Storm

CAUSLEEN-1

CAUSLEENA red sun was going down behind the rim of the far-off hills as Pedlar Donald came to the road-top overlooking Logie Woods, and beyond them the leagues of moorland roving up into the quiet and misty dusk.

He shifted the heavy pack from his shoulders, and laid it down awhile.

“Tired, father?” asked the girl beside him.

Donald Cameron answered nothing for awhile. He came from Highland glens and moors; and all the way south his yearning for the homeland had dragged at his feet as if they were shod with stone. He had bartered and sold in “foreign” lands, right down through the Scottish lowlands, and over the border into Northumberland and Durham. Now he could not be done with looking out and over these blue-purple hills—fold on fold of them, glamoured like his misty Highlands.

The girl had fallen silent, too. This land was setting its spell on her, as on Donald—the first friendly face they had found in exile. She had ached and sorrowed for the land left behind. And now it was with her—strength of the striding hills—the sun going down in fire of hope for the next morrow’s rising—the wide, free liberty of this land of Logie.

“We’ve travelled the rough ways down from Inverness,” said Donald, putting his arm about the girl, “and it’s been hard for you.”

“Nay, but for you.” Her voice was soft and healing. “My feet are young to the roads.”

“Was it worth while to say no to the price they offered us in Inverness? We could have had ease for the asking.”

The soft voice grew full of quick and eager fire. “We could have bought ease—and we’re better as we are.”

Donald laughed quietly as he shouldered his pack and trudged down the hill. The lass was bone of his bone, and had no regrets. Sharing honest exile, they had learnt the strange alchemy of the Pedlar’s Road that turns much bitterness to gold. A laugh by the wayside here, a vigil there with stricken folk—no taxes asked of their poverty, and none to deny them wind and weather—it was a big life, after all, open to the sky.

Only when they came to Logie Brigg, and Donald felt his knees grow weak again, so that he had to rest awhile, he doubted the wisdom of their days together. He was old and tiring fast. What of his girl if he died by the way? There was honour of the Road, and she would not lack many friends among the pedlars and the cheery tinkers and the men who poached fat hares by night. True—but there were perils for a maid who went alone.

“Child,” he said, as they rested on the bridge and heard Wharfe River croon and swirl below them, “it’s a vagabond’s life, after all—and, Causleen, I’m weary.”

“Your mother seems very near to us,” said Donald, his head lifted as if he heard the pipes calling him up some far hill. “There was the night she was dying, and you a week-old baby in her arms—how clear it all returns—and she saw that I hated you.”

“Hated?”

“Because you robbed me of a wife.”

Storm the sheep-stealer had seen ghosts of armed men pass to and fro across the Brigg, no longer since than yesterday. These two were seeing the broken years behind them, the slow growing into a comradeship as strong as the hills that guarded Logie Brigg.

“She put you into my arms,” went on the pedlar by and by, “and bade me christen you Causleen. I fear I was rough with you, lass.” The old, whimsical humour showed in his tired eyes. “Your mother chided me gently—taught me how to hold you.”

“Yes?”

“Again she bade me name you Causleen, because you’d be the Evening Star to me. She was near to death, and knew—what I came to know—that you’d be the light of my westering years.”

A grief too deep for tears came to the girl. Some weakness in the pedlar’s brave old voice—his looking backward, though all his sturdy gospel was to front the hills of each day—as they came—his hard endeavour to get the pack jauntily over his shoulders once again—all pointed the one way.

They crossed the bridge in silence, each knowing that they journeyed to a new life. It might be worse or better than the old. They did not know; but, either way, it was a stage nearer to the end of this life’s climb.

As they went up the road, a light blinked out at them from Logie house across the last glow of twilight that lingered on the hills above.

“There’ll be a bed for the night up there,” said Donald,—“a bed for you with the maids.”

“And the hay-mow for you?”

“There’s worse lying. You needn’t fret, bairn. Smell of the hay is no bad company.”

“We were not born to it, father,” she said, her slim, young body shaken with passion—not for herself, but for him, fuller of courage than strength.

“Aye, but we were, for we’ve come to it, Causleen. Life’s made that way. The road we trudge, with its ups and downs—it’s the long, grey road we were meant to tread.”

Donald was himself again, and the girl’s mood yielded to this indomitable, half-laughing courage that would not be dismayed.

“Does the grey road end somewhere?” she asked, linking her arm in his to help him up the steep.

“I trust not. When my time comes to go, there’ll surely be other hills beyond the Brink—winding roads, and further rises, and gloaming skies. I’d be lonely without them, child.”

They came to the grey house on the hill, through a rain of beech-leaves slanting down the breeze. The pedlar’s glance, quick for big things and little, caught a glint of the after-light on a small, polished thing that lay on top of the gate.

“The Wilderness Folk told no lies as we passed through,” said Donald. “I had speech with two or three, and their talk was all of this.”

“What is it?” asked Causleen, peering down at the thing lying in the old man’s palm.

“Just a token—and I’m wondering what sort of man lives here at Logie. He’ll need to be dour and staunch, with no fear about him.”

“They were kind enough to us, those folk,” she said, shivering a little at the memory; “but they were evil. While we were selling from the pack, and till we got away into the hills, there was poison round us.”

“There was. It’s a pity, girl, we haven’t let life dull the Highland vision. We ought to be toughened by this time.”

Again she glanced at the little thing in his palm. “Does it go hard with the man they hate?”

“It goes so hard that I’d not change places with him for a wealth of money. Weather is weather; fight in the open is fight; but what they’re putting on the Master of Logie would chill me to the bone.”

A dog barked suddenly, then came at them with a low, running growl.

“Be quit of your nonsense, laddie,” said Donald. “I’ve been through worse fights than you can give.”

The dog smelt them round and about to learn more of these tattered strangers, then put his nose into the pedlar’s hand.

“His sort were always friendly to us,” laughed the girl—“but what of his master?”

“He’s here to answer for himself,” said Hardcastle of Logie, turning at his own door.

They saw a big, loose-built man, with a gun under his arm, and a brace of partridge in his left hand—a man, Donald judged, accustomed to live alone, resenting all intrusion.

“Come to heel, Roy,” snapped Hardcastle. “I’ve no use for a dog that makes easy love to strangers.”

Causleen’s pride took fire, and her glance met his with sharp hostility. “Dogs have clearer sight than their masters sometimes—and gentler breeding.”

“He’s getting old, and forgets that gentleness and breed are under the harrow these days. You’ve blundered into a hard country, and I tell you so.”

She turned from him with tired disdain. “Come away, father,” she said. “They are surly here in Yorkshire. He will not buy.”

“What have you to sell?” asked the Master of Logie, aloof and cold.

“Favours for the maids,” said the pedlar, his voice soft with persuasion. He was thinking of Causleen’s safe lodging for the night, as he opened his pack and praised its wares. She was too tired, poor wean, to journey further, though he was so used to weariness that a further tramp through the night was of small account. “Favours for the maids—a blue mob-cap that sits bonnie enough on a young girl’s hair, with her eyes bo-peeping under it.”

“No maids live at Logie. There’s a grey, old woman indoors—a good cook, and quiet about the house—but she’s past favours.”

“You’re wrong,” persisted Donald. “If a woman neared her end at ninety, she’d cry for the pedlar to dress her up for bridegroom death.”

“Not Rebecca,” said Hardcastle. “I chose her with great care—a nether-millstone of a woman, without a frill or a furbelow about her.”

“You know much of women?” asked Causleen.

“Enough to last me a lifetime.” Something cold and savage showed in his face for a moment, then was gone. “My housekeeper is like the walls of Logie—staunch and weathered.”

“She never loses temper?” The girl was measuring swords with this self-secure, blunt man who disdained all pedlars. “You never find her crying her heart out when you come home before she looks for you?”

“She loses temper,” said Hardcastle, with lazy unconcern. “Not every day, or every week, but when the time comes for outlet. I’m made that way myself. We treat it like the ding of storm about a house that’s outlived many such.”

“And she never weeps?”

“She forgot the way of it long since. Life’s salt enough for most of us as it is.”

“Let’s leave him with this wonder-woman, who never cries,” said the girl, with the same quiet mockery. “She wants nothing from us and the Master of Logie will not buy.”

Hardcastle stood watching them with grim humour. “He would, if you’d anything to sell he needed. Pedlars have to carry all things in their packs for the women. They seldom have the man of the house to reckon with.”

“Seldom,” Donald agreed; “but I’ve something to barter for a night’s lodging.”

“A wheedling tongue? That never carried far with me.”

“Something I found on your gate. Gossip blows down all winds to us tramping folk, and they say the Wilderness People grow busy.”

The Master was silent. For a moment Causleen, as she watched him, saw beyond the mask of his hard, impassive face—saw down into his heart, where fear was dwelling—grey, chilly fear, at war with his manhood and his lusty strength.

“They’ve left their token on me? Show it,” he said, with rough command.

“For the price of a night’s lodging.”

“Oh, you can have it, man.”

“Not so hasty. It must be good lodging for my girl, however it goes with me.”

The Master glowered down at them from under sullen brows. “I’ve power to take it without price of any sort.”

“You have—but not power to use your strength against an aged man. Your face tells me that.”

“Well, then, your price is granted—a good lodging for the night.”

“For both?” asked Causleen. “Father cares little what bed he finds—but I care for him.”

“Beggars seem to be choosers these days,” snapped Hardcastle, raw with trouble.

“It does seem so,” said Donald gently. “The beggars out there are riding on your gate already.”

He opened his palm, and the moonlight glinted on a flint arrow-head, smooth and polished.

Do as he would, something near panic took the Master. The men of Logie-side had paid tribute diligently—till yesterday, when at last it was asked of a Hardcastle and met with blunt refusal. The fight at the pinfold had marked him. He was lame and bruised, but that was the pleasant fruit of victory in single combat against three.

The thing he looked on now was a token hedged about with dread of the forefathers. Once, in the twilight days of the Logie country, a man of the caves had killed his enemy with it, or had slain a wild-fowl for daily food. Since then it had grown to be what it was to Hardcastle—a thing of stark terror, known to all since the Lost Folk first bit their way into an honest country. He would have been less than flesh-and-blood if he had not weakened to this harsh trial time.