II
The next day Nita came home by way of the Long Spinney that raked down from Logie to the grey hill-fastness where her village lurked. Her step was buoyant. She had sold her baskets, and had another man in thrall at Garsykes. All was well with her, till a gunshot cracked from the spinney, and Hardcastle came presently down the lane between the thick-set firs and sycamores, dangling a hare.
At sight of him—big and careless, as if the world were his—Nita lost all content. There was one who had escaped her snare, and she coveted him.
“The man they call Will o’ Wisp brought me just such a hare—and it was one of yours, I fancy.”
“Did he? I’m taking mine to Logie.”
“For the pedlar’s brat to share?”
Hardcastle, as yet, knew nothing of his heart; but Nita read it in his stubborn quietness.
“What did you say to her, that day you met her on the road?” he asked.
“Something that brought burning to her cheeks. Do you think, because you’re Hardcastle of Logie, you can share a hut for the night with a lass and hear no more about it—snowstorm or no?”
“There are times,” he said slowly, “when I wonder why one or another of the Garsykes Men doesn’t cut out that tongue of yours and nail it where the gamekeeper——”
“Nails vermin?” said Nita gently. “I witch them, Hardcastle of Logie.”
Hardcastle longed to pass by, and could not. Surely what they said of her was false. She was so fresh and innocent, like a morning in mid-April.
“I witch them, Dick, and care for none—since you went out of my life.”
Again she was witching him, too. All that was rough and a man in him had asked always for a frail thing like Nita to guard—something that would need his strength and lean on it.
“They were good days, and I lost them,” she went on.
It was as if a net of cobwebs hindered him. She was close, and woe-begone, and pleading. Then he remembered how it had gone long since—his stormy, honest wooing—and the end of that good dream. He recalled the barren years, his loathing of all women for Nita’s sake—Nita’s, who had played him false.
“You’re of Garsykes,” he said, “and the new days are in.”
“I might have been of Logie once. I was a fool. Have you no pity, Dick?” She put a hand on his sleeve. “You’re built out of limestone rock—hard and unforgiving.”
“Just hard, Nita.”
“And buying acres here and there, to add to Logie?”
“I bought a farm yesterday—Nicholas Wade’s, who died in his bed at ninety. Yes, I’m buying acres.”
“Wouldn’t you save them, Dick? I’m of the Wilderness—and there are only six of yours that do not cringe to Garsykes. You’re almost alone against us now.”
“Maybe—but the six are staunch.”
Nita would have welcomed rage—his hands at her throat, for what she had done to him in days gone by—but she fretted at this cold hardihood that was so resolute.
“Have you no pity?” she asked again.
“I keep such for Logie these times.”
Then suddenly he found her hands in his, and the old beguilement was about him. She had tempted him before, when the feud was new and heady in his veins, and he had hope of saving Logie. Now he had no hope, except to face the last assault of Garsykes when it came, and die with the house whose every rafter-beam he loved. Six of his men had proved leal. The rest were chaff blowing down the winds of chance—folk cringing for daily bread to Garsykes, and paying toll as if they cared not for the shame of licking dirty boots.
All was in the losing. And here was Nita, her arms soft about him. What did it matter, if he took and claimed her, and earned restful days for Logie?
The fight was over almost before he knew it had begun. Pride played its own part. He would not yield, though twenty Garsykes came against him. But, deep under pride, lay some inner depth whose waters had not been stirred till now. Nita and her spells grew shadowy and weak. He was a free man again, and some new, undreamed-of world seemed to open out before him.
Nita stood at arm’s length now, wondering at the man’s stubbornness.
“So we’re both fools, it seems,” she said. “I lost Logie once for vanity—and now you’re losing it for pride.”
A twig snapped in the wood behind them, and Hardcastle turned sharply. He saw only a shaking of the pine-branches; but Nita had seen more.
“Afraid that one from Garsykes would club you from behind?” she mocked.
“Not afraid—but sure it would be from behind, if at all.”
“How you loathe us, Dick—and how we loathe you in turn. Listen. I’m as you see me—not ugly, they say—and there’s a mad-dog fury there in Garsykes. They want to burn your house to-morrow, and I will not let them.”
“Why?” snapped Hardcastle.
“I hope to be mistress there. Would I let them burn a house I shared?”
“You’ll never share it,” he said bluntly, stung by her careless trust in her own beauty and its power.
Nita stood regarding him for a moment, then laughed—a little, eerie laugh that had an edge of steel. “I’ll not let them burn the house for another reason now. It would be too easy a way out for its pride-sick master. You’re glancing at the wood again? It was no Garsykes face that peeped between the branches.”
“Whose was it, then?”
“Aye, whose? You’ll learn soon enough—and, after all, it’s only one more trouble to your load.”
A silence followed, heavy and brooding as thunder-weather brewing up. Nita, used to swaying men by her lightest smile, had done all to bring Hardcastle into captivity again. She had failed, and the Master drew back a pace or two, appalled by what he saw in the girl’s face and dove-like eyes.
“I shall teach them the way of better sport with Logie than burning it. You’d only die once in the flames. For weeks, maybe—or months—the Wilderness will let you go your ways. A mischance here and there, to let you know we’re not asleep—the waiting for a blow that will surely come at last—do you think pride will carry any man through that?”
“Yes,” said Hardcastle, and went up the pastures, swinging the hare he carried.