SPITE’S VICTORY
Causleen, when she left Hardcastle asleep in the hooded chair at Logie, wandered nearer and nearer to the Garsykes country, till she halted at last on Trolls Hill and stood looking over the barren lands.
The wind, boisterous now, had scattered the mists, and in the keen, chilly sunlight Garsykes village showed clear across the hollow. She could hear voices in its street, and wondered if they were planning some new devilment. A woman’s raucous laugh sounded. Was that in answer to the plotting?
Her courage ebbed low, after the night’s useless vigil. There were so many of them. What chance had Logie in the last result? Surely Hardcastle had done enough, and might give up the unequal battle. He had only to pay tribute, like the rest, to buy his safety.
She trampled down the thought. If she had half-loved him, that road of freedom might have brought content. As it was, she could not bear that he should be less than the Master, whatever came. And yet the odds against him were pitiful, disastrous.
Still her glance was drawn to Garsykes, as if the very evil of the place had cast a spell on her; and she started when Nita Langrish stepped lightly up the track that led from Logie.
“Not afraid to be so near our thieves and cut-throats?” said Nita.
“Logie does not fear such. They came, and had their answer.”
“Riding a tall horse, are you? Logie does not fear, says Hardcastle’s wanton, as if she was an honest wife there.”
The hot blood flamed in Causleen’s face, and pallor followed. If a knife had been ready to her hand, there would have been murder done, here where the wind roared and fluted over Trolls Hill.
“Go,” she said, “back to the styes that bred you!”
“I will go, little beggar on horseback. If you knew what errand I have been on—but, then, you do not know.”
Nita stood poised on slender feet, like a wild deer of the hills, but tarried.
“I’m skilled in divination,” she went on, her voice reminding Causleen, in some haphazard way, of Jonah, the brindled cat when he was playing with a mouse. “Shall the basket-weaver tell you what is coming?”
In spite of herself, Causleen felt weak and a child in the other’s hands. The magic that had kept Garsykes Men in thrall was drawing her into its webs. She followed Nita’s finger as it pointed to the road below, where the track from Logie split in two—one grey lane going flat to Garsykes, the other winding steep and rocky to a cavern gaping open-mouthed across the green face of the pastures.
“Do you see where the tracks divide?” purred Nita. “A man will come to the two-ways by and by, and take the upper road. And you will follow.”
Causleen remembered Hardcastle asleep at Logie; and he was the one man in the world she would ever follow willingly.
“It is not true,” she said, with chill disdain.
The basket-weaver made no answer. But still she did not go, and her silence began to mesh Causleen again with unseen nets. Yonder was Garsykes, foul and a menace centuries old. And close at hand was Nita. She felt utterly alone, as if friendless leagues divided her from Logie and her man.
Strive as she would, panic—headlong, unreasoning panic—was stealing on her, though the sun shone and the free winds went bristling by.
Nita kept silence. She, of all living Garsykes Folk, had learned most of the black magic handed down the generations. It had been her joy to weave it into the baskets she sold, into the ill-starred deeds her men did by night and day—and Causleen was given into her hands. She would half slay her now with dread, then let her go to what they had planned for the pedlar’s girl and Hardcastle.
All that was brave and Highland-born in Causleen fought the terror stealing on her. What sort of wife would she be to Hardcastle, if she yielded now to this stealthy dread that came like formless mist about her?
There came a whimpering through the heather. She did not hear, till a wet nose was pressed into her hand; and afterwards a tongue red with sheep-slaying reached up and licked her face.
Then, as on a night gone by when Storm lay in the cupboard under Logie’s stair, she threw her arms about him.
“Storm, you’ve come,” she said, hugging his tousled body, thick with bracken-splinters that he carried from his past night’s lair.
Nita drew away. Dogs always distrusted her, and fear of the whole race—a dread half superstitious—had grown into her life. Yet even now she could not keep back the bitter gibe.
“He is a friend of the Master’s, too. Dear grief, Logie keeps odd company nowadays.”
Storm, homeless and tired of the wander-lust, had been sending long thoughts out to Logie as he sat on a spur of the moors and saw Causleen swing into sight across the Garsykes track. He had bounded down—slipping and turning a somersault or two on the way—and, now that he was in touch again with Logie, he was content. He growled at Nita by habit, and bared his teeth, then turned again to Causleen and yielded like a puppy to her daft endearments. She smelt of home to Storm.
Causleen was reliant and herself again. The coming of this four-footed Ishmael had broken the basket-weaver’s spells. Garsykes mattered no longer. Out there Hardcastle was sleeping himself into new vigour; and here was Storm, to guide her safe to the return.
“Logie always had staunch friends,” she said, her glance meeting Nita’s.
Nita made no answer, but glanced behind her; and presently her slight body quivered with eagerness.
“Did I lie, little wanton? A man comes up the Garsykes road. He’s a small figure yet—but, see, he grows bigger—and now he nears the two-ways that I told you of.”
Causleen was meshed again by webs. She could do no more than follow the pointing finger, and watch the man till she knew his limber stride, his way of carrying broad shoulders.
“He has come to the two-roads now,” said Nita softly—“and now he takes the higher track. Did I lie?”
Hardcastle, in the clear light, seemed so near that Causleen cried aloud to him, entreating his return. The wind drove her voice back.
“I sent him there—in search of you,” said Nita. “He thinks we have you in our caves.”
For one still moment Causleen paused. She knew the agony speeding Hardcastle to the black mouth that grinned across the pasture-lands. She knew what leaped from her in answer.
“You sent him there?” she echoed.
“Yes—food for our Garsykes wolves.”
Causleen, with sudden, blinding passion, called to the sheep-slayer “Storm, kill her. Fasten on her throat, Storm.”
The dog was far down the slope already. He, too had seen the Master. Causleen might smell of home, but Hardcastle was Logie’s self.
The pedlar’s girl raced sure-footed between the wet, gnarled hummocks, crying as she ran with a warning that the gale caught and drove to tatters. She came to the parting of the ways, and followed without pause the grey track that wound upward to the caves.
Hardcastle’s big figure, far ahead, halted for a brief welcome as Storm overtook him. As if she stood beside them, she knew what went to that greeting—the man’s joy that he had a toothed and stubborn friend in this adventure, the dog’s that he was with the chosen one.
“Come back,” she cried again—so loud, it seemed to her, that not even the wind could hinder its sharp bidding.
Hardcastle did not hear. Like a man possessed he strode forward till he reached the cave’s mouth. Then they were swallowed by the darkness, Storm and he, and Causleen knew at last what caring meant.
She neither wavered nor had fear. Where he went she would follow, by free-will and by right.
Nita watched it all from the benty lands above—saw Hardcastle and Storm go into the trap prepared. Then Causleen went, and was hidden by the dark. And after that, ten frowsy men got out from the rocks and closed about the entry.
The basket-weaver took her way to Garsykes, crooning a song of the Lost Folk—a low, stealthy ballad, ages old, that reeked of the marshes and the styes. And, as she came into the village, she found it packed with men and scolding women.
They snarled and jeered at her, and Long Murgatroyd’s voice was lifted in sullen fury.
“Here comes Nita. She sent us to fire Logie, and then talked big about doing what we couldn’t. She’s laughed at us too long, the hussy.”
She faced the answering uproar and laughed afresh at them. “Little Nita does what she promises,” she said, pointing to the caves above. “Hardcastle has gone in to find his wanton, and she’s with him there.”
They fell back then, muttering, and her tongue whipped them as of old.
“I’ve trapped them for you—and you whine and skulk here asking questions. They’d be out of the trap by now, if I hadn’t picked ten from among you to guard the caves—ten who shaped more like men than rabbits.”
“Art lying, Nita, as of old?” growled Murgatroyd.
Again she pointed to the black mouth that gashed the fells. And now in the keen light they saw ten of theirs moving to and fro about the cave-front, and a great shout went up.
In a moment they were racing pell-mell up the slope, save for Nita and Widow Mathison, who kept the Garsykes inn.
“You’re coming to see Logie’s end?” asked Nita, looking back after she had started to follow her men at leisure.
“No,” said the widow. “I’ve too much flesh on my bones to care for hill-climbing.”
A light shone in the basket-weaver’s eyes—the light of thunder skies that ripen to full-blooded tempest. Merciless, brooding long, her spite against Logie had come to victory. But more than that went to this mood of Nita’s. By mother’s milk and father’s training she had been taught that Garsykes had striven for centuries out of mind to tumble Logie’s pride to ground.
“Will you not come, widow?” she asked. “There’ll be such sport as was never seen.”
“I’m too fat, I tell you. I should sweat myself to death in climbing.”
“More’s the pity, for you’d look on at what men long dead in Garsykes hungered to see. It was left to little Nita to bring Logie down.”
Then she mocked the widow’s grossness, and went up the breast of the fells. And Widow Mathison got heavily to a spur of the rising ground that gave her a better outlook on the caves. She remembered how Hardcastle had brought her lad from the wet of the slimy marshes and given him back to her on a night not long gone by. Nothing could ever bridge that debt she owed him.
She listened to the roar of Garsykes voices, saw Nita going tireless up the slope; and the tears ran amain down the furrows of her plump, good-natured face.
“We could spare most on Logie-side,” she sobbed, “but not its Master.”