Part 7

Scarce understanding yet, she turned from the bog-side with a sigh that was half-impatient, and crossed to the kirk which was land-mark and trysting-place in one. They counted the square-towered church at Marshcotes old; yet it was young compared with this rounded pile of stones which was sacred to the oldest-born of all religions. Hither the hill-lassies came on Mickaelmas Eve to ask if they would be wedded before the year was out, and to glean from the silent stone an answer prompted of desire; here, too, sweethearts half confessed found wit to tell each other what many a summer's field-walk after milking had failed to render clear, and grown men, who had come in jest, had stayed to wonder at the power the old place had to stir a laggard tongue. This Wynyates Kirk, at which Pagan mothers had once worshipped lustily, seemed still to have its message for the moor folk; and the way of a man with a maid, which it had watched for generations out of mind, showed constantly the same.

The compulsion of the past was strong on Janet, as she stood under shadow of the rounded stone and strained her eyes toward the track which should be leading Shameless Wayne to her. She had lived with the wind for comrade and the voices of the heath for bed-fellows; there had been none to keep her mind from Nature's lesson to its children, and here, with the ghosts of long-dead love vows plaining from the heather that hugged the kirk-stone foot, her heart went out once and for all to Shameless Wayne. The spirit of the place quickened in her, telling her that neither kinship nor any reek of feud could come between herself and Wayne; for love was real up here, while pride of family went fluttering like a thistle-seed down the rude pathway of the wind.

"He's a laggard--a laggard!" she cried. "Ah, if he knew what I am keeping from him----"

She stopped, and the wind grew colder, so it seemed. How if the Lean Man had changed his path? How if he had met Wayne by the way and given him that which would render him a laggard till the Trump of Doom? Again she strained her eyes across the peat, and far down the moor she saw a sturdy, loose-limbed figure stride up toward her.

Nearer and nearer the figure came, and the girl laughed low to herself. Standing with one arm on the stone, she looked down at Shameless Wayne and waited. And many a dark matter came clear to her in that moment, as she marked the lines of trouble in his face; nor could she tell which was the stronger--the shyness that knowledge of her self-surrender brought, or the fierce, protective impulse that bade her fight his troubles for him.

"So you've kept tryst, Janet? I scarce looked for it," he said gravely.

"Is it my wont, Ned, to break tryst?" she answered.

"Nay, but last night has changed all--for you and me."

His coldness jarred on her, after her late eagerness toward him.

"Art chill as this rainy sky, Ned," she said. "Is't because I have looked askance at thee of late that thou giv'st me you for the old _thou_ of friendship?"

"Nay, but because the friendship is frost-nipped, Janet."

She was silent for a while, fighting the maidish battle of pride with tenderness. "That need not be," she said at last. "Was I not like to hold off, Ned, when thou wast so sure of me that thou could'st play the wilding up and down the country-side? So sure of me that, thrice out of four times, a wine-flagon showed more tempting company than I? But thou'rt altered, Ned--I saw it in thy face as thou camest up the moor--and----"

"Hold, lass!" he cried, gripping her arm. "I'll trick no secrets from thee now. Know'st thou I let another fight for me in Marshcotes kirkyard?"

"I heard as much a while back. And what said I to my heart about it, think'st thou?"

"That it matched well with Shameless Wayne."

"That it matched ill with what I would have the man I love to be--Ned, Ned, 'tis I am shameless, for I cannot see thy trouble and keep confession back. It was well enough to flout thee in old days, when thou hadst little need of me--but now--hast never a use for me, dear?"

The world had rolled back from Janet. Her folk were straw in the balance, the brewing quarrel was naught. They were alone, Shameless Wayne and she, with only the quiet, far-reaching moor to watch them; and love was a greater thing by far to her woman's eyes, than any hate of feud could be. Wayne reeled for a moment under a like impulse: he had come here to say farewell to Janet, expecting a little sorrow from her and no more, and she had met him with every tender wildness, of voice and eyes and roundly-moving bosom, that ever set a lad's hot pulses beating. Life was to be an uphill fight henceforth for Shameless Wayne; but here by the kirk-stone, with the peewits shrilling overhead and the low wind whistling in the heather, he was facing the hardest fight of all. Slowly the colour deepened in the girl's face as the moments passed, and still he made no answer and a touch of anger was in her shame, as she sought vainly for the meaning of his mood.

"Lass, why could'st not hold it back? Why could'st not?" he cried hoarsely. "Listen, Janet, there has that chanced at Marsh since yestermorn which has set the Pit of Hell 'twixt thee and me."

"What chanced at Marsh was none of thy doing, nor of mine," she broke in, and would have said more, but the look of Wayne's face, with the tragic lines set deep about his brow and under his eyes, daunted her.

"One of thy folk killed my father in cold blood," he went on, after a silence, "and in hot blood I swore never to ease my fingers of the sword-hilt until the reckoning was paid. Can we lie soft in wedlock, girl, when every dawn will rouse me to the feud? Can we lock arms and kiss, when slain men come from their graves to curse the treachery?"

"Thou art thou, Ned, and I am I. Can kinship alter that?"

"Ay, can it," he cried bitterly, for her stubbornness angered him when he looked for help from her at this hottest of the fight. "The one part of me is sick for thee, Mistress Janet, while the other loathes thee--ay, loathes thee--because thou art a Ratcliffe.--There, child, forgive me! 'Tis no fault of thine, God knows, and my tongue slips into unmeant cruelties----"

She turned her back on him and leaned her forehead against the stone that had brought many a maid to her undoing or her happiness. Back and forth went her thought; she would not acknowledge how real his struggle was, but told herself that he had flouted her for sake of an idle fancy, that she could never win back what she had given him just now. She looked up at last, and glanced at Shameless Wayne.

"Hast not left me yet?" she said. "'Tis scarce seemly, is't, to pry upon my shame?"

Anger he could have met, but not this tearless sorrow. If Janet could cast kinship to the winds, was he to show himself a laggard? He sprang toward her; and she, seeing his sternness gone, waited and held her breath, not knowing what she feared or what she hoped. And then he stopped, suddenly, as if a hand had clutched at him to hold him back; and without a word he turned and left her.

She watched him go, her arms clasped tight about the stone; and for awhile her heart went empty of all feeling. So quiet the moor was that she could hear the rustle of an eagle, sweeping far overhead toward Conie Crag Ravine, with a lamb in its talons plucked from some outlying upland field. A moor-fowl splashed through the reeds that fringed the marsh to left of her. The peewits wheeled everlastingly in dropping circles, showing white breasts to the sunlight at every backward turn. There was a vague, wandering sound that threaded through all the others--the gnome-like cries and gurgles of water running underground through straitened channels.

She thought of the frail figure which she had lately seen go up the brink-fields, and she asked herself, was she less lonely than mad-witted Mistress Wayne? A storm of passionate self-pity swept over her at the thought; and after that the calm of hopelessness.

Slowly as her passion waned, the girl understood that there was more than an idle lad's caprice underlying all that Shameless Wayne had said. It was no lover's quarrel, this, to be righted at the next tryst. Her folk were the aggressors in this new-born feud; but they were still her folk, and feelings that she scarce realised as yet could cloud her love, she knew, as already they had clouded Wayne's. She glanced at the kirk-stone again and shivered; it had spoken her false when it bade her count all things less than love, and the folk who had whispered soft secrets here--man to maid, and maid to man--were they not dead and buried long since, and their love along with them?

Her pride weakened, too, and she remembered that she had come here to warn Ned of the danger with which the Lean Man's malice threatened him. Full of pity for herself she had been; but now the pity was all his, as she looked down the winding sheep-track, and told herself that though he humbled her afresh, she would seek speech of him once more and tell him of the Lean Man's purpose. But Wayne was already out of sight and hearing, and she knew that to follow him was useless.

Scarce knowing where she went, she set off wearily across the heath. The moor's harshness was friendly to her mood, and she wandered on and on until, by the time she reached the Wildwater gates again, the sun was sinking into gloaming mist.

Her grandfather was standing by the well-spring in the courtyard as she entered. His back was toward her, and he failed to mark her light step on the flagstones. A vague foreboding seized the girl; creeping closer, she saw the Lean Man stoop to rinse his hands in the clear stream, and a low cry escaped her as she saw that the water reddened as it ran between his fingers.

Nicholas swung round with a frown, and clapped a hand to the breast of his tightly-buttoned coat.

"What art doing here, lass?" he said roughly.

"I--I have been walking----"

"What, so soon after I bade thee keep so close to home?" said Nicholas, wiping his hands furtively on the lappel of his coat.

She answered nothing for awhile. Then, "How went the hunting?" she asked, with a sudden glance at him.

"Bonnily. I've brought home better flesh, Janet, than Wildwater has seen this score years."

Her forboding took clear shape. Had he met Shameless Wayne on his way home from the kirk-stone? What was it that the Lean Man guarded so carefully at his breast? At all costs she must learn if Ned were safe.

"Where did you kill the quarry?" she whispered, and longed to take back the question for fear of the answer she might get.

"Where? Why, on Cranshaw Rigg--'tis on the Long Wayne's land, thou'lt call to mind," chuckled the Lean Man.

"Then--then 'twas not Wayne of Marsh?"

He glanced at her curiously; but it was plain that he shared none of Red Ratcliffe's suspicion touching her tenderness for Wayne.

"Nay, it was not Wayne of Marsh--for the reason that, seek as I would, I could not find the lad," he answered, as he turned to go indoors.

"'Tis not Ned after all," murmured Janet. "Thank God he kept the tryst with me."

*CHAPTER VI*

*THE BROWN DOG'S STEP*

Marsh House lay lower than Wildwater, and it had a softer look with it, though built much after the same pattern so far as roominess and stout building went. The trees grew big about it and a pleasant orchard ran from the garden to the chattering stream; yet was it ghostly, in a quiet fashion of its own, and not all its trees and sheltered garden-nooks could rob it of a certain eeriness, scarce felt but not to be gainsaid. On either hand the gateway two balls of stone had lately topped the uprights; but one of these had fallen and lay unheeded in the courtyard--a quiet and moss-grown mourner, so it seemed, for the lost pride of the Waynes of Marsh. Behind the house, leading up to the sloping shoulder of the moor, ran a narrow, grass-grown way, scarce wide enough to let a horseman through and lined on either hand by grassy banks and lichened walls of sandstone; they called it Barguest lane, and the Spectre Hound who was at once the terror of the moorside and the guardian spirit of the Waynes, was said to roam up and down between the moor and Marsh House whenever trouble was blowing in the wind.

And true it was that at certain times--oftenest when the air was still, and dusk of late evening or dark of night brooded quiet over house and garden--a wild music would sweep down the lane, not crisp and sharp-defined, but softened like the echo of a hound's baying far away. The hardier folk were wont to laugh at Barguest, with a backward turn of the head to make sure he was not close behind them, and these vowed that the Brown Dog of Marsh was no more than the voice of the stream which ran in a straitened channel underneath the road; water had strange tricks of mimicry, they said, when it swept through hollow places, and the deep elfin note that haunted Barguest lane was own brother to many a bubbling cry and groan that they had hearkened to amongst the stream-ways of the moor. And this son of talk was well enough when treacle posset was simmering on some tap-room hearth; but abroad, and especially if gloaming-tide surprised them within hail of old Marsh House, they found no logic apt enough to meet their terror of the Spectre Hound. As for the Waynes, there were some among them who pretended to disclaim their guardian Dog; yet there was not one who would oust tradition from his veins--not one who failed to loosen his sword-blade in the scabbard if any told him that Barguest had lately given tongue.

The spirit of the homestead was strong on Shameless Wayne to-night, as he sat alone in the hall, watching the dead and thinking his own remorseful thoughts. All that was left of his father rested, gaunt and still, on the bier in the centre of the hall, where it was laid out in state with candles burning low at head and feet. Mistress Nell and the serving-wenches were all in the back part of the house; the lads had not returned from hawking in the lowland pastures; the last of the day's visitors had bidden the corpse farewell and had gone home again, leaving the new master of Marsh House to watch the closed eyes of his forerunner.

A ray of fading sunlight crept across the hall and rested on the dead man's face, which showed white as the cere-cloth that bound his jaws.

"Father, father!" he cried, laying one hand on the waxen cheek. "Do you know what chanced yesternight? Do you know that I, who should have carried the quarrel, sat drinking your honour and my own away?--God, I could see each Wayne of them all look askance at me to-day, as they came and stood beside you here. And each man was saying to himself, 'There is none of the old breed left at Marsh.' They were right, father--and sometimes, when the candle-shadows play about your face, I seem to see you laughing at thought of Shameless Wayne--laughing to know him for your son."

The sunlight moved from the bier, and up the oak-panelled walls and backward along the ceiling-beams until it vanished outright. Dusk came filtering through the lattices. A low stir of bees sounded from the garden, where corydalis and white arabis had newly opened to the spring. And still Wayne sat on, listening to the thousand voiceless rumours that creep up and down an empty house.

"I cannot wipe out the stain, father," he went on, in a quieter voice; "but I will do all that is left to me--I'll pluck Janet out of my heart--and there shall none say, for all my shamelessness, that I let the land go backward, though in old days you'll remember there was no love spilt 'twixt me and farming matters. But the Wayne lands were always better-tilled than any in the moorside, and 'twould hurt you, father, if I let them grow foul and poor of crop.--Yet, for all that, 'tis easier to swear to hunt out every Ratcliffe from this to Lancashire," he added, with a whimsical straightforwardness which showed that a sense of fellowship with the dead had come to him through long watching by the bier.

And then he let his thoughts drift idly and was near to falling into a doze when he was called to his feet by a tapping at the window. He crossed the floor and the light scarce sufficed to show him his step-mother's face pressed close against the glass.

"Open to me, Ned, open to me," she was crying.

He went to the narrow door that led into the garden and opened it; and Mistress Wayne clung tight to him while he took her to the hearth--keeping her fast in talk the while, lest she should see what lay in the middle of the hall.

"You are cold, little bairn," he said, using the same half-tender, half-scornful name he had given her at the vault-stone yesternight.

"Yes, cold and weary, Ned--so weary! All night I wandered up and down the moor, seeking somebody--but I never found him--and the wind came, and the rain--and all about the moor were prying eyes--and strange birds called out of the darkness, and strange beasts answered them----"

"Well, never heed them. Haply 'twas Shameless Wayne you sought, and he will see that none does you hurt."

She put her face close to his and looked at him fixedly in the deepening gloom. A shaft of flame struck out at her from the hearth and showed a would-be alertness in the babyish eyes. "Yes, yes," she whispered. "I thought it was a lover I was seeking, a lover who had strong arms and tender words--but I was wrong--'twas thee I sought, Ned, all through the weary night--and I want nothing now that I have found thee--and--Ned, wilt keep the ghosties off?"

"Every one, little bairn.--Now, see how stained your gown is with--with rain. I shall not love you at all if you do not run and change it before you come with me to supper."

"Not love me!" she repeated, with a look of doubt.--"Why, then, I'll change my gown thrice every day, because you are kind to me. No one else is kind to me, Ned. The wind buffets me, and rude men turn me forth of doors whenever I cross a threshold--save Sexton Witherlee, who was wondrous kind to me last night. All afternoon, Ned, I wandered about Marsh before I dared come in--I feared you would scowl at me, like the redmen of Wildwater." She turned, and in a moment she was clapping her hands for glee. "Look, look, Ned! Pretty candles--see'st thou how the shadows go playing hide-and-find-me up the walls?"

"They're bad shadows; have naught to do with them," said Shameless Wayne, turning her face to the hearth again and wondering to find what care he had for this frail woman's malady.

But she slipped from his hands, and ran forward to the bier, and was reaching out for one of the candles when its light showed her the pale face of Wayne of Marsh. The sight did not frighten her at all; but she stood mute and still, as if she were trying to understand in dim fashion that once this man had been her husband.

"Would he answer if I spoke to him? No, I think he would not; he looks too stern," Wayne heard her murmur. "I've seen that face--in dreams, long, long ago, it must have been. Perhaps he was my lover--strange that I should seek him all about the moor, when he was lying so quietly here."

"Come away, little bairn. He has no word for you," said her step-son, wearily.

Mistress Wayne halted a moment, then stooped and kissed the dead man's lips. And then she laughed daintily and rubbed her mouth with one forefinger. "Why does he not care!" she lisped. "His lips are cold as a beggar's welcome, Ned--we'll none of him, will we, thou and I?"

The door behind them opened and Nell Wayne came slowly across the floor until she stood within arm's reach of her step-mother. Scorn was in the girl's face, and a hatred not to be appeased.

"What brings this woman here?" she asked.

Mistress Wayne crept close to her protector. "All are cruel except thou, Ned. Keep her from me--she will turn me out into the cold again."

"Ay, Mistress--to starve of cold and want, if I had my way," said Nell.

Shameless Wayne put one arm about the pleading woman and turned upon his sister hotly. "Canst not see how it is with her?" he cried. "They say that men are hard, but God knows ye women make us seem soft-hearted by the contrast."

"The dead cannot speak, or father yonder would up and cry shame on her," the girl answered, covering the pair of them with a disdainful glance.

"Nay, thou'rt wronging him. Had she been whole of mind, he might have done--but 'twas never father's way to double any blow that fell upon a woman."

"She shall not stay here! 'Tis pollution," cried Nell.

"And I say the poor bairn shall bide here so long as she lacks a home; and _I_ am master here, not thou."

His sister stared open-eyed at him. Since last night he had been contrite to the verge of womanishness; but now he showed a sterner glimpse of the Wayne temper than she had looked for in him. She felt wronged and baffled, and for her life could not keep back the stinging answer.

"Ay, thou art master," she said slowly, "and thou beginnest well--first to let another fight for thee, and then to welcome the betrayer with open arms. Small wonder that they call thee Shameless Wayne."

For a breathing-space she thought he would have struck her. But this lad, who until yesterday had never seen need to check his lightest whim, was learning a hard lesson well. He struggled with his pride awhile, and crushed it; and when he spoke his voice was quiet and sad.

"Nell," he said, "'tis no fit place for brawling, and thou art right in what thou say'st of me. But Mistress Wayne shall bide, and not if all our kin cry out on me, will I go back on what I promised."

"I am cold again, and very hungry. Send yond girl away," wailed the little woman.

"Does naught soften thee, lass?" said Wayne, glancing from his sister to the shrinking figure that held so closely fast to him.

"Naught," Nell answered, hard and cold. "The years will pass, and sorrows age, may be--but I shall never lose my hate of her."

"Yet think," he went on patiently. "She cleaves to me, Nell, and thou know'st how the fairy-kist bring luck to those they favour. 'Tis a good omen for the long fight that's coming."

"If pity does not move me, will a country proverb, think'st thou? Have thy way, Ned, since there's none to stay thee--but at the least take thy new friend from the death-room. Thou'lt see father turn and writhe if she stay longer by him, and 'tis my turn to watch the bier."

"Let's begone, little bairn. Haply thou'lt know here to find thy wearing-stuff if I take thee to the old room above," said Shameless Wayne, leading his step-mother to the door.

But Nell was fevered, and would not brook such prompt obedience to her wish. "Where are the lads?" she asked. "Frolicking, belike, when sober sitting within-doors would better have fitted the occasion."

Shameless Wayne turned on the threshold. "I sent them hawking," he answered, the new firmness gaining in his voice. "There's one claim of the dead, lass, and another of the living; and 'tis better they should brace their muscle for the days to come than sit moping over what is past."

"He grows masterful already. The shame has slipped clean off from him," murmured Nell, as she took a pair of snuffers from the mantel and trimmed the death-candles.

Yet Ned had not killed his shame. He was but battling with it, and the effort to show something like a man, in his own eyes at least, rendered his mood at once strangely tender and strangely savage. But he could find naught save tenderness for Mistress Wayne, as they climbed the wide stairway hand-in-hand and went in at the door of what had been his father's bed-chamber--his father's and that of the little woman by his side. She was no longer an unfaithful wife; she was a child, bewildered in the midst of enemies, and she had no friend but him.

Mistress Wayne stood in the middle of the room, fearful a little and asking a mute question of her step-son.