Part 9

The Sexton's wife looked at Nell's white face and red-rimmed eyes, and she could find no heart to answer; she just took the lass in her arms, and kissed her, and comforted her with such little wordless tendernesses as she had used when Nell had been frightened as a bairn.

While they stood thus, still with no speech between them, a horse pulled up at the door, and they could hear the rider's voice strike, deadened a little but clear, through the stout oaken planks.

"The feud is up, lad! When I rode home last night they had slain one of my folk on Cranshaw Rigg."

"Ay, and the body lacked"--came the voice of Shameless Wayne.

"God's pity! Wrench it down. 'Tis my brother's hand, Ned," broke in the first speaker.

"What is't?" cried Nell, freeing herself from Nanny's arms and turning sharply. "That was Rolf's voice--and Ned is with him--what are they doing, nurse?"

"Niver heed 'em, bairn--they're nobbut----"

"Ay, but thou canst not blind me, Nanny! I know! I dreamed of it the night through--'tis the old token father told me of so oft--'tis a Wayne's hand, nurse! Did I not tell thee Barguest went pad-footed down the lane beside me?"

"Now, whisht ye, mistress! Your sweetheart's safe, as ye can hear, an' he'll be in by an' by--he's coming now, an' ye'll noan want me, dearie, when he's by to comfort ye. I'll waken th' wenches, an' then I mun lig me down awhile, for there's a lot needs seeing to this day."

Nell stood there idly until the old woman's steps were lost among the restless echoes of the house. On a sudden the main door was thrown open, and Shameless Wayne came in alone.

"Why did not Rolf stay?" asked Nell.

"Because I gave him a message for his folk at Cranshaw. Nay, I cannot tell thee what it was; 'twould only scare thee. --Come, Nell! I, too, have to get to saddle, and I fear to leave thee with such misery in thy face. Where are the lads?"

"Abed yet--wearied with their hunting."

"They must not come to the kirkyard. Bid them keep close to home till we return."

"But, Ned, why should they keep away?" the girl began.

He stopped her, with the quiet, forceful air that she was learning to obey. "Because I bid them," he said, and kissed her lightly on the cheek, and went out to the stables.

Nell crossed to the bier, where her father lay heedless of the storm and fret that his death had brought to old Marsh House. She sat her down, and put her face between her hands, and let her thoughts go drifting down the pathway of the years. From time to time the maids came in and busied themselves with setting out the table for the feast that would follow the old master's burial in a few hours' time; but the master's daughter seemed to heed them as little as himself. She thought of her brother, wondering at the change in him, yet doubting that the old wildness would return soon as the first keen smart of shame was softened; she thought of Mistress Wayne, who was a guest here in the house which she had dishonoured in all men's eyes; and then again she remembered what had chanced in Marshcotes kirkyard, and told herself that surely a twelvemonth had hurried by since she went up to the belfry-tower with a knife close hidden under her cloak.

Not two days ago she had watched the life ebb fast and red from the wound in her father's back, while his murderer looked on and laughed; and now he was ready for the grave; and in between there had seemed no rest from the hurry of events. Dick Ratcliffe had paid his price; one of the Cranshaw Waynes had fallen at the Lean Man's hand; the old feud-token had been nailed over the Marsh doorway; and under all the present misery--the grief and fret and long-drawn-out restlessness that wait on burial--was the overshadowing sense of tragedy to come. To-day they would lay their dead to rest; and then the smouldering embers of the feud would leap to flame; and after that no man nor woman of them all could count a day safe won through till it was done, and men's lives and women's honour would be no more than straws upon the fast-racing stream of chance.

All this went back and forth in the girl's mind, and the feud took on a hundred different shapes each time she thought of it. It was the feud she had heard of since earliest childhood, the feud whose memory was grafted in by many a far-back legend and nearer tale of fight. Often and often in the happier years she had wondered, as a girl will, how the way of it would be if the quarrel broke out afresh: there had been deeds of high courage and glamour of sword-thrust to make her almost love the feud and count it noble; but now that it was on them, now that it hugged the very threshold, naked, terrible and brutish, she understood the reality and lost her dream-visions of the splendour and the majesty of fight. Fight meant gaping wounds, and blood upon the floor, and men going into the shadowy places when they were at the topmost of their strength. God knew that, if the choice were hers, she would cry peace once and for all and let the dead past rest.

Yet her mood changed like the gusty wind that whistled now and then across the chimney-stacks. No sooner had she let that eager prayer for peace escape her, than her hands clenched themselves, and her eyes brightened, and the old vengeance-cry of her people rose hot to her lips. Let bloodshed come, and slaughter--and she would take new heart as one by one the Ratcliffes fell. Never in all the years that they had been together had the likeness between the dead man and his daughter shown more plain than now, as she laid her hand on his and counted his wrongs afresh. The pride of her race, its pitiless sternness when wronged, seemed gathered from the long-dead generations who had fought the Wayne and Ratcliffe fight aforetime; and the hate of the fathers woke again to splendour and to savagery in the slender-supple body of this last daughter of the line.

She could sit still no longer, but got to her feet and crossed to the garden-door. The house-air stifled her; men fought under the open sky, and for that cause there was friendship in wind and sun and drifting clouds. Something like a prayer--a masterful prayer, and a bitter--rose to the girl's lips as she stood and felt the keen wind in her face.

"Keep warm my hate, Lord God!" she cried.

A light footstep sounded from the hall behind her. She turned and saw little Mistress Wayne bending over her father's body, with the same questioning, roguish air that she had worn last night.

"Wake, wake!" Mistress Wayne was lisping in the dead man's ear. "'Tis my wedding-morn, I tell thee, and all at Marsh must come to see it."

Not touched at all was Nell by the piteousness of the scene. She remembered only what this woman had done, and forgot how hard a penance she was undergoing.

"Get ye gone," she said, clutching her step-mother fiercely by the arm. "Is't not enough that you have killed him, but you must mock him after death?"

Mistress Wayne shrank backward from her touch. "I did but try to wake him, Nell. He would be angered if he missed my bridal-morn."

Nell made no answer, but turned her back on the little woman; and Mistress Wayne crept, softly as she had come, out of the chamber whose guest perplexed her so.

"Her bridal-morn!" cried Nell, as though her father could hear that she was speaking to him. "Is it for malice that she gowns herself in white on such a day, and prates of weddings? Father, why didst go to the Low Country for a wife? She has brought disaster on disaster since the first day she set foot in Marsh."

A new thought came to her, adding its own load to the burden that was already over-heavy for her. Would Ned win free of his passion for Janet Ratcliffe, or would his marriage, too, be ill-fated as his father's? To wed from the Low Country was folly, but marriage between a Ratcliffe and a Wayne would be a crime on which the country-side would up and cry out shame.

And then, in a moment, all the girl's fierceness, her resolution and tearless pride, were lost. God had made her a woman, and like a woman she fell prone across the bier, and wept, and thought neither of vengeance nor of hatred, but of the love that had grown through twenty years of comradeship between the dead man and herself. It was not her father's strength, his sweeping recklessness in fight, that she remembered now; but she recalled his gentleness toward her, his clean and upright courtesy, his generosity to rich and poor among his neighbours.

Marsh House was full of the unrest that goes before a burial, the fruitless wandering to-and-fro which seems to ease the sorrow of the living. The menservants were idling in the courtyard with a subdued sort of noisiness; the maids were still passing and re-passing from the kitchen; and Nanny Witherlee, unable to snatch more than the briefest spell of sleep, came hobbling by and by into the hall.

The old woman stopped on seeing Nell stretched across the bier, and half advanced toward her; then shook her head. "I'll let her be; happen 'twill be best for her to cry her een out," she muttered, and turned down the passage to the kitchen.

Nanny showed different altogether this morning from the quivering, ghost-ridden watcher who had kept so long a vigil with only the dead and strange voices in the wind for company. Then there had been no work to be done, no household cares to rouse the old instincts in her; but now that preparations for the burial feast were going busily forward she slipped naturally into the place which had been hers at Marsh aforetime. Brisk as though she had had a full night's sleep, she fell to doing this and that, rating the maids the while with a keenness that robbed the day of half its sadness for her.

"Now then, ye idle wenches!" she cried, soon as she had crossed the kitchen threshold. "Do ye think gaping at a mutton-pasty 'ull mak it walk to th' dining board? Martha, tha'rt allus mooning ower thy work like a goose wi' a nicked head. An' look at Mary yonder! Standing arms under apron when th' house 'ull soon be full o' hungry folk. An' th' Waynes allus had good appetites, sorrow or no sorrow."

Nanny was setting parsley-sprigs round a dish of neat's tongue all this time; and when this was done she climbed onto the settle and reached down piece after piece of haver-bread that was drying on the creel. The same instinct that had bidden her test the quality of Wayne's winding sheet, while yet she was deep in sorrow for him, was with her now, and her mind was set on leaving no unremembered detail, of wine or meat or ripe October ale, to mar the burial-feast.

"It's weel to do nowt, same as some folk!" she cried, stopping to glance sourly at the progress of the maids. "I don't know what wenches are made on nowadays, that I don't."

"Do nowt, my sakes! When my knees is dibble-double-ways wi' weariness," cried Martha.

"Hoity-toity! I've done as mich before breakfast ivery day o' th' week when I war a lass.--Mary, wilt gi'e me a hand wi' this cheese, or mun I let it fall to th' floor-stuns?"

The maids, run off their feet already, without any help from outside, grew wild with the natter-natter of the Sexton's wife; but awe of her kept any but the briefest snaps of anger from their tongues, and it was a relief to both when the door opened slowly and they saw Hiram Hey standing on the threshold. Clean-shaven and spruce of body was Hiram, and a certain melancholy drooping of the mouth-corners could not quench his sober gaiety of mien.

"'Tis a sad day, this, for us at Marsh," he said, thrusting his head forward and sniffing the air with unctuous wonder that the women could think of victuals at all at such a time.

Nanny turned quickly. "It willun't be ony brighter for thy coming, Hiram Hey. We want no men-folk here," she cried.

The maids looked from Nanny to the farm-man, and then at each other. There was a stiff breeze always when these two met, and Nanny was apt to find her match at such times.

"Well, now, are ye winning forrard-like?" said Hiram, leaning against the doorway in his idlest attitude.

"Ay, an' no thanks to thee," snapped the Sexton's wife.

"It beats me to know how folk can eat an' drink, an' drink an' eat, when there's a burying. It seems a mockery o' th' dead, that it does--as mich as to say, 'See what it is to be wick, lad; tha'll niver put victuals down thy throat again, same as I'm doing now.' Ay, I've oft thowt it's enough to mak a corpse turn round an' scowl at ye."

"I've seen thee at a burying, Hiram," said the Sexton's wife, quietly, "an' tha can do thy share, I've noticed. It's all talk, an' nowt but, wi' sich as ye. Tha cannot see we're thrang, mebbe?"

His only answer was to shift his shoulder to a more easiful position against the doorway, and Nanny left him to it. At another time she would have had a sharper tongue for Hiram Hey, nor would his own responses have lacked their sting; but the old Master's influence had never been so strong as it was now, and a sense of seemliness--a fear, perhaps, of waking the last sleep of him who lay so near to them--held even the rough tongues of these upland folk in check.

Hiram glanced at Martha, soon as the little old woman had hobbled out to lay fresh dishes in the hall; and Martha answered his glance in a way that showed there was an understanding between them--as indeed there was like to be, seeing that Hiram Hey had been wooing her off and on these two years past.

"Hast been to th' fields this morn?" asked Martha.

"Ay, iver sin' th' sun war up, lass."

"Tha'll be dry, then, Hiram, at after thy morning's work."

"Dry, now? Well, I wodn't say just dry--but that way on a bit. I niver war a drinker myseln, as I telled shepherd Jose nobbut yesterday; but there's a time for iverything, an' if I war to see a quart, say, of October frothing ower th' lip o' th' mug----"

"Tha'd find a mouth to fit it? Well, an' shall, says I," cried Martha.

Hiram stretched his limbs more lengthily before the peats, as a soothing gurgle from the pantry told him that Martha was already filling him a measure. She was back again by and by, with a brim-full pewter in her hands.

"Drink, lad Hiram; what wi' work an' sadness, there's need for strong liquor here at Marsh," she said.

The firelight struck with a ruddy, softened sheen on the pewter as Hiram lifted it. He drank slowly, and his face was full of unwonted cheerfulness until he had set down the empty mug beside him.

"Theer! It war gooid, Martha," he murmured sorrowfully, "but I doubt there's nowt mich in it when all's said. Drink is all varry weel, but there's one ower i' th' hall yonder who'll niver warm to liquor again this side o' Judgment. Nay, I'm fair shamed o' myseln to be supping ale while th' owd Maister ligs so cold."

He stopped and eyed the empty pewter; and Martha, reaching across the settle-back, picked up the mug again.

"Tha's getten too soft a heart, Hiram," she said. "Sup while ye can, an' mak th' most on't."

"Nay, nay, I'm no drinker. Plain watter is nigh th' same to me as ale, an' there's no call for thee to fill afresh--leastways, I wodn't say a full quart, tha knows."

But Martha was back again before he had well finished with his protests. "Get done wi' 't, Hiram, afore Nanny comes back," she whispered. "She carries an ill tongue, does Nanny, when she finds life going too easy wi' a body."

"There's queer things bahn to happen," said Hiram presently.

"By th' Heart, I thowt there'd been queer happenings enough of late!"

"The shepherds telled me this morn that th' Ratcliffes is all a-buzz, an' folk are shaking their heads all up an' dahn th' moorsides. Besides, th' owd house here fair rustles, like, as I've known it do afore when trouble war i' store. I tell thee, I can hear th' boggarts creeping wick as scropels fro' roof to cellar."

"Hod thy whisht--do, now, for goodness sake. Tha flairs me," cried Martha, glancing behind her. And then she clutched the farm-man by the arm with sudden terror. "Look yonder, Hiram! Look yonder!" she cried.

Hiram looked and started to his feet. "Begow, I thowt 'twar a right boggart this time," he muttered. "What ails th' little body to move so quiet about a house?"

Mistress Wayne, dressed all in white, with celandines at her breast and fair hair rippling to her waist, had come in from the garden and stood at the open kitchen-door; and she was smiling, carelessly and trustfully, on the frightened maids and on old Hiram.

"'Tis my wedding-morn," she said, "and I've been to talk with the fairies, Martha. They say 'tis well to get the wee folks' blessing for the bairns to come."

Hiram gave her a long glance, then looked away; and an unwonted pity stirred him. "Nay, I've no sorrow to waste. She's made herself a nettle-bed, an' she mun lig on't," he muttered.

"Come in, Mistress, come in, an' warm yourseln a bit; ye're looking cold and wan, like," cried Martha, recovering from her fright.

"Oh, no, that is not true. I peeped at myself in the well out there just now, and I thought that I had never seen a happier face. Hiram, thou must come to my wedding, too; wilt thou?"

"Ay, Mistress--ay, I'll come, choose what."

She smiled again, and waved her hand, and slipped away into the sunshine that shimmered over the wet flagstones of the yard. And neither Martha nor the farm-men found aught to say to one another for awhile.

"What dost mak of it?" said Hiram Hey at last.

"Nay, I can mak nowt of it. But 'tis a drear start for a burial. Hiram, lad, Marsh is no healthy place just now, an' I for one could wish to be weel out on't. It isn't th' blood-shed I fear, an' it isn't th' dead man yonder--but it's th' ghosts! Tha'rt right when tha says they fair creep fro' floor to garret."

A thought crossed Hiram's mind--no new thought, either, but one that showed livelier than its wont now Martha was in such trouble.

"Tha'd be fain to change dwellings, like?" he ventured, putting a hand on her shoulder and half drawing her toward him.

Martha yielded to his touch, and a puzzled look came over Hiram's face; he had pondered over this last step for four-and-twenty months, and needed a twelvemonth longer in which to make sure of its wisdom. His doubts were settled, however, by the intrusion of the Sexton's wife, who stopped on seeing what was afoot and glanced from Hiram to the empty mug.

"So that's what's browt thee here, Hiram Hey?" she cried. "Tha'rt a bonnie un to come talking o' what's seemly i' a house o' death! First, to drink thyseln dizzy-crazy, an' then to go prettying wi' a wench that mud weel by thy own grandchild. Nay, I've no patience wi' thee; tha'rt owd enough to be thinking o' thy own latter end i'stead o' fly-by-skying wi' lasses, an'----"

Hiram for once could find no answer, but stood ruffling the frill of hair under his clean-shaven chin and shifting his feet from side to side.

"I have talked with my cousin, Nanny," came the Master's voice from the door.

Nanny turned and saw Shameless Wayne standing there, pale and quiet, with the straight downward rent between his brows which seemed to have been fixed there two nights ago for good and all.

"About th' burying, Maister?" she queried eagerly.

"Aye. We are to go armed; the word has been sent round."

"Now God be praised! Ye're wise to list to what Barguest hes to tell," said the Sexton's wife, and forgot to rate the maids, forgot the fifty little household cares that claimed attention.

*CHAPTER VIII*

*A STORMY BURIAL*

The Wayne vault lay open to the April sky, and throstles were singing in the stunted trees, as Sexton Witherlee, infirm of step and dreamy of eye, moved softly over the graveyard stones. He stopped when he reached the vault, set down the ladder he was carrying and stood looking at the clean-swept room below.

"'Tis a sweet place, a vault, to my thinking," he muttered. "So trim and peaceable the folk lie, each on his appointed shelf, with never a wrong word betwixt 'em th' twelvemonth through. Ay, 'tis quiet ligging, an' th' storms pass overhead, an' ivery now an' again there's what ye mud call a stir among 'em when a new shelf is filled an' a new neighbour earned. Well, I've seen life a bittock, but I wod swop beds wi' ony o' these, that I wod."

A robin came and perched on the top rung of the ladder, and eyed Sexton Witherlee sideways with a friendliness which long following after the spade had bred.

"What, laddie, dost think I'm delving?" said the Sexton, chuckling feebly. "Nay, there's to be a better burying this morn nor raw earth gives a man. 'Tis bricks an' mortar, robin, an' a leaded coffin for sich as Wayne o' Marsh.--Well, then, bide a bit till I've straightened all up down here, an' then I'll scrat thee up a worm or two for thy dinner."

He reached down one stiffened leg, twisted the ladder from side to side to make sure that it was safe, and began his slow descent into the vault. He passed his hand lightly over the stone doors that hid the shelves--lightly, and as if he loved each separate entry in this Book of Death. And all the while he talked to himself, soft and slow.

"There's old Tom Wayne put to bed there--he war a rum 'un an' proper, they say, though he war dead a hundred year afore my time--an' yond's Ralph Wayne's spot--well, he lived hot an' he lived fast, did Ralph Wayne, an' he died at two-score, an' so saved a mort o' sweating an' unthankfulness. An' now there's th' Maister come to join 'em; I mind burying his wife ten years agone--ten years!--an' him to hev lived wi' all his troubles until now. It 'ull by my turn next, I'm thinking--th' young 'uns come an' they go, an' it doan't hold to reason that Sexton Witherlee should be spared to bury 'em for iver."

A broom stood in one corner of the vault, fashioned of heather-fagots bound to a stout handle of ash. Witherlee took the broom in his hands, and began to sweep up the rubble that lay about the floor.

"Moiling an' toiling, that's all a man addles by keeping th' life quick i' him. I'm faired shamed o' living when I come among so many decent, quiet bodies--ay, fair shamed," murmured the Sexton, and rested on his broom, and looked up to find a broad face and a sturdy pair of shoulders hanging over the edge of the vault.

"How's trade, Sexton?" said the newcomer.

"Brisk, Jonas, brisk."

"Well, what's one man's meat is another man's poison, i' a manner o' speaking. 'Tis how ye look at things, I reckon, an' there's heads an' tails on ivery good piece o' money. So trade's middling, is't?"

"Oh, ay. Other trades grow slack, but ye cannot do without Sexton Witherlee i' Marshcotes parish. That's what I says to Parson a week come yestermorn. 'Parson,' says I, 'me an' thee hev getten likely trades. Folk allus need prayers, an' they allus need burying. Crops fail time an' time,' I says, 'an' sickness follows at after famine; an' that's money i' a Sexton's breeches pockets,' says I."

"Mebbe tha'rt right, Sexton; but I'd liefer live by putting sound liquor down folk's throats nor be shovelling earth a-top of 'em when they've getten past meat an' drink. But we munnot fratch, for we're near neighbours--me at th' Bull, an' thee i' th' kirkyard hard by, an' each to his own trade, says I, choose who hears me say 't.--'Tis a drear business, this o' th' Maister o' Marsh. Th' burying is fixed for twelve o' th' clock, they tell me."

"Ay, sure; he'll be ligged i' bed here all ship-shape, will th' owd Maister, come a half hour after nooin."

"He's nobbut been laid out two days an' less, hes he? How should that come about, like? 'Tis nobbut decent I allus did say, to give a corpse its full time on th' bier--'specially a gentle-born corpse, that looks for so mich more attention or a common un."