THE NIGHT-RIDER
DOWN at Windyhough, where the old house thrust its gables up
into the shelter of its firs and leafless sycamores, Sir Jasper Royd
sat listening to the messenger who had ridden from Squire Roger’s.
Lady Royd, who kept her beauty still at five-and-forty, and with it
some air of girlish petulance and wilfulness, sat on the other side of
the hearth. Oliphant of Muirhouse stood between them, after supping
hastily, with the air of a man who cannot sit unless the saddle carries
him.
“We owe you a great debt for bringing in the news,” Sir Jasper was
saying.
“I am not so sure of that, sir,” put in Lady Royd, with sharpness and a
hint of coquetry. “You are robbing me of a husband.”
“Nay, surely,” said Oliphant, with a touch of his quick humour. “The
Prince will restore him to you by and by. We’re all for Restoration
these days, Lady Royd.”
“Oh, I know! And you’ve passed your wine over the water before you set
lips to it. I know your jargon, Mr. Oliphant--but it is lives of men
you are playing with.” A stronger note sounded in her spoiled, lazy
voice; she glanced at her husband, asking him to understand her passion.
“Not playing with,” said the messenger, breaking an uneasy pause.
“Lives of men were given them to use.”
“Yes, by gad!” broke in Sir Jasper unexpectedly. “I’m sixty, Mr.
Oliphant, and the Prince needs me, and I feel a lad again. I’ve been
fox-hunting here, and shooting, and what not, just to keep the rust out
of my old bones in case I was needed by and by--but I was spoiling all
the while for this news you bring.”
“What are the chances, Mr. Oliphant?” asked Lady Royd, with odd,
impulsive eagerness. “For my part, I see a county of easy-going
gentlemen and bacon-eating clowns, who wouldn’t miss one dinner for the
Cause. The Cause? A few lean Highlanders; a lad who happens to carry
the name of Stuart; the bagpipes waking our hills in protest with their
screeching--righteous protest, surely--I see no hope in this affair.”
Oliphant was striding up and down the room. He halted, faced this
petted woman of the world; and she wondered how it came that a man so
muddied and so lined with weariness could smile as if he came down to
breakfast after a night of pleasant sleep.
“The chances? All in our favour, Lady Royd. We’re few, and hold the
Faith. We never count the chances; we just march on from day to day.”
His smile grew broader. “And, by your leave, you’ll not speak ill of
the pipes. They’re food and drink to us, when other rations fall a
little short. The pipes? You’ve never heard them, surely.”
“Yes, to my cost,” put in the other shrewishly. “They’re like--like an
east wind singing out of tune, I think.”
So then Oliphant grew hot on the sudden, as Highlanders will when they
defend a thing that is marrow of their bones. “The pipes? You’ll hear
them rightly, I hope, before you die. The soft, clear tongue of them!
They’ll drone to ye, soft as summer, Lady Royd, and bring the slopes
o’ Lomond to your sight--and you’ll hear the bees all busy in the
thyme; and then they’ll snarl at you, and stretch your body tight as
whipcord--and then you taste the fight that’s brewing up----”
“True,” said Lady Royd; “but you ask me for my husband, and I’m
loth to part with him. Not all the pipes in Scotland may comfort me
after--after this fight that you say is brewing up.”
Sir Jasper glanced at her. He had followed her whimsies with great
chivalry and patience for six-and-twenty years, because it happened
that he loved her, once for all; but he had not heard, till now, this
answering care for his safety, this foolish and tempestuous wish to
keep him by her side.
Oliphant of Muirhouse understood their mood. He had ridden through
the lonely places, counting life cheap; and such men grow quick of
intuition. “Your husband?” he echoed. “I only claim his promises. He’ll
return to you, after paying pleasant debts.”
“Ah! but will he return?”
The messenger was surprised again into open confession of his faith.
“One way or another you will meet--yes. The good God sees to that,” he
answered gravely. “And now, Sir Jasper, we’ve talked enough, and my
bed lies ten miles farther on. Your roads are quagmires--the only bad
things I’ve found yet in Lancashire.”
“But, Oliphant, you’ll stay the night here? I’ll call you at daybreak
if needs must.”
“I’ll sleep--a little later, friend--and at your house another day.”
His smile was easy as he bade farewell to Lady Royd and gripped his
host’s hand for a moment; but Sir Jasper saw him stumble a little as he
made towards the door.
“How far have you ridden to-day?” he asked sharply.
“Oh, fifty miles, no more--with a change of horses. Why d’ye ask?” said
Oliphant, turning in some surprise.
“Because you look underfed and over-ridden, man. Stay here the night, I
say. The Prince himself would not ask more of you if he could see you
now.”
“The Prince least of all, perhaps. It is his way to shift burdens on to
his own shoulders--if we would let him.”
Lady Royd found a moment’s respite from her spoiled and stunted
outlook, from the sense of foreboding and of coming loss--loss of the
husband whom, in some queer way, she loved. She looked at Oliphant of
Muirhouse, standing in the doorway and looking backward at them; and
she wondered by what gift he could be sleepless and saddle-sore, serene
and temperately gay, all at the one time.
“Mr. Oliphant,” she said, “this lad with the Stuart name gets more than
his deserts. He has few men like yourself among his following, surely?”
“He has many better men.” Oliphant, weary of everything except the need
to get his ten-mile errand done and snatch the sleep he needed, bowed
prettily enough to his hostess. “The Prince, God bless him, sets the
keynote for us all. He makes weaklings into--something better, Lady
Royd.”
Royd’s wife, she knew not why, thought suddenly of Rupert, her
elder-born, and she yielded to the temper that had not been curbed
throughout her married life. “Then would God my son could come under
the Prince’s discipline! He’s the heir to Windyhough--laugh with me,
Mr. Oliphant, while I tell you what a weakling he is. He can ride,
after a fashion--but not to hounds; he can only read old books in the
library, or take his gun up to these evil moors my husband loves.”
Sir Jasper’s temper was slow to catch fire, but it was burning now with
a fierce, dismaying heat. He would have spoken--words that would never
be forgotten afterwards between his wife and him--if Oliphant had not
surprised them both by the quietness of his interruption.
“He has had no chance to prove himself, I take it?” he broke in, with
a certain tender gravity. “I was in that plight once--and the chance
came--and it seemed easy to accept it. Good-night to you, Lady Royd,
and trust your son a little more.”
Sir Jasper was glad to follow his guest out of doors into the
courtyard, where a grey-blue moon was looking down on the late-fallen
sleet. Oliphant’s horse, tied to the bridle-ring at the door, was
shivering in the wind, and his master patted him with the instinctive,
friendly comradeship he had for all dumb things.
“Only ten more miles, old lad,” he muttered, hunting for sugar in the
pockets of his riding-coat, and finding two small pieces.
As he was untying the bridle a sound of feet came up the roadway. The
courtyard gate was opened, and three figures, unheroic all of them,
came trudging in. They crossed the yard slowly, and they were strangely
silent.
Sir Jasper and his guest stared at the three in blank surprise as they
drew near. The moonlight showed them Maurice, carrying a black eye and
a battered face with the jauntiness inborn in him, and Rupert, bending
a little under the bruises that were patent enough, and a horse that
moved dejectedly.
“You’ve been hunting with a vengeance, boys,” said Sir Jasper, after
long scrutiny of the sons who stood shamefacedly at attention. “Who was
it marked your face so prettily, Maurice?”
“It was Rupert, sir. We had a quarrel--and he half-killed me--I
couldn’t make him yield.”
Sir Jasper was aware of an unreasoning happiness, a sense that, in
the thick of coming dangers, he had found something for which he had
been searching many years. If he had been Squire Demaine, his intimate
friend and neighbour, he would have clapped Rupert on the back, would
have bidden his sons drown their quarrel in a bumper. But he was more
scholarly, less hale of body than Roger Demaine, and he tasted this new
joy as if he feared to lose its flavour. He had fought Rupert’s cause
so long, had defended him against the mother who despised and flouted
him. Under all disappointment had been the abiding faith that his heir
would one day prove himself. And now--here was Rupert, bruised and
abashed, and Maurice, proud of this troublesome brother who had fought
and would not yield.
It was all so workaday, so slight a matter; but Sir Jasper warmed
to these two lads as if they had returned from capturing a city for
the rightful King. They were bone of his bone, and they had fought
together, and Rupert had forgotten that he was born a weakling.
Oliphant of Muirhouse looked on. He remembered both lads well, for
he had halted often at Windyhough during these last troubled years,
had seen the heir grow into reedy and neglected manhood, the younger
brother claiming notice and regard from every one, by reason of his
ready wit, his cheeriness, his skill at sports of all kinds. From
the first Oliphant’s sympathy had been with the elder-born, with the
scholar at whom men laughed; for he could never quite forget his own
past days. He looked on to-night, glad of this touch of human comedy
that came to lighten his desolate rides between one post of danger and
the next.
“Come, lads,” said Sir Jasper, with gruff kindliness, “you were fools
to seek a quarrel. Brother should love brother”--he laughed suddenly, a
boy’s laugh that disdains maxims--“but there’s no harm in a fight, just
now and then. What was your quarrel, eh?”
They glanced at each other; but it was Rupert who first broke the
silence, not Maurice as in bygone days. “We cannot tell you, sir,” he
said, with a dignity in odd contrast with his swollen, red-raw face.
“Indeed, we cannot.”
Sir Jasper, out here in the sleety wind, was not aware of cold or the
coming hardships. His heir was showing firmness, and he tempted him
into some further show of courage.
“Nonsense, boy! You tell me all your secrets.”
Rupert lifted his battered face. “Not this one, sir--and if Maurice
tells it----”
“There, there! Get indoors, lads, and ask the housekeeper for a raw
beefsteak.”
Maurice went obediently enough, knowing this tone of his father’s. But
Rupert halted on the moonlit threshold, turned in his odd, determined
way, and came to Oliphant’s side. The messenger, standing with an arm
through the bridle of his restive horse, was embarrassed by the look in
the boy’s eyes--the eager glance of youth when it meets its hero face
to face.
“Who is your guest, father?” asked Rupert, as a child asks a question,
needing to be answered quickly. “He has often come to Windyhough, but
always in haste. You would never tell me what his name was.”
“Mr. Oliphant of Muirhouse. Who else?” Sir Jasper answered, surprised
by this sudden question. And then he glanced at Oliphant, ashamed of
his indiscretion. “The boy will keep your secret,” he added hurriedly.
“I’ve no doubt at all of that, sir,” said the messenger.
So then Rupert said little, because it seemed this meeting was too good
to hope for in a world that had not used him very well. He had heard
talk of Oliphant, while his father sat beside the hearth o’ nights
and praised his loyalty. From the grooms, too, he had heard praise of
the horsemanship of this night-rider, who was here to-day and gone
to-morrow, following the Stuart’s business. And, because he had leisure
for many dreams, he had made of Oliphant a hero of more immaculate
fibre than is possible in a world of give-and-take.
“Is father jesting?” asked the boy. “You are”--the catch in his voice,
the battered face he lifted to the moonlight, were instinct with that
comedy which lies very close to tears--“you are Oliphant of Muirhouse?
Why, sir, I think the Prince himself could--could ask no more from
me--if only I were able.”
His voice broke outright. And the two elders, somewhere from the
haunted lands of their own boyhood, heard the clear music that had been
jarred, these many years, by din of the world’s making.
“I’m Oliphant of Muirhouse,” said the messenger gruffly, “and that’s
not much to boast of. Is there any service I can render you?”
Rupert, astonished that this man should be so simple and accessible,
blurted out the one consuming desire he had in life. “I ride so
clumsily: teach me to sit a horse, sir, and gallop on the Prince’s
business--to be like other men.”
Oliphant reached out and grasped his hand. “That will be simple enough
one day,” he said cheerily. “Sir Jasper, your son is staunch. We’ll
need him by and by.”
Yet Oliphant, after he had said good-bye and ridden out into the white
and naked country, was feeling as tired and unheroic as any man in
Lancashire. The wind was pitiless, the roads evil, half between thaw
and a gaining frost. Sleep was a constant menace to him, for he had
had little during the past week. He was saddle-sore, and every bone
of a body not too robust at best seemed aching with desire for rest.
Moreover, this land of hills, and hills beyond, riding desolate to the
grey sky and the shrouded moon, was comfortless as any step-mother.
He knew that his faith, his loyalty, were sound; but no inspiration
reached him from these tired and stubborn friends; he was in that
mood--it comes equally to those who have done too ill or too well in
life--when he was ready to exchange all chances of the future for an
hour of rest. He knew that a good horse was under him, that his hands
were sure on the reins whenever a sudden hill or a slippery turning met
him by the way; for the rest, he was chilled and lifeless.
The last two miles of his journey asked too much of his strength. He
swayed in the saddle, and thought that he must yield to this sickness
that was creeping over him. Then quietly from the gaunt and sleety
hills, Rupert’s voice came whispering at his ear. He recalled the lad’s
bruised face, the passionate idolatry he had shown when he knew that
Oliphant of Muirhouse was the guest at Windyhough.
“By gad! the boy would think me a fool if I gave in now,” he muttered.
“And the message--it _must_ go forward.”
He rode with new heart for the house where his errand lay. He got
indoors, and gave his message. Then he looked round, and saw a couch
that was drawn up near the hearth, and for four-and-twenty hours
they could not rouse him from the sleep that had carried him back to
Rupert’s land o’ dreams.
Rupert himself, meanwhile, had stood for a while with his father in the
courtyard. The sleet and the east wind could not interrupt the warm
friendship that held between them.
“What is the news, father?” he asked, breaking the silence.
“Good news enough, lad. The Prince has left Edinburgh on his march
south--there has been a ball at Holyrood, all in the old way, and they
say that only churls were absent. His route lies through Lancashire. At
long last, Rupert, we’re needed, we men of Lancashire.”
“We shall not fail,” said Rupert buoyantly. “How could we, sir? The
preparation--the loyalty waiting only for its chance--I forgot, sir,”
he finished, with sudden, weary impotence. “I’m not one of you. I got
all this from books, as mother said to me last night. She was wrong,
for all that--I learned it at your knee.”
They stood looking at each other, father and son, seeking help in this
bleak wilderness of sleet. They were comrades; yet now there seemed a
deep gulf fixed between them, between the strength and pity of the one,
the weakness of the other.
“I taught you no lies, at any rate,” said Sir Jasper gruffly. “Let’s go
indoors and set your face to rights.”
“But, father, I shall ride with you?”
“No, no,” said the other, with brusque tenderness. “You are not--not
strong enough--you are untrained to stand the hardships of a campaign.”
Rupert’s face grew white and set, as he understood the full meaning of
that word “untrained.” In the peaceful days it had been well enough for
him to stand apart, possessed by the belief that he was weaker than his
fellows; it was a matter of his own suffering only; but now every loyal
man in Lancashire was needed by the Prince. His father’s hesitancy, the
wish to save him pain, were very clear to him. He had thought, in some
haphazard, dreamy way, that zeal and complete readiness to die, if need
be, for the Cause, were enough to make a soldier of him. But now he
realised that untrained men would be a hindrance to the march, that he
would be thwarting, not aiding, the whole enterprise.
“There, you take it hardly, lad!” said Sir Jasper, ill at ease. “Your
place is here. You’ll be needed to guard Windyhough and the women while
we’re away.”
“You mean it in kindness, sir, but--the fight will sweep south, you
tell me.”
“It may sweep any way, once the country is astir. You may find yourself
fighting against long odds, Rupert, before you’ve had time to miss us.
Come, it is each to his own work these days.”
In the hall, as they went in, Lady Royd was making much of Maurice,
obviously against his will. His hurts must be seen to--how had he come
by them?--he was looking grey and ill--Maurice was ashamed of the
twenty foolish questions she put to him.
“Mother, I’m a grown man by now,” he was saying as Sir Jasper entered.
“The nursery days are over.”
“Yes,” put in his elder brother, with a quick, heedless laugh, “the
nursery days are over, mother.”
She turned to him, surprised by his tone and new air of command. And on
his face, too, she saw the marks of his stubborn fight with Maurice;
and something stirred in her--some instinct foreign to her easy,
pampered life--some touch of pride that her elder-born could fight like
other men.
“So it was you who fought with Maurice? Miracles do not come singly, so
they say.” From sheer habit she could not keep back the gibe. “We shall
have the skies raining heroes soon if the heir of Windyhough----”
“Be quiet, wife!” broke in Sir Jasper hotly. “Your sons--God help me
that I have to say it!--your sons will be ashamed of you in years to
come.”
Sir Jasper had been bitter once about his heir’s weakness. He had met
and conquered that trouble long ago, as straight-riding men do, and had
found a great love for Rupert, a chivalrous and sheltering love that,
by its very pity, broadened the father’s outlook upon all men. Year by
year, as he saw that pride meant more than motherhood, the rift had
grown wider between husband and wife, though he had disguised it from
her; and this sudden, imperative fury of his had been bred by many
yesterdays.
Lady Royd stepped back, as if he had struck her, and a strange quiet
fell on all of them. The wind had shifted, for the twentieth time
to-day, and was crying thinly round the chimney-stacks. A grey,
acrid smoke was trailing from the hearth, and hail was beating at
the windows. Somewhere, from the stables at the rear, a farm dog was
howling dismally.
Lady Royd shivered as she drew the lace more closely round her neck.
She was helpless against this storm that had gathered out of doors and
in. With an understanding too keen for her liking, she realised what
this Rising was doing to her men-folk. The breath of it was abroad,
stormy and swift. It had made her husband restless, forgetful of the
lover’s homage that he had given until these last months; it had made
Rupert leave his books and dreams, from sheer desire of lustiness; it
had made Sir Jasper, here in the smoky hall, with the thin wind blowing
through it, say words of which already, if his face were aught to go
by, he repented.
It was Rupert that broke up a silence that dismayed more practical
folk. It had been his way to bear no malice; and now, glancing
at Lady Royd, he was aware that she needed help. He came to her
side--diffidently enough, as if he feared repulse--and put a hand on
her shoulder.
“She was right, sir,” he said, as if defending her against his father.
“I’d not had pluck to fight until to-day. I--I was not what the heir
should be.”
Sir Jasper saw that tears were in his wife’s eyes, saw that she was
over-wrought and tired. “Get to bed, my lads,” he said, with a friendly
laugh--“and keep the peace, or I’ll lay a heavy hand on the pair of
you.”
When they were alone he turned to his wife. The wind’s note was louder,
the hail beat hard and quick about the windows, the farm dog was
howling ceaselessly.
“I was harsh just now,” he said.
“No.” Her face was older, yet more comely. “It was I who was harsh.
Rupert needed me all these years, and I would not heed--and he was
generous just now--and I’m thinking of the years I’ve wasted.”
Her repentance--yet awhile, at any rate--would be short-lived; for
winter is never a sudden and lasting convert to the warmth of spring.
Yet her grief was so patent, her voice so broken and so tender, that
Sir Jasper, in his simple way, was thankful he was leaving Rupert,
since leave him he must, to better cheer than he had hoped for.
“He’ll find his way one day,” he said. “Be kind to him, wife--it’s ill
work for a man, I tell you, to be sitting at home while other men are
fighting. I’ll not answer for his temper.” Then suddenly he smiled.
“He’s a game pup, after all. To see Maurice’s face when they came
home together--and to know that it was Rupert who had knocked it so
pleasantly out of shape----”
“Is there nothing pleases men but war?” the wife broke in piteously.
“Nothing but blows, and bruised faces----”
“Nothing else in the world, dear heart--when war happens to be the
day’s business. Peace is well enough, after a man has earned it
honestly.”
Lady Royd was tired, beaten about by this cold, northern winter that
had never tamed her love of ease. “Then women have no place up here,”
she said fretfully. “Bloodshed--how we loathe it and all your needless
quarrels! And all the while we ask ourselves what does it matter which
king is on the throne, so long as our husbands are content to stay at
home? Women surely have no place up here.”
Sir Jasper, too, was tired in his own way. “Yes, you’ve a place,” he
answered sharply--“the place we fight to give you. There’s only one
King, wife--I’m pledged to his service, by your leave.”
“Oh, yes,” she said, with her pleasant drawl. “I know that by heart.
Faith, and the high adventure, and the King. There’s only one matter
you forget--the wife who sits at home, and plies her needle, and
fancies each stitch is a wound her husband takes. You never saw that
dark side of your Rising?”
“Wounds?” said the other gruffly. “We hide them, wife--that is men’s
business. The fruits of them we bring home--for our wives to spend.”
“Ah, you’re bitter,” she pleaded.
“Not bitter,” he said. “I’m a man who knows his world--or thinks he
does. The men earn--and the women spend; and you never guess how hard
come by is that delicate gift, honour, we bring you.”
“Honour?” She was peevish now. “I know that word, too, by heart. It
brings grief to women. It takes their men afield when they have all
they need at home. It brings swords from the scabbard----”
“It brings peace of soul, after the wounds are healed,” Sir Jasper
interrupted gravely.
Will Underwood about this time had reached his own house, and had found
his bailiff waiting for him. He had added another wing to the house in
the summer, and workmen had been busy ever since in getting things to
rights indoors in readiness for the ball which Underwood had planned
for Christmas Eve--a ball that should outmatch in lavishness and pomp
all previous revels of the kind.
“Well, Eli?” growled the master, who was in no good mood to-night.
“Your face is sour enough. Have you waited up to tell me that the men
are discontented again with their wages?”
“Nay, with their King,” said the bailiff, blunt and dispassionate.
“It’s a pity, for we were getting gradely forrard with the work--and
you wanted all done by Kirstmas, so you said. I’d not go up street
myself to see any king that stepped. Poorish folk and kings are much o’
the same clay, I reckon. Sexton at th’ end of all just drops ’em into
six feet o’ wintry mould.”
Will Underwood’s father had held the like barren gospel, expressed in
terms more guarded. Perhaps some family instinct, at variance with the
coat he wore these days, had prompted Will, at his father’s death, to
keep as bailiff one of the few “levellers” who were to be found in this
loyal corner of the north. If so, he should have stood by his choice;
but instead he yielded to childish and unreasoning passion.
“D’ye think I’m missing my bed at this time o’ night to hear your
ranting politics? It would be a poor king that couldn’t prick your
windbag for you, Eli. Stick to your ledgers and the workmen----”
“It’s them I’m trying to stick to,” broke in Eli, with that impassive
dead-weight of unbelief which is like a buckler to some men. “The
workmen are all gone daft about some slip o’ Belial they call Stuart
Charlie. Squire Demaine has been among and about them, talking of some
moonshine about a Rising; and Sir Jasper Royd has been among ’em; and,
what with one and t’ other, the men are gone daft, I tell you. They
talk in daylight o’ what they dursen’t whisper to the dark a few months
since; they’re off to the wars, they reckon, and you can whistle,
maister, for your carpenters and painters.”
Underwood fidgeted up and down the room, and Eli watched him furtively.
The bailiff, apart from his negative creed that every man was probably
a little worse than his neighbour, and princes blacker than the rest,
was singularly alive to his own interests. He had a comfortable billet
here, and was aware of many odd, unsuspected channels by which he could
squeeze money from the workmen busy with the new wing of the house; it
did not suit his interests that the master should ride out to lose his
head in company with Sir Jasper and Squire Demaine.
“Stick to the chap that’s sitting on a throne, maister. That’s my
advice,” he said, gauging the other’s irresolution to a nicety.
“Weights are heavy to lift, especially when they’ve been there for a
long while.”
Will Underwood found his better self for a moment. He remembered the
way of Sir Jasper, the look on Nance’s face as she bade him ask for her
kerchief when he was ready to go out on a loyal errand. A distaste of
Eli seized him; there was no single line of the man’s squat body, no
note of his voice, that did not jar on him.
“Your tongue’s like a file, Eli,” he snapped. “You forget that I’m a
King’s man, too--a Stuart man.”
“Nay, not so much o’ one,” broke in the other dryly, taking full
advantage of an old servant’s tyranny. “Your father was weaned on
thirst and brimstone, maister; and he was reared, he was, on good, hot
Gospeller’s stuff, such as they used to preach at Rigstones Chapel;
and he never lost the habit when he gat up i’ the world. Nay, there’s
naught Stuart about ye.”
Will Underwood, standing with a foot in either camp, was accused not
so much by Eli’s blunt, unlovely harshness as by his own judgment
of himself. He knew, now that he was compelled to ask questions of
himself, that all his instincts, tap them deeply enough, were against
monarchy of any sort--against monarchy of soul over body, against the
God these Catholic gentry worshipped, against restraints of all kinds.
He saw Rigstones Chapel, standing harsh against the moor--the home of
a lonely, obscure sect unknown beyond its own borders, a sect that
had the east wind’s bitterness for creed, but no remembrance of the
summer’s charity. He remembered, as a little chap, going to service
at his father’s side, recalling the thunder and denunciation from
the pulpit, the scared dreams that had shared his bed with him when
afterwards he went to sleep on Sabbath nights.
Underwood got himself in hand again. Those days were far off, surely.
Despite Eli’s unbelieving face, confronting him, he was striving to
forget that he had ever shared those moorland walks to Rigstones
Chapel. His father had learned gradually that it was absurd to
credit a score of people, assembled in a wayside chapel, with the
certainty that, out of the world’s millions, they alone were saved;
and afterwards this same father had bought a fine house, because the
squire who owned it had gambled credit and all else away. And the son
had found a gift for riding horses, had learned from women’s faces that
they liked the look of him; and, from small and crude beginnings, he
had grown to be Wild Will, the hunter who never shirked his fences,
the gay lover who had gathered about himself a certain fugitive romance
that had not been tested yet in full daylight.
Eli watched his master’s face. The hour was late. The wind was shrill
and busy here, as it was at Windyhough. The world of the open moor,
with its tempests and its downrightness, intruded into this snug house
of Underwood. Will was shut off from his intimates, from the easy,
heedless life, that had grown to be second nature to him. He was aware
of a great loneliness, a solitude that his bailiff’s company seemed,
not to lessen, but to deepen. In some odd way he was standing face to
face with the realities of this Stuart love that had been a pastime to
him, a becoming coat to wear when he dined or hunted with his friends.
There was no pastime now about the matter. He thought of Sir Jasper
Royd, of Squire Demaine, of others he could name who were ready to go
out into the wilderness because the time for words was over and the
time for deeds had come.
“You’re not just pleased, like, with all this moonshine about the lad
wi’ yellow hair,” said Eli guardedly. “Now, there, maister! I allus
said ye had your grandfather’s stark common sense.”
Will Underwood did not heed him. He began to pace up and down the floor
with the fury that Squire Demaine, not long ago, had likened to that
of a wild cat caught in a trap. It was so plain to him, in this moment
of enlightenment, how great a price these friends of his were ready to
pay without murmur or question of reward. They had schooled themselves
to discipline; they were trained soldiers, in fact, ready for blows or
sacrifice, whichever chanced; their passing of the loyal toast across
the water had been a comely, vital ritual, following each day’s simple
prayer for restoration of the Stuart Monarchy.
And he? Will listened to the gale that hammered at the window, saw
Eli’s inquisitive, hard face, fancied himself pacing again the moorland
road that led to Rigstones Chapel and its gospel of negation. His
frippery was stripped from him. He felt himself a liar among honest
men. He could find no sneer to aim at the high, romantic daring of
these folk who were about to follow a Prince they had not seen; for he
knew that he was utterly untrained to such sacrifice as was asked of
him. To give up this house of his, the pleasant meetings at the hunt or
by the covert-side; to put his neck on the block, most likely, for the
sake of a most unbusiness-like transaction--it was all so remote from
the play-actor’s comedy in which he had been a prime figure all these
years. He had not dreamed that Prince Charles Edward, in sober earnest,
would ever bring an army into pleasant England to disturb its peace.
Eli watched the irresolution in his face. He, at least, was
business-like. He had none of the spirit that takes men out on the
forlorn hope, and he measured each moment of his life as a chance for
immediate and successful barter.
“Maister,” he said quietly, “you’ve not heard, may be, the rumour
that’s going up and down the countryside?”
“Bad news?” snapped Underwood. “You were always ready to pass on that
sort of rumour.”
“Well, _I_ call it good news. They say Marshal Wade has men enough
under him to kill half Lancashire--and he’s marching down this way from
Newcastle to cut off these pesty Scotchmen.”
Will Underwood turned sharply. “Is your news sure, Eli?”
“Sure as judgment. I had it from one of Wade’s own riders, who’s been
busy hereabouts these last days, trying to keep silly country-folk
from leaving their homes for sake o’ moonshine. He laughed at this
pretty-boy Prince, I tell ye, saying he was no more than a lad who
tries to rob an orchard with the big farmer looking on.”
Underwood questioned him in detail about this messenger of Marshal
Wade’s, and from the bailiff’s answers, knowing the man’s shrewdness,
he grew sure that the odds were ludicrously against the Prince.
“I’m pledged to the Stuart Cause. You may go, Eli,” he said, with the
curtness he mistook for strength.
“Ay, you’re pledged, maister. But is it down in black and white? As a
plain man o’ business, I tell ye no contract need be kept unless it’s
signed and sealed.”
“And honour, you old fool?” snapped Underwood, afraid of his own
conscience.
“Honour? That’s for gentry-folk to play with. You and me, maister, were
reared at Rigstones Chapel, where there was no slippery talk o’ that
kind. It’s each for his own hand, to rive his way through to the Mercy
Throne. It’s a matter o’ business, surely--we just creep and clamber
up, knowing we’ve to die one day--and we’ve to keep sharp wits about
us, if we’re to best our neighbour at the job. It would be a poor do, I
reckon, if ye lost your chance by letting some other body squeeze past
ye, and get in just as th’ Gates were shutting, leaving ye behind.”
The whole bleak past returned to Will Underwood. He saw, as if it stood
before him harsh against the rough hillocks of the moor, the squat face
of Rigstones Chapel. He heard again the gospel of self-help, crude,
arid, and unwashed, that had thundered about his boyhood’s ears when
his father took him to the desolation that was known as Sabbath to
the sect that worshipped there. It had been all self-help there, in
this world’s business or the next--all a talk of gain and barter--and
never, by any chance, a hint of the over-glory that counts sacrifice a
pleasant matter, leading to the starry heights.
“Eli, I washed my hands of all that years ago,” he said.
“Ay, and, later on try to wash ’em of burning brimstone, maister--it
sticks, and it burns, does the hell-fire you used to know.”
There is something in a man deeper than his own schooling of himself--a
something stubborn, not to be denied, that springs from the graves
where his forefathers lie. To-night, as he watched Eli’s grim mouth,
the clean-shaven upper lip standing out above his stubby beard, as he
listened to his talk of brimstone, he was no longer Underwood, debonair
and glib of tongue. He was among his own people again--so much among
them that he seemed now, not only to see Rigstones Chapel, but to be
living the old life once more, in the little house, near the watermill
that had earned the beginnings of his grandfather’s riches. Thought by
thought, impulse by impulse, he was divided from these folk of later
years--the men and women who hunted, dined, and danced, with the single
purpose behind it all--the single hope that one day they would be
privileged to give up all, on the instant call, for loyalty to the King
who reigned in fact, if not in name. To-night, with Eli’s ledger-like,
hard face before him, Underwood yielded to the narrower and more barren
teaching that had done duty for faith’s discipline at Rigstones Chapel.
And yet he would not admit as much.
“You’re a sly old sinner, Eli,” he said, with a make-believe of the
large, rollicking air which he affected.
The bailiff, glancing at his master’s face, knew that he had prevailed.
“Ay, just thereby,” he said, his face inscrutable and hard. “But one
way or another, I mean to keep free o’ brimstone i’ the next world.
It’s all a matter o’ business, and I tell ye so.”
Underwood went out into the frosty, moonlit night, and paced up and
down the house-front. His forebears had given him one cleanly gift, at
least--he needed always, when in the thick of trouble, to get away from
house-walls, out into the open. The night was clear, between one storm
and the next, and the seven lamps of Charlie’s Wain swung high above
his head. He had to make his choice, once for all, and knew it--the
choice between the gospel of self-help and the wider creed that sends
men out to a simple, catholic sacrifice of houseroom and good living.
He looked at the matter from every side, business-like as his father
before him. There were many pledges he had given that he would join
his intimates when the summons came. If they returned from setting
a Stuart on the throne, the place he had won among them would be
valueless. But, on the other hand, Eli’s news made it sure that they
would not return, that, if they kept whole skins at all, they would be
driven into exile overseas. He knew, too, that there were many lukewarm
men, prudent doubters, even among the gentry here whose every instinct
had been trained to the Stuart’s service. The few hot-headed folk--the
dreamers--were riding out to disaster certain and foreknown--but there
would be practical, cool men enough left here in Lancashire to keep him
company.
And there was Nance. He was on ground less sure now. It lay deeper
than he guessed, deeper than his love of hunting and good-living, his
passion for Nance Demaine. She was at once his good and evil angel, and
to-night he had to choose his road. All that was best in his regard for
her pointed to the strict, narrow road of honour. And she had promised
him her kerchief when he returned from following that road. And yet--to
lose life and lands, may be--at best, to be a fugitive in foreign
countries--would that help him nearer to the wooing? If he stayed here,
she would be derelict at Windyhough, would need his help. He could ride
down to the house each day, be at hand to tempt her with the little
flatteries that mean much when women are left in a house empty of all
men-folk. And, if danger came up the moors after the Rising was crushed
at birth by Marshal Wade, he would be at hand to protect her.
_To protect her._ He knew, down under all subterfuge, that such as
Nance find the surest protection when their men are riding straight,
and he was not riding straight to-night; and finer impulses were
stirring in him than he had felt through five-and-thirty years of
self-indulgence.
He glanced at the moors, saw again the squat, practical face of
Rigstones Chapel, heard Eli Fletcher’s east-wind, calculating voice.
He was true to his breed to-night, as he surrendered to the bleak,
unlovely past.
“Fools must gang their gait,” he muttered, “but wise men stay at home.”
Eli Fletcher was crossing the hall as he went in, and glanced at the
master’s face. “Shall we get forrard wi’ the building?” he asked,
needing no answer.
“Ay, Eli. And we’ll dance at Christmas, after this ill-guided Rising is
ended.”
“You’re your father over again,” said Eli, with grim approval.