Part 19

Nicholas, eager beforehand to keep his trust in the girl unshaken, let his last doubts fall off from him. "Thou wast right, child, to trust me," he said. "This fool here got his word in first, and if thou hadst not told me of thy meeting with Wayne before ever I twitted thee with it--why, I might well have believed that which would have gone nigh to break my heart."

For a moment the girl's eyes clouded and she could not look him in the face. He was so kind to her, so ready to take her part at all times; and she was rewarding his trust in sorry fashion. But that passed as she remembered the Lean Man's cruelty, his guile, his resolve to do Shameless Wayne to death by any sort of treachery. Was it a time to stand on scruples, when she was fighting, not for her own life, but for another's? Again her mother-love for Wayne swept over her, touching her fancy with a sense of fine issues that were to be compassed, here and now, by her own unaided wit.

"I said, sir, that I was powerless to keep Wayne of Marsh from walking with me," she went on, her voice gaining depth and subtlety as she made forward with the tale that had been shaping itself in her mind all through the long walk home from Hill House; "but I could at the least make him pay for his ill manners in curious coin. _He_ to dare offer marriage to a Ratcliffe! My cheeks were red with shame, as if another man had offered less than marriage; but I would not let him see it. I lured him on, I played with him, I learned all that he had done, or was doing, or was about to do."

"God rest thee, lass!" cried the Lean Man, with a boisterous laugh. "Who says thou'rt more or less than a very Ratcliffe? Thou didst lead the poor fool on, then, with a trail of honey? By the Dog, I never loved thee half as well as now.--What, Ratcliffe the Red, thou lookest moody! The old man was not fond enough to stomach any wild tale thou didst bring to him?--Well, girl, what didst learn from Wayne?"

"That he was going to Bents Farm, to see that some repairs were rightly done."

"Ay, it tallies," murmured Nicholas.--"Go on, Janet; we knew as much as that."

"But did you know, sir, that Wayne had somehow learned your purpose? He was to have gone on Thursday----"

"Did he tell thee that, or was it I?" broke in Red Ratcliffe. "Hark ye, grandfather! I let slip to her this morning the tale of what we meant to do, and she uses it now for her own ends."

"Peace, sirrah! I have a long account to square with thee, and a quiet tongue may keep thee from adding to the reckoning. Didst let the tale slip? The more fool thou, when I had bidden thee speak of it to no man. Haply 'twas from thee that Wayne of Marsh learned what we have in mind?"

"It matters little, as it chances, whether Wayne knows or not," said Janet. "He will go on Friday, sir, at noon, instead of on Thursday; for he told me as much, laughing to think how easily he could outwit you."

"Haply the last laugh will be mine," said Nicholas grimly. "Didst learn how many of his folk he meant to bring with him? Being warned, he will not go alone, I warrant."

"Nay, he professed to be a match for any four of you," answered the girl, a spice of the Ratcliffe devilry leading her to garnish her story with needless detail, "but for prudence sake, he said, he would take some two or three with him."

"A match for any four?" muttered the Lean Man. "I'll keep that word in mind when Wayne fares up to Bents. Ay, by the Rood I will let none but myself cross swords with him. Three of my folk I'll take, to equal his, and none shall say that Wayne of Marsh fought against odds when he was slain on the road to Bents Farm."

Janet shuddered to hear her grandfather talk of Wayne's death, as of a fact already well accomplished; glancing at the Lean Man's height and wiry frame, remembering the skill he had in wielding that dread two-handled sword of his, she felt that Wayne of Marsh, for all his lusty youth, would find a match in Nicholas Ratcliffe. And then she laughed her fears away; for was she not sending the slayers on the veriest Jack-o'-lanthorn errand that ever led men into the bogs?

"Take the men with you, sir, for Wayne can be tricky as yourself," she said gravely. "By Our Lady, I think he'll not fare back again from Bents to Marsh."

"Hast a shrewd head on thy pretty shoulders. Gad, yes, thou'rt crafty! Who is't thou callest to mind, girl? Some one out of the musty Book that Parson reads from on the Sabbath. Delilah, was it not, who fooled the long-haired fighter and clipped his locks for him as if he were a sheep at shearing-time?"

"And he could not fight at all, sir, after the shearing was done. 'Tis a good fable," laughed Janet.

"Ay, but how if she is clipping a Ratcliffe poll the while, and fools us into thinking that Wayne's locks, not ours, are underneath the shears?" snapped Red Ratcliffe.

The Lean Man, good-humoured almost now that his quarry was well in view, turned and looked his grandson up and down. "It would take a clever lass, methinks, to clip that rusty head of thine; as well reap a stubble-field for corn," he sneered.--"There! The work speeds merrily, and a little jest suffices for a big laugh. Janet, come draw me a measure of wine, and we'll pledge thy mother-wit."

He moved across the courtyard, and Red Ratcliffe, stepping to Janet's side, laid a hand on her cloak. "I asked this morn who fathered thee," he whispered. "Well, now I know. The devil got thee, and thou'lt not shame him. The game is thine so far--but by the Lord I'll make thee smart when fortune shifts her favours."

"What, dost not believe my story?" she answered, with demure wonder. "Well, go on Thursday, then, if thou doubtest----"

"Nay. He will not go to Bents Farm on Thursday, for thou hast warned him; nor will he go on Friday, since thou tellest us so glibly the place and hour. But we'll wait each day for him until he comes."

"The Lean Man will not wait with you, save on the Friday."

An ugly scrowl crossed the other's face. "The Lean Man ages fast; we must learn to strike while he is hanging on every lying word of thine," he said, and left her.

Janet halted on the threshold before following Nicholas indoors.

"Ay, even such as he can call me liar," she muttered, looking out across the heath as if for guidance. "Sorrow of women, why must we always stoop to feints and trickeries? Why cannot we fight as men fight----"

The peewits were wheeling over the sky-rimmed moor, and Janet, watching them, bethought her once again how they had used the self-same trickery to save their unhatched young. Instinctively she felt their world was hers, their teaching hers, and what was right for the wild things of the heath was right for her.

"And I have saved Wayne of Marsh. God be thanked for it," she cried with sudden fervour, and went to bring the Lean Man the cup which was to pledge her mother-wit.

*CHAPTER XVI*

*HOW WAYNE OF MARSH RODE UP TO BENTS*

The sun was nearing the top of his climb, and his rays were kindly with Mistress Wayne as she sat by the waterside in Hazel Dene and filled her lap with flowers and green lush grasses. Here a clump of primroses nestled close to the water's edge, and there a hazel-bush waved its catkins finger-like over the peat-brown water, dusting the wavelets with finest saffron pollen. Above, in the sloping fields, lambs bleated after the wethers, and kine chewed lazily the cud of sweet new grass. All was tender frolic, as if a month ago no snow had filled the hollows of the trees where now were nests, as if no bitter wind had whistled downward from the moor, chilling the bud within its sheath and the sap in well-turned limbs of ash and oak.

Mistress Wayne ceased playing with her flowers, and fell to dreaming. She was the one still thing among all the quivering eagerness of leaves and water, birds and hovering flies and glancing fish. For the storms that had chilled and frightened her were over, and with the spring her mind seemed to be loosing, one by one, its winter bonds. Old memories stirred in her and clamoured for release; new desires awakened, and with them a fresh load of doubts and fears; she sat, helpless and inert, and strove with all her might to unravel the threads which one night's tragedy had tangled.

"Ah, it is sweet--sweet," she murmured. "I was a child once--a child--and they gave me love--both hands they gave me full of love--and it was always spring, I think, with warmth like this and song of birds. But I'm old now; older than anybody knows, and sad. I think it is because I did some one a great wrong. What was it? Down in the meadows, when he came and tried to kill me with his hard grey eyes--the eyes that stared at me afterward from the bier. Nay, he could not forgive me, even in death--I think he knew that I had never loved him."

For a moment longer she struggled with memory; then her face grew empty as of old, and she picked up her flowers and fell to talking babe-talk to them. But her witless moods held lighter sway nowadays; reason was coming slowly back, and day by day her mind returned more often from childishness into the piteous strife of sanity. She got to her feet soon, and threw the flowers from her, and looked with troubled eyes toward Marshcotes.

"I might go and find Sexton Witherlee," she said, halting with one finger on her lip; "he is so wise, and he may tell me what I want to learn. Yes, I must find the Sexton."

A crackling of twigs came from up the Dene, and turning affrightedly she saw Shameless Wayne striding along the narrow path.

"Why, little bairn, what art doing here?" he cried, as she ran to him with hands outstretched in welcome.

"Thinking, Ned--always thinking. I want to remember--oh, I want to remember--but the thoughts will never stay still enough for me to put my hand on them. I have been trying to catch the little fish in the stream yonder, and it was just the same; they stayed till I had all but caught them, and then they glanced and flickered, flickered and glanced, until I could not see them for the splashes which they made."

"Bide awhile, bairn," he said kindly; "thy thoughts will come tame to hand one day, never fear."

"Art going home, Ned?" she said, after a silence. "I was crossing to Marshcotes kirkyard, but if thou'lt come into the fields with me, and talk, I'll ask naught better."

"I'm going to Marsh, but only to get to saddle and be off again. Better talk to the Sexton this morning, and I'll walk with thee after dinner.--Nay! Never look so downcast. 'Tis only that there's work to be done up at Bents Farm, and I shall scarce get there and back as 'tis by dinner-time."

Again the puzzled look, which told that she was doubtful lest this returning memory of hers were leading her astray. "I thought, Ned--I thought thou hadst gone there yesterday? Well-away, the days slip past, and sometimes I forget to count them; was it not Thursday yesterday--and Friday today--and what comes after?" Her eyes filled with tears. "It is so hard, dear, to forget and to know that all the world is pitying me."

"Tush, bairn! Thou canst remember nigh as well as any of us now. And thou'rt right about Bents Farm; I should have gone there yestermorn, but was prevented. There! Find out yond friendly Sexton of thine, and show him how this fair spring weather is warming thee back to memory."

"Thou'lt not forget to walk with me after dinner?" she said.

"Not I.--The stream's over-wide for thee, is't? Well, that is soon reckoned with."

Laughing, he picked her up and leaped across the babbling water; then set her down, and turned to wave farewell as he swung round the corner of the path.

"Half her wits have come home from wandering. What when they return altogether?" he muttered. "Nay, she had better be as the bairns are. Our wits do naught for us save teach us that life rings cracked and hollow as a broken bell.--I could swear the sun moves at racing-speed," he broke off, glancing toward the south. "'Twas well I told them to set dinner back a full two hours."

The Lean Man, standing in the Wildwater courtyard, was likewise looking toward the south, as he rated three of his kinsfolk into the saddle.

"Ye lie-abed, hounds!" he roared. "Does Wayne of Marsh come riding to meet us every day, that ye mean to let noon go by? Up with the stirrup-cup, Janet, and I'll drain it once again to an errand that is all of thy making."

"'Tis scarce past the time for wild geese, sir," put in Red Ratcliffe drily, "and Janet knew it, methinks, when she sent us on this chase."

"Marry, why should'st doubt Wayne's coming?" snapped Nicholas. "But thou wast so from thy birth, lad, so I'll not rate thee for thy clownishness."

"I doubt for reasons that I'll tell you afterward," said the other, nettled by his comrades' laughter.

"What, when I return with Wayne's head at my saddle-flap?"

"If mares build nests, and lay gold eggs in them, we shall bring back Wayne's head to-day," growled Red Ratcliffe, and pricked his horse forward out of reach of further gibes.

"The young cockerels crow while the old birds fill their crops," laughed Nicholas. "Forward, lads, and mind well that none is to lay hand on Shameless Wayne till I have done with him."

Janet watched them move up into the moor, their figures, riding one behind the other, dark against the white, wind-hurried clouds.

"A fair journey, sirs!" she cried, soon as they were out of eyeshot. "A fair journey, and fair tempers when ye come back from slaying Wayne of Marsh."

Dangers were waiting in plenty for Ned, she knew; but it was enough that he was safe from the peril of the moment, and her heart sang blithely as she told herself that, but for her aid, the Lean Man would have gone to meet him yesterday--and would have found him. What she should say when they returned from their bootless errand, she knew not, nor whether her grandfather would suspect the truth of all the tale she had told him when he found one flaw in it. It did not matter; some way she would coax him back to good humour, as she had done four days ago.

Restless in her gaiety, which had a certain fierceness in it, she wandered up and down the house, and out into the garden, and thence to the stables in search of her favourite roan mare. The roan had been ailing lately, and this morning she turned a sadly lack-lustre eye on Janet in answer to the girl's caresses.

"'Tis time a leech looked to thee," said Janet, stroking the beast's muzzle. "Yet it is thankless of thee, when all is said, after the pains I've taken. I all but lost the fingers of one hand awhile since in giving thee a ball, and thou'rt not a whit the better for it. Well, we must see if Earnshaw, yond idle rogue from Marshcotes, can do thee any good; he's cunning at horse-physic, so they say."

Glad of the excuse for a scamper, but finding none of the farm-hands about the yard, she saddled the mare that stood in the next stall, led her to the horsing-steps that stood this side the gateway, and soon was galloping over the heather as if the chestnut had no knees to be broken, nor she a neck to lose. And half the way her thoughts were of the Ratcliffes, riding to meet a foe who would not come; and half the way she thought of Wayne's splendid doggedness, when she had met him at Hazel Brigg, and he had turned a deaf ear to her warning.

Mistress Wayne, meanwhile, had found the Sexton at work on a new grave and had enticed him to the flat stone which had grown to be their seat on all occasions when they foregathered for a chat. Thinner than ever was the Sexton, as if the past winter had dried the little flesh that had once made shift to clothe his bones; his eyes were dreamier, but the old kindliness was in them as they rested on this frail comrade who listened with such goodwill to all his thrice-told tales of fight and fairies, of Barguest and the Brown Folk.

"Ay, they live under th' kirkyard, do th' Brown Folk, as weel as farther out across th' moor," Witherlee was saying. "They're deepish down, but time an' time, when I'm nearing th' bottom of a grave, I can hear 'em curse an' cry at me, for they like as they cannot bide mortal men to come anigh 'em."

"Art thou never afraid of them, Sexton?" asked Mistress Wayne, her wide, questioning eyes on his.

"Nay, I niver get ony harm, as I knaw on, fro' th' little chaps,--though I do shiver whiles, for their curses is summat flairsome to hearken to. Howsiver, curses break no bones, as th' saying is, so I just let 'em clicker, an' I win forrard wi' my digging."

The little woman shivered. "They are cruel, these Brown Folk. They snatch children from the cradle, and carry them down and down, deep under the peat, to work the gold for them. I like the slim ghosties better. Sexton, talk to me of them,--the ghosts of those who lie asleep here; thou hast seen such often?"

"Ay," said the Sexton softly. "I've learned th' feel an' th' speech an' th' throb o' th' kirkyard, Mistress, till I'm friends wi' ivery sleeper of 'em all. Lord Christ, how sweet it is to sit here on a summer's eve, wi' th' moon new-risen ower kirk an' graves--to feel this feckless body o' mine crumple an' shrink, while th' inward fire grows fierce, and bright, and steady. 'Tis then th' ghosties come and slip their thin hands into mine; for th' naked souls o' men are friendly, and 'tis only our lumpish shroud of clay that frights th' sperrits from us. Ay, there's scant room, I'm thinking, for us poor mortals, what wi' Brown Folk below, an' White Folk up aboon."

"Once thou said'st 'twas only the unwed lassies walked. Is it so, Sexton?"

"Nay, there's men-folk, too. I say to myseln, small wonder that th' ghosties stir up and down, time an' time, when them as lig under sod fall to thinking o' th' unquiet things that hev happened just aboon their heads. Look ye, Mistress, how black yond kirk-tower looks at us; 'twas there a Wayne fought, in an older day, agen Anthony Ratcliffe wi' five other Ratcliffes to back him--fought wi' his back to th' tower-wall, and killed four out o' th' six that made agen him, an' sore wounded Anthony an' another. Ay, an' ye mind how Shameless Wayne took toll a while back i' this same spot? An' how Dick Ratcliffe paid his reckoning on th' vault-stone yonder?"

Mistress Wayne shrank from the Sexton as if he had struck her. "Dick Ratcliffe--Dick--what should I know of him?" she murmured. Again the still intensity of face, as she sought the key to that dim past of hers.

But the Sexton was deep in his own reverie; he was thinking, not of the woman to whom Dick Ratcliffe had given an unclean love, but of the new feud that had come to gladden these latter days.

"Is not th' place like to be restless, wi' sich as these lying bedfellows?" he went on, nodding his head in greeting at the lettered stones. "Ay, restless as I am restless, heving followed my trade, through sun an' gloaming an' mid-winter midnight, amang th' wild folk that niver found peace till they came on their last journey to Marshcotes kirkyard.--Theer, theer, Mistress!" he broke off, as the little woman's cry broke sharply into his musings and half awoke him. "I flair ye, but ye need think nowt on 't; an owd chap mun hev his spell o' dithering in an' out amang th' fierce owd tales that tangle and trip up th' one t' other. Yet I praise God that, after all these weak new days, young Wayne o' Marsh hes shown th' owd stuff a-working."

"Sexton, Sexton!" The woman's eyes, fixed on the vault-stone below, were sane now, and her voice not like at all to the childish pipe which Witherlee had grown to love. "I have tried so hard to understand--and now I know--and would God I could forget again."

Witherlee made as if to put an arm about her, so wishful of comfort she seemed; but he withdrew, feeling that her grief was over-terrible for such rough consolation as he had to offer. Instead, he filled his pipe and lit it, and waited till she found more to tell him.

They rested so for a long while, with only the song of birds and the moan of a rainy breeze to break the silence. Then,

"I see it all, Sexton," she said quietly--"the evening when Wayne of Marsh, my husband, found me with my lover in the orchard--Wayne's death--the flight with Dick Ratcliffe of Wildwater. We gained the wicket up above there--we could hear the harness rattling of the chaise that was to carry us to safety--and then--" She stopped and hid her face awhile.

"'Tis ower an' done wi' long sin'," murmured the Sexton; "ower an' done wi,' Mistress."

"'Twill never be over and done with. Dick was killed--but I--I was not given death, only a merciful little spell of sleep."

"Nay, I wish th' poor body wod cry her een out," thought the Sexton, watching the bright eyes and tragic face. "I niver held wi' a crying woman myseln, but I could thoyle tears better nor this stark, dry grief o' hers."

But Mistress Wayne was far from tears as yet. A great load was on her heart, crushing the misery inward; it was long before she could shake off the least part of it, but at last--after the Sexton had waited with a patience that was all his own--she crept nearer to him, and laid a hand on his, and began to talk with a quiet and settled gravity.

"I was not at all to blame, Sexton," she said. "I think, if he knew all, even dead Wayne of Marsh might look with pity on me. I was so young when he brought me out of the sweet, warm South up into these dreary mountain-tops--so young, and the folk here were so harsh, and I hated them when they mocked me for my foreign ways. Wayne was kind, so far as he knew how to be, but I feared him--feared his sternness, and his hard dark face. The storms that only brought him ruder health were killing me, and the wind at nights, as it moaned about the chimney-stacks, was like a dirge. And Nell could not forgive me for coming a second wife to Marsh. I had no friend at all, save Shameless Wayne; they despised him as a drunkard and a reveller, but I never had aught but kindness and goodwill from him. Sexton, was it not hard----"

Witherlee did not answer. His glance, roving to the far side of the graveyard, had fallen on his goodwife, who was nearing him with a brisk, decided step; and he, who feared no ghost that ever walked light-footed through the grasses, shrank from the tongue which was wont to fall like a flail on him.

"Ay, I said how 'twould be!" cried Nanny, while still a score yards off. "Frittering thy time away, while th' wife is wearing herseln bone-thin for thee. Here th' dinner hes been cooked this half-hour, an' th' dumplings as cold as Christmas, an' I allus did say th' most worritsome trick a man could hev war coming late to his victuals."

"I'm coming, fast as legs 'ull tak me," said Witherlee, scrambling to his feet. "An' as for th' dumplings--I'd as lief hev 'em cold as warm; it's all one when they've gone down a body's throat."

"Hearken to him! All one, says he--he'll be telling me next there's nowt to choose 'twixt to-day an' yesterday. Is't all one whether _tha_'rt warm, or cold as one o' yond coffin-chaps under sod?--Ay, an' now there's Earnshaw coming. Well, well, if him an' thee once get together, there'll nowt less than a thunderstorm skift ye, an' that I'll warrant."

Earnshaw, coming up from the Bull tavern, met them as they turned the corner of the pathway. His hands were thrust deep into his pockets, and he wore his usual air of shiftless cheeriness.

"Blowing rain, I fancy," said Earnshaw, standing square across the path.

"Blowing fiddlesticks," snapped Nanny, who was in one of her worst fratching moods. "Get out o' th' gate, Earnshaw, an' let busier folk pass by. It's weel to be thee, or Witherlee here--nowt to do save put hands i' pockets, an' tak 'em out again."

"Nay, now, tha'rt allus so bustling, Nanny. Tak life at a fair, easy pace, say I, an' ye'll noan need Witherlee's pick an' shovel this side o' three-score years an' ten. Hast heard th' news, like?"