THE LOYAL MEET
TWO days later Sir Jasper and Maurice sat at breakfast. There was a
meet of hounds that morning, and, because the hour was early, Lady Royd
was not down to share the meal. It was cold enough after full sunrise,
she was wont to say, with her lazy, laughing drawl, and not the most
devoted wife could be expected to break her fast by candlelight.
Sir Jasper, for his part, ate with appetite this morning. The unrest of
the past weeks had been like a wind from the north to him, sharpening
his vigour, driving out the little weaknesses and doubts bred of long
inaction. And, as he ate, old Simon Foster, his man-of-all-work, opened
the door and put in the grizzled head which reminded his master always
of a stiff broom that had lately swept the snow.
“Here’s Maister Oliphant,” said Simon gruffly. “Must I let him in?”
“Indeed you must,” laughed Oliphant, putting him aside and stepping
into the room. “My business will not wait, Sir Jasper, though Simon
here is all for saying that it crosses you to be disturbed at
breakfast-time.”
The two men glanced quickly at each other. “You’re looking in need of a
meal yourself, Oliphant. Sit down, man, and help us with this dish of
devilled kidneys.”
Oliphant, long ago, had learned to take opportunity as it came; and
meals, no less than his chances of passing on the messages entrusted to
him, were apt to prove haphazard and to be seized at once. Old Simon,
while they ate, hovered up and down the room, eager for the news, until
his master dismissed him with a curt “You may leave us, Simon.”
Simon obeyed, but he closed the door with needless violence; and they
could hear him clattering noisily down the passage, as if he washed his
hands of the whole Rising business.
“_You may leave us, Simon!_” he growled. “That’s all Sir Jasper has
to say, after I’m worn to skin and bone in serving him. And he must
know by this time, surely, that he allus gets into scrapes unless
I’m nigh-handy, like, to advise him what to do. Eh, well, maisters
is maisters, and poor serving-men is serving-men, and so ’twill be
till th’ end o’ the chapter, I reckon. But I wish I knew what Maister
Oliphant rade hither-till to tell Sir Jasper.”
Oliphant looked across at his host, after Simon’s heavy footfalls told
them he was out of earshot. “The hunt comes this way, Sir Jasper, with
hounds in full cry. I see you’re dressed for the chase.”
“And have been since--since I was breeked, I think. When, Oliphant? It
seems too good to be true. All Lancashire is asking when, and I’m tired
of telling them to bide until they hear Tally-ho go sounding up the
moors.”
“You start at dawn to-morrow. Ride into Langton, and wait till you see
the hounds in full view.”
“And the scent--how does it lie, Oliphant?”
“Keen and true, sir. I saw one near the Throne three days ago, and he
said that he had never known a blither hunting-time.”
They had talked in guarded terms till now--the terms of Jacobite
freemasonry; but Sir Jasper’s heart grew too full on the sudden for
tricks of speech. “God bless him!” he cried, rising to the toast.
“There’ll be a second Restoration yet.”
Maurice, his face recovered from traces of the fight with his stubborn
brother, had been abashed a little by Oliphant’s coming, for, like
Rupert, he had the gift of hero-worship. But now he, too, got to his
feet, and his face was full of boyish zeal. “We’ll hunt that fox of
yours, Mr. Oliphant,” he laughed--“ay, as far as the sea. We’ll make
him swim--over the water, where our toasts have gone.”
“He’s bred true to the old stock, Sir Jasper,” laughed Oliphant. “I
wish every loyalist in Lancashire had sons like Maurice here to bring
with him.”
Sir Jasper found no answer. An odd sadness crossed his face, showing
lines that were graven deeper than Oliphant had guessed. “Come, we
shall be late for the meet,” he said gruffly. “Oliphant, do you stay
and rest yourself here, or will you ride with us? The meet is at
Easterfield to-day.”
“As far as the cross-roads, then. My way lies into Langton.”
Oliphant’s tone was curt as his host’s, for he was puzzled by this
sudden coolness following his praise of Maurice. As they crossed the
courtyard to the stables he saw Sir Jasper glance up at the front of
the house, and there, at an upper window, Rupert the heir was watching
stronger men ride out to hunt the fox. He saw the misery in the lad’s
face, the stubborn grief in the father’s, and a new page was turned for
him in that muddled book of life which long night-riding had taught him
to handle with tender and extreme care.
At the cross-ways they parted. All had been arranged months since;
the proven men in Lancashire, as in other counties, were known to the
well-wishers of the Prince. Each had his part allotted to him, and Sir
Jasper’s was to rally all his hunting intimates. So far as preparation
went, this campaign of the Stuart against heavy odds had been well
served. The bigger work--the glad and instant wish of every King’s man
to rally to the call, forgetting ease of body, forgetting wives and
children--was in the making, and none knew yet what luck would go with
it.
“At Langton to-morrow,” said Oliphant, over-shoulder, as he reined
about.
“Yes, God willing--and, after Langton, such a fire lit as will warm
London with its flames.”
When they got to Easterfield, Maurice and his father, the sun was
shining on a street of melting snow, following a quick and rainy thaw,
on well-groomed men and horses, on hounds eager to be off on the day’s
business. And, as luck had it, they found a game fox that took them at
a tearing gallop, five miles across the wet and heavy pastures, before
they met a check.
The check lasted beyond the patience of the hunters, and Sir Jasper
chose his moment well.
“Gentlemen,” he said, rising in his stirrups--“gentlemen, the meet is
at my house of Windyhough to-morrow. Who rides with me?”
The field gathered round him. He was a man commanding men, and he
compelled attention.
“What meet?” asked Squire Demaine, his ruddy face brick-red with sudden
hope.
“The Loyal Meet. Who’s with me, gentlemen?”
Sir Jasper was strung to that pitch of high endeavour which sees each
face in a crowd and knows what impulse sways it. They gathered round
him to a man; but as he glanced from one to the other he knew that
there were many waverers. For loyalty, free and unswerving, sets a
light about a man’s face that admits no counterfeit.
Yet the din was loud enough to promise that all were of one mind here.
Hounds and fox and huntsmen were forgotten. Men waved their hats and
shouted frantically. Nance Demaine and the half-dozen ladies who were
in the field to-day found little kerchiefs and waved them, too, and
were shrill and sanguine in their cries of “The Prince, God bless
him!--the Prince!--the Stuart home again!”
It was all like Bedlam, while the austere hills, lined here and there
with snow that would not melt, looked down on this warmth of human
enterprise. The horses reared and fidgeted, dismayed by the uproar.
Hounds got out of hand and ran in and out between the plunging hoofs,
while the huntsman, a better fox-hunter than King’s man, swore roundly
and at large as he tried to bring them out of this outrageous riot.
“Where’s Will Underwood?” asked a youngster suddenly. It was young
Hunter of Hunterscliff, whose lukewarmness had angered Nance not long
ago. “It’s the first meet he’s missed this winter.”
A horseman at his elbow laughed, the laugh that men understood. “He had
business in the south, so he told me when I met him taking the coach.
Wild Will, from the look of his face, seemed tired of hunting.”
“No!” said Sir Jasper sharply. “I’ll have no man condemned without a
hearing. He lives wide of here--perhaps this last news of the Rising
has not reached him. Any man may be called away on sudden business.”
“You’re generous, sir. I’m hot for the King, and no other business in
the world would tempt me out of Lancashire just now. Besides, he must
have known.”
Nance had lost her high spirits; but she was glad that some one had
spoken on Will Underwood’s behalf, for otherwise she must have yielded
to the impulse to defend him.
“That does not follow, sir,” said Sir Jasper, punctilious in defence
of a man he neither liked nor trusted. “At any rate, it is no time for
accusation. Mr. Underwood, if I know him, will join us farther south.”
Young Hunter, a wayward, unlicked cub, would not keep silence. “Yes,”
he said, in his thin, high-pitched voice, “he’ll join us as far south
as London--after he’s sure that a Stuart’s on the throne again.”
An uneasy silence followed. Older men looked at older men, knowing
that they shared this boy’s easy summing-up of Underwood’s motives.
And Nance wondered that this man, whom she was near to loving, had no
friends here--no friends of the loyal sort who came out into the open
and pledged their faith in him.
There was a game hound of the pack--a grey old hound that, like the
huntsman, was a keener fox-hunter than loyalist; and, through all this
uproar and confusion, through the dismayed silence that followed, he
had been nosing up and down the pastures, finding a weak scent here, a
false trail there. And now, on the sudden, he lifted his grey head, and
his note was like a bugle-call. The younger hounds scampered out from
among the hoofs that had been playing dangerously near them and gave
full tongue as they swung down the pastures.
Sir Jasper spurred forward. “Here’s an omen, friends,” he cried. “The
hunt is up in earnest. We shall kill, I tell you! we shall kill!”
It was a run that afterwards, when the fires of war died down and
all Lancashire was hunting once again in peace, was talked of beside
cottage hearths, on market-days when squires and yeomen met for
barter--was talked of wherever keen, lusty men foregathered for the
day’s business and for gossip of the gallant yesterdays.
Sir Jasper led, with Squire Demaine close at his heels. It seemed,
indeed, the day of older folk; for away in front of them, where the
sterns of eager hounds waved like a frantic sea, it was Pincher--grey,
hefty, wise in long experience--that kept the running.
Prince Charles Edward was forgotten, though he had need of these
gentlemen on the morrow. After all, with slighter excuse, they might
any one of them break their necks to-day in pursuit of the lithe red
fox that showed like a running splash of colour far ahead. The day was
enough for them, with its rollicking hazards, its sense of sheer pace
and well-being.
Down Littlemead Ings the fox led them, and up the hill that bordered
Strongstones Coppice. He sought cover in the wood, but Pincher, with
a buoyant, eager yell, dislodged him; and for seven miles, fair or
foul going, they followed that racing blotch of red. There were fewer
horsemen now, but most of them kept pace, galloping hard behind Sir
Jasper and the Squire, who were riding neck for neck. The fox, as it
happened, was in his own country again, after a sojourn he regretted
in alien pastures; and he headed straight for the barren lands of
rock and scanty herbage that lay up the slopes of Rother Hill. The
going was steep and slippery, the scent cold, because snow was lying
on these upper lands; and the fox, who knew all this a little better
than Pincher, plunged through a snowdrift that hid the opening of his
favourite cave and knew himself secure. They could dig him out from a
burrow, but this cave was long and winding, and all its quiet retreats
were known to him.
Pincher, the grey, hefty hound, plunged his nose into the snow, then
withdrew it and began to whimper. He was unused to this departure
from the usual rules of fox-hunting; the snow was wet and chilly,
and touched, maybe, some note of superstition common to hounds and
hill-bred men. Superstition, at any rate, or some grave feeling, was
patent in the faces of the riders. The huntsman, knowing the windings
of the cave as well as Reynard, gathered his pack.
“They’d be lost for ever and a day, Sir Jasper,” he growled, “if once
they got into that cave. I followed it once for a mile and a half
myself, and then didn’t reach the end of it.”
Sir Jasper glanced at Squire Demaine, and found the same doubt in
his face. They had chosen this gallop as an augury, and they had not
killed. It is slight matters of this sort that are apt constantly to
turn the balance of big adventures, and the two older men knew well
enough how the waverers were feeling.
“Gentlemen,” said Sir Jasper sharply, “we’re not like children. There’s
no omen in all this. I jested when I talked of omens.”
“By gad, yes!” sputtered the Squire, backing his friend with a bluster
that scarcely hid his own disquiet. “There’s only one good omen for
to-morrow, friends--a strong body, a sound sword arm, and a leal heart
for the King. We’ll not go back to the nursery, by your leave, because
a fox skulks into hiding.”
There was a waving of three-cornered hats again, a murmur of applause;
but the note did not ring true and merry, as it had done at the start
of this wild gallop. The horses were shivering in a bitter wind that
had got up from behind the hollows of the uplands. Grey-blue clouds
crept round about the sun and stifled him, and sleet began to fall.
They were children of the weather to a man, and to-morrow’s ride for
London and the Stuart took on the semblance of a Lenten fast.