March! The fatefully-returning word smote on his ear like a blast. He hung up the receiver and stood, thinking.
CHAPTER XXIII
COME—THE GREEN GATES OF VISION:—V. THE OUTER DARK
It was dark when Brack got in, pitch-dark and blowing the very roof off the world. He found his housekeeper slumbering peacefully in the kitchen, with a bottle of gin peeping coyly from under the table. He shook her into some measure of wakefulness, but coherence was beyond her. Ay, Lup Whinnerah had called, sure enough, and kept her yammering in a draught fit to blow the flesh off her old bones. “Message? What-like message? Nay, now, master, ye said nowt o’ t’ sort! T’ lad didn’t bide long or say much neyther, barrin’ he’d happen look in later. Ay, he’d a manbody o’ sorts wi’ him, but I don’t mind who. It was ower black.”
She had let out a screech at first sight of the dripping figure with haggard cheeks and staring eyes, and even after he had thrown off his coat and emerged as the elegant, somewhat ineffectual master she knew, her fear of him scarcely lessened. He told her to make him some tea, shooting out sharp questions as she dragged to and fro, and swearing helplessly at the maddening vagueness of her replies. When the tea came, he drank it black and strong, and ate nothing, sitting at the table with his wet hands locked, the flying firelight on his white, strained face and drooped shoulders. At every fresh blow of the gale he started, and more than once he went to the door to peer into the dark, looking for Lup’s form on the step, and returning breathless from the fight with the entering storm. As the hours wore on, he could not sit still even for a few minutes together, but was forced to pace the flags, straining and listening, his restless eyes on the banging windows and the shaking rugs, coughing as the wind in the chimney drove great clouds of smoke into the room. The housekeeper had fallen asleep again, taking no heed of his mutterings as he passed continually behind her.
The stock was safe, anyhow, up in those far pens. Were they doing anything at Pippin?—Pippin, on the very edge of the sand, hobnobbing with every tide that ran in? Probably they were all gallivanting off to the “Duke,” eating and drinking with that Lancaster-worshipping fool from Watters. Was Lup there, too, blind and deaf to the call of the storm? and, if not, where was he? That was the torturing, unanswerable problem. He’d never have come to Thweng, though, if he hadn’t thought something was up—why, he would never have left Liverpool at all! What had that old hag really told him? She might easily have given him the message, after all, and forgotten all about it. If he had gone straight to the Pride, Brack would certainly never set eyes on him to-night. If, on the other hand, it was true that he meant to call again, he might be here, any minute. Should he wait, or should he go himself? God! What was that? A fresh, tearing roar from the gale drove him to a scream that brought the old woman leaping out of her happy, drunken sleep. He was struggling back into his coat, trying to control himself. It had only been the wind, after all.
“I’m off out again!” he threw at her, tying a scarf over his mouth to keep the force of the air from choking him. “Come and bar the door after me, and if you don’t stop awake with your eye on that fire, you’ll sure be cinders in hell by to-morrow morning! Do you take me? And if Lup’s round again, tell him I’ve gone to the Pride!”
It took all their united strength to force the door back when once it was open, and after the bolts were shot, the old creature sank on the floor, shaking with long, sobbing breaths. She could not hear what direction the master took, nor catch the note of the car as it turned out presently through the yard. She could only hear the song of the wind as it swept up from under the door in a maniac scream, playing over her crouching form like the gust of a thresher’s flail.
Within the cheer of Ladyford, the storm seemed of less account, and there was no tide yet, washing at its foot, to add the sinister dread of live water close at hand in the dark and a flying gale. They had known many a night as wild, though none worked to such a pitch in so short a time; yet the women looked anxiously at the clock, and wished Michael safe back from the “Duke.” He had turned out again reluctantly—nothing but an urgent business-matter to be put to Lancaster would have dragged him to Sandwath—and would have a bad time, coming back. It was nearly midnight, now. He should be home before long behind a horse who knew his road like a homing pigeon; yet in the warmth and jollity of the “Duke” the wildness without might pass unfelt. Mrs. Dockeray fidgeted, sighed, set the kettle boiling, stole a look at her daughter and sighed again.
Michael had told them of Lup’s return, and, between the three of them, thrash it out as they might, they could make nothing of it. He seemed anxious about his folks, but that hadn’t prevented him stopping the night at Lockholme instead of coming on to the far marsh. He’d no call to be anxious, either, unless some busybody had been writing him lies. Happen he’d taken boggle at the big ship and the far-off country, but that wasn’t like Lup, who had always found the hardest thing in life to be turning back or changing his mind. Happen he was home-sick, or just taking steck and no more; happen, and happen to it. The riddle would not read, any way round.