THE NIGHT WATCH
As the hours passed, the tempest gained in speed. Stout-built as it was, the foresters’ hut shook with the gale’s mishandling, and the din out of doors was as full of cries as if every warlock and hellhound had been loosed from Langstrothdale to Logie.
Causleen and Hardcastle sat on the rough benches built on each side of the hut. They faced each other across the fireglow, and between them Storm slept on, making the most of luxury.
“It would be fierce, but could not last at this time of the year,” said Causleen, with grave, accusing anger. “You promised that.”
“And could not keep the promise. I’m only the last fool who thought himself a prophet where Logie weather was concerned.”
“If the snow has stopped—go see if the snow has stopped—I should not care for the wind, however hard it blew. We could get up to Logie somehow.”
Her eyes were bright—too bright, to Hardcastle’s thinking—and she seemed to have some stubborn feud with him.
“How can we, through the drifts? Be glad we’re sheltered here.”
“Are you a man at all? I bade you go and see if we could get to Logie.”
To humour her, he went out and looked about him. There was a clear space still in front of the sheltered doorway, and little stir of wind. The hut lay in a little harbour of its own, secure; but a little space away the gale ravened through the snow as Storm at his reddest had never harried the grey ewes.
“The snow thickens,” he said, coming in again.
“Then there is nothing we can do to get to Logie?”
“Not yet.”
Quarrel showed in her eyes again. “A beggar-maid’s honour is of no account. It would not be, to you.”
He looked at her with puzzled question. To him, this was an adventure thrust on him by the tricky weather, and he would be glad to see the end of it.
“Your honour?”
“You are so dull, you men of Logie. It’s not you I doubt. I trust you—dear God, as I’d trust an oak-tree, or a stone. But they will say——”
She faltered, ashamed of her thought, dismayed by their imprisonment, bitterly resentful.
“They say,” snapped Hardcastle, “is the biggest fool in the Dale. He’ll not hurt us much.”
“You will not understand. Why did you bring me here?”
“Why? Would you rather be lying in the pasture?”
She was angered afresh by the knowledge that she owed her life to him, by the tolerant wonder in his face, as if he had a child’s absurdities to answer.
“Yes. I would rather be lying there.”
She faced him with frank enmity, and was silent for awhile.
“Have your Logie Women no nice sense of honour?” she went on. “Are they not taught that the least breath on it is worse than death?”
“They are,” said the Master, stung into defence of his own—“and with it they’re taught common-sense. Logie thinks none the worse of two folk because a blizzard keeps them safe indoors.”
“If you had been a Hielandman, and I’d said to him half of what I’ve said to you——”
“Well?”
“He’d have been fighting the drifts outside by now.”
The challenge was direct—out-facing if he did not take it up—and Hardcastle glanced at Storm, asleep still between them. The dog would be a sure guardian for her, if he failed. It was likely he would fail; but there was just a chance that he could win through to some other shelter.
He searched in the chest at the far side of the hut, where the woodmen kept their axes and sundry tools, and found a shovel. Then without a word he went out, closing the door behind him, and paused a moment to frame a plan before he left the narrow belt of shelter.
The trees, instead of giving protection to the ground below, were gathering even deeper drifts than the naked pastures. In such a storm as this, their branches—full leaved almost as in summer—trapped the snow and held it till some fiercer wind-blast sent it scattering down. There was no chance on that side; but there was hope if he could work round to the wall that made one side of the hut. Once he reached that, its whole length would give him the same narrow strip of freedom from wind and snow that the hut was giving him now. Afterwards he might travel, on the lee side of this and other walls, until he reached some barn or other.
Whether the plan failed or carried, he told himself grimly, Causleen’s good-repute would go white as the swirling storm. She would be found with a grizzled sheep-stealer for guardian, not with him; and maybe her restless pride would be content.
Out of his disdain for women—out of the slur she had put on all but Highland men—endurance came to him. Between himself and the wall he sought, a great bulk of snow lay at the corner of the hut, and he drove at it with his shovel. For the honour of Logie Men he must get through it, and give the pedlar’s chit her answer.
The drift could not be more than a few yards thick, he knew, and he worked hopefully in a lull of the wind. Suddenly, from the white mass in front, came faint voices raised in protest, and he remembered what Storm had heard not long since. There were over-blown sheep in the drift here—part, maybe, of the flock that Storm had hunted yesterday—and work had a double zest.
The gale had given him respite in mockery. It swooped on him afresh with a whistling screech, so that he could scarcely stand to ply his shovel. Drenched from within by sweat, the snow fell icy on him from the branches overhead—fell on the track he was carving, foot by foot, towards the drifted ewes, and half undid his labour.
Still he toiled, though passionate desire for sleep had joined the company of his enemies. There seemed no heaven but one, here or hereafter—a bed in this snow he strove to master.
Causleen, after she had watched him go, felt the same loneliness, the same longing to call him back, as when—years ago, it seemed—he had gone to get a kettleful of snow. She was filled with a great unrest, a wonder that she had chosen to drive him out. What had he done, except give her a roof there at Logie, and here in this warm hut?
Storm was uneasy, too. He got up and flicked a flea or two away from a hide that had known fouler quarters than the hut, and whined about the door. Then he glanced back at her.
She went to the door and opened it. As Hardcastle had done, she halted, watching the snow, listening to the gale that ceased for a moment and let a man’s voice through—a harsh, fighting voice. While she stood, reluctant to plunge into the white hurricane, Storm showed the way to her. Already snow had drifted over the lane Hardcastle had carved; and they found him at the corner of the hut, battling forward for the last yard that would take him to the lee-wall’s shelter.
Again the wind lulled, and Causleen was aghast to hear the deep, stubborn curses of this man she had sent out to battle. In simple earnest he was fighting the snow-sleep; but in fancy it was Garsykes and its devilry he fought. As he made forward, inch by inch, he cursed Nita Langrish, rained blows again on the three gaunt men who had met him at the pinfold; and Causleen could not remember afterwards how she and Storm got him safely back at last to the hut’s shelter.
They got him back, and for a while he lay in a dazed sleep, past this world’s ken. Then little by little he forced himself—by sheer will to fight on, it seemed—into wakefulness. He glanced at Causleen—at the fire she had replenished—at grey, old Storm, nosing his knee in quiet distress.
“How nightmare plays the devil with a man,” he laughed. “I fancied I was shovelling snow.”
He dozed again, and Causleen watched beside him. She had taunted him; but it seemed there was one man at least in Logie-side. And he might have died while going her errand.
The night wore on. Storm was asleep, too, but she sat wakeful, and listened to the dying tempest. The window of the hut was not blurred by snowflakes now. The wind no longer roared in glee; it wailed and sobbed, like a child left out in the dark. Strange noises sounded out of doors—soft, thick splashings that she knew by and by for melting snow shed by the forest trees—and across the window-space a keen, sharp radiance stole.
Dawn must be here, she thought. Yet anger against him, her fear of gossip, showed unworthy. She was here with the realities of the big, open lands, and she smiled, recalling Hardcastle’s rough “They say is the biggest fool in the Dale.”
She turned to the window again, glad of the moonlight that meant the end of tempest; and, as she sat there, her whole body suddenly grew tense and her eyes wide with terror. She could not cry to Hardcastle for help. Tongue and limbs seemed chained.
Framed by the moonlight, a white, big face looked in at her—a face packed with evil—and then was gone. Hardcastle heard nothing, nor did Storm; but Causleen listened to the slushing scrunch of feet going over melted snow.
That sound ceased, and the door was opened warily till it stood open to the moonlight and the fireglow. And still Causleen could not stir, or cry a warning; and Storm snored on.
It was Hardcastle who woke. With a bound he was up. Murgatroyd, dazed for a moment by the unexpected greeting, turned just in time, and ran, and clashed the door behind him.
Hardcastle followed, Storm silent as he raced behind the Master. The two of them went forward, over slush of the melting snow, under the scudding Hunter’s Moon; but Long Murgatroyd was part of the snowy wilderness by now, lost beyond the night’s finding.
They came back unwillingly, and to Causleen it seemed that Hardcastle had never shown his true self till now. Smeared with sweat and weariness, limping on the foot bruised by the coping-stone, his eyes were bright as a lad’s.
“We can get to Logie now,” he said—“and it’s time we went, after losing Long Murgatroyd. He may be dodging out to Garsykes, to bring the Wilderness on us.”
Full moonlight shone on the fast melting snow as they went out. A warm breeze stole against their faces. Winter’s journey to the Dale had been hurried, alike in coming and going, as if she feared her welcome.
At the corner of the hut, where the drift had been, there was no more than a slender bank of snow, with rivulets playing down its sides. A shovel lay in front of it, and for the first time Hardcastle recalled, with a sudden rush of memory, how he had struggled here in a wind that bit to the bone.
Storm’s nose was buried already in the slush. He scented the oily reek that spoke of hunting-days, past and to come; and when he drew his head back and glanced up at the Master, there was wistfulness in his brown eyes.
“Gone away,” laughed Hardcastle. “You’d best come up to Logie, out of Brant’s reach.”