THE QUIET WEDDING
The Garsykes Folk had grown tired of guarding the cave mouth. For a night, and half the next day, Nita’s tongue had whipped them into watchfulness; and when they were growing out of hand at last, she made light of what Hardcastle could do to them.
“Get you in first, Long Murgatroyd,” she gibed. “What with the ghosts and the silence, we’ve tamed Hardcastle by this time. You needn’t fear.”
Murgatroyd fetched a laugh up, big as his body. “If you’ll come with me,” he said.
The devil in her warmed to what she would find, somewhere along the track in yonder. To see Hardcastle distraught with fear and hunger—to have him cringe to her for the means of safety—that was the dream she had woven into her baskets for many a month gone by.
She took Murgatroyd’s hand, with a light and eager smile, and together they went into the cavern whose every winding was known to the rabble that followed with shrill, raucous jests.
They had candles in plenty, to scare the ghosts away; but somehow their laughter grew afraid of itself, and died out in eerie echoes, passed on from the wet spear-points of rock that came straight, like arrows, from the roof above. Then the whole cavern was filled with rolling murmurs that passed on their oaths into the everywhere beyond; but Nita kept them trudging forward.
They crossed the torrent. No trace of life showed, no sign of struggle. And now they reached the lake, and Nita paused at its brink, looking down into its unstirred waters. Were Hardcastle and the pedlar’s brat lying there, she wondered? But, if that had chanced, why had two Garsykes Men not returned—the two she had sent with knives to kill Hardcastle and torture Causleen?
One question was answered speedily, as she and Murgatroyd turned the bend of the track and saw two huddled shapes blocking their way. Murgatroyd roared with sudden terror, but Nita, laughing at him, held her candle low above the dismaying sight.
The man shot by Hardcastle at close quarters showed less ghastly than his fellow, for the charge had gone through him like a single bullet; but the other lay face up to the roof, and Storm’s fury was plain about his tortured throat.
“What is it?” growled the men behind, catching panic from Murgatroyd’s bellow of affright.
“Two of ours that could well be spared,” said Nita, and stepped on the fallen, and went forward for a pace or two.
“What is it?” came the uneasy question again as they heard a sharp cry escape her.
“The end of Logie. Come see it.”
They gathered courage from the exultation; and those who could press into the new cavern, formed to the left hand of the track, lifted a score of candles to what had been the end of their rock-fastness. The straight-faced barrier they had known was now a mad confusion of rocks broken into shapes fantastic, terrible.
“That’s their marriage-bed,” said Nita, her voice childest in its gentleness—“Hardcastle’s and his wanton’s. Did I say there’d be an end of Logie?”
“The man was always a bit of a fool,” growled Murgatroyd, recovering from his panic. “I reckon he loosed his fowling-piece on one o’ the two we trod on. A toddling Garsykes kid could have told him what it ’ud do to pent-in walls.”
When Nita, treading on light feet, led her men back through the cave, and out into the sweet upland air of afternoon, she took them straight to Widow Mathison’s inn, and left them there.
“Drink your fill, now Logie’s gone,” she said, and went up into the fells.
Near dusk she returned, and called them out from the ale that had merried them—called them into the cobbled street.
“Is Nita wise?” she asked softly. “Did she promise Logie’s end?”
They roared an answer, and suddenly she fell to dancing for their pleasure. The last crimson of the sunset flared down and over from Pengables Hill, and lit her slender paces and her slender limbs. As her fingers wove dark magic into the baskets she sold down and up the Dale, her whole body now snared and enticed the men she loathed.
Then once more she left them, going fleet-footed as a deer up the darkening fells, and came to her cottage where the little fir-wood rustled in the breeze. She slept as a tired child might, and soon after dawn went to her bath in the pool within the wood. Then she took the fell-track to Logie, and came to the open door of Rebecca’s kitchen, and stood there, darkening the wintry sunlight.
“The Master has not returned?” she asked softly.
Rebecca had looked for some such visit, and glanced up from dusting the china dogs on the chimney-shelf. “Not yet. But what is that to you?”
“He followed the pedlar’s girl into the cave, they tell me, and neither will come back, I fear.”
“Well, there’s still me and the brindled cat left, and we’ll see to Logie. Tell Garsykes from me, you basket-weaving trollop, that I’ll comb ’em with the thick end of a besom if they try their pranks.”
Nita could make nothing of the woman, so hard, so unmoved by the Master’s fate. “Have you no fear?”
“Aye, for such as you, once my fingers get about you. You’d best be gone.”
Nita tarried only for one last shaft before she fled from the other’s truculence. “The Master’s gone. And old Rebecca’s wits have gone. It’s the rarest day that Garsykes ever saw.”
“Maybe,” muttered Rebecca, as she got to her dusting again.
She knew how, after their safe return from the cave, Hardcastle had left Causleen in her care while he went up the moonlit road to join Shepherd Brant in his waiting for the Logie yeomen to return from market. She knew how he had probed under their lazy tribute-giving by plain recital of what had happened in the cave, and had pledged them to guard Logie whenever he himself had need to tide abroad.
And now the Master had ridden over-hill to Skipton, on an errand that she guessed; and Causleen herself lay in the room above, in a dead sleep of weariness that was saving life and reason after the hell she had passed through in the cavern.
“You’re the one spoil-sport among us, my brindled cat,” she snapped, as Jonah mewed about her skirts. “I loved old Storm myself; but he’s gone, and you can’t mew him back.”
For an hour she went about her work, then grew as restless as Jonah himself. It was time the Master was home again, and he tarried. What if, at the end of his rough journey through the cave, his horse had thrown him somewhere between this and Skipton? Life, as she knew it, had that apeish way of letting folk go safe through harsh odds, only to crack thin skulls against a moorland boulder as they rode quietly home.
Keenly as Rebecca listened for the tip-tap of hoofs up the road, Causleen heard it first. She wakened from a sleep befogged by peddling days, and memories of the harsh greeting she had found once at Logie—sleep threaded through and through by flame-red memories of Garsykes and its cavern.
Far down the road she heard the music of her man’s returning—clickety-clack, faint at first as the tread of elfin feet. Where had he been, risking his life in these disastrous days? And was he wounded by a stealthy blow aimed at him by some foul lout from Garsykes lurking in the heather?
Need to know how it fared with him drew her from her bed. She put the frayed cloak about her—the cloak that had been blue as hope once, but now was like a Jacob’s coat, painted by many kinds of weather—and went down the stair, and out to Logie’s gate.
She was in time to open it for Hardcastle, in time to see the light in his eyes as he got from the saddle, and told his horse to find his own way to stable.
“Where have you been?” she asked, fingering his sleeve.
“To Skipton-in-Craven,” said Hardcastle. “I had business there.”
She touched his sleeve no longer. “And left me here—alone, except for Rebecca and a farm-lad? At such a time—after all we’d shared, and with Garsykes near—You went on business?”
“I left a body-guard. Some of our Logie Men are in the woods—and two by Logie Brigg, to let none from Garsykes through—except Nita, if she’s a mind to come.”
She took a further step away. “You might have stayed, for all that—just to be near me, Dick.”
“I went over-hill for the right to keep you near.”
She had known him taciturn and hard, known the laughter that came rarely and was far away from joy; but now he was a riddle, as he took her hands and would not let them go.
“You left me so soon—for what?” asked Causleen wearily.
His heart spoke now. By all he said and left unsaid she knew at last the caring that had come at the end of their uphill, stormy wooing. Garsykes might be broken, once for all, he told her; but the old, stealthy siege of Logie might be renewed by slow degrees. Either way, they’d meet the coming weather as man and wife. The licence would be ready in three days’ time, and it was no far ride to Skipton Kirk.
“That was your business?” she asked, her voice brave and vibrant. “And I chided you—and so, Dick, do what you will with me.”
When his will was made plain, however, that on the fourth day from now they would be married, she was submissive no longer, but pleaded for delay. She had no clothes for her wedding, and would shame him in his own market-town unless he gave her time.
“Wear the old cloak over all,” said Hardcastle, “and I’ll be content enough.”
So there came a day when Rebecca watched them ride out from Logie. The Master had not said what their errand was, but she knew; and she scolded Jonah till he spat at her. And then she gathered him into her arms, and cried, and cried.
“Love of a man sees far, when you’ve mothered his cantrips since he was a babby,” she said by and by, with a smile utterly forlorn. “And jealousy sees far. But it’s hell’s own spite when the two keep company.”
Causleen and Hardcastle guessed nothing of all this, as they rode, in wonder and in silence, over the hill to Skipton. They guessed nothing of it as they rode home again, drawing rein to glance at the pride of that one word, Desormais, carved high above the grey, stubborn castle-gateway.
Long as he had known it—and he rode seldom from Skipton without a glance at the message overhead—Hardcastle had taken it as a symbol of his own grim fight for Logie. Now that was changed. He had a wife beside him, and the feud with Garsykes grew doubly worth the while.
He glanced at the carved challenge, and made English of it for her. “Henceforth, sweetheart,” he said, and laughed quietly as a conqueror might.
In silence they rode past the castle walls and up into the grey, solitary fells. The track twisted this way and that to lessen the steepness of the climb, till they breasted the last of the hill and passed through the rocky gap that was the gateway of the homeland watered by Wharfe River.
They drew rein, and could only marvel at the land stretched wide below them. The winter’s sun shone warm and mellow over the far spaces, grey-blue with haze. Every striding league of heath, each gully where leafless rowans waited for the spring, showed to Hardcastle like the map of his own heart. Pride—big hearted, eager pride—leaped out as he pointed down the slope.
“We own most of it, wife. Is it a good bridal-gift?”
Her eyes filled with tears. He gave all he had, for her to share. And he named her wife. She had not guessed how all-sufficing the name was, how real and warm and safe. And somehow, across the chill upland breeze, a summer fragrance blew, as of clove-pinks and ladslove in a wayside garden.
All they had gone through together returned—the stealthy siege of Logie, the stark, long peril in the cave—and she drew a sharp breath of thanksgiving that this was the end of nightmare.
“Life is sweet to hold, Dick,” she said, smiling through her tears.
They rode in another silence, rich with speech, down the slack of Storner Bank. And now the wood-reek from Logie’s chimneys eddied up, so near that they could smell its savour.
“We’re home,” said Hardcastle, drawing his horse nearer hers.
Then, as they rounded the bend, he pulled up sharply. Nita Langrish, a bundle of withies over her shoulder, was standing in the roadway, her glance fixed on Logie. So intent she was on thoughts of the dead Master who had flouted her—hidden deep with the pedlar’s brat under the rocks in Garsykes cave—that she heard no sound of hoofs behind.
Nita had had her will of them both, and stood there as in a trance. Vengeance was sweet. She was minded to taste it to the full, looking down at masterless Logie. Every curling wisp of smoke rose from a hearth Hardcastle would never know again. No son of his would grow to claim the heritage. Logie and its seven hundred years ended with old Rebecca and a brindled cat; and so much for pride.
A man’s cry of warning roused her, and she turned to see Hardcastle’s cob rearing scarcely a yard away, his fore-feet perilously close.
Nita leaped aside, then stood gazing at these two who were buried in the cave out yonder—these two, who seemed to ride on horseback through the sunlight and the free moorland wind.
Hardcastle glanced once at her. It was not his way to fight with women; but a sullen loathing came.
“We’re dead in Garsykes cavern,” he said. “It’s only our ghosts that ride.”
“Only your ghosts?” asked Nita eagerly, snatching at a straw in this torrent of dread that raced over her.
“And Storm’s,” said Hardcastle. “He died with us, and runs close behind, I fancy.”
With that they rode on, and Hardcastle’s grim smile died out as he glanced at Causleen’s face.
“You’re tired, wife,” he said gently.
“I was not tired at all until—until she stood there—stood on the threshold of our home-coming.”
A shadow crept, too, about Hardcastle and stayed with him as they came indoors, Causleen and he, and found Rebecca waiting for them.
“Step forrard,” said Rebecca. “It was time you married, Hardcastle of Logie.”
“How did you know?” he asked, wondering that there was no need to break the news.
Gaunt and straight, Rebecca stood facing them with a hard, roving glance. “How did I know, asks he, when I’ve given my life to watching his ins-and-outs? How could I help but know?”
On one side of the threshold Nita had met them. On the other stood this henchwoman, grief and jealousy showing in her sombre eyes. Against their will, a sense of doom crept out from Logie’s storied walls, chilling their eager wedlock.
“I kept young for you, Master,” went on Rebecca, “till you found a bride for Logie. And now I’ll let myself grow old.”
“I’d have told you our errand——”
She cut short his troubled words. “You would, but for thinking of old Rebecca. The blow would fall softer, you fancied, if you brought a full-fledged wife, instead of letting me wait all day for a promised one. Men, poor lambs, are not good at breaking news, and never were.”
Her tart humour swept him like a moorland breeze through the gloom she had brought about these two.
“I’ve the bridal-supper ready, and near spoilt. You were always late to your vituals, Master.”
She sat on in the kitchen, after all was served and she had left them to their meal; and she missed Jonah sorely. The cat had been with her till the moment when she went to greet the bridal-pair, and now had vanished like her own joy in serving Hardcastle. All had gone, it seemed, and she yielded to loneliness utter and complete.
She threw her apron over her head, and rocked to and fro. Grief had its way with her. The years behind gathered their hardships to a head, and tears broke through at last.
Then by and by she heard the kettle singing on the hob, and made a hefty brew of tea. And after that she went in search of Jonah.
They heard her tramping forlornly upstairs and down, and Causleen’s hand reached out to Hardcastle’s across their wedding-table.
“She’s old and sorry, Dick—and we’ve so much.”
Hardcastle found a quick new tenderness for this wife of his. She knew, as he did, that Rebecca was bone and fibre of his house—one by this time with its thick-set walls, the people who lived here aforetime—one to be cherished like a heritage.
Together they went in search and found Rebecca standing at the cupboard under the stair. The door was open, and her candle showed the brindled cat spitting and growling from the lair he had shared with Storm on many a day gone by.
The candlelight showed something else to Causleen, her vision sharpened by this wild home-coming—showed her the shape of Storm, the sheep-slayer, with a long, brown-red gash across his filmy hide—Storm, who was dead, returned to Logie and the Master.
Hardcastle had made a bitter jest to Nita of Storm’s following them, a ghost. And Storm was here.
“What d’ye see,” asked Rebecca—“what d’ye see, beyond that dratted cat o’ mine?”
“A leal friend, Rebecca.”
And with that she put a hand in Hardcastle’s, ready for whatever weather came to Logie. The end of the stark battle was not yet.