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another who rode—in safety, so far—at the rear-guard of his army.
And he disdained the ill-favoured mob behind him.
They went up and down the bridle-track that threaded this white
land of hills and cold austerity. It was a track whose every turning
was a landmark to Sir Jasper, reminding him of other days. He had
ridden it when he went hunting—when he went south to the
wooing; when, afterwards, he needed respite from the lap-dog
follies of his wife, from the knowledge that his heir was never likely,
in this world, at least, to prove himself a man of action. This lane
was thick with memories for him; but never, until now, had he ridden
it a fugitive.
He thought of Derby and the sick retreat. He thought of many
might-have-beens, and because the pain of it was so sharp and
urgent he gathered up his courage. He held the Faith; he was strong
and stubborn; and out of this windy ride to his own home he
plucked new resolution.
They came—he and Goldstein’s men—to Lone Man’s Cross, a
wayside monument that marked the spot where a travelling pedlar
had been murdered long ago. And as he passed it Sir Jasper recalled
how, as a boy, he had been afraid to ride by the spot at dusk. They
came to the little kirk of St. Michael’s on the Hill, and passed it wide
on the left hand, and went down by way of Fairy-Kist Hollow, where
the leafless rowans were gowned in frosted sleet. From time to time
some ribald jest would come to him from one or other of the
troopers; but he did not heed. One half of him was thinking of the
memories this bridle-track held for him, of the hopes and fears and
gallant dreams that had kept him company along it in the years
gone by; the other half—the shrewd-witted, practical half—was
content to know that each mile they traversed was leading danger
farther from the Prince, that each step of the rough, up-and-down
track was telling on horses that were too southern in the build for
this cross-country work. His own mare was lithe and easy under him,
for she was hill-bred.
They rode forward slowly through a land that turned constantly a
cold and sleety shoulder to them at every bend of the way. And they
came to the Brig o’ Tryst—a small and graceful bridge—to which, so
country superstition said, the souls truly mated came at last.
“You live in a cursed climate, Sir Jasper,” said Goldstein gruffly; “and
gad! Your roads match it.”
Sir Jasper was alert again. Some quality in Goldstein’s voice roused
in him a loathing healthy and inspiriting. Dreams went by him. He
took hold of this day’s realities, saw the strip of level going ahead,
remembered that he was a short five miles now from Windyhough,
with a game mare under him. There would be time to get into his
own house, to barricade the doors; and afterwards there would be
the swift, hard battle he had hungered for at Derby.
He put spurs to his mare, and she answered blithely. And Goldstein
understood on the sudden what this gentleman of Lancashire had
meant when he passed his word to lead them, at his own pace, to
Windyhough.
“Halt! Fire!” he roared. “Are you daft, you fools?”
His men recovered from a surprise equal to his own. The light was
wan and sleety, with mist coming down from the hills; but the
fugitive was well in sight still as they brought their muskets to the
shoulders. A sharp volley rang out between the silent hills, as if
every trooper had pulled his trigger in instant answer to command.
It seemed that one here and there of the shots would tell; but Sir
Jasper went galloping over the level, and dipped down the further
rise, and their horses would not answer when they tried to gallop in
pursuit.
“So that is all the wars in Flanders taught you?” said Goldstein
savagely. “You should have brought your wives to shoot for you.”
A low growl went up. These men were tired of Goldstein’s
leadership, tired of the hardship and bad weather. And their leader
knew the meaning of that growl.
“Keep your cursed tempers,” he said, with what to him was suavity.
“There’s the Pretender at the end of this day’s journey—and a price
on his head.”
At Windyhough, Rupert and his mother sat in the parlour, with its
faded scents and tapestries. They waited for great happenings that
did not come their way; and they were sick at heart. Rupert was
hungry for news of the father who was braver and stronger than he
—the father whom he missed at every turn of the day’s road. He had
done his round of the house with Simon Foster; and Nance, who
cheered his outlook for him whenever she came in sight, was absent
on some wild hill-scamper, shared by the broken-winded horse who
had grown close comrade to her.
Lady Royd, with the new-found motherhood that made her comelier,
guessed what was passing in the boy’s mind; and she fussed about
him, when he was asking only for free air and the chance to fight
like other men. And Rupert thought, with a shame that deadened all
his outlook, of the years when he had stood, scholarly, ironical, apart
from the blood and tears that meet wayfarers who take the open
road. He saw it all, to-night when the peevish wind was beating
through the draughty house—saw the weakness that had divided
him from the open-air, good fellows who liked and pitied him.
“There’s powder and shot stored here, and I know how to use
them,” he said, with light contempt of himself. “And yet nothing
happens, mother. It is as Simon Foster says—‘we’re needing storms
and earthquakes, just to make to-day a little different, like, fro’
yesterday.’”
“Oh, your chance will come,” said Lady Royd, with the pitiful feigning
of belief that she thought was faith. “Your father taught you, just
before he went, how to direct a siege. You remember that he taught
you?” she insisted. “He trusted you to hold Windyhough for the
Prince.”
Rupert laughed—a sudden, dreary laugh that startled her. “He
taught me well. I’ve not forgotten the lesson, mother. But he knew
there would be no siege. I heard him tell you so.”
There was no sharp riding-in of enemies. The night was still, and
empty, and at peace. Yet Lady Royd was plunged deep, by her own
son, into tragedy and battle. She remembered the night of Sir
Jasper’s departure—the talk they had had in hall—her husband’s
weary confession that he had lied to Rupert, telling him a fairy-tale
of the coming attack on Windyhough.
Rupert had overheard them, it seemed; and through all these days
of strain and waiting he had not spoken of his trouble, had let it eat
inward like a fire. As if in punishment for the indifference of earlier
years, Lady Royd’s perception of all that touched her son was clear
to the least detail now. With her new gift of motherhood, of courting
pain for its own sake, she retraced, step by step, the meaning of
these last few days to Rupert. He had grown used to the sense that
he stood apart from stronger men, unable to share full life with
them; but always, behind it all, he had been sure, until a little while
ago, that his father trusted him to prove his manhood one day.
She went to him, and put her arms about him, as any cottage
mother might have done. “Oh, my boy—my boy!” she cried,
understanding the fierceness, the loneliness, of this last trouble.
In this mood of his, with his back to the wall which no man asked
him to defend, Rupert could have withstood many dangers; but
sympathy exasperated him.
“It is hard for my father,” he said, with desperate simplicity. “There
was never a weak link in the Royd chain till I was born the heir. Why
did I come to—to bring him shame?”
Some ruggedness, borrowed from the land that was hers by
marriage, bade Lady Royd stand straight and take her punishment.
“I will tell you why,” she said, her voice passionate and low; “I
hindered you before your birth. I went riding when your father bade
me rest at home—and my horse fell——”
“Just as mine did when I went to join the Rising,” said Rupert,
following his own train of thought. “Mother, I should have been with
the Prince’s army now if—if my horse had not stumbled.”
Lady Royd crossed to the mantel, leaned her head awhile on the
cool oak of it. “Yes,” she said, turning sharply. “Yes, Rupert. It has
taken five-and-twenty years—but I’m answering for that ride of
mine.”
He looked at her in wonder. And suddenly he realised that this
beautiful, tired mother of his was needing help. She had not guessed
what strength there was in her son’s arms until he drew her close to
him.
“What ails us, mother?” he asked, with surprising tenderness.
“We’ve Windyhough, and powder and ball, and Lancashire may need
us yet.”
Hope took her unawares. This boy was transformed into a man of
action; for only active men can glance from their own troubles to
understand the weakness that is planted, like lavender, in the heart
of every woman.
“I would God it needed us,” she said, with a touch of her old
petulance. “Lancashire men can sing leal songs enough——”
“Can live them, too. The hills have cradled us.”
Lady Royd smiled, as if her heart were playing round her lips.
“You’re no fool, son of mine,” she said. “I wish the Retreat were
sweeping straight to Windyhough, instead of leaving us in peace. I
wish you could be proved.”
Rupert glanced shyly at her. He was son and lover both, diffident,
eager, chivalrous. “Suppose there’s no attack on the house, mother—
suppose I were never proved? I have learned so much to-night—so
much. Surely there’s something gained.”
It was a moment of simple, intimate knowledge, each of the other.
And the mother’s face was flower-like, dainty; the spoilt wife’s
wrinkles were altogether gone.
“It is my turn to ask why,” she said, with a coquetry that was rainy
as an April breeze. “I’ve not deserved well of you, my dear—not
deserved well at all, and have told you so; and you choose just this
time—to honour me. Men are perplexing, Rupert. One never knows
their moods.”
Her toy spaniel began barking from somewhere at the far end of the
house; and the old inconsequence returned from habit.
“Oh, there’s poor Fido crying!” she said eagerly. “Go find him,
Rupert. The poor little man is so sensitive—you know he’s almost
human, and he is crying for me.”
And Rupert went out on the old, foolish quest—willingly enough this
time. He had seen beneath the foolish, pampered surface of his
mother’s character, and was content to hold secure this newborn
love for her, this knowledge that she needed him. He was needed—
at long last.
“You look gay, master,” said Simon Foster, meeting him down the
corridor. “Well, it’s each man to his taste; but I shouldn’t have said,
like, there was much to hearten a man these days.”
“You’ve not sought in the right place,” laughed the master.
And then Simon grinned, foolishly and pleasantly. For he
remembered how he had helped Martha the dairymaid to milk the
cows not long ago. “I’m not complaining,” he said, guardedly.
 CHAPTER XIII
THE RIDING IN

Sir Jasper, sure of his mare, had ridden hard toward Windyhough. He
had promised, in good faith, that he would lead Captain Goldstein on
the road, but he had not passed his word that he would ride at the
pace of heavy cavalry. He heard the bullets singing, right and left
and overhead, after Goldstein’s call to fire; but the lean, hill-bred
mare was going swiftly under him, and it was only five miles home
to Windyhough. There had been a sharp pain in his left shoulder, a
stab as if a red-hot rapier had pierced him, in the midst of the
crackling musket-din behind him; but that was forgotten.
The mare galloped forward gamely. She was untouched, save for a
bullet that had grazed her flank and quickened her temper to good
purpose. Sir Jasper’s spirits rose, as the remembered landmarks
swept past him on the wind. His mind, his vision, his grip on forward
hope, were singularly clear and strong. This was his holiday, after
the sickness of retreat.
He had gained a mile by now. His pursuers, riding jaded horses,
were out of sight and hearing behind the hump of Haggart Rise. He
remembered, once again, the Prince’s figure, riding solitary on the
Langton road; and he was glad that these one-and-twenty louts
were being led wide of their real quarry. And then he forgot the
Stuarts, and recalled his wife’s face, the tenderness he had for her,
the peril he was bringing north to Windyhough. Behind him was
Captain Goldstein, of unknown ancestry and doubtful morals, and
with him a crowd of raffish foreigners, who would follow any cause
that promised licence and good pay.
Sir Jasper saw the danger plainly. He was thinking, not of the
Prince’s honour now, but of his wife’s. He knew that he must win to
Windyhough. And still his spirits rose; for this was danger,
undisguised and facing him across the sleety, rugged hills he loved.
Windyhough had stout walls, and powder and ball, and loopholes
facing to the four points of the compass; Simon Foster would be
there, and Rupert could pull a trigger; it would be in the power of
this little garrison to hold the house, to pick off, one by one, this
company of Goldstein’s until the rest took panic and left it to its
loneliness.
It was a hazard to his liking, and Sir Jasper’s face was keen and
ruddy as he clattered down and up the winding track. He was a
short mile now from Windyhough, and he eased his mare because
she showed signs of trouble.
“We’ve time and to spare, lass,” he muttered, patting her neck. “No
need to kill you for the Cause.”
And then—from the midst of his eagerness and hope—a sickness
crept over the horseman’s eyes. His left shoulder was on fire, it
seemed; and, glancing down, he saw dimly that his riding-coat was
splashed with crimson. The mare, feeling no command go out across
the reins, yielded to her own weariness, and halted suddenly. Sir
Jasper tried to urge her forward; but his hand was weak on the
bridle, and the grassy track, the hills, the flakes of sleet, were
phantoms moving through a nightmare prison.
He had come to the gate of Intake Farm, and the farmer—Ben
Shackleton by name—was striding up the road to gather in some
ewes from the higher lands before the snow began to drift in
earnest.
“Lord love you, sir!” he said nonchalantly, catching Sir Jasper as he
slid helplessly from saddle. “Lord love you, sir, you’re bleeding like a
pig!”
“It’s nothing, Ben.” Even now Sir Jasper kept his spacious contempt
of pain, his instinct to hide a wound as if it were a crime. “Help me
to horse again. My wife needs me—needs me, Ben.”
Then he yielded to sheer sickness for a moment; and Ben
Shackleton, who was used to helping lame cattle, grew brisk and
business-like. “Here, William!” he called to a shepherd who was
slouching in the mistal-yard. “Come lend a hand, thou idle-bones!
Here’s master ta’en a hurt, and he’s a bulkier man than me. We’ve
got to help him indoors to the lang-settle.”
Sir Jasper, by grace of long training, was able to keep his weakness
off for a space of time that seemed to him interminable. He saw
Windyhough at the mercy of these ragabouts of Goldstein’s—saw his
wife standing, proud, disdainful, pitiful, while they bandied jests
from mouth to mouth.
“It’s nothing, Ben, I tell you!” he muttered testily. “Help me to
saddle.”
He staggered forward, tried to mount, fell back again into Ben’s
arms. And still he would not yield. And then at last he knew that
Windyhough would not see him to-day, if ever again; and the pity he
had for his wife, left defenceless there by his own doing, was like a
knife cutting deep and ceaselessly into his living flesh.
He was in torment, so that his wound, save that it hampered him,
seemed a trivial matter. To Ben Shackleton and the shepherd all
passed in a few minutes; they did not guess how long the interval
was to Sir Jasper between this going down to hell and the first ray of
hope that crossed the blackness.
Sir Jasper passed a hand across his eyes. If only he could
understand this sudden hope, the meaning of it—if his wits were less
muddled—there was a chance yet for Windyhough. Then he
remembered Rupert—his son, to whom he had told a fairy-tale of
gunpowder and ball, and the defence of the old house—and a
weight seemed lifted from him. He recalled how he had said to the
boy’s mother that Rupert was leal and stubborn at the soul of him,
however it might be with his capacity for every-day affairs. He
smiled, so that Ben and the shepherd, looking on, thought that he
was fey; for he was thinking how weak in body he himself was, how,
like Rupert, he had only his leal soul to depend upon.
Then, for the last time before he surrendered to the weakness that
was gripping him in earnest, he had a moment of borrowed vigour.
“Ben,” he said, in the old tone of command, “you’ve your horse
ready saddled?”
“Aye, sir!” answered the other, bewildered but obedient.
“Ride hard for Windyhough. There’s a troop of the enemy close
behind. Gallop, Ben, and tell my son”—he steadied himself, with a
hand on the shepherd’s shoulder—“tell him that he must hold the
house until I come, that I trust him, that he knows where the
powder is stored. Oh, you fool, you stand gaping! And there is
urgency.”
“I’m loath to leave you, Sir Jasper——”
“You’ll be less loath, Ben,” broke in the other, with a fine rallying to
his shattered strength, “if I bring the blunt side of my sword about
your ears.”
So Ben Shackleton, troubled and full of doubt, got to horse,
following that instinct of obedience which the master had learned
before he taught it to his men, and rode up the windy track. Sir
Jasper, when he had seen him top the rise and disappear in the
yellow, dreary haze, leaned heavily against the shepherd.
“Now for the lang-settle, since needs must,” he said, with a last bid
for gaiety. “I can cross the mistal-yard, I think, with a little help. So,
shepherd! It heaves like a ship in storm; it heaves, I tell you; but my
son out yonder—my son at Windyhough—oh, the dear God knows,
shepherd, that I taught him—taught him how to die, I hope!”
They crossed the mistal-yard, blundering as they went; and
somehow the shepherd got Sir Jasper into the cheery, firelit house-
place, and on to the lang-settle. Ben Shackleton’s wife was baking
an apple-pasty when they came in, and glanced up. If she felt
surprise, she showed none, but wiped the flour from her arms with
her apron, and crossed to the settle. She looked at Sir Jasper as he
lay in a white and deathlike swoon, and saw the blood oozing from
his wounded shoulder.
Shackleton’s wife was quick of tongue and quick of her hands. “Take
thy girt lad’s foolishness out o’ doors, William!” she snapped. “I know
how to dress a wound by this time, or should do, seeing how oft
Shackleton lames himself by using farm-tools carelessly. Shackleton
has a gift that way.”
The shepherd passed out into the windy, cheerless out-o’-doors. He
knew the mistress in this humour, and preferred a chill breeze from
the east. As he crossed the mistal-yard he saw a company of
horsemen, riding jaded nags; and they were grouped about Sir
Jasper’s mare, that, too tired to move, was whinnying for her absent
master.
“Hi, my man!” said Goldstein. “Whose mare is this?”
“Sir Jasper Royd’s,” the shepherd answered. His voice was low and
pleasant, as the way of Lancashire folk is when they prepare to meet
a bullying intrusion.
“Then he’s here?”
“No,” said the shepherd, after picking a straw from the yard and
chewing it with bucolic, grave simplicity. “No. Sir Jasper changed
horses here, and rode for Windyhough.”
“How far away?”
The shepherd thought of Sir Jasper, lying yonder on the lang-settle.
He was touched, in some queer way, by the master’s gallantry in the
dark hour of retreat. He was so moved that he was brought, against
his will, to tell a lie and stick to it.
“Oh, six mile or so, as the crow flies—more by road,” he said
nonchalantly. “Ye’d best be getting forrard, if ye want to win there by
nightfall.”
Goldstein mistook this country yokel’s simplicity for honest dullness.
Men more in touch with the Lancashire character had done as much
before his time, especially when horse-dealing was in progress on
market days. “You look honest, my man,” he said, stooping to slip a
coin into William’s hand. “Tell me what sort of road it is from here to
Windyhough.”
“Well, as for honest,” said the other, with the vacant grin that was
expected of him, “I may be honest as my neighbours, if that be
much to boast of; and it’s a terrible ill-found road, for sure. Best be
jogging forrard, I tell ye.”
“It’s cursed luck, men,” said Goldstein, spurring his horse into the
semblance of a trot; “but we’re hunting big game this time. A mile or
two needn’t matter. There’s the Pretender at Windyhough,
remember, and a nice bit of money to be earned.”
The shepherd watched them over the hilltop, then glanced at the
piece of silver lying in his palm. There was so much he might do
with this money—might buy himself a mug or two of ale at the
tavern in the hollow, just by way of changing the crown-piece into
smaller coin—and he was “feeling as if he needed warming up, like,
after all this plaguy wind.”
He glanced at the coin again, with a wistfulness that was almost
passionate. Then he spat on it, and threw it into the refuse from the
mistal lying close behind.
“Nay, I’ll have honest ale, or none,” he growled, and crossed quietly
to the house, and stood on the threshold, looking in.
He saw Shackleton’s wife bending over Sir Jasper, who lay in a
swoon so helpless and complete that it was like a child’s sleep—a
sleep tired with the day’s endeavours, yet tranquil and unfearful for
the morrow’s safety.
“Oh, it is thee, is’t?” said Shackleton’s wife, facing round. “Well, he’s
doing nicely—or was, till ye let in all this wind that’s fit to rouse a
body from his grave.”
“Well-a-day, mistress,” said the shepherd, with a pleasant grin, “if
that’s your humour, I’m for the mistal-yard again. It’s rare and quiet
out there.”
“Nay, now,” she said, glancing up with sharp, imperious kindliness.
“Shut t’ door, lad, and sit thee down by th’ peats, and keep a still
tongue i’ thy head. I wouldn’t turn a dog out into all this storm that’s
brewing up. And, besides, Sir Jasper’s mending. I’d doubts of him at
first; but he’s sleeping like a babby now. We’ll keep watch together,
till Shackleton comes home fro’ his ride to Windyhough. He’ll not be
long, unless the maids there ’tice him to gossip and strong ale.”
“I might smoke, mistress—just, like, to pass the time?”
“Aye, smoke,” snapped Shackleton’s wife. “Men were always like
bairns, needing their teething-rings, in one shape or another.”
“Better than spoiling their tempers,” said the shepherd. And he lit his
pipe from a live peat, and said no more; for he was wise, as men go.
 CHAPTER XIV
THE GLAD DEFENCE

At Windyhough the gale sobbed and moaned about the leafless

trees that sheltered it from the high moors. Sleet was driving against
the window-panes, and there was promise, if the wind did not
change, of heavy snow to follow. And indoors were Lady Royd and
Nance, the women-servants, and the men too old to carry arms
behind Sir Jasper—these, and the lean scholar who was heir to
Windyhough.
Simon Foster—he who had carried a pike in the ’15 Rising, and felt
himself the watch-dog here—had been moving restlessly up and
down all day, like a faithful hound whose scent is quick for trouble.
And now, near three of the afternoon, he was going the round of the
defences once again with the young master.
“You’re not looking just as gay as you were yesternight,” he growled,
snatching a glance at Rupert’s face. “Summat amiss wi’ the Faith ye
hold by, master?”
Rupert was sick with bitter trouble, sick with inaction and the
frustration of long hopes; yet he held his head up suddenly and
smiled. “Nothing amiss with that,” he answered cheerily. “I’m too
weak to carry it at times, that is all, Simon.”
Simon stroked his cheek thoughtfully. “Well, it’s all moonshine to me
—speaking as a plain man; but I’ve noticed it has a way o’ carrying
folk over five-barred gates and walls too high to clamber. For my
part, I’m weary, dead weary; and I see naught before us, master,
save a heavy snow-storm coming, and women blanketing us wi’
whimsies, and a sort o’ silent, nothing-doing time that maddens a
body. You’ve the gift o’ faith—just tell me what it shows you, Maister
Rupert.”
The master laughed. It tickled his humour that he, who was wading
deep in sickness and disillusion, should be asked for help in need by
this grizzled elder, who had loved and pitied him, who had tried,
these last days, to teach him the right handling of a musket. “Just
this, Simon—square shoulders, and a quick eye, and the day’s
routine ahead. What else?”
“Then faith is a soldier’s game, after all.”
“Yes, a soldier’s game,” Rupert answered dryly.
And so they went forward from room to room, from loophole to
loophole, that cast slant, grey eyes on the sleet that was blowing
across the troubled moonlight out of doors. And, at the end of the
round, after Simon had gone down to see if he could catch a glimpse
of Martha in the kitchen, Rupert heard the sound of spinet keys,
touched lightly from below. And then he heard Nance Demaine
singing the ballads that were dear to him, and a sudden hunger
came upon him.
He went down to the parlour, stood silent in the doorway. Lady Royd
was upstairs, putting her toy spaniel to bed with much ceremony;
and Nance was alone with the candlelight and the faded rose-leaf
scents. With ache of heart, with a longing strong and troublesome,
he saw the trim figure, the orderly brown hair, the whole fragrant
person of this girl who was singing loyal ballads—this girl who kept
his feet steady up the hills of endeavour, and of longing for the
battle that did not come his way.
And the mood took Nance to sing a ballad of the last Stuart Rising,
thirty years ago, when all was lost because the leaders of the
enterprise were weaker than the men who rode behind them.
“There’s a lonely tryst to keep, wife,
All for the King’s good health.
God knows, when we two bid farewell
I give him all my wealth.”
It was the song of a cavalier, written to his wife the night before he
went to execution for the Stuart’s sake. And it had lived, this ballad,
because to its core it rang true to the heart’s love of a man. And
Nance was singing it as if she understood its depth and meaning.
This was the man’s love, royal, simple, courageous, of which she had
talked to Lady Royd not long ago, for which she had been laughed at
by the older woman. Yet one man at least had found grace to carry
such love with him unblemished to the scaffold. The resignation, the
willing sacrifice for kingship’s sake summed up by “the lonely tryst to
keep,” as if this were a little matter—the human note of loss and
heartbreak when she reached the last love confession, strong,
tender, final in its simplicity—Nance’s voice found breadth and
compass for them all, as if she had stood by this cavalier long dead,
feeling pulse by pulse with him. And so, in a sense, she had; for
these royalists of Lancashire had faults and weaknesses in plenty,
but they had been strong in this—from generation to generation
they had reared their children to a gospel resolute and thorough as
the words of this old ballad.
Nance lingered on those last words as if they haunted her—“I give
him all my wealth.” And Rupert, standing in the doorway, was aware
that, even to his eyes, Nance had never shown herself so tender and
complete. She leaned over the spinet, touching a key idly now and
then; and her thoughts were of Will Underwood, who had courage of
a sort, a fine, reckless horsemanship that was needed by the Rising;
of Wild Will, whose whole, big, dashing make-believe of character
was ruined by a mean calculation, a need to keep houseroom and
good cheer safe about him. She remembered her trust in him, their
meeting on the moor, the sick, helpless misery that followed. And
then she thought of Rupert, standing scholarly and apart from life—
no figure of a hero, but one whom she trusted, in some queer way,
to die for the faith that was in him, if need asked. And then again
she laughed, a little, mournful laugh of trouble and bewilderment.
Life seemed so wayward and haphazard, such a waste of qualities
that were hindered by weaknesses tragic in their littleness. If
Rupert’s steady soul could be housed in Will Underwood’s fine,
dominant body, the world would see a man after its own heart.
And Rupert had his own thoughts, too, in this silence they were
sharing. He knew to a heart-beat the way of his love for Nance, the
gladness and the torture of it; and again he wondered, with
passionate dismay, that he had done so little to make himself a man
of both worlds, ready to fight through the open roads for her. He
had given her a regard that, by its very strength and quality, was an
honour in the giving and the receiving; he had built high dreams
about her, feeling her remote and unattainable; but he had failed in
common sense, in grasp of the truth that a man, before he reaches
the hilltops where high dreams find reality, must climb the workaday,
rough fields. He understood all this, knew for the first time that his
father had been just in leaving him behind, because the fighting-line
needs men who can use their two hands, can sit a horse, can face,
not death only but all the harsh, unlovely details that war asks of
men. His humiliation was bitter and complete. There was Nance,
sitting at the spinet, the gusty candlelight playing about her trim,
royal little figure, and she was desirable beyond belief; and yet he
knew that she stood, not for faith only but for deeds, that he had
only gone a few paces on the road that led to the fulfilment of his
dreams.
The silence was so intimate, so full of the strife that hinders
comrade souls at times, that Nance knew she was not alone. She
glanced up, saw Rupert standing in the doorway, read the misery
and longing in his face. For women have a gift denied to men—they
see us as an open book, clear for them to read, while we can only
sight them at odd moments, like startled deer that cross the
mountain mists.
“You’re sad, my dear,” she said, with pleasant handling of the
intimacy that had held between them since they were boy and girl
together.
“No,” he answered, hard pressed and dour. “I am—your fool, Nance,
as I always was.”
“Come sit beside me,” she commanded. “I shall sing Stuart songs to
you—sing them till you hear the pipes go screeling up Ben Ore, till I
see the good light in your face again.”
Her tenderness was hard to combat. “I need no Stuart songs,” he
said, with savage bluntness.
“Why, then, you’re changeable. You liked them once.”
“I’ll like them again, Nance—but not to-night. It is Stuart deeds I
ask, and they do not come my way.”
Rupert had crossed to the spinet, and, as he stood looking down at
her with grave eyes, Nance was aware of some new mastery about
him, some rugged strength that would have nothing of this indoor,
parlour warmth.
“Rupert, what is amiss with you?” she asked gravely.
He was himself again—scholarly, ironic. “What is amiss? You, and
the house where I’m left among the women, because I have learned
no discipline—it is a pleasant end, Nance, to my dreams of the riding
out. Your fool, listening to his mother’s spaniel whining as she puts
him to bed, and the empty house, and the wind that calls men out
to the open—just that.”
She came near to understanding of him now. While there was peace,
and no likelihood at all of war, he had been content, in his odd,
indifferent way, to stand apart from action. But now that war had
come he reached back along the years ashamed and impotent, for
the training other men had undergone—the training that made his
fellows ready to follow the unexpected call, the sudden hazard.
“It is cruel!” said Nance, with a quick, peremptory lifting of the head.
“You could fight, if only they would let you——”
“Just so. The bird could fly, if its wings had not been broken in the
nest.”
She knew this dangerous, still mood of his. He was a civilian,
untrained, unready, left at home while stronger men were taking the
hardships. In every line of his face, in the resolute, dark eyes, there
was desperate shame and self-contempt; and yet he fancied he was
hiding all show of feeling from her. Nance felt the pity of it—felt
more than pity—found the tears so ready that she turned again to
the spinet and began playing random odds and ends of ballads. And
through all the stress she took a grip of some purpose that had been
with her constantly these last days. Will Underwood—his dominant,
big person, his gift of wooing—had gone from her life. She was
lonely and afraid, and found no help except along the road of
sacrifice—the road trodden hard and firm by generations of women
seeking help in need.
“Let me mend your life for you,” she said, glancing up with
bewildering appeal and tenderness.
Rupert was young to beguilement of this sort. Her eyes were kindly
with him. There was a warmth and fragrance round about the
parlour that hindered perception of the finer issues. And he knew in
this moment that even a good love and steady can tempt a man
unworthily.
From the moors that guarded Windyhough there came a sudden fury
of the wind, a rattle of frozen sleet against the windows. And Rupert
lifted his head, answering the bidding of the open heath. “You
cannot mend my life,” he said sharply. “How could you, Nance?”
“You thought so once.” Her glance was friendly, full of affection and
great liking; and so well had she been schooling herself to the new,
passionate desire for sacrifice that Rupert read more in it than the
old comradeship. “What have I done, that I cannot help you now?”
He was dizzied by the unexpectedness, the swiftness of this night
surprise. Here was Nance, her face turned eagerly toward him, and
she was reminding him of the devotion he had shown her in years
past. He had no key to the riddle, could not guess how desperate
she was in her wish to hide Will Underwood’s indignities under cover
of this sacrifice for Rupert’s sake—Rupert, whom she liked so well
and pitied.
“Shall I not sing to you now?” she repeated, with pleasant coquetry.
“If you have no Stuart songs—why, let me sing you Martha’s doleful
ballad of Sir Robert who rode over Devilsbridge, and came riding
back again without his head. It was a foolish thing to do, but it
makes a moving ballad, Rupert.”
Her mood would not be denied. Tender, gay, elusive, she tempted
him to ask what she was ready—for sake of sacrifice—to give. There
was reward here for the empty boyhood, the empty days of shame
since the men of the house rode out. It was all unbelievable,
unsteadying. He had only to cross to Nance’s side, it seemed, had
only to plead, as he had done more than once in days past, for the
betrothal kiss. He recalled how she had met these wild love-makings
of his—with pity and a little laughter, and a heart untouched by any
sort of love for him. And now—all that was changed.
The moment seemed long in passing. Within reach there was Nance,
desirable beyond any speech of his to tell; and yet he could not
cross to her. It was as if a sword divided them, with its keen edge
set toward him. He did not know himself, could not understand the
grip that held him back from her, though feet and heart were willing.
Then it grew clear to him.
“Nance,” he said sharply, “do you remember the Brig o’ Tryst?”
“Why, yes,” she answered, with simple tenderness. “I remember that
I hurt you there. You pleaded so well that day, Rupert—and now
you’re dumb, somehow.”
“Because—Nance, there has war come since then, and it has proved
us all.” He laughed, the old, unhappy laugh of irony and self-
contempt. “There’s Simon Foster, bent with rheumatism, and Nat the
Shepherd, too infirm to do anything but smoke his pipe and babble
of the ’15 Rising, and—your fool, Nance. You’ve a gallant house of
men about you.”
And Nance was silent. Some deeper feeling than pity or haphazard
sacrifice was stirring her, for she saw Rupert as he was, saw him
with a clearness, a knowledge of him, that would never leave her. In
retreat, against his will, in utter darkness of hope and forward
purpose, he had found the right way and the ready to Nance’s heart.