II
About five of that November evening, Hardcastle had come to his house of Logie and heard a woman’s voice as he stepped into the hall after stabling his horse.
“Now, Storm, be quiet,” she chided. “You’ve had two weeks of nursing, and you’re nearly well. I’ll not have you snap at me. But then all sick folk are that way,” she went on, coaxing and scolding in the same breath.
She was changing the sheep-slayer’s bandages, and glanced up at Hardcastle with a smile of welcome.
“He’s strong enough to need a male nurse now. Will you do the rest?”
Storm tried his fretful temper on the Master, but not for long. He did not whimper even as the ointment stung and galled before it soothed; for he knew that the days of his pamperdom were nearly over—and that Hardcastle knew it, too.
When he had licked himself for a while, then settled into sleep, Causleen and Hardcastle stood in the draughty hall, glancing at each other with the new understanding that had come by stealth to them during these last days.
“Donald—how is he?” he asked.
“A little nearer the end.”
Hardcastle had driven pity out of his life, had bruised it with his heel at every turn. He was impatient to find it stirring faintly now.
“I wish Logie was a safer lodging for you. You’ve trouble enough of your own.”
The note in his voice, the haunted look that showed in his eyes for a moment and was gone, told her of some encounter on the road to-night.
“Is it Long Murgatroyd again, with a rope across the highway?”
“What do you know of that?” he snapped.
“Oh, you hid the news well enough, but gossip brought it. What happened to-night as you rode from Norbrigg?”
“Nothing that mattered—for me. But for you and Donald——”
“It matters for all of us, or none,” she broke in, her glance questioning and steady.
“No,” he said roughly. “The end for Logie is sure, so far as I can see. But I’d hoped the house would last Donald’s time. He’s earned a peaceful end.”
Causleen seemed ever to be finding some unexpected waywardness in Hardcastle. He waged the feud so quietly, with such contempt for his own safety, that she had thought him deaf to what was no news on Logie-side. He, too, was aware that his house was doomed, it seemed; yet he found time to think of Donald.
“What happened to-night?” she asked again. “I’d rather have the tale from you than wait for gossip.”
So then he told her of his ride up-fell from Norbrigg, and how he found a post-boy holding his own with hardship against a footpad.
“I sent a bullet after him—and, the last I saw of the rogue, he was limping hard for Garsykes. It’s only one more count in their tally against me.”
“You could buy your house—at a price,” she said.
“What price?” He was rough and hard on the instant—rough as Storm, sleeping his sickness off in the cupboard near at hand.
“You could give them tribute.”
“And sell Logie’s honour? I couldn’t. Seven hundred years would rive open the graves down yonder, where dead Hardcastles lie. They’d rise and flout me.”
Causleen’s eyes glowed bright and clear. “It would be so easy,” she said, tempting him, “to pay a little to them every now and then—and your house safe—and no ropes stretched across night-roads.”
Hardcastle glowered down at her. “And no peace by day or night. Logie would know. Her timbers would creak and groan. She’d loose her ancient ghosts on me—and God knows every house has ghosts enough of that sort. You’re mad to talk of giving tribute.”
She had probed to the core of him, as she had meant; and a great need came to her, out of the weary years behind, to speak of the tribute asked of Donald and herself—which had been denied in face of odds as great as he was facing.
“Two pedlars came to your door,” she said, with a flash of the old grievance. “You counted us as such, and no more.”
“And shall never be forgiven.”
“I’m tired and out of heart, and you have been kind—kinder than you need have been. And we still intrude.”
“No,” said Hardcastle.
That was all; but his denial had a new ring of truth about it, though she could find no reason for the change.
“We had lands of our own once,” she went on by and by—“lands and a house like yours. But they went.”
There was a tearless grief, too deep for Hardcastle to fathom, in those three words, “But they went.” Logie was going, unless a miracle arrived; but he would die with the house, when the last onset of the Garsykes Men prevailed. He had no such parting to face as Causleen had gone through—exile from a homestead whose every stone and draughty corridor was loved like a second self. Logie and he, when their time came, would face the Trump o’ Doom together.
“Tell me more,” he said.
While she halted, fearing that grief would get the better of her, Rebecca came down the passage with a martial tread. The brindled cat was on her shoulder, his fur raised in warlike challenge, too.
“Logie lands breed slack-come-by men these days, Master. Such a twitter as there’s been in my kitchen. You’d have fancied women were talking, though they wore breeks.”
“Who were they, Rebecca?”
“Phineas Rowbotham first, squealing that he was a man of peace. Bloodshed was a sin, said he, and why shouldn’t we pay our way with the Garsykes Folk—living, and letting live. I was dusting his jacket with a rolling-pin when another steps in with the same tale, and another. So I swept them out, and barred the door. Jonah spat at ’em from my shoulder, same as he’s sitting now. Jonah knows men’s flesh and blood from chicken-meat. Spat and growled at ’em, he did, as a man cat should.”
Causleen felt a sudden sense of home. Hardcastle had not the Highland speech, nor Rebecca; but they three were one in the spirit to endure. And Storm and the brindled cat were with them.