Part 15

Red Ratcliffe helped him up, marvelling to find that Nicholas, who was wont to be active as the best of them, had no spring in his body, no knee-grip when at last his feet were in the stirrups. He stole many a glance at the old man's face as they rode up the moor, and marked a change in it--a palpable change, which he could not understand, but which added a new dread to the heaviness that was already weighing on him.

"Robert is dead, I take it?" said Nicholas, as they passed the square-topped stone that marked one boundary of the Wildwater lands.

"Dead? Ay, for the lad cleft his skull in two clean halves."

Robert was the Lean Man's eldest-born; but if he had any touch of fatherly sorrow for the dead, he would not show it. "'Tis a pity," was all he said; "he had the best hand of all you younger breed.--The miles crawl past, lad, and the thirst of Hell is on me; get thee down and fill thy hat in the stream yonder."

Red Ratcliffe brought the water, and the old man stooped eagerly to it, then glanced behind him on the sudden and stifled a low groan.

"What is't?" cried his grandson. "See, sir, the water's trickling through; there'll be none left unless you drink."

"I--I thought--" stammered Nicholas, and pulled himself together with an effort. "'Twas only a fresh dizziness. There! Fill up again; the water will clear my wits, belike."

He drank greedily, and his knees were firmer on the saddle-flaps when they rode on. "I'll fight the pair of them, God rot them," he mumbled, slipping clumsily to ground as they gained the door of Wildwater.

Janet, hearing them ride under her chamber window, woke from a troubled sleep and ran to open the casement. All day her grandfather had worn the air of grim gaiety which she had learned to fear, and the lateness of his home-coming told her which way his errand had lain.

"They have made a night-attack," she murmured, fumbling blindly with the window-fastening. "And what of Shameless Wayne? If--if aught has chanced to him----"

She wrenched the window open and peered down into the courtyard. The moon, dropping toward the high land that stretched from Wildwater to the four corners of the sky, gave light enough to show her Nicholas and close behind him Red Ratcliffe with the bridle of a riderless horse in his right hand. These were her folk; but the girl's heart leaped at sight of the empty saddle, at the slowness of the Lean Man's movements, for these things told her that defeat had ridden home across the moor with them.

Nicholas, hearing the creak of the casement above, glanced sharply up. "Is't thou, Janet?" he called.

"Ay, grandfather. Have ye--have ye been a-hunting again?"

He fetched a hollow laugh. "Ay, down by Marsh; but the fox slipped cover before we were aware."

She found her courage then, and answered crisply, following the old metaphor. At all hazards she must make them think that her hatred against Wayne of Marsh was equal to their own. "The trickiest fox breaks cover once too oft; ye'll catch him yet," she laughed--"whose saddle goes empty of a rider?"

"Thy Uncle Robert's. Get thee to bed, lass, and use thy woman's trick of prayer."

"To what end shall I use it, sir?" she asked softly. It was easy to play her part of Ratcliffe, now that she knew how things had gone at Marsh.

"Why, to the end of vengeance." The Lean Man's voice rang thin and high with sudden passion. "Pray to the Fiend, girl, or to Our Lady, or to the first that bends an ear to thee--pray that the Waynes----"

He stopped, and Janet saw him shrink as if a shrewd wind had nipped him unawares. And then, without a word, he led his horse across the yard.

Janet still lingered at the casement, watching the moonlight fade away among the grey hollows of the moor. "I will pray," she murmured--"pray that the Waynes may win a rightful quarrel--pray that love may one day conquer kinship, and----"

"Janet!"

She looked down at Red Ratcliffe, standing close to the wall with face upturned to her window. "What is't?" she said coldly.

"Thou know'st as well as I. The times are perilous, and when a man loves he cannot wait.--Listen, Janet! I'm sick with longing for thee."

"The wind blows cold. Canst find no time more fitting for love-idleness?" she said, and shut the casement with a snap.

Red Ratcliffe halted a moment, for the night's work, unmanning him, had loosed his hotter impulses. Panic had held him, and after that dull fear; and now the brute in him rose up.

"Come back, thou wanton!" he cried, so loudly that Nicholas heard him from across the yard.

"Dost think I can wait all night while thou stand'st bleating under a lass's chamber-window?" roared the Lean Man. "Come, fool, and help me stable this nag of mine."

Red Ratcliffe moved away, sullenly, with a bridle in either hand, and found his grandfather leaning heavily against the door-post of the stable.

"Thou'lt have to groom the three of them," said Nicholas, in a failing voice. "That cursed fire has--has tapped my strength a little." He stood upright with a plain effort, and frowned on his grandson, and, "Lad," he said, "what wast saying to Janet just now? I gave thee free leave to win her if thou could'st--but, by the Living Heart, there shall none force her inclination."

"Ay, shall there," muttered the younger man, as he watched Nicholas turn on his heel and falter toward the house. "Red Ratcliffe shall force her inclination, when she hears how much he knows of her meetings with Shameless Wayne; were the Lean Man once to guess, he'd set finger and thumb to Janet's throat, I think, and crush the life out of her, though she's dear as his sword-hand to him.--Peste! How he staggers in the doorway. What if he has got his death-blow down there at Marsh? 'Twill be an ill hour for us when we go leaderless.--The devil's in the wind to-night; it seems to whistle a burial-song," he broke off, gloomily setting himself to rub down the horses.

But the Lean Man, as if bent on refuting his grandson's fears, was down betimes on the morrow. His face and hands were not good to see now that daylight showed each scar on them; but he had regained the most part of his strength, and he ate like one who sees long life before him.

"Where's Janet?" he asked, when breakfast was half through. "Oh, there thou art, child. What ails thee to come down so late, when thou know'st I need thee as a sauce to every meal?"

All through the night her pity had been for those at Marsh;

but now, as her eyes met and shrank from the Lean Man's scars, as she heard the tenderness of voice which none but she could win from him, the girl came and laid a compassionate hand on his shoulder. "I slept all amiss, sir," she said, "through--through troubling for what chanced last night."

"Well, sit thee down, girl, and never trouble thy head again about so small a matter.--Small? Nay!" he cried with his old power of voice as he glanced round the board. "See these scars, lads--don't fear to take a straight look at them. We're loosening our hold on the Wayne-hate, and these should stiffen you. A scar for a scar; and he that kills Shameless Wayne, by trickery or open fight, shall----"

He paused, searching for some reward that should seem great enough and Red Ratcliffe broke suddenly into the talk.

"Shall have Janet there in marriage," he cried.

Nicholas looked hard at him, and then at Janet, and pondered awhile. The girl's face was white, but she kept her trouble bravely from the old man's glance.

"'Tis well for all maids to have an arm about them now," said Nicholas slowly. "And thou hast played contrips long enough, Janet, with these clumsy-wooing cousins of thine.--Well, so be it. Shameless Wayne is more than the roystering lad we thought him, and if any of you can show wit and strength enough to trap him--why, Janet will have made the best choice among you."

"Is that a bargain, sir?" said Red Ratcliffe, stretching his hand across the board.

The Lean Man took his hand and laughed grimly. "A bargain--but I doubt old Nicholas will be the first among you, now as aforetime. What then, Janet? What if I win my own prize? Why, lass, I'll let none wed thee, but thou shalt play the daughter to me to the end."

All laughed at the grim banter, save Janet, sitting white and cold at her grandfather's side. Once she glanced at Red Ratcliffe, who strove hardily to meet her scorn; and then something of the Lean Man's spirit came to her.

"That shall be a bargain, sir," said she, with a low laugh. "If any kills Shameless Wayne, he shall wed me--but by'r Lady, I think the marriage will not be this year, nor next."

Nicholas half minded to rail at her, thought better of it. "'Twill be within the month, or my word goes for naught; but thou dost well, girl, to mock at them. See Red Ratcliffe glowering at thee there; yet last night he dared not look the Master of Marsh between the eyes."

"I'll look any man between the eyes,--but not when a boggart sits upon his shoulder and strikes for him," growled Red Ratcliffe.

The Lean Man shivered, as if the hall were draughtier than its wont, and rose abruptly. "Come, there's a long day's work to be got through," he said.

All was bustle for awhile, until the men had set out on their usual business of farming or of bringing game home for the larder. The women, after they had gone, stayed to chatter of this and that, and then they, too, went about their work--to the spinning-wheel, the dairy or the kitchen. But Janet, who had always lived apart from the common run of life at Wildwater, stood idly at the wide northward window of the hall, and looked out on the greening waste of moor. "Was not the feud bad enough?" she murmured. "Was there too little stood between Shameless Wayne and me, but this must be added to the rest? God's pity, but they could not have struck at me more cruelly, and Red Ratcliffe knew it when he made the bargain. _To be wedded to him who kills Shameless Wayne_."

She lifted her head suddenly, and it was strange to mark how once again the Lean Man's hardiness showed plainly in her face.

"Nay, but it needs two for any bargain," she cried, and cold steel, even in a maid's hand, can always right a quarrel.

Yet she was full of dread for Shameless Wayne. What chance had he, with the Lean Man's craft and all the strength of Wildwater against him? He would not budge from Marsh, folk said, and he had but four weak lads to help him there. And she could do nothing. Instinctively she looked to the moor for help--the moor, that had been friend and playmate to her through her score years of life. Flat to the cloud-streaked sky it stretched, and the bending heather-tops seemed moving toward her with kindly invitation. Reaching down her cloak from behind the door, she hurried out and turned her back on Wildwater, with its surly stretch of intake, its blackened, frowning gables, its guardian pool. Little by little her step grew firmer; the sky and the wind were close about her, and the fret begotten of house walls slackened with each mile that took her further away from men.

At Marsh there were hills above and sloping fields below; but here the dingle-furrowed flat of bog and peat and heather ended only with the sky--the sky, whose grey and amber cloudlets seemed but an added acreage to the great moor's vastness. Far off the Craven Hills--Sharpas, and Rombald's Moor, and the dark stretch of Rylstone Fell--showed flat as the cloudland and the heath, and the valleys in between were levelled by the mist that filled them up. Only the kirk-stone near at hand, and further the round breast of Bouldsworth Hill, stood naked out of the wilderness, and served, like pigmies at a giant's knee, to show the majesty against which they upreared their littleness. A lark soared mote-like in the middle blue, but his song came frail and reedy through the silence; the noise of many waters rose muffled from their jagged streamways, aping a thousand voices of the Heath-Brown Folk who lived beneath the marshes and the heather. The toil of goblin hammers, working day-long at the gold hid underground was to be heard, the tinkle of the Brown Folk's laughter when they danced, the sobbing fury of their cries as a human foot pressed over-heavily above their peat-roofed dwellings. And sometimes, too, a drear baying came with the wind across the moor, and told that Barguest was speeding on his death-errand.

All this the girl understood, as she did not understand the ways of men and their crabbed round of life. The world-old loneliness, the tragic stillness that was half a sob, were full of intimate speech for her; when the storm-winds whistled, they piped a welcome measure; there was no hour of dark or day out here on the heath that showed her aught but homelike linkliness. The little people of the moor she knew, too, as she knew her own face reflected in a wayside pool--the plump-bodied spiders, the starveling moor-tits, the haunt of snipe and curlew, eagle and hawk and moor-fowl. Scarce a day passed but she read some well-thumbed page of this Book of Life, till now she had learned by heart the two lessons which the wide hill-spaces teach their children--superstition and a rare singleness of passion. The Ratcliffe men-folk lusted after the feud, and their hate was single-minded; Janet, with a man's vigour in her blood and only a maid's way of outlet, had never learned of sun or wind or tempest, that the plain force of passion was created only to be checked. Shame, and halting by the way, were her woman's birthright; but these had lacked a foster-mother, and the resistless teaching of the solitude had made her love for Wayne of Marsh a swift, and terrible, and god-like thing.

Yet her clear outlook upon life had been dulled of late. The moor had still the same unalterable counsel for her, but at Wildwater there had been such constant talk of feud, such a quiet surety on the Lean Man's part that no Ratcliffe could ever stoop to friendship with a Wayne, that insensibly the girl had faltered a little in her purpose. Had Shameless Wayne been of her mind, she would have cared naught for what her folk said; but he, too, had been against her, and, while he angered and perplexed her, he forced her to believe that the blood spilt between the houses would leave its stain forever.

But that was changed now: the bargain made by the Lean Man that morning had killed, once for all, the narrower love of kin; the danger that was coming so near to Wayne of Marsh made her free to be as she would with him--for with it all she knew that, spite of Wayne's would-be coldness, his heart was very surely hers.

She moved to the kirk-stone, and lifted her hands against its weather-wrinkled face, and bared her heart to this living bulk of stone which had learned, century in and century out, the changeless fashion of men's impulses. She had no wild passion now for Shameless Wayne; that was subdued by a fierce and over-mastering mother-love--a love that saw his danger and yearned to snatch him from it at any cost, a love that knew neither pride nor shade of doubt.

"Thank God, I have no father to Wildwater, nor brother," she murmured, "for I would have taken against them, too, for his sake.--They are so sure of me, grandfather, and Red Ratcliffe, and all of them; I will trick them to tell me all their plans; and each time they come back with empty saddles I will be glad." Her voice deepened. "Ay, I will be glad!" she cried.

Little by little her heaviness slipped off from her. It had been hard to wait idly, expecting each hour to bring her news of Wayne's discomfiture; but now there was work for her to do, and she would strive at every turn to cross her kinsfolk's plans. With a lighter heart than she had known for many a day, she took her farewell of the kirk-stone and swung out across the moor until she reached the lane, soft now with budding thorn-bushes, which led past Wynyates.

And all the way her mind was busy with the long debt that Marsh House owed to Wildwater. The Ratcliffes had been first to strike; they had used treachery, when the Waynes scomed guile of any sort; they were bringing all their heavy weight of odds to bear against this solitary foe who would not move a hair's-breadth from their path. Well, she must use guile, since Wayne of Marsh would not, and she would save him in his own despite.

"I am no Ratcliffe," she cried, turning into the Wildwater bridle track. "I am a Wayne, with less wilful pride than they, and twice their wit to get them out of danger."

The stone which bounded the Ratcliffe lands on the side toward Ling Crag stood on the right hand of her road. Her eyes fell on it absently, and she would have passed it by, but something lying on it caught her glance--something that showed white against the rain-soaked blackness of the stone. She drew near, and for a moment sickened, for the man's hand that lay there was meant for hardier eyes than hers.

Awed she was, but curious too, as she drew near to the stone, wondering what this token, which her grandfather had often told her of, was doing here on the Wildwater land. And then she saw that beside the hand five words were scrawled untidily in chalk. "From Wayne to Ratcliffe--greeting," ran the message.

Janet, bewildered, read and re-read the words, and then their meaning flashed across her mind. Last night they had attacked Shameless Wayne, and he had routed them; and afterward he had cut off the right hand of him whose horse had come back riderless to Wildwater, and had answered the Lean Man after his own fashion. A dauntlessness there was about the message, a disregard of odds, that suited the girl's temper.

"I need not fear for Wayne of Marsh," she said, her eyes brightening. "If he means to hunt the hunters--why, Our Lady fights for all such gallant fools--Yet, shall I leave it there?"

She eyed the token doubtfully and seemed minded to remove it, lest the Lean Man's hate should be fanned to a hotter flame. But something checked her--a touch of Wayne's own recklessness, perhaps, and her new-found faith that victory would be with him in the long run. She turned about, leaving the hand there under the naked sky, and made for home. Almost eager she was to reach Wildwater; she was returning now, not to kinsmen whose battles were her own, but to foes--Waynes' foes and hers--who would tell her the last detail of their plots.

A half-mile nearer Wildwater she chanced on Red Ratcliffe, striding through the heather with a merlin hawk on his wrist, and a brace of hares slung by a leathern thong about his shoulders.

"I've sought thee all the morning," he said, standing across her path.

His face was lowering, and she saw that there was mischief in it. "Hadst better seek hares, and conies, and the like," she answered, pointing to his spoil. "That swells the larder--but, well-away, what use is there in seeking one who's tired of mocking thee?"

"Because there's a touchstone, cousin, that turns mockery to something kindlier."

"To love, thou mean'st?" she laughed disdainfully. "Come to me in a likelier hour, Red Ratcliffe. Shall I love thee more because thou didst run away last night? Shall I be sorry for thee, taking the poor excuse thou gavest for thy cowardice. Thou said'st amiss this morning--the boggart sits, not on Wayne's shoulder, but on thine; and his name is panic."

"Art strangely free with Wayne's name," he sneered. "A man, to look at thee, would think the past night's work had pleased thee well."

"It pleases me at all times to hear of one man fighting three, and daunting them. Wilt ever give me that sort of pleasure, think'st thou?"

Red Ratcliffe was silent for awhile; then, "What dost find to say, Janet, when thou meet'st Shameless Wayne by stealth?" he asked, with a sudden glance at her.

She coloured hotly, and paled again. If he knew what she had thought to be a secret from all at Wildwater, her chance of helping Wayne of Marsh was slight.

"It wears an ugly look," he went on. "Come, I am kin to thee, and have a right to guard thy honour. Wilt tell me what has passed between this rake-the-moon and thee, or must I whisper in the Lean Man's ear how his darling wantons up and down the country-side?"

She would not stoop to plead with him, in whatever jeopardy she might be. "Thou canst tell as much as pleases thee," she flashed, "and I will amend thy story afterward; and if ever thou darest to block my way again----"

Red Ratcliffe had unhooded his hawk too soon, and he made a clumsy effort to atone for the false cast. "Stay, girl! I did not mean to say aught to anger thee. Promise to wed me before the corn is ripe, and I'll keep a still tongue."

"Promise to wed thee?" said Janet, turning her back on him. "I've promised it already, when thou canst prove thyself a better man than Shameless Wayne. But before the corn is ripe? Nay, I think 'twill be later in the year."

He watched her move a pace or two away. "I'll ask thee once more, when we get back to Wildwater," he said surlily; "and by that time, I fancy, thou'lt have given thought to what the Lean Man's anger is."

He was falling into step beside her, but she would none of him. "Go over the rise yonder," she said, "and it may be thou wilt find something there to give _thee_ food for thought."

"I had liefer walk beside thee, sweet, than follow any All-Fool's chase."

"It is no fool's errand, I tell thee. Thou know'st the boundary-stone this side Ling Crag? I passed it just now, and saw a present waiting for thee on the top of it."

He stopped, glancing first at Janet, then down the bridle-track. "A present?" he cried. "What sort of gift should any one leave for the first passer-by to steal?"

"'Tis a curious gift, and one not likely to be stolen," she said. "What is it? Nay, but a gift grows less if one tells of it beforehand and I'll spoil no pleasure for thee."

A sudden fear, the echo of his late panic, touched Red Ratcliffe. "Is--is it Wayne of Marsh who waits there with the present?" he asked, and bit his lips soon as the tell-tale thought was out.

"When Wayne of Marsh wants thee, he will not wait," she said. "Go, sir, and have no fear at all of him whom thou hast sworn to kill before the corn is ripe."

*CHAPTER XIII*

*APRIL SNOW*

After a fortnight's softness, with mist winds and child-like trustfulness of breaking apple-blossom, the season had swung back to winter. North to Northwest the wind blew, and its touch was like a stab. The sun, shining day-long out of blue skies, seemed rather a mocking comrade of the wind, for his warmth in shaded corners served only to set a keener edge to the blast that lay in waiting at the next turn. Fields and roads were parched once more, and the dust lay thick as June.

Even Bet Earnshaw, the idle-bones and by-word of Marshcotes village, had been moved to do a spell of work this morning, by way of driving some sort of warmth into her veins; but habit had proved too strong for her, and toward noon she slipped into the Sexton's cottage next door to learn the current gossip from Nanny Witherlee. The wind was at its coldest up the narrow lane that ran between the graveyard and the cottages, and Bet was fain to throw her brown cotton apron over her head as she ran across the few yards that separated door from door. She found Nanny standing at the table, her sleeves rolled up to her elbow and a delf bowl in front of her.

"Well, Nanny, making dumplings?" she said, lifting a corner of her apron and showing a true slattern's face, big, red and empty of the least line of care.

Nanny looked up, still moving her hands briskly among the contents of the bowl. "Ay, we're allus making summat, us mortals--awther food for our bellies or food for th' daisies ower yonder. Step in, Bet, an' for th' Lord's sake shut yond door to."