THE HORSE THIEF
AT Windyhough, Rupert had watched Sir Jasper and his brother ride out
to the hunt, had felt the old pang of jealousy and helplessness. They
were so hale and keen on the day’s business; and he was not one of them.
He turned impatiently from the upper window, not guessing that his
father had carried the picture of his tired face with him to the
meet. With some thought of getting up into the moor, to still his
restlessness, he went down the stair and out into the courtyard. Lady
Royd, who had not lain easy in her bed this morning, was standing
there. Some stronger call than luxury and well-being had bidden her
get up and steal into the windy, nipping air, to watch her men ride
out. She was late, as she was for all appointments, and some bitter
loneliness had taken hold of her when she found them gone. She had
never been one of these gusty, unswerving people here in Lancashire,
and their strength was as foreign to her as their weaknesses. Until
her marriage with the impulsive northern lover who had come south to
the wooing and had captured her girl’s fancy, she had lived in the
lowlands, where breezes played for frolic only; and the bleakness
of these hills had never oppressed her as it did this morning. She
forgot the swift and magic beauty that came with the late-won spring,
forgot how every slope and dingle of this northern country wakened
under the sun’s touch, how the stark and empty moor grew rich with
colour, how blackbird and lavrock, plover and rook and full-throated
thrush made music wild and exquisite under the blue, happy sky. For
the present, the wind was nipping; on the higher hill-crests snow lay
like a burial-shroud; her husband and the younger son she idolised
were riding out to-morrow on a perilous road because they had listened
to that haunting, unhappy melody which all the Stuarts had the gift of
sounding.
Lady Royd could not see beyond. Her faith was colder than the hills
which frightened her, emptier than this winter-time she hated. She had
not once captured the quiet, resolute note that sounded through her
husband’s conduct of affairs. Let the wind whistle its keenest under
a black and sullen sky, Sir Jasper knew that he was chilled, as she
did; but he knew, too, that summer would follow, blithe and full of
hay-scents, fuller, riper in warmth and well-being, because the months
of cold had fed its strength.
She chose to believe that he was playing with a fine, romantic sense
of drama, in following the Prince, that he was sacrificing Maurice
to the same misplaced zeal. Yet hour by hour and day by day of their
long companionship, he had made it plain, to a comrade less unwilling,
that he had followed a road marked white at every milestone by a faith
that would not budge, an obedience to the call of honour that was
instinctive, instant, as the answer of a soldier to his commanding
officer. If all went amiss with this Rising, if he gave his life for a
lost cause, it did not matter greatly to Sir Jasper; for he was sure
that in one world or another, a little sooner or a little later, he
would see that Restoration whose promise shone like the morning star
above the staunch, unbending hills of Lancashire.
“Who is to gain by it all?” murmured Lady Royd, shivering as she drew
her wrap about her. “When I’m widowed, and Maurice has gone, too, to
Tower Hill--shall I hate these Stuart fools the less? It matters little
who is king--so little----”
She heard Rupert’s step behind her, turned and regarded him with that
half-tolerant disdain which had stood to her for motherhood. Not long
ago she had felt a touch of some divine compassion for him, had been
astonished by the pain and happiness that pity teaches; but the mood
had passed, and he stood to her now as a simpleton so exquisite that
he had not strength even to follow the stupid creeds he cherished. She
was in no temper to spare him; he was a welcome butt on which to vent
her weariness of all things under the sun.
They looked at each other, silent, questioning. Big happenings were in
the making. The very air of Lancashire these days was instinct with the
coming troubles, and folk were restless, ill-at-ease as moor-birds are
when thunder comes beating up against the wind.
“It is not my fault, mother,” said Rupert brusquely, as if answering
some plainly-spoken challenge. “If I had my way, I’d be taking fences,
too--but, then, I never had my way.”
Lady Royd laughed gently--the frigid, easy laugh that Rupert knew by
heart. “A _man_,” she said, halting on the word--“a man makes his way,
if he’s to have it. The babies stay at home, and blame the dear God
because He will not let them hunt like other men.”
Rupert took fire on the sudden, as he had done not long since when
he had fought with his brother on the moor. Old indignities were
brought to a head. He did not know what he said; but Lady Royd bent
her head, as if a moorland tempest beat about her. It seemed as if
the whole unrest, the whole passion and heedlessness, of the Stuart
battle against circumstance had gathered to a head in this wind-swept
courtyard of the old fighting house of Windyhough.
And the combatants were a spoilt wife on one hand, on the other a
scholar who had not yet found his road in life. The battle should have
given food for laughter; yet the scholar wore something of his father’s
dignity and spirit, and the woman was slow to admit a mastery that
pleased and troubled her.
Again there was a silence. The east wind was piping through and through
the courtyard, and rain was falling; but on the high moors there were
drifts of snow that would not yield to the gusty warmth. All was upset,
disordered--rain, and snow, and wind, were all at variance, as if they
shared the unrest and the tumult of the times.
“You--you hurt me, Rupert,” she said weakly.
“I had no right, mother,” he broke in, contrite. “Of course I am the
heir--and I was never strong, as you had wished--and--and I spoke in
heat.”
“I like your heat, boy,” she said unexpectedly. “Oh, you were right,
were right! You never had a chance.”
He put his hand on her arm--gently, as a lover or a courtier might.
“Maurice should have been the heir. It cannot be helped, mother--but
you’ve been kind to me through it all.”
Lady Royd was dismayed. Her husband had yielded to her whims; the folk
about her had liked her beauty, her easy, friendly insolence, the
smile which comes easily to women who are spoilt and have luxury at
command. She had been sure of herself till now--till now, when the son
she had made light of was at pains to salve her conscience. He was a
stay-at-home, a weakling. There was no glamour attaching to him, no
riding-out to high endeavour among the men who were making or were
marring history. Yet now, to the mother’s fancy, he was big of stature.
She yielded to a sharp, dismaying pity. “My dear,” she said, with a
broken laugh, “you talk like your father--like your father when I like
him most and disagree with his mad view of life.”
Rupert went to bed that night--after his father and Maurice had
returned muddied from a hunt he had not shared, after the supper
that had found him silent and without appetite--with a sense of keen
and personal disaster that would not let him sleep. Through all his
dreams--the brave, unspoiled dreams of boyhood--he had seen this Rising
take its present shape. His father’s teaching, his stealthy reading
in the library of books that could only better a sound Stuart faith,
had prepared him for the Loyal Meet that was to gather at Windyhough
with to-morrow’s dawn. But in his dreams he had been a rider among
loyal riders, had struck a blow here and there for the Cause he had
at heart. In plain reality, with the wind sobbing round the gables
overhead, he was not disciplined enough to join the hunt. He was
untrained.
Maurice shared his elder brother’s bedroom; and somewhere in the dark
hours before the dawn he heard Rupert start from a broken sleep, crying
that the Prince was in some danger and needed him. Maurice was tired
after the day’s hunting, and knew that he must be up betimes; and a
man’s temper at such times is brittle.
“Get to sleep, Rupert!” he growled. “The Prince will be none the better
for your nightmares.”
Rupert was silent. He knew it was true. No man would ever be the
better, he told himself, for the help of a dreamer and a weakling. He
heard his brother turn over, heard the heavy, measured breathing. He
had no wish for sleep, but lay listening to the sleet that was driving
at the window-panes. It was bitter cold, and dark beyond belief.
Whatever chanced with the Prince’s march to London, there was something
to chill the stoutest faith in this night-hour before the dawn. Yet the
scholar chose this moment for a sudden hope, a warmth of impulse and of
courage. Down the sleety wind, from the moors he loved, a trumpet-call
seemed to ring sharp and clear. And the call sounded boot-and-saddle.
He sprang from bed and dressed himself, halted to be sure that Maurice
was still sound asleep, felt his way through the pitch-dark of the room
until he reached the door. Then he went down, unbarred the main door
with gentle haste, and stood in the windy courtyard. It was a wet night
and a stormy one on Windyhough Heights. Now and then the moon ran out
between the grey-black, scudding clouds and lit a world made up of rain
and emptiness.
And Rupert again heard the clear, urgent call. Slight of body, a thing
of small account set in the middle of this majestic uproar of the
heath, he squared his shoulders, looked at the house-front, the fields,
the naked, wind-swept coppices, to which he was the heir.
Old tradition, some instinct fathered by many generations, rendered him
greater than himself. “Get to saddle,” said the voice at his ear; and
he forgot that the ways of a horse were foreign to him. He glanced once
again at the heath, as if asking borrowed strength, then crept like a
thief toward the stables.
It was near dawn now. The wind, tired out, had sunk to a low, piping
breeze. The moon shone high and white from a sky cleared of all but
the filmiest clouds; and over the eastern hummocks of the moor lithe,
palpitating streaks of rose, and grey, and amber were ushering up the
sun.
All was uproar in the stable-yard, and the future master of these
grooms and farm-lads waited in the shadows--a looker-on, as always. He
saw a lanthorn swinging up and down the yard, confusing still more the
muddled light of moon and dawn; and then he heard Giles, his father’s
bailiff, laugh as he led out Sir Jasper’s horse, and listened while
the man swore, with many a rich Lancashire oath, that Rising work was
better than keeping books and harrying farmers when they would not pay
their rents. And still Rupert waited, watching sturdy yeomen ride in
from Pendle Forest, on nags as well built as themselves, to answer Sir
Jasper’s rally-call.
“’Tis only decent-like, Giles,” he heard one ruddy yeoman say, “to ride
in a little before our betters need us. I was never one to be late at a
hunt, for my part.”
“It all gangs gradely,” Giles answered cheerily. “By dangment, though,
the dawn’s nearer than I thought; and I’ve my own horse to saddle yet.”
Rupert waited with great patience for his chance--waited until Giles
came out again, leading a thick-set chestnut that had carried him on
many a bailiff’s errand. And in the waiting his glow of courage and
high purpose grew chilled. He watched the lanthorns bobbing up and
down the yard, watched the dawn sweep bold and crimson over this crowd
of busy folk. He was useless, impotent; he had no part in action, no
place among these men, strong of their hands, who were getting ready
for the battle. Yet, under all the cold and shame, he knew that, if he
were asked to die for the Cause--asked simply, and without need to show
himself a fool at horsemanship--it would be an easy matter.
He looked on, and he was lonelier than in the years behind. Until
a day or two ago he had been sure of one thing at least--of his
father’s trust in him; and Sir Jasper had killed that illusion when he
taught his heir how Windyhough was to be defended against attack and
afterwards confessed that it was a trick to soothe the lad’s vanity.
Yet still he waited, some stubborness of purpose behind him. And by
and by he saw his chance. The stable-yard was empty for the moment.
Sir Jasper’s men had mustered under the house-front, waiting for their
leader to come out. Giles had left his own horse tethered to a ring
outside the stable door, while he led the master’s grey and Maurice’s
slim, raking chestnut into the courtyard. From the bridle-track below
came the clatter of hoofs, as Sir Jasper’s hunting intimates brought in
their followers to the Loyal Meet. On that side of the house all was
noise, confusion; on this side, the stable-yard lay quiet under the
paling moonlight and the ruddy, nipping dawn.
Sir Jasper’s heir crossed the yard, as if he planned a theft and feared
surprisal. There had been horse-thieves among his kin, doubtless, long
ago when the Royds were founding a family in this turbulent and lawless
county; and Rupert was but harking back to the times when necessity was
the day’s gospel.
He unslipped the bridle of Giles’s horse, and let him through the gate
that opened on the pastures at the rear of Windyhough. Then he went in
a wide circle round the house, until he reached a wood of birch and
rowan that stood just above the Langton road. The wind was up again,
and rain with it; and in the downpour Rupert, holding the bridle of a
restive horse, waited for the active men to pass him by along the road
that led to Prince Charles Edward. He could not join them at the meet
in the courtyard, but he would wait here till they passed, he told
himself, would get to saddle afterwards and ride down and follow them.
And in the coming battle, may be, he would prove to his father that
courage was not lacking, after all, in the last heir of the Royd men.
The front of Windyhough, meanwhile, was busy with men and horses, with
sheep-dogs that had followed their masters, unnoticed and unbidden,
from the high farms that bordered Windyhough. It might have been
Langton market-day, so closely and with such laughing comradeship
yeomen, squires, and hinds rubbed shoulders, while dogs ran in and out
between their legs and horses whinnied to each other. The feudal note
was paramount. There was no distrust here, no jealousy of class against
class; the squires were pledged to defend those who followed them with
healthy and implicit confidence, their men were loyal in obedience that
was neither blind nor stupid, but trained by knowledge and the sense
of discipline, as a soldier’s is. Each squire was a kingly father to
the men he had gathered from his own acres. In all things, indeed, this
gathering at Windyhough was moved by the clan spirit that had made
possible the Prince’s gathering of an army in Scotland--that small,
ill-equipped army which had already routed General Cope at Prestonpans,
had compelled Edinburgh to applaud its pluck and gallantry, had taken
Carlisle Castle, and now was marching through a country, disaffected
for the most part, on the forlornest hope that ever bade men leave warm
hearths.
Sir Jasper, standing near the main door of Windyhough, watched the
little companies ride in. He was keen and buoyant, and would not
admit that he was troubled because his own judgment and that of his
friends was justified. He had guessed that one in five of those who had
passed their claret over the water would prove their faith; and he had
calculated to a nicety. One whom he had counted a certain absentee was
here, to be sure--young Hunter of Hunterscliff, whose tongue was more
harum-scarum than his heart. But, against this gain of a sword-arm and
a dozen men, he had to set Will Underwood’s absence. Some easy liking
for Will’s horsemanship, some instinct to defend him against the common
distrust, had prompted him to an obstinate, half-hearted faith in the
man. Yet he was not here, and Sir Jasper guessed unerringly what the
business was that had taken him wide of Lancashire.
Squire Demaine was the last to ride in with his men. He could afford to
be late; for Pendle Hill, round and stalwart up against the crimson,
rainy sky, would as soon break away from its moorings as Roger Demaine
proved truant to his faith.
It was wet and cold, and the errand of these men was not one to promise
warmth for many a day to come. Yet they raised a cheer when old Roger
pushed his big, hard-bitten chestnut through the crowd. And when they
saw that his daughter was with him, riding the grey mare that had known
many a hunting morn, their cheers grew frantic. For at these times men
learn the way of their hearts, and know the folk whose presence brings
a sense of well-being.
Sir Jasper had not got to saddle yet. He stood at the door, with his
wife and Maurice, greeting all new-comers, and hoping constantly that
there were laggards to come in. He reached up a hand to grasp the
Squire’s.
“The muster’s small, old friend,” he said.
“Well, what else?” growled Roger. “We know our Lancashire--oh, by the
Heart, we know it through and through.” He glanced round the courtyard,
with the free, wind-trained eye that saw each face, each detail.
“There’s few like to make a hard bed for themselves, Jasper. Best leave
our feather-bed folk at home.”
Sir Jasper, with a twinge of pain to which long use had accustomed him,
thought of Rupert, his heir. He glanced aside from the trouble, and for
the first time saw that Nance was close behind her father.
“Does Nance go with us?” he asked, with a quick smile. “She can ride
as well as the best of us--we know as much, but women are not soldiers
these days, Roger.”
Squire Demaine looked round for a face he did not find. “No, she stays
here at Windyhough. Where’s Rupert? I always trusted that quiet lad.”
“He’s gone up to the moors, sir, I think,” said Maurice, with some
impulse to defend the absent brother. “He was full of nightmares just
before dawn--talking of the Prince, who needed him--and he was gone
when I got up at daybreak.”
“Well, he’ll return,” snapped the Squire; “and, though I say it, he’ll
find a bonnie nestling here at Windyhough. Nance, tell the lad that I
trust him. And now, Jasper, we’ll be late for the meet on the Langton
Road, unless we bestir ourselves.”
Sir Jasper, under all his unswerving zeal, grew weak with a fine human
tenderness. He turned, caught his wife’s glance, wondered in some odd,
dizzy way why he had chosen to tear his heart out by the roots. And
Rupert was not here; he had longed to say good-bye to him, and he was
hiding somewhere, full of shame that was too heavy for his years--oh,
yes, he knew the lad!
He passed a hand across his eyes, stooped for a moment and whispered
some farewell message to his wife, then set his foot into the stirrup
that Giles was holding for him. His face cleared. He had chosen the way
of action--and the road lay straight ahead.
“We’re ready, gentlemen, I take it?” he said. “Good! The Prince might
chance to be a little earlier at the meet. We’d best be starting.”
Nance had slipped from the saddle, and stood, with the bridle in her
hand, watching the riders get into some semblance of a well-drilled
company of horse. At another time her quick eye would have seen the
humour of it. Small farmers--and their hinds, on plough-horses--were
jostling thoroughbreds. Rough faces that she knew were self-conscious
of a new dignity; rough lips were muttering broad, lively oaths as if
still they were engaged in persuading their mounts to drive a straight
furrow.
Yet to Nance the dignity, the courage, the overwhelming pity of it
all were paramount. The rain and the ceaseless wind in the courtyard
here--the wintry moors above, with sleet half covering their black
austerity--the uneasy whinnying of horses that did not like this cold
snap of wind, telling of snow to come--all made up the burden of a song
that was old as Stuart haplessness and chivalry.
The muttered oaths, the restlessness, died down. The drill of months
had found its answer now. Rough farmers, keen-faced yeomen, squires
gently-bred, were an ordered company. They were equals here, met on a
grave business that touched their hearts. And Nance gained courage,
while she watched the men look quietly about them, as if they might
not see the Lancashire moors again, and were anxious to carry a clear
picture of the homeland into the unknown. It seemed that loyalty so
grim, and so unquestioning, was bound to have its way.
She saw, too, that Sir Jasper was resolute, with a cheeriness that
admitted no denial, saw that her father carried the same easy air.
Then, with a brisk air of command, Sir Jasper gathered up his reins and
lifted his hat.
“For the King, gentlemen!” he said. “It is time we sought the Langton
Road.”
It was so they rode out, through a soaking rain and a wind that nipped
to the bone; and Nance, because she was young and untried as yet, felt
again the chill of bitter disappointment. Like Rupert, her childish
dreams had been made up of this Loyal Meet that was to happen one day.
Year by year it had been postponed. Year by year she had heard her
elders talk of it, when listeners were not about, until it had grown
to the likeness of a fairy-tale, in which all the knights were brave
and blameless, all the dragons evil and beyond reach of pity for the
certain end awaiting them.
And now the tale was coming true, so far as the riding out went. The
hunt was up; but there was no flashing of swords against the clear
sunlight she had pictured, no ringing cheers, no sudden music of the
pipes. These knights of the fairy-tale had proved usual men--men
with their sins and doubts and personal infirmities, who went on the
Prince’s business as if they rode to kirk in time of Lent. She was too
young to understand that the faith behind this rainy enterprise sang
swifter and more clear than any music of the pipes.
She heard them clatter down the road. She was soaked to the skin, and
her mare was fidgeting on the bridle which she still held over-tight,
forgetting that she grasped it.
“You will come indoors, Nance?” said Lady Royd, shivering at the door.
“They’ve gone, and we are left--and that’s the woman’s story always.
Men do not care for us, except as playthings when they see no chance of
shedding blood.”
Nance came out from her dreams. Not the quiet riding-out, not the rain
and the bitter wind, had chilled her as did the knowledge that Will
Underwood was absent from the meet. She had hoped, without confessing
it, that young Hunter’s gibe of yesterday would be disproved, that Will
would be there, whatever business had taken him abroad, in time to
join his fellows. He was not there; and, in the hand that was free of
her mare’s bridle, she crushed the kerchief she had had in readiness.
He had asked for it, to wear when he rode out--and he had not claimed
it--and her pride grew resolute and hot, as if one of her father’s
hinds had laughed at her.
“You’re wet and shivering, child,” said Lady Royd, her temper
frayed, as always, when men were stupid in their need to get away
from feather-beds. “I tell you, men are all alike--they follow any
will-o’-the-wisp, and name him Faith. Faith? What has it done for you
or me?”
Nance quivered, as her mare did, here in the soaking rain and the
wind that would not be quiet. Yet she was resolute, obedient to her
training. “Faith?” she said, with an odd directness and simplicity.
“It will have to help us through the waiting-time. What else? We are
only women here, and men too old for battle----”
“You forget Rupert,” broke in the other, with the tired disdain that
Nance hated. The girl did not know how Lady Royd was suffering, how
heart and strength and sense of well-being had gone out with the
husband who was all in all to her. “Rupert--the heir--is here to guard
us, Nance. The wind will rave about the house--dear heart! how it
will rave, and cry, and whistle--but Rupert will be here! He’ll quiet
our fears for us. He is--so resolute, shall we say?--so stay-at-home.
Cannot you see the days to come?” she went on, seeking a weak relief
from pain in wounding others. “Rupert will come down to us o’ nights,
when the corridors are draughty with their ghosts, and will tell us
he’s been reading books--that we need fear no assault, surprisal,
because good King Charles died for the true faith.” She drew her wrap
about her and shivered.
She was so dainty, so young of face, that her spite against the
first-born gathered strength by contrast. And, somehow, warmth returned
to Nance, though she was forlorn enough, and wet to the skin. “So he
did,” she answered quickly. “No light talk can alter that. The King
died--when he might have bought his life. He _disdained_ to save
himself.”
Lady Royd laughed gently. “Oh, come indoors, my girl. You’ll find
Rupert there--and you can put your heads together, studying old books.”
“Old books? Surely we’ve seen a new page turned to-day? These men who
gathered to the Loyal Meet--were they fools, or bookish? Did they show
like men who were riding out for pastime?”
“My dear,” said Lady Royd, with a tired laugh, “the Stuart faith
becomes you. I see what Sir Jasper meant, when he said one day that you
were beautiful, and I would have it that you had only the prettiness of
youth. Rupert----”
Nance stood at bay, her head up. She did not know her heart, or the
reason of this quiet, courageous fury that had settled on her. “Rupert
fought on the moor--for my sake; you saw the plight Maurice came home
in. I tell you, Rupert can fight like other men.”
“Oh, yes--for books, and causes dead before our time.”
“The Cause lives, Lady Royd--to Rupert and myself,” broke in Nance
impulsively.
So then the elder woman glanced at her with a new, mocking interest.
“So the wind sits there, child, does it? It is ‘Rupert and I’
to-day--and to-morrow it will be ‘we’--and what will Mr. Underwood
think of the pretty foolery, I wonder?”
The girl flushed. This tongue of Lady Royd’s--it was so silken, and yet
it bit like an unfriendly wind. “Mr. Underwood’s opinion carries little
weight these days,” she said, gathering her pride together. “He is
known already as the man who shirked his first big fence and ran away.”
“Oh, then, you’re like the rest of them! All’s hunting here, it
seems--you cannot speak without some stupid talk of fox, or hounds, or
fences. For my part, I like Will Underwood. He’s smooth and easy, and a
respite from the weather.”
“Yes. He is that,” assented Nance, with something of the other’s irony.
“He’s a rest, somehow, from all the wind and rain and downrightness of
Lancashire. But, there! We shall not agree, Nance. You’re too like your
father and Sir Jasper. Come indoors, and get those wet clothes off. We
shall take a chill, the two of us, if we stand here.”
Nance shivered, more from heart-chill than from cold of body.
“Yes,” she said--“if only some one will take this mare of mine to
stable. She’s wet and lonely. All her friends have left her--to seek
the Langton Road.”
Again the older woman was aware of a breadth of sympathy, an
instinctive care for their dumb fellows, that marked so many of these
hill-folk. It seemed barbarous to her that at a time like this, when
women’s hearts were breaking for their men, Nance should be thinking
of her mare’s comfort and peace of mind.
A step sounded across the courtyard. Both women glanced up sharply, and
saw Giles, the bailiff, a ludicrous anger and worry in his face.
“Well, Giles?” asked his mistress, with soft impatience. “Are you a
shirker, too?”
“No, my lady. I was not reared that way. Some cursed fool--asking
pardon for my plain speech--has stolen my horse. I’ll just have to
o’ertake them on foot, I reckon--unless----”
His glance rested on Nance’s mare, big and strong enough to carry him.
“But, Giles, we keep no horse-thieves at Windyhough,” said Lady Royd,
in her gentle, purring voice. “Where did you leave him?”
“Tethered to the stable-door, my lady. He couldn’t have unslipped the
bridle without human hands to help him. It was this way. I had to see
Sir Jasper mounted, and Maister Maurice. They’re raither feckless-like,
unless they’ve got Giles nigh handy to see that all goes well. Well,
after they were up i’ saddle, I tried to get through the swarm o’ folk
i’ the courtyard, and a man on foot has little chance. So I bided till
they gat away, thinking I’d catch them up; and when they’d ridden a
lile way down the road, I ran to th’ stable. Th’ stable-door was there
all right, and th’ ring for tething, but blamed if my fiddle-headed
horse warn’t missing. It was that way, my lady, take it or leave
it--and maister will be sadly needing me.”
He was business-like in all emergencies, and his glance wandered again,
as if by chance, from Nance’s face to the mare’s bridle that she held.
“There’s not a horse in Lancashire just the equal of my chestnut,” he
said dispassionately; “but I’d put up with another, if ’twere offered
me.”
Nance, bred on the soil, knew what this sturdy, six-foot fellow asked
of her. It was hard to give up the one solace she had brought to
Windyhough--her mare, who would take her long scampers up the pastures
and the moor when she needed room about her.
“She could not carry you, Giles,” said the girl, answering the plain
meaning behind his words.
“Ay, blithely, miss. But, then, you wouldn’t spare her, like.”
There was a moment’s silence. Nance was asked to give up something for
the Cause--something as dear to her as hedgerows, and waving sterns of
hounds, and a game fox ahead. Then she put the bridle into Giles’s hand.
“On second thoughts”--she halted to stroke the mare’s neck--“I think,
Giles, she’ll carry you. Tell Sir Jasper that the women, too, are leal,
though they’re compelled to stay at home.”
Giles wasted little time in thanks. Business-like, even in this matter
of running his neck into a halter, he sprang to the mare’s back. He
would be sore before the day was out, because the saddle was wringing
wet by this time; but he was used to casual hardships.
Lady Royd watched the bailiff ride quickly down the road, heard the
last hoof-beats die away. “You are odd, you folk up here,” she said,
with a warmer note in her tired voice. “You did not give up your mare
lightly, Nance--and to Giles, of all men. Who stole his horse, think
you?”
Nance answered without knowing she had framed the thought. “Rupert is
missing, too,” she said, with an odd, wayward smile. “I told you he had
pluck.”
Yet, after they had gone indoors, after she had changed her
riding-gear, Nance sat in the guest-chamber upstairs, and could think
only of Will Underwood. Her dreams of him had been so pleasant, so
loyal; she was not prepared to trample on them. She saw him giving her
a lead on many a bygone hunting-day--saw the eager face, and heard his
low, persuasive voice.
Nance was steadfast, even to disproven trust. She caught hold of Sir
Jasper’s challenge yesterday, when men had doubted Will. He would join
them on the southward march. Surely he would, knowing how well she
liked him. And the kerchief he had asked for--it must wait, until he
came in his own time to claim it.