THE HURRIED DAYS
UNEASY days had come to Lancashire. The men had grown used to security,
save for the risk of a broken neck on hunting-days, their wives
pampered and extravagant; for peace, of the unhealthy sort, saps
half their vigour from men and women both. They had nothing to fear,
it seemed. There had been wars overseas, and others threatened; but
their battles had been fought for them by foreign mercenaries of King
George’s. For the rest, Lancashire hunted and dined and diced, secure
in the beauty of her women, the strength of her men who rode to hounds
and made love in the sleepy intervals.
And now the trumpet-call had sounded. None spoke abroad of the
news that Oliphant of Muirhouse and other messengers were bringing
constantly; but, when doors were closed, there was eager talk of what
was in the doing. And the elders of the company were aware that, for
every man who held loyalty fast in his two hands, there were five at
least who were guarded in devotion, five who spoke with their lips, but
whose hearts were set on safety and the longing to enjoy more hunting
days.
It was this lukewarmness that harassed and exasperated men like Sir
Jasper and Squire Demaine. Better open enemies, they felt--those who
were frankly ranged against the Old Faith, the Old Monarchy, the old
traditions--than easy-going friends who would talk but would not act.
Here on the windy heights of Lancashire they were learning already what
the stalwarts farther north were feeling--an intolerable sickness, an
impatience of those who wished for the return of the old order, but had
not faith enough to strike a blow for it.
Yet there were others; and day by day, as news of the Prince’s march
drifted down to Windyhough, Sir Jasper was heartened to find that after
all, he would bring a decent company to join the Rising. Meanwhile,
the lives they were living day by day seemed odd to thinking men who,
like Sir Jasper, understood how imminent was civil war, and what the
horrors of it were. The farmers rode to market, sold their sheep and
cattle, returned sober or otherwise according to force of habit, just
as at usual times. In the village bordering Windyhough the smith
worked at his bellows, the cobbler was busy as ever with making boots
and scandal, the labourers’ wives--the shiftless sort--scolded their
husbands into the ale-house, while the more prudent ones made cheery
hearths for them at home. It seemed incredible that before the year was
out there would be such a fire kindled in this peaceful corner of the
world as might burn homesteads down, and leave children fatherless, if
things went amiss with Prince Charles Edward.
But Sir Jasper let no doubts stay long with him. Things would go well.
If the risks were great, so was the recompense. A Stuart safely on the
throne again; English gentlemen filling high places where foreigners
were now in favour; the English tongue heard frequently at Court;
a return of the days when Church and King meant more than an idle
toast--surely the prize was worth the hazard.
He carried a sore heart on his own account these days. He had a wife
and sons at Windyhough; he loved the house that had grown old in
company with his race; he had no personal gain in this adventure of the
Prince’s, no need of recompense nor wish for it; and sometimes, when
he was tired-out or when he had found the younger gentry irresolute in
face of the instant call to arms, he grew weak and foolish, as if he
needed to learn from the everlasting hills about him that he was human
after all. And at these times his faith shone low and smoky, like a
fire that needs a keen breath of wind to kindle it afresh.
On one of these days, near dusk, as he rode home across the moor,
dispirited because no news had followed Oliphant’s message of a week
ago, a rider overtook him at a spurring gallop, checked suddenly, and
turned in saddle.
“I was for Windyhough,” he panted. “You’ve saved me three miles,
sir--and, gad! my horse will bless you.”
“The news, Oliphant? The news? I’m wearying for it.”
“Be ready within the week. The Prince is into Annan--Carlisle will
fall--get your men and arms together. Pass on the word to Squire
Demaine.”
“And the signal?”
“Wait till I bring it, or another. Be ready, and--God save the King!”
Here on the hilltops, while Oliphant of Muirhouse breathed his horse
for a moment, the two men looked, as honest folk do, straight into each
other’s eyes. Sir Jasper saw that Oliphant was weary in the cause of
well-doing; that was his trade in life, and he pursued it diligently;
but the older man was not prepared for the sudden break and tenderness
in the rider’s voice as he broke off to cry “God save the King!” There
was no bravado possible up here, where sleety, austere hills were the
only onlookers; the world’s applause was far off, and in any case
Oliphant was too saddle-sore and hungry to care for such light diet;
yet that cry of his--resolute, gay almost--told Sir Jasper that two
men, here on the uplands, were sharing the same faith.
“God save the King!” said Sir Jasper, uncovering; “and--Oliphant,
you’ll take a pinch of snuff with me.”
Oliphant laughed--the tired man’s laugh that had great pluck behind
it--and dusted his nostrils with the air of one who had known
courts and gallantry. “They say it guards a man against chills, Sir
Jasper--and one needs protection of that sort in Lancashire. Your men
are warm and Catholic--but your weather and your roads--de’il take
them!”
“Our weather bred us, Oliphant. We’ll not complain.”
Oliphant of Muirhouse glanced at him. “By gad! you’re tough, sir,”
he said, with that rare smile of his which folk likened to sun in
midwinter frost.
“By grace o’ God, I’m tough; but I never learned your trick of hunting
up tired folk along the roads and putting new heart into them. How did
you learn the trick, Oliphant?”
It was cold up here, and the messenger had need to get about his
business; but two men, sharing a faith bigger than the hills about
them, were occupied with this new intimacy that lay between them, an
intimacy that was tried enough to let them speak of what lay nearest to
their hearts. Oliphant looked back along the years--saw the weakness of
body, the tired distrust of himself that had hindered him, the groping
forward to the light that glimmered faint ahead.
“Oh, by misadventure and by sorrow--how else? I’ll take another pinch
of snuff, Sir Jasper, and ride forward.”
“If they but knew, Oliphant!” The older man’s glance was no less
direct, but it was wistful and shadowed by some doubt that had taken
him unawares. “We’ve all to gain, we loyalists, and George has left us
little enough to lose. And yet our men hang back. Cannot they see this
Rising as I see it? Prosperity and kingship back again--no need to have
a jug of water ready when you drink the loyal toast--the Maypole reared
again in this sour, yellow-livered England. Oliphant, we’ve the old,
happy view of things, and yet our gentlemen hang back.”
A cloud crossed Oliphant’s persistent optimism, too. In experience of
men’s littleness, their shams and subterfuges when they were asked to
put bodily ease aside for sake of battle, he was older than Sir Jasper.
The night-riders of this Rising saw the dark side, not only of the
hilly roads they crossed, but of human character; and in this corner
of Lancashire alone Oliphant knew to a nicety the few who would rise,
sanguine at the call of honour, and the many who would add up gain and
loss like figures in a tradesman’s ledger.
“Sir Jasper,” he said, breaking an uneasy silence, “the Prince will
come to his own with few or many. If it were you and I alone, I think
we’d still ride out.”
He leaned from the saddle, gripped the other’s hand, and spurred
forward into the grey haze that was creeping up the moor across the
ruddy sundown.
Sir Jasper followed him, at an easier pace. For a while he captured
something of Oliphant’s zeal--a zeal that had not been won lightly--and
then again doubt settled on him, cold as the mist that grew thicker
and more frosty as he gained the lower lands. He knew that the call
had come which could not be disobeyed, and he was sick with longing
for the things that had been endeared to him by long-continued peace.
There was Rupert, needing a father’s guidance, a father’s help at every
turn, because he was a weakling; he had not known till now how utterly
he loved the lad. There was his wife, who was wayward and discontented
these days; but he had not forgotten the beauty of his wooing-time.
There was all to lose, it seemed, in spite of his brave words not long
ago.
Resolute men feel these things no less--nay, more, perhaps--than
the easy-going. Their very hatred of weakness, of swerving from the
straight, loyal path, reacts on them, and they find temptation doubly
strong. Sir Jasper, as he rode down into the nipping frost that hung
misty about the chimney-stacks below him, had never seen this house
of his so comely, so likeable. Temptation has a knack of rubbing out
all harsher lines, of showing a stark, midwinter landscape as a land
of plenty and of summer. There were the well ordered life, the cheery
greetings with farmer-folk and hinds who loved their squire. There was
his wife--she was young again, as on her bridal-day, asking him if he
dared leave her--and there was his heir. Maurice, the younger-born,
would go out with the Rising; but Rupert must be left behind.
Sir Jasper winced, as if in bodily pain. Every impulse was bidding him
stay. Every tie, of home and lands and tenantry, was pulling him away
from strict allegiance to the greater Cause. He had but to bide at
home, to let the Rising sweep by him and leave him safe in his secluded
corner of the moors; it was urgent that he should stay, to guard his
wife against the licence that might follow civil war; it was his duty
to protect his own.
The strength of many yesterdays returned to help Sir Jasper. Because he
was turned sixty, a light thinker might have said that he might take
his ease; but, because he was turned sixty, he had more yesterdays
behind him than younger men--days of striving toward a goal as fixed as
the pole-star, nights of doubt and disillusion that had yielded to the
dawn of each succeeding sunrise. He had pluck and faith in God behind
him; and his trust was keen and bright, like the sword-blade that old
Andrew Ferrara had forged in Italy for Prince Charles Edward.
“The Prince needs me,” he muttered stubbornly. “That should be praise
enough for any man.”
He rode down the bridle-track to Windyhough; and the nearer he got to
the chimneys that were smoking gustily in the shrewd east wind, the
more he loved his homestead. It was as if a man, living in a green
oasis, were asked to go out across the desert sands, because a barren,
thirsty duty called him.
Again the patient yesterdays rallied to his aid. He shook himself free
of doubts, as a dog does when he comes out of cold waters; and he
took a pinch of snuff, and laughed. “After all, I was growing fat and
sleepy,” he thought, stooping to pat the tired horse that carried him.
“One can sleep and eat too much.”
He found Lady Royd in the hall, waiting for him, and a glance at her
face chilled all desire to tell her the good Rising news.
“What is the trouble, wife?” he asked, with sudden foreboding. “Is
Rupert ill?”
She stamped her foot, and her face, comely at usual times, was not good
to see. “Oh, it is Rupert with you--and always Rupert--till I lose
patience. He is--why, just the scholar. He does not hunt; he scarce
dares to ride--we’ll have to make a priest of him.”
“There are worse callings,” broke in Sir Jasper, with the squared jaw
that she knew by heart, but would not understand. “If my soul were
clean enough for priesthood, I should no way be ashamed.”
“Yes, but the lands? Will you not understand that he is the heir--and
there must be heirs to follow? We have but two, and you’re taking
Maurice to this mad rising that can only end on Tower Hill.”
“That is as God wills, wife o’ mine.”
Again she stamped her foot. “You’re in league together, you and he.”
“We share the same Faith,” he put in dryly, “if that is to be in league
together.”
“Only to-day--an hour before you came--I found him mooning in the
library, when he should have been out of doors. ‘Best join the priests
at once, and have done with it,’ said I. And ‘No,’ he answered
stubbornly, ‘I’ve been reading what the Royds did once. They fought
for Charles the First, and afterwards--they died gladly, some of
them. I come of a soldier-stock, and I need to fight.’ The scholar
dreamed of soldiery! I tapped him on the cheek--and he a grown man of
five-and-twenty--and”--she halted, some hidden instinct shaming her for
the moment--“and he only answered that he knew the way of it all--by
books--dear heart, by books he knew how strong men go to battle!”
“Rupert said that?” asked Sir Jasper gently. “Gad! I’m proud of him.
He’ll come to soldiery one day.”
“By mooning in the library--by roaming the moors at all hours of the
day and night--is that the way men learn to fight?”
Sir Jasper was cool and debonair again. “Men learn to fight as the
good God teaches them, my lady. We have no part in that. As for
Rupert--I tell you the lad is staunch and leal. He was bred a Christian
gentleman, after all, and breed tells--it tells in the long run, Agnes,
though all the fools in Lancashire go making mouths at Rupert.”
He strode up and down the hall, with the orderly impatience that she
knew. And then he told the Rising news; and she ran towards him, and
could not come too close into his arms, and made confession, girlish
in its simplicity, that she, who cared little for her son, loved her
husband better than her pride.
“You’ll not go? It is a mad Rising--here with the Georges safe upon the
throne. You need not go, at your age. Let younger men bear the brunt of
it, if they’ve a mind for forlorn hopes.”
He put her arms away from him, though it helped and heartened him to
know that, in some queer way, she loved him.
“At any age one serves the Prince, wife. I’m bidden--that is all.”
Lady Royd glanced keenly at her husband. She had been spoilt and
wilful, counting wealth and ease as her goal in life; but she was
sobered now. Sir Jasper had said so little; but in his voice, in
the look of his strong, well-favoured face, there was something
that overrode the shams of this world. He was a simple-minded
gentleman, prepared for simple duty; and, because she knew that he was
unbreakable, her old wilfulness returned.
“For my sake, stay!” she pleaded. “You are--my dear, you do not know
how much you are to me.”
He held her at arm’s length, looking into her face. Her eyes were
pixie-like--radiant, full of sudden lights and fugitive, light-falling
tears. So had he seen her, six-and-twenty years before, when he brought
her as a bride to Windyhough. For the moment he was unnerved. She was
so young in her blandishment, so swift and eager a temptation. It
seemed that, by some miracle, they two were lad and lass again, needing
each other only, and seeing the world as a vague and sunlit background
to their happiness.
“Ah, you’ll not go!” she said softly. “I knew you would not.”
“Not go?” He stood away from her, crossed to the window that gave him
a sight of the last sunset-red above the heath. “You are childish,
Agnes,” he said sharply.
“So are all women, when--when they care. I need you here--need you--and
you will not understand.”
Sir Jasper laughed, with a gentleness, a command of himself, that did
not date from yesterday. “And a man, when he cares--he cares for his
honour first--because it is his wife’s. Agnes, you did not hear me,
surely. I said that the Prince commands me.”
“And _I_ command you. Choose between us.”
Her tone was harsh. She had not known how frankly and without stint she
loved this man. She was looking ahead, seeing the forlornness of the
waiting-time while he was absent on a desperate venture.
He came and patted her cheek, as if she were a baby to be soothed.
“I choose both,” he said. “Honour and you--dear heart, I cannot
disentangle them.”
She felt dwarfed by the breadth and simplicity of his appeal. The world
thought her devout, a leal daughter of the Church; but she had not
caught his gift of seeing each day whole, complete, without fear or
favour from the morrow. And, because she was a spoilt child, she could
not check her words.
“You’ve not seen the Prince. He’s a name only, while I--I am your wife.”
Sir Jasper was tired with the long day’s hunting, the news that had met
him by the way; but his voice was quiet and resolute. “He is more than
a name, child. He’s my Prince--and one day, if I live to see it, his
father will be crowned in London. And you’ll be there, and I shall tell
them that it was you, Agnes, who helped me fasten on my sword-belt.”
And still she would not heed. Her temperament was of the kind that
afterwards was to render the whole Rising barren. She had no patience
and little trust.
“Why should I give you God-speed to Tower Hill?” she snapped. “You
think the name of Stuart is one to conjure with. You think all
Lancashire will rise, when this wizard Prince brings the Stuart Rose
to them. Trust me--I know how Lancashire will wait, and wait; they are
cautious first and loyal afterwards.”
“Lancashire will rise,” broke in Sir Jasper; “but, either way, I
go--and all my tenantry.”
“And your heir? He will go, too, will he not?”
She did not know how deep her blow struck. He had resisted her, her
passionate need of him. He would leave her for a Rising that had no
hope of success, because the name of Stuart was magical to him. In her
pain and loneliness she struck blindly.
He went to the door, threw it open, and stood looking at the grey,
tranquil hills. There was the sharp answer ready on his tongue. He
checked it. This was no time to yield to anger; for the Prince’s men,
if they were to win home to London, had need of courage and restraint.
“My son”--he turned at last, and his voice was low and tired--“_our_
son, Agnes--he is not trained for warfare. I tell you, he’ll eat his
heart out, waiting here and knowing he cannot strike a blow. His heart
is big enough, if only the body of him would give it room.”
She was desperate. All the years of selfishness, with Sir Jasper
following every whim for love of her, were prompting her to keep him at
her apron-strings. Her own persuasion had failed; she would try another
way, though it hurt her pride.
“He’ll eat his heart out, as you say. Then stay for the boy’s sake,”
she put in hurriedly. “He will feel the shame of being left behind--he
will miss you at every turn--it is cruel to leave him fatherless.”
She had tempted him in earnest now. He stood moodily at the door,
watching the hills grow dark beneath a sky of velvet grey. He knew the
peril of this Rising--knew that the odds were heavy against his safe
return--and the pity of that one word “fatherless” came home to him.
This weakling of his race had not touched compassion in the mother, as
the way of weaklings is; but he had moved his father to extreme and
delicate regard for him, had threaded the man’s hardihood and courage
with some divine and silver streak.
He turned at last. There was something harsh, repellent in his anger,
for already he was fighting against dreary odds.
“Get to your bed, wife! Fatherless? He’d be worse than that if I sat by
the fireside after the Prince had bidden me take the open. He’d live to
hear men say I was a coward--he’d live to wish the hills would tumble
down and hide him, for shame of his own father. God forgive you, Agnes,
but you’re possessed of a devil to-night--just to-night, when the wives
of other men are fastening sword-belts on.”
It was the stormy prelude to a fast and hurrying week. Messengers rode
in, by night and day, with news from Scotland. They rode with hazard;
but so did the gentlemen of Lancashire, whenever they went to fair or
market, and listened to the rider’s message, and glanced about to see
if George’s spies were lingering close to them.
Men took hazards, these days, as unconcernedly as they swallowed
breakfast before getting into saddle. Peril was part of the day’s
routine, and custom endeared it to them, till love of wife and home
grew like a garden-herb, that smells the sweetest when you crush it
down.
Lady Royd watched her husband’s face, and saw him grow more full of
cheeriness as the week went on. Oliphant’s news had been true enough,
it seemed, for Scotland had proved more than loyal, and had risen at
the Stuart’s call as a lass comes to her lover. The Highlanders had
sunk their quarrels with the Lowlanders, and the ragged beginning of
an army was already nearing Carlisle. Then there came a morning when
Sir Jasper rode into the nearest town on market-day, and moved innocent
and farmer-like among the thick-thewed men who sold their pigs and
cattle, and halted now and then to snatch news of the Rising from some
passer-by who did not seem, in garb or bearing, to be concerned with
Royal business; and he returned to Windyhough with the air of one who
has already come into his kingdom.
“They are at Carlisle, wife,” he said. “They’ve taken the Castle
there----”
“It’s no news to Carlisle Castle, that,” she broke in--shrewishly,
because she loved him and feared to let him go. “It stands there to be
taken, if you’ve taught me my history--first by the Scots, and the next
day by the English. Carlisle is a wanton, by your leave, that welcomes
any man’s attack.”
He had come home to meet east wind and littleness--the spoilt woman’s
littleness, that measures faith by present and immediate gains. He was
chilled for the moment; but the loyalty that had kept him hale and
merry through sixty years was anchored safe.
“The Prince comes south, God bless him!” he said gravely. “We shall go
out at dawn one of these near days, Agnes. We shall not wait for his
coming--we shall ride out to meet him, and give him welcome into loyal
Lancashire.”
She was not shrewish now. Within the narrow walls she had built about
her life she loved him, as a garden-flower loves the sun, not asking
more than ease and shelter. And her sun was telling her that he must be
absent for awhile, leaving her in the cold, grey twilight that women
know when their men ride out to battle.
“You shall not go,” she said, between her tears. “Dear, the need I have
of you--the need----”
He stooped suddenly and kissed her on the cheek. “I should love you
less, my dear, if I put slippers on at home and feared to take the
open.”
And still she would not answer him, or look him in the eyes with the
strength that husbands covet when they are bent on sacrifice and need a
staff to help them on the road.
“You’re not the lover that you were--say, more years ago than I
remember,” she said with a last, soft appeal.
He laughed, and touched her hand as a wooer might. “I love you twice as
well, little wife. You’ve taught me how to die, if need be.”
She came through the door of the garden that had sheltered her. For the
first time in her life she met the open winds; and Sir Jasper’s trust
in her was not misplaced.
“Is that the love you’ve hidden all these years?” she asked.
“Yes, my dear. It’s the love you had always at command, if you had
known it. Men are shy of talking of such matters.”
She ran to get his sword, docile as a child, and laid it on the table.
“I shall buckle it on for you, never fear,” she said, with the light in
her eyes at last--the light he had sought and hungered for.
“Sweetheart, you--you care, then, after all?” He kissed her on the lips
this time. “We shall go far together, you and I, in the Prince’s cause.
Women sit at home, and pray--and their men fight the better for it. My
dear, believe me, they fight the better for it.”
They faced each other, searching, as wind-driven folk do, for the
larger air that cleanses human troubles. And suddenly she understood
how secure was the bond that intimacy had tied about them. She had not
guessed it till she came from her sheltered garden and faced the breezy
hills of Lancashire at last.
And her husband, seeing her resolute, allowed himself a moment’s
sickness, such as he had felt not long ago after saying good-bye to
Oliphant high up the moor. He might not return. The odds were all
against it. He was bidding a last farewell, perhaps, to the ordered
life here, the lover’s zeal which his wife commanded from him still--to
the son whom he had watched from babyhood, waiting always, with a
father’s dogged hope, for signs of latent strength. In some queer way
he thought most of his boy just now; the lad was lonely, and needed him.
Then he crushed the sickness down. The night’s road was dark and
troublesome; but, whether he returned or no, there must needs be a
golden end to it.
“What does it matter, wife?” he said, his voice quivering a little.
“A little loneliness--in any case it would not be for long,
sweetheart--and then--why, just that the Prince had called me, and we
had answered, you and I----”
She swept round on him in a storm of misery and doubt. “Oh, Faith’s
good enough in time of Peace. Women cherish it when days go easily, and
chide their men for slackness. And the call comes--and then, God help
us! we cling about your knees while you are resolute. It is the men who
have true faith--the faith that matters and that helps them.”
He took her face into his two hands. She remembered that he had worn
just this look, far off in the days of lavender and rosemary, when
he had brought her home a bride to Windyhough and had kissed her
loneliness away.
“What’s to fear? War or peace--what’s to fear? We’re not children, wife
o’ mine.”
And “No!” she said, with brave submissiveness. And then again her face
clouded with woe, and tenderness, and longing, as when hill-mists
gather round the sun. “Ah, but yes!” she added petulantly. “We are like
children--like children straying in the dark. You see the Prince taking
London, with skirl of the pipes and swinging Highland kilts. _I_ see
you kneeling, husband, with your head upon the block.”
Sir Jasper laughed quietly, standing to his full, brave height. “And
either way it does not matter, wife--so long as the Prince has need of
me. You’ll find me kneeling, one way or the other.”
From the shadowed hall, with the candles flickering in the sconces,
their son came out into the open--their son, who could not go to war
because he was untrained. He had been listening to them.
“Father,” he said, “I must ride with you. Indeed, I cannot stay at
home.”
Sir Jasper answered hastily, as men will when they stand in the thick
of trouble. “What, you? You cannot, lad. Your place is here, as I told
you--to guard your mother and Windyhough.”
The lad winced, and turned to seek the shadows again, after one long,
searching glance at the other’s unrelenting face. And Lady Royd
forgot the past. She followed him, brought him back again into the
candlelight. One sharp word from the father had bidden her protect this
son who was bone of her bone. Rupert looked at her in wonder. She had
been his enemy till now; yet suddenly she was his friend.
He looked gravely at her--a man of five-and-twenty, who should
have known better than to blurt out the deeper thoughts that in
prudent folk lie hidden. “Mother,” he said, striving to keep the
listless, care-naught air that was his refuge against the day’s
intrusions--“mother----”
She had not heard the word before--not as it reached her now--because
she had not asked for it. It was as if she had lived between four
stuffy walls, fearing to go out into the gladness and the pain of
motherhood.
“Yes, boy?” she asked, with lover-like impatience for the answer.
“You are kind to--to pity me. But it seems to make it harder,” he said
with extreme simpleness. “I’m no son to be proud of, mother.” His voice
was low, uncertain, as he looked from one to the other of these two who
had brought him into a troubled world.
Then he glanced shyly at his father. “I could die, sir, for the
Prince,” he added, with a touch of humour. “But they say I cannot live
for him.”
The wife looked at the husband. And pain crossed between them like a
fire. He was so big of heart, this lad, and yet he was left stranded
here in the backwater of life.
Sir Jasper laid a hand on his shoulder. “You’re no fool, Rupert,” he
said, fierce in his desire to protect the lad from his own shame. “I
give you the post of honour, after all--to guard your mother. We cannot
all ride afield, and I’m leaving some of our men with you.”
“Yes,” said Rupert; “you leave the lamesters, father--the men who are
past service, whose joints are crazy.”
He was bitter. This Rising had fired his chivalry, his dreams of high
adventure, his race-instinct for a Stuart and the Cause. He had dreamed
of it during these last, eager nights, had freed himself from day-time
weakness, and had ridden out, a leader, along the road that led through
Lancashire to London. And the end of it was this--he was to be left at
home, because straight-riding men were hindered by the company of an
untrained comrade.
The father saw it all. He had not watched this son of his for naught
through five-and-twenty years of hope that he would yet grow strong
enough to prove himself the fitting heir. It was late, and Sir Jasper
had to make preparation for a ride to market at dawn; but he found time
to spare for Rupert’s needs.
“Come with me, Rupert,” he said, putting an arm through his son’s. “It
was always in my mind that Windyhough might be besieged, and I leave
you here--in command, you understand.”
“In command?” Rupert was alert, incredulous. “That was the way my
dreams went, father.”
“Dreams come true, just time and time. You should count it a privilege,
my lad, to stay at home. It is easier to ride out.”
Lady Royd, as she watched them go arm-in-arm together through the hall,
was in agreement with her husband. It was easier to ride out than to
sit at home, as scholars and women did, waiting emptily for news that,
when it came, was seldom pleasant. Already, though her husband had not
got to saddle, she was counting the hazards that were sure to meet him
on the road to London. And yet some sense of comfort whispered at her
ear. Her son was left behind to guard her. She lingered on the thought,
and with twenty womanish devices she hedged it round, until at last she
half believed it. This boy of hers was to guard her. In her heart she
knew that the storm of battle would break far away from Windyhough,
that in the event of peril Rupert must prove a slender reed; but she
was yielding to impulse just now, and felt the need to see her son a
hero.
Sir Jasper, meanwhile, was going from room to room of the old house,
from one half-forgotten stairway to another. He showed Rupert how each
window--old loopholes, most of them, filled in with glass to fit modern
needs--commanded some useful outlook on an enemy attacking Windyhough.
He showed him the cellars, where the disused muskets and the cannon
lay, and the piles of leaden balls, and the kegs of gunpowder.
“You’re in command, remember,” he said now and then, as they made their
tour of the defences. “You must carry every detail with you. You must
be ready.”
To Sir Jasper all this was a fairy-tale he told--a clumsy tale enough,
but one designed to soften the blow to his heir; to Rupert it was a
trumpet-note that roused his sleeping manhood.
“I have it all by heart, father,” he said eagerly. Then he glanced
sharply at Sir Jasper. “No one ever--ever trusted me till now,” he
said. “It was trust I needed, maybe.”
Sir Jasper was ashamed. Looking at Rupert, with his lean body, the face
that was lit with strength and purpose, he repented of the nursery-tale
he had told him--the tale of leadership, of an attack upon the house,
of the part which one poor scholar was asked to play in it.
“Get up to bed, dear lad,” he said huskily. “I’ve told you all that
need be. Sleep well, until you’re wanted.”
But Rupert could not sleep. He was possessed by the beauty of this hope
that had wound itself, a silver thread, through the drab pattern of
his life. He let his father go down into the hall, then followed, not
wishing to play eavesdropper again, but needing human comradeship.
Lady Royd, weaving dreams of her own downstairs, glanced up as she
heard her husband’s step.
“Oh, you were kind to the boy,” she said, comelier since she found her
motherhood.
He put her aside. “I was not kind, wife. I lied to him.”
“In a good cause, my dear.”
“No!” His fierceness shocked her; for until now she had been unused to
vehemence. “Lies never served a good cause yet. I told him--God forgive
me, Agnes!--that he would be needed here. He has pluck, and this notion
of leadership--it went to his head like wine, and I felt as if I’d
offered drink to a lad whose head was too weak for honest liquor.”
She moved restlessly about the hall. “Yet in the summer you had kegs
of gunpowder brought in,” she said by and by--“under the loaded
hay-wagons, you remember, lest George’s spies were looking on?”
There would be little room for tenderness in the days that were coming,
and, perhaps for that reason, Sir Jasper drew his wife toward him
now. He was thinking of the haytime, of the last load brought in by
moonlight, of the English strength and fragrance of this country life
to which he was saying good-bye.
“I wooed you in haytime, Agnes, and married you when the men were
bending to their scythes the next year, and we brought the gunpowder in
at the like season. We’ll take it for an omen.”
“And yet,” she murmured, with remembrance of her son--the son who was
the firstfruit of their wooing--“you said that you had lied to Rupert
when you bade him guard the house. Why bring in gunpowder, except to
load your muskets with?”
He sighed impatiently. This parting from the wife and son grew drearier
the closer it approached. “We had other plans in the summer. It was to
be a running fight, we thought, from Carlisle down through Lancashire.
Every manor was to be held as a halting-place when the Prince’s army
needed rest.”
He crossed to the big western window of the hall, and stood looking up
at the moonlit, wintry hills. Then he turned again, not guessing that
his son was standing in the shadows close at his right hand.
“Other counsels have prevailed,” he said, with the snappishness of a
man who sees big deeds awaiting him and doubts his human strength.
“I think the Prince did not know, Agnes, how slow we are to move in
Lancashire--how quick to strike, once we’re sure of the road ahead.
Each manor that held out for the King--it would have brought a hundred
doubters to the Cause; the army would have felt its way southward,
growing like a snowball as it went. They say the Prince overruled his
counsellors. God grant that he was right!”
“So there’s to be no siege of Windyhough?” asked Lady Royd slowly.
“None that I can see. It is to be a flying charge on London. The
fighting will be there, or in the Midlands.”
“That is good hearing, so far as anything these days can be called good
hearing. Suppose your lie had prospered, husband? Suppose Rupert had
had to face a siege in earnest here? Oh, I’ve been blind, but now I--I
understand the shame you would have put on him, when he was asked to
hold the house and could not.”
“He could!” snapped Sir Jasper. “I’ve faith in the lad, I tell you. A
Royd stands facing trouble always when the pinch comes.”
She looked at him wistfully, with a sense that he was years older than
herself in steadiness, years younger in his virile grip on faith. It
was an hour when danger and the coming separation made frank confession
easy. “I share your Faith,” she said quietly, “but I’m not devout as
you are. Oh, miracles--they happened once, but not to-day. This boy of
ours--can you see him holding Windyhough against trained soldiery? Can
you hear him sharp with the word of command?”
“Yes,” said the other, with the simplicity of trust. “If the need
comes, he will be a Royd.”
“Dear, you cannot believe it! I, who long to, cannot. No leader ever
found his way--suddenly--without preparation----”
“No miracle was ever wrought in that way,” he broke in, with the
quiet impatience of one who knows the road behind, but not the road
ahead. “There are no sudden happenings in this life--and I’ve trained
the lad’s soul to leadership. I would God that I’d not lied to him
to-night--I would that the siege could come in earnest.”
Rupert crept silently away, down the passage, and through the hall, and
out into the night. Through all his troubles he had had one strength to
lean upon--his father’s trust and comradeship. And now that was gone.
He had heard Sir Jasper talk of the siege as of a dream-toy thrown to
him to play with. In attack along the London road, or in defence at
home, he was untrained, and laughable, and useless.
There was war in his blood as he paced up and down the courtyard. His
one ally had deserted him, had shown him a tender pity that was worse
to bear than ridicule. He stood alone, terribly alone, in a world that
had no need of him.
The wind came chill and fretful from the moor, blowing a light drift of
sleet before it; and out of the lonely land a sudden hope and strength
reached out to him. It was in the breed of him, deep under his shyness
and scholarly aloofness, this instinct to stand at his stiffest when
all seemed lost. He would stay at home. He would forget that he had
overheard his father’s confession of a lie, would get through each day
as it came, looking always for an attack that, by some unexpected road,
might reach the gates of Windyhough.
But there was another task he had--to forgive Sir Jasper for the
make-believe--and this proved harder. Forgiveness is no easy matter
to achieve; it cannot be feigned, or hurried, or find root in shallow
soil; it comes by help of blood and tears, wayfaring together through
the dark night of a man’s soul.
Rupert went indoors at last, and met Sir Jasper at the stairfoot.
“Why, lad, I thought you were in bed long since.”
“I could not rest indoors, sir. I--I needed room.”
“We’re all of the same breed,” laughed his father. “House-walls never
yet helped a man to peace. Good-night, my lad--and remember you’re on
guard here.”