CHAPTER XVII

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*THE DOG-DREAD*

A soft wind was fluttering from the edge of dark. The moon lay like a silver sickle over Dead Lad's Rigg, watching the fading banners of the sunset go down beneath the dark red-purple of the heath. No bird piped, save the ever-moaning curlew; the reeds whispered one to another, nodding their sleepy heads together; the voice of waters distant and of waters near at hand sobbed drearily. Over all was the masterful silence of the sky, that dread and mighty stillness of the star-spaces where the hill-gods stretched tired limbs and slumbered. Full of infinite sweets was the breeze, and the scent of heather mingled with the damp, heart-saddening odour of marsh-weeds and of bog-mosses.

The Lean Man, prone in the heather with his eyes on the dying sunset, felt every subtle influence of the hour. His life's grand failure had been compassed, the first and last deep terror had laid its grip on him; the wide moor, which had spoken of freedom once, was narrowed now to a prison, whose walls of sky were creeping close and closer in upon him. Man-like, he clothed his own dead passions--his love of fight, his pitiless lust for vengeance--with all the majesty of larger nature; man-like, he thought the moor's face darkened for his own tragedy, that even the curlews thrilled with something of his own intimate and tearless sorrow. What was this ghoul that had come, naught out of nothingness, and chilled the life-blood in him? It was a phantom, yet a hard reality--a thing of unclean vapours, yet stronger than if it had plied a giant's sword with more than a giant's strength of arm.

Near must all men come, once in their lifetime, to that deep horror of brain and heart when they stand, less and greater than their manhood, at the gulf-edge which lies between them and the space that fathered them. The Lean Man was peering over the gulf to-night, and the soul of him was naked to the moor-wind. No groan, no little muttered protest escaped him; for throat and lips were powerless, and the body that they served stood far off from Nicholas Ratcliffe.

"The night wears late, grandfather. Will you not come home to Wildwater?" said a low voice at his side.

He did not hear till the words had been twice repeated; then, starting as if a rude hand had wakened him from sleep, he began to moisten dry lips with a tongue as dry.

"Janet, what brings thee here?" he said hoarsely.

"Care for you, sir. You have been out of health, and I feared to leave you so late on the moor lest sickness----"

He laughed brokenly. "Sickness--ay. I have been--not well. 'Twas rightly spoken, girl."

His mood changed presently. The nearness of this girl, who alone had touched his heart to deep and selfless love; the drear sympathy of the gloaming heath; the swift and over-powering need of fellowship; all made for the confession which he had kept close locked these many days.

"Sit thee down beside me, Janet. Thou'lt take no hurt from the warm night. There, lass. And let me put an arm about thee--so. God's life, how real thou art, after the boggart-company I've kept of late."

Her cheeks burned at thought of the poor requital she had given his love; but she would not remember Wayne of Marsh, and she waited, her grey eyes pitiful on his, until he should find words to ease his trouble.

"We'll start far back, Janet," he said, slowly, "in the old days before my father, or his father's father before him, had seen the light. Ratcliffes were at feud then with Waynes, and both were busy sowing the crop which generation after generation was to reap. The tale is old to thee, but thou'lt not grudge to hear it all again?"

"Not that tale to-night, grandfather--any tale save that," pleaded the girl.

But Nicholas did not hear her. "The tale," he went on, "is of how one Anthony Ratcliffe, dwelling at Wildwater, rode down to Marsh to slay Rupert Wayne. He found there only Wayne's young wife, and asked where her goodman was. She would not answer; so Anthony Ratcliffe bade his men heat a sword-blade in the fire till it was white, and had the lady of Marsh stripped mother-naked, and marked a broad red scar all down her body between each question and each refusal of an answer. But she would not tell where Wayne had gone--not till she heard the steel hiss for the fifth time on her tender flesh. And then she told that he was riding home over Ludworth Slack; and they left her dying of her wounds."

"Hush, grandfather! I cannot bear it. Hark to the rushes yonder--and the curlews--they've heard your tale, methinks."

"'Tis grim, lass, but what I have to tell thee is grimmer still, so bide in patience. They got to horse again, Anthony Ratcliffe and his men, and they met Wayne of Marsh on the road, riding home with his favourite hound for company. They made at him, and the hound sprang straight and true at Anthony's throat"--the Lean Man halted a moment and wiped the sweat-drops from his forehead--"and nipped the life out of him. One of his folk thrust a spear then through the dog's heart, and the rest fell upon Wayne of Marsh and slew him."

Janet thought of another Wayne of Marsh who had lately been met in just such a fashion up by Dead Lad's Rigg. "Go on, grandfather," she whispered, in an awe-stricken voice.

"Mark well the end of the old tale, girl. A company of Wayne's kinsfolk, riding near to Ludworth Slack soon after the Ratcliffes had set off again for home, heard a hound's baying from across the moor; they followed and the baying went on before them till they reached the spot where Wayne lay dead--and beside him Anthony Ratcliffe, with teeth-marks at his throat--and, a little way off, Wayne's hound, fast stiffening."

The girl had heard the tale not once nor twice before; but it came with a new force to-night, for every mention of the hound brought a spasm of mortal anguish to the Lean Man's face, and in a flash she guessed his secret.

"The hound was dead, mark ye," went on Nicholas, as if compelled to dwell on details that he loathed; "yet the baying never ceased. No round and honest bay it was, but ghostly, wild and long-drawn-out; and it would not let them stay there, but took them on and on until they saw the Ratcliffes far up ahead of them, climbing the hill toward Wildwater. They galloped with a will then, and overtook them at a score yards from the courtyard gate, and left but one alive, who won into safety after desperate hazard."

The moon was silver-gold now and her rays fell coldly on the Lean Man's head, on his twitching mouth and haunted eyes. The curlews never rested from complaint, and the note of many waters seemed, to the girl's strained fancy, the voice of the hound who had bayed, long centuries ago, on Ludworth Slack.

"The one left alive took on the Wildwater line," said Nicholas, after a long pause; "but he had the Dog-dread till he died, and his children had it after him, and his children's children. For he, too, had heard the dead hound baying up the moor, and its note was branded on his heart."

"And that is Barguest, grandfather," said Janet, creeping closer to him.

"That, lass, is Barguest. That is why the Marsh folk take _Wayne and the Dog_ for their cry. The hound that slew old Anthony has dwelt with the Waynes ever since; no peril comes nigh them, but he must warn them of it: and sometimes he--" The Lean Man stopped, and put a hand to his throat, and glanced at the fingers as if he looked for blood on them.

She gathered a little courage from his lack of it. "The tale is old as yonder hills, and Barguest walks in legends only. Is it not so?" she said, but with a tremour in her voice.

"I said as much, Janet, for nigh on three-score years. I cast out the old dead fears, and laughed at the Waynes and their guardian hound--and thou see'st to what I have come at last. It began when I nailed the hand above the Marsh doorway; when Nanny Witherlee--God curse her--told me I had crossed Barguest on the threshold. Still I laughed, though she has the second-sight, they say; but the fear even then ran chill through me. Thou know'st the rest, girl--how I have fought it, and cast it off, and been conquered in the end. But none knows--not even thou, dear lass--what sweat of terror has dripped from me by nights."

"I have guessed," she answered softly, "and have grieved for you more than ever I told you of."

He was quiet for a space; then rose and began to walk up and down the heather; and after that he dropped sullenly again to Janet's side. "Not long since I met Shameless Wayne on Dead Lad's Rigg, and fought with him," he went on. "I all but had him--my blade was lifted high to strike--and then--out of the empty moor a great brown hound leaped up at me. His jaws were running crimson froth, and his teeth shone white as sun on snow, and he bayed--once--and then he had me by the throat."

"Sir, 'twas your fancy! I tell you, it was fancy," cried Janet wildly. "Did Wayne see it, or Red Ratcliffe, or----"

"None saw it save I. Dost mind the tale of how my father died, Janet? For dread of the Dog. 'Tis the eldest-born that sees it always, and none beside.--Hark ye, he's baying across the marshland yonder! Fly, girl--fly, I tell thee, lest he set his seal on thee in passing."

She stifled her own dread and pleaded with him--quietly, sanely, with the tender forcefulness that only her kind can compass. He grew quieter by and by, and set himself with something of his old force of will to tell the tale to its end.

"I shall never shake it off again, Janet," he said. "Each day it has a new sort of dread in waiting for me. Sometimes I am athirst and dare not drink--the sound of water is frenzy to my wits----"

"Have any of the Wildwater dogs turned on you of late?" she asked, with a sudden glance at him.

"Nay, lass! There's no key to the trouble there."

"Are you sure, sir? You recall how one of the farm-dogs ran mad a year ago, and a farm-hand, trying to kill him, was bitten on the arm--and again on the hand as he tried to snatch a hair as a cure against the mad-sickness? He, too feared water----"

"Ay, and died of a sickness of the body, plain to be felt and known. But what of me, girl? 'Tis a mind-sickness, this--a dumb, soft-stepping, noiseless thing that flees if one stands up to it, only to come back, and snarl, and grin, the moment the heart fails for weariness. Come, we'll get us home, Janet. It has eased me a little to tell thee of it--haply thou'lt help me make a last big fight."

"God willing, sir," she murmured, as she turned to walk beside him.

Once only he broke silence on the way to Wildwater. Stopping, he bared his throat to the moonlight, and bade her look well at it, and watched with anxious eyes as she obeyed.

"Canst--canst see the teeth-marks there?" he whispered.

"'Tis smooth, sir, without a scratch on 't."

"Pass thy hand over--lightly. I can feel the deep wound burn and sting--surely thy fingers can feel the pit."

"There is no wound, grandfather--no wound at all."

He drew his breath again, and laughed, and, "Tell me again, dear lass," he said, "that it is fancy--naught but fancy."

"It is altogether fancy," she answered.

"Art tricking me?" he said with sudden suspicion. "Let me see thy fingers, lass--the fingers that touched my throat."

She held her hand out to him. "There's no stain on them, sir. Have I not told you?" she cried, striving to keep the terror from her voice as best she could.

"Why, no," he whispered; "no stain at all. And yet----"

And after that they spoke no word until Wildwater gates showed dark in front of them.

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