III
Causleen, wandering restlessly about Logie House, heard Shepherd Brant come into the kitchen with news that he had shot Storm at last. She heard, too, Rebecca’s talk of danger to the Master on his way from Norbrigg; and her restlessness increased.
Storm had found no more than his due, perhaps; but she had made a comrade of the shaggy culprit, and it seemed a cruel death for any dog. So little friendship came her way. She would miss his stealthy coming to the cupboard under the stair, her own stealthy journeys to the larder in search of a bone for him.
Then, struggle with the feeling as she might, she began to share Rebecca’s fears for Hardcastle. Suppose, in sober fact, he was lying somewhere on the Norbrigg road? Suppose his big, hale body would never ride the hill-crests again, or taste the savour of keen moorland weather? She felt the pity of it, and with pity came remembrance of the tempest they had shared. But for him, she would have died in the snow. That would have mattered little, for herself; to her father it would have meant an end of the last consolation left him.
The pedlar was calling her now. His eyes were bright and eager when she knelt beside him and took his cold hands into hers.
“I’m seeing all the Highlands, child—not just Ben Crummock here, or Ben Ore there—but the good, wild sweep o’ them all.”
His voice was clear again, vibrant and youthful as when he went a-Maying.
“It’s as if I was standing on a high mountain—seeing it all spread out below me—hearing the pipes sob up from Glencoe, and over Culloden Muir, and out from the Western Isles.”
“Never heed their sobbing,” she pleaded.
“I will, for it heartens me. Where I stand now—”
A tremor shook him, a dry, harsh coughing; but he was so nearly rid of his body that his high spirit stormed and conquered it afresh.
“Where I stand now the after-music sounds. The pipers come, leading our Highland dead—there’s still a plaining and a sorrow, but the strathspey sounds.”
Through blinding tears Causleen saw this courageous father, stalwart to the end, his vision clear as a boy’s, his faith indomitable. She was losing him, and soon. Whenever one of her race neared the threshold of beyond, the pipers summoned them.
“They sorrowed here. They’ll come by and by into all they fought for in the narrow glens, and up the braes—cannot you see them, girl?”
The pedlar strove to rise, because his vision was so urgent, and fell back, and moaned awhile in helplessness. Then he glanced at Causleen with quiet humour.
“Standing on a high hill, was I?” he muttered. “It was a good dream while it lasted.”
Then his eyes clouded, and he slept; and Causleen, roaming the winding passages again, encountered Rebecca.
“He’ll only come the one way home to Logie,” muttered the woman. “He’ll only come the one way now—stretched on a gate, with four men carrying him. It was so they brought my man home, forty odd years since, after he had said nay to the Garsykes sort.”
Causleen, awed by the loneliness of corridors and stairs that seemed peopled with ghosts, followed Rebecca as she went to the door, and opened it, and stood listening.
“All’s quiet as yet,” said Rebecca, turning by and by; “but it’ll not be quiet for long. It’s a queer sort o’ shuffling noise they make—four men carrying a gate and something heavy stretched on it. Forty years since I heard it last! It seems like yesterday.”
The girl yielded to the other’s hard, quiet certainty that Hardcastle was dead—yielded to the wind’s sobbing in among the half-stripped branches of the sycamores outside. Again pity touched her—a deeper pity now. If the Master’s welcome at their first coming had been chilly, he had bettered it with every day that followed. She and her father had been nothing but a burden to him from the start, yet he had made them guests of honour in his own gruff fashion. There was the night, too, at the woodmen’s hut. She had railed at him for saving her; but now she understood. And it was too late.
Rebecca’s lean body grew intent on the sudden. She stepped out into the moonlight, and presently Causleen heard, too, the pit-a-pat of hoofs sound up the road.
“They’re bringing him on horseback, instead of a gate,” said Rebecca, in the same hard, quiet tone; “but it’s a dead man rides, and that I know.”
Causleen could think no less. The slow clink of hoofs suggested no living master, riding home to his own roof-tree and its cheer. Somewhere—in her heart or mind, she knew not which—there was a sense of bitter loss. Already, without guessing it, she had grown to lean on Hardcastle in these days of grief and home-sickness for the Highlands. And he was gone, all but the husk of him.
The hoof-beats sounded nearer now, and Rebecca’s stillness broke like thunder-weather. Forty years was cancelled. It was her own man coming, so she fancied. In a flash she went through the anguish of that far-off time—the dead lips making no answer to her kisses, the limp arms that would never again shield her from life’s tumults.
She dashed the tears away with a rough, skinny hand, and saw Causleen there.
“It’s not your fault, or the pedlar’s,” she snapped, old days and new mingling, with no gap between them—“but how dare he unfasten his pack and show me baby-wear?”
Causleen, young but tried by many footsore journeys, had learned insight into such moods as this. She understood the other’s wild clinging to past grief, as to a better thing than present joy.
“He did not know,” she pleaded softly.
“To be sure. He didn’t know. But he might as well have put a skewer through my heart.”
Then Rebecca forgot the girl. Standing straight to her lean height, she reached out her arms, and stood there calling to the man killed long since by the Lost Folk. She bade him come quickly, for she had wakened from a dream that he was dead—bade him step up and tarry no more—pretended he was here beside her, and closed her arms about the emptiness, crooning a girl’s love-welcome.
The slow pit-a-pat of hoofs had rounded the corner now, and Rebecca woke as from a trance.
“Get indoors, lass,” she said. “Dead men are no good sight for young eyes to see.”
Causleen answered nothing. She waited, sick with fear. Step by step the horse brought its burden nearer. There was no pride in her heart now, no memory of Hardcastle’s curt welcome—was it a few weeks ago, or years? She did not know—knew only that she would miss something that had come into her life to stay.
“The pity of it—oh, the pity,” she cried.
“I’d rather he died that fashion,” snapped Rebecca, peering out into the moonlight, “than in a bed he’d bought by giving tribute Garsykes way.”
She would not go to meet trouble, and Causleen dared not. So Hardcastle came leading his horse to the door, and was astonished to find two women there who gazed at him as if he came from under some tomb in the churchyard.
“Is it your ghost, Master?” quavered Rebecca.
“No, it’s my body—and damned tired at that.”
Causleen, before she could check the impulse, ran forward and touched his sleeve. Long watching beside her father had weakened her endurance. So had the suspense that brooded over Logie since the feud was up.
“Oh, thank God,” she said with a sudden rush of tears.
Hardcastle glanced at her in frank wonder. It was long since anyone had given him such a welcome home; yet only yesterday she had shunned him as if he had the plague. There was the scent of violets in her hair as it brushed his shoulder—a warm, wet fragrance, born of the night-time breeze—that unsteadied him. He had thought himself past that sort of blandishment, since Nita and he shared courting-days; but his heart found a quicker beat.
She withdrew sharply, ashamed of her weakness and blaming him for it. “Rebecca was so sure that you were killed on the way home,” she said. “I could not comfort her.”
Rebecca herself was in a fine, gusty rage. She had gone through much in the last hour, and the relief from foreboding asked for outlet.
“I will say this, Master, though I let my tongue be still most times. Outrageous folk, men are. They’ll go pleasuring to market, in spite o’ Garsykes being out against ’em. They’ll let their women moil and toil for ’em, and wait their coming—and, like as you might say for frolic, they’ll come an hour late to supper.”
Hardcastle could understand her wrath no better than Causleen’s tears. It seemed to him simply that the two of them were daft. But then most women were.
“I was kept,” he said.
“Aye, you were kept—and the best supper ever cooked is spoiling to a cinder. And you never stopped to think I should be picturing you dead on the roadway all this time.”
The moon was racing through a scud of cloud, and Rebecca peered through the silver dusk.
“What have you got on your saddle?” she asked sharply.
“Storm, poor brute. He fell asleep on the journey, worn out with it all.”
Rebecca’s gusty mood pointed south-west now, instead of shrill nor’-east. “Then I’m glad you’re late. Shepherd Brant was in my kitchen just now, boasting he’d put lead into Storm at last and that he’d die of it among the brackens.”
“He came near it.”
“Maybe; but a miss is as good as a mile. I sent Brant stamping out, with a flea in his big, hairy ear—and, as for Storm, poor lamb, we’ll mend his legs for him.”
The Master had lifted Storm already from saddle. The dog bit feebly at him, and writhed in pain; but his growling ceased when he found himself in the old quarters that had grown to be home and respite to him.
Rebecca ran in search of linen and a cunning ointment she bought from the gypsies who came peddling to her door, and then Causleen, wise with dogs, held the rough head while Hardcastle felt down the maimed hindquarters.
“There’s nothing broken,” he said, glancing up, “but Brant fired at close range, damn him. Storm’s flesh has gaps in it.”
The sheep-slayer had gone through evil days—hunger while they hunted him, and after it the straddling out in search of cover after Brant had left him with two legs to go on instead of four. So he let them do what they would with him, though Rebecca’s ointment galled his wounds as she plied them with no gentle fingers. This was ease after hardship—three folk attentive on him, and a snug lodging for the night.
The cunning ointment, its bite sharp at first, began to soothe, and Storm dozed happily.
“Poor lamb, he’s bettering now,” said Rebecca, wiping her fingers on a scrap of linen.
Hardcastle laughed quietly. “There are lambs that were never born because he slew the ewes. But he’s ours, Rebecca.”
They stood together in the silence. Peril brooded like thunder-weather over the house of Logie. The wind, chattering and plucking at the casements, spoke of stealth, of nameless treacheries closing round about its walls. The pedlar was crying in his sleep for another glimpse of Ben Crummock before he died.
Do as they would, gloom spun its webs about them—little, clinging webs that hindered courage—till Jonah, the brindled cat, stalked down the passage. Storm’s protest when they tended the wounds had roused Jonah from his sleep, and he came to learn what ailed an ancient comrade. His thick, handsome coat was all a-bristle, his eyes green and combative.
Jonah paid no heed to Rebecca, but stepped into the cupboard and glanced at the sheep-slayer, and mewed restlessly. Storm lifted his head drowsily and growled a welcome, and the brindled cat curled himself into the dog’s shaggy neck and looked out on all intruders with defiance. Then they licked each other once or twice and fell into a deep slumber of content.
“Listen to him,” said Rebecca, with a cackle of glee. “Listen to vagabones Jonah. He’s purring as loud as an eight-day clock, Lord bless him.”
Their eerie hour of dread was broken. Causleen glanced at the Master, and for the first time since they shared Logie’s roof they laughed together. Then she grew wide-eyed and grave again.
“But your hands are raw!” she cried.
“Storm did not know me just at first. They’ll heal,” said Hardcastle.