II
Rebecca was busy in her kitchen up at Logie on the afternoon of the great snowstorm. She was thinking how wise she had been to send Causleen “just to get a bit of colour into her cheeks” when the sky began to darken, till she could scarcely have seen to ply her rolling-pin but for the ruddy hearth-glow. Now and then she turned on the great, brindled cat curled up inside the fender
“You’re a grand ’un for bringing bad weather,” she said, “and that’s why I named you Jonah. You never sit close to the fire but it means a storm.”
The cat stretched himself, and licked his handsome fur, and dozed again. It was odd to him that human folk had so little knowledge of weather.
“Just Jonah, you—and an idle vagabones at that I’ve a mind to sweep you out of my kitchen with the thick end of a besom.”
Jonah heard the threat without disturbance. He knew the way of Rebecca’s weather, too.
She went on with her pastry-making. The Master had a big body to be filled, and a sweet tooth for pastry after he’d had his fill of strong meats. Men were all alike. Feed ’em and fill ’em, and they’d be lambs about a house. And Rebecca never guessed why her hand was light at the work—and the pastry light, by that token. She had never a man to care for, except Hardcastle of Logie, and it was a joy to wear herself to the bone for him.
The wind got up and snarled, as it snarled by the Strith when Hardcastle and Causleen listened to the vanguard of the storm piping low through Logie Wood. And then there came the crying of the wild-geese, winging high above the house.
Rebecca dropped her rolling-pin, and went out into the wind-gusts and the greying light. She was at prayer, of her own sort.
“The Gabble-Rachet always brought me luck,” she said. “It’s that I live for.”
Flight after flight went overhead, with ceaseless uproar. Rebecca was no longer the practical, deft-handed housekeeper at Logie. She was as Causleen and old Donald had seen her, when the pedlar showed baby-wear among the litter of his pack, and she went wild.
She thought of the lad who was to have married her in the far-off time, of his death because he would pay no toll to Garsykes. The man who killed him had died while the Gabble-Ratchet screeched overhead. Years afterwards his son broke his neck to the self-same music. Luck was in for her, and out for Garsykes, at such times.
She had crossed the stable-yard and gone into the field beyond, to get clearer sight of the wild-geese; and when the last of them had hurried by, she looked about her. There were signs in plenty of the storm to come. Just as the brindled cat had sought the fender, sheep were hurrying to cover of the wall. Rooks, feeding tranquilly an hour since in upland oat-stubble, sped homeward. In the high thorn-edge, storm-cocks, that love a tilt at harsh weather, cried lustily.
Rebecca looked far down the field, and saw a speck move up it. The speck took man’s shape by and by. A scud of snow was following him up the hill, and by his shammocky stride she was sure he hailed from Garsykes. This puzzled her. An attack in force on Logie she could have understood, but it was not like the Wilderness Folk for one of them to come alone into a hostile country.
The snow-scud overtook and hid him for awhile. Then again she saw him plodding up, and she could distinguish now a bulky sack that swayed about his shoulders. With a grim face, and a grimmer heart, Rebecca waited. Jonah the cat, hugging the fire indoors, had claws to show in time of need. So had she.
The gale was up in earnest, and snow thickened fast about the man who hurried up the field. Soon he began to blunder this way and that through the blinding maze, and a sharp, bitter cry rang up-wind.
“Damn Nita Langrish. She sent me into this.”
Rebecca laughed with eerie gentleness. The man came from Garsykes, as she had guessed, and Nita had sent him on an errand. Already he was hidden by the on-driving wall of snow, and so much for him. The wild-geese had flighted to-day, and Logie’s luck was in.
So intent the woman was on nursing vengeance that the storm was on her, too, before she found a thought for her own safety. Though scarcely twenty yards from the gate that led into the stable-yard, it took long to find it; and afterwards, close to her own kitchen, wind and snow played blind-man’s-buff with her before she found the door, and opened it, and had to use all her lean, hard strength to close it against the in-leaping storm.
Jonah still slept tranquilly inside the fender, dreaming of rats to be hunted in the stables when good weather came again. Rebecca’s glance rested on him, lying plump and sleek there, and wrath descended on her. She snatched a besom up, and gave him the thick end of it with zest, as she had promised not long since in idle banter.
“That’s what I give to vagabones,” she said, and thwacked him again.
Jonah sprang to the top of the big chair beside the hearth, and spat at her. His fur was stiff, like an angry dog’s, and he swept down a wild-cat’s paw at her.
“Getting to be your own man again?” said Rebecca. “Well, it’s time you did, now the rats creep up from Garsykes.”
With that she took up her rolling-pin and went on with the pastry-making as quietly as if nothing had disturbed the work; but her thoughts were with the man she had watched creeping up the field. A glance at the window showed panes crusting ever thicker as the snow drove at them, and a hard smile played about her lips.
The brindled cat eyed her with wrath that cooled by slow degrees. He washed himself all over, as if to clear away the besom’s touch, and stood on the chair-top in sullen dignity. Then suddenly he jumped to the floor and up to Rebecca’s shoulder at a bound. They could never quarrel for long, these two.
“At your cantrips again,” said Rebecca calmly, “as if you were kitten-high—and resting all your great, idle weight on a woman that won’t put up with such-like nonsense.”
The cat stayed where he was, and presently Rebecca began to talk to him.
“There’s a Garsykes Man out yonder, Jonah. It must be cold lying. He’ll never taste kitchen-warmth again, or the crisp of an apple-pasty.”
Jonah purred against her withered cheek, and watched the rolling-pin go up and down.
“I can see him now as he came up the pasture. The snow overtook him, and he wambled like a drunken man, and dropped. There’ll be his burial-mound above him—a biggish mound by this time. So there’s another of the foul brood gone.”
From within-doors—loud as the wind was screaming at the windows—Rebecca heard a fretful cry steal down the passage.
“It’s the pedlar,” she grumbled. “Good sakes. I’d forgotten he was all on his lonesome—his legs forsaking him, and all.”
Donald was striving pitifully to rise when she reached the long-settle. “Where’s Causleen?” he pleaded. “I feel an old, old man, buried out of sight, when she’s not near.”
Rebecca wondered, too, where Causleen was. The Master was out in the storm, but he knew every barn and bield-wall of his country, and would find shelter somehow. Causleen was a stranger. It might be that she had met the same white death that the Garsykes Man had found. And she had sent her out.
“She’ll be here by and by,” she said, pity stirring at her gnarled old heart.
Donald’s glance wandered to the pike that had gone to Flodden Field and back, and again he tried to rise. “There was so much I had to tell her. You’re kind, and bid us stay at Logie—but there’s rust of Jaimie the King’s blood up there. I cannot eat or sleep within the house. Causleen knows I cannot—and she will not come.”
“Now I’m tucking the blankets round you,” said Rebecca, her hands deft and gentle, “and I’m telling you to get to sleep, or give me a reason t’ other way.”
Donald yielded to the warmth and rest; and in his dozing his heart leaped into his lips, and he told in few, poignant words what the years behind had meant to him.
“The long, grey roads—the footsore roads—selling Pedlar’s Balsam to other folk—it’s a weary life. There’s no time for the pedlar to balsam his own feet.”
And so they watched beside him through the night, Rebecca and the brindled cat. From time to time the woman crossed to the window, to see if there were any sign of the storm’s abating. There was none, and her fears for Causleen increased. Yet she could do nothing, and fell asleep at last in the chair drawn up beside the settle.
The day was up when she awoke. A glance at Donald showed him lying in childlike slumber, with Jonah curled up on the blankets; and Rebecca went out into the sunlight, scanning the lower slopes in search of the Master or Causleen. They did not come, though the thaw had opened out wide tracks of green between the drifts.
In her long time at Logie, Rebecca had never known a tempest so quick to come and go. A wind swift and bitter from the east had driven her indoors last night. Now a warm, playful breeze played against her face. The gold and crimson glory of the autumn woods reared itself above great scuds of snow that melted almost as they fell. And everywhere there was the cry of waters, big and little; for every dingle of the pastures was a running beck, and all the glens were rivers, bank-top high with snow-broth.
Rebecca heard the rooks come clamouring to their sycamores and ancient nests—heard a throstle pipe a stave or two, as if he scented spring after this wild October night—and knew then that the storm would not return for many days. Rooks and the thrushes were old in weather-lore.
Still the Master did not come, nor Causleen, and Rebecca wondered if the Gabble-Ratchet had brought luck to Logie, after all. The pedlar’s girl meant little to her, but if Hardcastle was dead—if never again she would sew buttons on for him, or cook his meals, or bear with his gusty temper—it was near her time to be done with this world and its foolishness.
Rebecca glanced downhill again, and when still no sign of life showed between the brimming waters, her thoughts turned to the man from Garsykes who had been overtaken by the storm last night. She crossed the stable-yard and went down the field on the far side of it till she reached a pile of melting snow. Out of the mound showed a man’s two hands, limp and glistening-wet.
No spark of pity or horror touched Rebecca. With fierce, exultant patience she watched the snow-shroud crumble, till now his arms showed to the sunlight, then his lean neck with the mouldy kerchief tied about it.
Sun and south wind between them were busy with the melting, and presently the man’s face showed. It had been a coarse face, lined with slyness; but snow and death had washed it, and it carried a strange look of peace.
The sack he had carried lay beside him. She opened it, and knew at last the object of his journey. It was filled with pine-logs, twigs and resin. These and the tinder-box in his pocket were enough to set Logie flaming from end to end of its grey gables.
The dead man could tell her nothing now; but he had told all yesterday when, baffled by the storm, he cursed Nita Langrish for bringing him into this. Rebecca pieced the tale together with shrewd vision. There was none from this to Langstrothdale who garnered news like Nita the basket-weaver. Men passed her as she sat on the bridge-wall, her fingers slender almost as the withies she plaited. They stayed for gossip with a maid known through the Dale to be a maddener of men, and she ’ticed their news from them.
Nita had learned, no doubt, that the Master was from home, and had sent up this poor, dead fool to fire the house. Rebecca stirred the body with her foot, in grudging pity. Then the peace in his face—the still unalterable peace—brought wrath and brimstone round her once again.
“You’ve found too soft an end,” she grumbled—“too soft by half, my lad.”
She was still standing there, the feud raw at her heart, when Causleen and the Master came up together from their vigil in the foresters’ hut.
“You’re safe, then, the pair of you,” she said. “I was fearing for the pedlar’s girl. She’s not used to our rough country.”
Causleen was ashamed of her own shame, as she heard Hardcastle tell how he had met her just in time—heard Rebecca’s blunt thankfulness that they had found a hut to spend the night in, safe from the worst blizzard ever known on Logie-side. Why had her pride taken fire because Hardcastle had saved her life? Why had she stooped to think of gossip and dishonour, when these two saw the past night as a fight against weather—a fight won by Logie?
Then Causleen saw the muddled heap that yesterday had been a man—saw the wet face and hands, the pitiful, threadbare clothes.
“What is it?” she asked.
“One from Garsykes that’s dead,” said Rebecca tranquilly.
“Poor pedlar. What does he carry in that big pack of his?”
“Enough to burn Logie down from roof to cellar. But he’s dead. And the Master’s quick. It’s Logie’s turn this time.”