Chapter XIV: Nita

I

Garsykes was stirred to grim and crafty mirth during the next weeks. November had brought its little spell of summer between fall of the leaves and winter’s onset. Primroses bloomed here and there in favoured nooks. The sun was constant, from dawn till nightfall, in a blue and happy sky, and birds began to think of courtship.

So did Will o’ Wisp. In all his careless, vagabond life he had found none like Nita; and she smiled at him whenever they met by stream or coppice.

“Our men are rough and savage,” she would say. “They frighten me.”

Then Will o’ Wisp would yield to the slender helplessness of this girl who showed him open favour. And all Garsykes laughed, to watch the stranger going the way of many men before him.

“She has him in her lap,” growled Long Murgatroyd, sitting in the inn one afternoon among his cronies, “and the Lord knows which o’ them I’d like to throttle first.”

“Choose Nita,” they answered, in snarling chorus.

“Happen I will,” said Murgatroyd, and fell back into the sullen brooding that shadowed his every thought these days.

Will o’ Wisp cared nothing at all for what they said of him in Garsykes. He cared only to be with Nita Langrish, to grow wilder each day for her elusive beauty.

On one of these windless, moist afternoons, near dusk, he came from the benty lands and found her at the bridge that spanned Crooning Water.

“That’s a fine hare you’re dangling in your hand,” she said, with a welcoming smile.

“I was thinking to leave it at your door as I went by.”

“I’d best come with you, then, as soon as I’ve finished my basket. Hares left at Garsykes doors don’t stay there long.”

“They wouldn’t,” agreed Will o’ Wisp, with a random laugh. “I should have thought of that.”

“You’d best keep it, after all. What do I know of the way to skin it?”

“I should have thought of that, too. I’ll bring it dressed for cooking—and don’t blame me if it looks like a plump, naked cat.”

She seemed to invite him to sit on the parapet beside her; but when he tried to put an arm about her, it grasped only empty space. Nita was on the far side of the bridge, as if by magic, threading her withies.

“They used to cut the willows for me,” she said by and by, her voice soft as the breeze that fluted down the stream. “And now I have to cut them myself. See how rough my hands are.”

They were held out to him—slim, shapely hands—and he was mad to take them. But Nita was already standing in the roadway, and laughed as she dangled the finished basket to and fro.

“This is for little Tabitha, up dale. Seventy odd and a spinster, she. The last I made was for a bride. I wonder what drollery will come to them both, when they take their baskets over-arm?”

Will o’ Wisp’s crisp good-humour failed him. The girl stood there, all of her but the grey eyes young as June about these winter highlands; but the eyes were old, unfathomable.

“What drollery should come?” he asked.

“You would not understand. I cannot help it, but I’ve a trick of weaving spells into my baskets. Whoever I make one for, I get a picture of her in my mind, and ply the willows in and out with a sort of prayer, you might say, that my basket will teach her just the daft contrary-wise of what she thought she was. And it comes true, Will o’ Wisp.”

Then suddenly the grey eyes were young again, and smiling into his. “Was I seeing far? It comes of foregathering with gypsies. One of them talked to me just now of Logie and its Master.”

“The man who tried to stop me with a bullet?”

“Do you bear no malice, Will o’ Wisp?”

“I should do,” he chuckled, “but, thanks be, I harbour none o’ that. I’ve seen too much of it in my time—eating into men like a plague.”

“You’d have had the post-boy’s money in your pocket, but for Hardcastle. And what cause had he to interfere?”

“His bullet only flicked me. Next time I’ll flick him, maybe, and settle that little account between us. But, as for malice, I wouldn’t sour myself with it.”

“You’re not like the Garsykes sort. They’d gnaw at what Hardcastle did to you, as a dog gnaws at a bone, never letting it rest.”

“More fools they. I’m a rogue by nature and choice—a light-hearted one—and fancied they’d be all like that in Garsykes.”

“You fancied wrong, Will o’ Wisp. Honour among thieves—Robin Hood and his merry men—you looked to find all that in Garsykes? You’re young.”

“And you’re young,” he broke in heedlessly. “You were talking of spells you wove into your baskets, Nita—as if baskets mattered. You’ve woven them round a man.”

“Or half a man?” she mocked. “One who lets Hardcastle pistol him and daren’t answer.”

Will o’ Wisp grew taut as a bow-string on the sudden. “_Dare not_ never shadowed me since I was breeked. I’ve little to boast about except that.”

They went together up the road, and turned into the track that led between lean, benty lands to Garsykes.

“If Hardcastle had done a wrong to me?” she asked.

He gripped her shoulder till she winced. “I’d kill him,” he said simply.

“A man, are you, after all?”

“I was born one, as it happened.”

“Oh, it’s not so bad as to ask murder,” said Nita, her voice gentle as a dove’s. “Hardcastle slighted me—no more than that—took the heart out of my body and threw it away for frolic.”

“Did he?” said Will o’ Wisp.

“Not murder,” she pleaded, her hand like velvet on his arm.

“That’s as maybe.”

So then she cried, and he fell to comforting her; and afterwards she set the width of the roadway between them as they went through Garsykes village.

Prying eyes looked out on them from Widow Mathison’s inn, and Long Murgatroyd fetched a great laugh as he stood looking out of the window.

“There’s another o’ Nita’s goes by. To-morrow he’ll be where most of us have been in our time.”

Murgatroyd spoke truth. On the next day Will o’ Wisp was busy in the swampy hollow where Nita’s willows grew. The Garsykes Men, when they got late abroad, did not pause for banter as they passed. They let the newcomer hang himself in Nita’s silken toils, and so much for him.

So it went for many days, till Will o’ Wisp began to lose his content with life as he found it. There were times when he came into the inn and sat silent on the settle, till at last the widow rallied him.

“You’re getting heavy as Murgatroyd. What’s amiss with your easy-go-lucky handling of things as they come?”

“How should I know? Draw me a quart of ale, and maybe that will cure me.”

“Maybe it will—and likely it willun’t. But Nita’s good for my trade, and always was.”

“I said naught about Nita.”

“No. But you were thinking of her. Will o’ Wisp, my lad, I’ve a liking for you, and I’m old enough to be your mother. Quit Nita Langrish, before she binds her spell too fast.”

The rough sympathy was too much for him. He had gone through evil days—through beguilement that promised all, and gave nothing but the slant flight of a snipe as it raced down-wind.

“The spell’s over me, fast and hard,” he said, and laughed—but not with the old relish.

II

The next day Nita came home by way of the Long Spinney that raked down from Logie to the grey hill-fastness where her village lurked. Her step was buoyant. She had sold her baskets, and had another man in thrall at Garsykes. All was well with her, till a gunshot cracked from the spinney, and Hardcastle came presently down the lane between the thick-set firs and sycamores, dangling a hare.

At sight of him—big and careless, as if the world were his—Nita lost all content. There was one who had escaped her snare, and she coveted him.

“The man they call Will o’ Wisp brought me just such a hare—and it was one of yours, I fancy.”

“Did he? I’m taking mine to Logie.”

“For the pedlar’s brat to share?”

Hardcastle, as yet, knew nothing of his heart; but Nita read it in his stubborn quietness.

“What did you say to her, that day you met her on the road?” he asked.

“Something that brought burning to her cheeks. Do you think, because you’re Hardcastle of Logie, you can share a hut for the night with a lass and hear no more about it—snowstorm or no?”

“There are times,” he said slowly, “when I wonder why one or another of the Garsykes Men doesn’t cut out that tongue of yours and nail it where the gamekeeper——”

“Nails vermin?” said Nita gently. “I witch them, Hardcastle of Logie.”

Hardcastle longed to pass by, and could not. Surely what they said of her was false. She was so fresh and innocent, like a morning in mid-April.

“I witch them, Dick, and care for none—since you went out of my life.”

Again she was witching him, too. All that was rough and a man in him had asked always for a frail thing like Nita to guard—something that would need his strength and lean on it.

“They were good days, and I lost them,” she went on.

It was as if a net of cobwebs hindered him. She was close, and woe-begone, and pleading. Then he remembered how it had gone long since—his stormy, honest wooing—and the end of that good dream. He recalled the barren years, his loathing of all women for Nita’s sake—Nita’s, who had played him false.

“You’re of Garsykes,” he said, “and the new days are in.”

“I might have been of Logie once. I was a fool. Have you no pity, Dick?” She put a hand on his sleeve. “You’re built out of limestone rock—hard and unforgiving.”

“Just hard, Nita.”

“And buying acres here and there, to add to Logie?”

“I bought a farm yesterday—Nicholas Wade’s, who died in his bed at ninety. Yes, I’m buying acres.”

“Wouldn’t you save them, Dick? I’m of the Wilderness—and there are only six of yours that do not cringe to Garsykes. You’re almost alone against us now.”

“Maybe—but the six are staunch.”

Nita would have welcomed rage—his hands at her throat, for what she had done to him in days gone by—but she fretted at this cold hardihood that was so resolute.

“Have you no pity?” she asked again.

“I keep such for Logie these times.”

Then suddenly he found her hands in his, and the old beguilement was about him. She had tempted him before, when the feud was new and heady in his veins, and he had hope of saving Logie. Now he had no hope, except to face the last assault of Garsykes when it came, and die with the house whose every rafter-beam he loved. Six of his men had proved leal. The rest were chaff blowing down the winds of chance—folk cringing for daily bread to Garsykes, and paying toll as if they cared not for the shame of licking dirty boots.

All was in the losing. And here was Nita, her arms soft about him. What did it matter, if he took and claimed her, and earned restful days for Logie?

The fight was over almost before he knew it had begun. Pride played its own part. He would not yield, though twenty Garsykes came against him. But, deep under pride, lay some inner depth whose waters had not been stirred till now. Nita and her spells grew shadowy and weak. He was a free man again, and some new, undreamed-of world seemed to open out before him.

Nita stood at arm’s length now, wondering at the man’s stubbornness.

“So we’re both fools, it seems,” she said. “I lost Logie once for vanity—and now you’re losing it for pride.”

A twig snapped in the wood behind them, and Hardcastle turned sharply. He saw only a shaking of the pine-branches; but Nita had seen more.

“Afraid that one from Garsykes would club you from behind?” she mocked.

“Not afraid—but sure it would be from behind, if at all.”

“How you loathe us, Dick—and how we loathe you in turn. Listen. I’m as you see me—not ugly, they say—and there’s a mad-dog fury there in Garsykes. They want to burn your house to-morrow, and I will not let them.”

“Why?” snapped Hardcastle.

“I hope to be mistress there. Would I let them burn a house I shared?”

“You’ll never share it,” he said bluntly, stung by her careless trust in her own beauty and its power.

Nita stood regarding him for a moment, then laughed—a little, eerie laugh that had an edge of steel. “I’ll not let them burn the house for another reason now. It would be too easy a way out for its pride-sick master. You’re glancing at the wood again? It was no Garsykes face that peeped between the branches.”

“Whose was it, then?”

“Aye, whose? You’ll learn soon enough—and, after all, it’s only one more trouble to your load.”

A silence followed, heavy and brooding as thunder-weather brewing up. Nita, used to swaying men by her lightest smile, had done all to bring Hardcastle into captivity again. She had failed, and the Master drew back a pace or two, appalled by what he saw in the girl’s face and dove-like eyes.

“I shall teach them the way of better sport with Logie than burning it. You’d only die once in the flames. For weeks, maybe—or months—the Wilderness will let you go your ways. A mischance here and there, to let you know we’re not asleep—the waiting for a blow that will surely come at last—do you think pride will carry any man through that?”

“Yes,” said Hardcastle, and went up the pastures, swinging the hare he carried.

III

Nita turned at last, when he was out of sight, and went down the track to Garsykes. Heart she had none to be wounded, but vanity was touched to the quick. Hardcastle would never be moved by her spells from this to the Crack o’ Doom, and with the knowledge came a passionate gust of hate.

It was in this mood that she encountered Will o’ Wisp, lumbering to the inn on heavy feet.

“You’re not your own merry self,” she said. “What ails you?”

“Nita Langrish ails me. I get no rest for wanting of you.”

“Why do all the men go daft for the little basket-weaver? I never ask it, Will o’ Wisp.”

“Maybe,” he growled, “but the lord Harry knows you maze us. I could throttle you where we stand, Nita—just for love of doing it.”

“You couldn’t. I’d put a hand on your arm—like this—and I’d ask you to be gentle with little Nita. And, see, you could not hurt me.”

The man stood there, smiling foolishly, and lost to all but the girl’s low, pleading voice. And she began to play on his infirmities, as skilled fingers might touch a fiddle’s strings, till she brought him to her purpose. It was true that she had checked the Wilderness Men in their second plot to fire Logie. It had been true, till her meeting with Logie’s Master, that she had crooned happily to herself as she wove her baskets, and planned the long do-little time which should break Hardcastle’s spirit and his pride before they broke his body. But now she could not wait.

Vanity, restless and impatient, cried for solace to its wounds.

“Why do I fret you so, Will o’ Wisp?”

“That’s past my wits to say. Happen you know yourself, and happen you don’t.”

“There’s Hardcastle of Logie, and not one in Garsykes dares bring him down—for my sake.”

“For your sake?”

“Yes. You’re half-men, all of you, or we’d be rid of him. I met him up the pastures awhile since, and he—he was not kind. If I’d had you with me, Will o’ Wisp—but you were drinking strong ale, likely, instead of being at my side.”

“I was lad-mooning up and down the fields, sick of my fancy for you. And naught ever comes of it.”

“Lad-moon no more, Will. Be up and doing.”

“How?” he asked bluntly.

“You’re not his match in strength—but little folk are given nimble wits. He took a pistol to you once.”

“He did,” muttered Will, urged now by a rancour Nita had fostered diligently.

“And it’s turn and turn about in this life. Borrow Murgatroyd’s fowling-piece to-morrow——”

“And creep up to Logie with it?”

“There’s no need. All gossip comes to little Nita, and I can tell you the way home Hardcastle will be taking, near dusk. It lies yonder, where the track dips down from Pengables—and, when you’ve fired, Will o’ Wisp, you’ve no more to do than slip home to Garsykes for your welcome.”

“What sort of welcome?”

“You’d find me, for one. What I’d give the man who rid Logie-side of Hardcastle—but, then, you’re only half-man, maybe, like the rest.”

With that, Will o’ Wisp was in the toils again; and as they went down to Garsykes, the basket-weaver nestled close against him.

Hardcastle, meanwhile, had taken his own grim way to Logie—over the bridge of many memories and up the winding steep of the road. His gate, when he reached it, held memories, too, and he fingered the arrow-head left there as a token before the autumn trees were stripped. He kept it in his pocket nowadays, for luck.

A stable-lad, sweeping the lane, touched his forelock as Hardcastle came by.

“There’s been Farmer Draycott to see you, Master, but he couldn’t wait till you came back. You promised to go to Broken Firs to-morrow about repairs, and he stepped up to remind you.”

“I’d not forgotten,” said Hardcastle carelessly—“though it’s a long message for you to carry, William.”

The lad grinned sheepishly. “It did twist the few wits I’ve got; but I just kept on saying it over and over—not letting go in a manner o’ speaking, like as if I stuck to a rope.—And, Master——”

“Well?”

“I’d not go if I was you.”

Hardcastle glanced at him with gruff kindliness; for all Logie humoured this lad of the strong hands and the lame wits.

“You wouldn’t go?”

“Not if Guytrash yelped behind and druv me forrard. I’d choose Trash, I would, instead o’ Broken Firs. Why d’ye go, Master?”

“Because I said I’d go—so fret no more, William, and take this hare up to the kitchen.”

He missed the wistful, dog-like glance that followed him up the lane. He was thinking of Nita Langrish—of Causleen, who was a guest thrust on him against his will. Donald the pedlar wearied him, too, though he hated himself for the thought that pensioners lingered in their dying. Surely there was enough to face these days, without useless burdens to carry on one’s back! What did he owe Donald and his girl? Why were they here, when Logie asked for all his strength, and no weaklings in the house?

Yet, when he came under his own roof, he was aware of loneliness. Donald, as he glanced into the room, was sleeping tranquilly. Rebecca, far down the passage, seemed to be at war with Jonah, the brindled cat.

“A vagabones I call you, lapping cream all day and doing naught,” came the shrill voice.

Again Hardcastle wearied of it all. Peril, of the stealthy kind that he was fighting, had made his body lean and nagged at his spirit till it was raw with wounds. Something was absent—something he had come to look for on returning—and he grew restless and impatient.

Rebecca came down the passage by and by, Jonah perched on her shoulder after the last of their soon-over quarrels. With swift and savage intuition she knew what ailed the Master.

“The pedlar does well enough. Are you worrying about him?”

“No,” said Hardcastle, tall and sombre.

“As for his girl, she came in awhile since like a child o’ Belial. After she’d seen to Donald, she was frost and venom. She wouldn’t speak—I could have thoyled it better that road—but flounced about in her quiet, proud way, till I could have bitten her. Then she went out o’ doors—at this time o’ night, and with all Garsykes stirring for aught we know—and she’s not come back.”

Hardcastle turned to the rack, reached for a fowling-piece and looked to the priming. Then, without a word to Rebecca, he went into the soft November night and stood listening for the cry of one in trouble. None came. A sickle moon lay cradled in the tree-tops, shining on a land of misty quiet; and in that moment Hardcastle learned something of the heart he had thought walled-up for ever.

He called, and silence answered. Crying louder and louder still, he went up and down the pastures, through the home-spinney and out into Chantry Meadow where the cowslips grew in spring. He began to weave pictures of Garsykes Men surrounding her from every corner of these empty wastes, and quickened pace, and went circling hither and thither like a man distraught. Gusty anger found him, passionate question why she had left Logie’s shelter—fear reached him, of a kind unknown till now—and again his cry rang out—his heart’s cry of _Causleen_.

A bunch of sheep, huddled under the wall, got up and ran bleak-witted past him. That was the only answer. And now his own littleness appalled Hardcastle. Measured by the striding loneliness of Logie-land, he seemed small and of no account. He must get back, and saddle a horse, and rouse the country-side. If they found Causleen safe—if they found her safe—his mind stayed there awhile, glad to believe it till he was half-way back to Logie.

Then his mind raced forward. If they found her dead, or worse, he’d gather his roving company into a band that would burn Garsykes from one end to the other of its styes. Hardcastle, the magistrate who once had scrupled to carry a gun against the Lost Folk, was growing fast these days.

He came to his own door, wrath and fear between them making havoc of him. And there stood Causleen, looking quietly out across the trees.

“Surely you heard me call?” snapped Hardcastle, with quick relief.

“I heard.”

“Then why the devil, child, didn’t you answer? I’ve been sick with fear for you.”

“Is that true?” she asked. “There’s no other could make you sick with fear of that sort?”

Hardcastle was no easy man to live with these days. His temper was brittle as a file, and here was the pedlar’s girl, cross-questioning him after the turmoil he had gone through.

“I was a fool,” he said.

“And why?”

“To get my heart into my mouth because——”

“Because, Hardcastle of Logie?”

“Rebecca told me you’d gone out alone, as if there were no Wilderness Men skulking round the house.”

“And you cared to go in search?”

“I was a fool,” said Hardcastle again.

She glanced at him once, in the light of the young, keen moon—and laughed at him with quiet derision—and went indoors, to find Rebecca waiting.

“Back, are you? Well, it’s time. The Master’s been daft about you—and Jonah sits atop o’ your shoulder now, instead o’ mine—so I’m getting jealous all ways. What made you go?”

“The owls were hooting in Logie Wood. They seemed to call me,” said Causleen, aloof and cold.

“Pack o’ nonsense. Why couldn’t you let the hullets get on with their decent hunting? It was the dratted voles and rats they were crying for. And now you’ll want supper, on top of my hard day’s work.”

“I—I could not eat, Rebecca. So you’re spared that trouble.”

Rebecca, noting the girl’s sudden pallor, was grimmer than before.

“Spared more from your pack o’ nonsense, am I? I’ll see to that. It’s a good, square meal you need, my lass.”

Causleen faced her with a dignity so aloof that it daunted even tough Rebecca. “I eat as little as may be of your Master’s food.”

With that she was gone up the windy stairway, like a Highland storm across her own far moors; and presently Hardcastle came in, dour and stubborn.

“William brought you the hare?” he asked, finding Rebecca still in the hall, chewing the cud of her defeat at Causleen’s hands.

“Aye, and more. He prayed me draw you back from going to Broken Firs to-morrow.”

“What of that? William’s wits were never strong.”

“But his far-sight is. Suppose he’s right, Master—and suppose you knew he was right—would you still go up to Michael Draycott’s?”

“What else should I do?”

A lean, hard smile wrinkled the woman’s lips. “Aye,” she said. “Aye. That’s Logie, through and through.”