THE HEIR RETURNS
AT Windyhough, Martha the dairymaid was restless, like all the women
left about the house. She could not settle to her work, though it
was churning-day, and good cream was likely to be wasted. Martha at
five-and-thirty, had not found a mate, yet she would have made a good
wife to any man; strong, supple, with wind and roses in her cheeks, she
was born to matronhood; though, by some blindness that had hindered the
farmer-folk about her when she crossed their path, she had not found
her road in life. And, in her quiet, practical way, she knew that the
shadows were beginning to lengthen down her road, that she might very
well go on dairying, eating, sleeping, till they buried her in the
churchyard of St. John’s--no more, no less.
The prospect had never shown so cheerless as it did just now. The men,
as their habit was, had all the luck; they had gone off on horseback,
pretending that some cause or other took them into open country. For
her part, she was tired of being left behind.
Lady Royd was indoors. The housekeeper was not about to keep the maids
attentive to routine. All was silent and lack-lustre; and Martha went
down the road till she reached the gate at its foot--the gate that
stood open after letting the Loyal Meet ride through.
“It’s queer and lonesome, when all’s said,” she thought, swinging
gently on the gate. “Men are bothersome cattle--full o’ tempers and
contrariness--but, dear heart, I miss their foolishness.”
She thought the matter out for lack of better occupation, but came to
no conclusion. In front of her, as she sat on the top bar of the gate,
she could see the muddied hoof-tracks that marked the riding-out. Her
own father, her two brothers, were among Sir Jasper’s company; they
were thrifty, common-sense folk, like herself, and she wondered if
there was something practical, after all, in this business that had
left Windyhough so empty and so silent.
A man’s figure came hobbling up the road--a broad, well-timbered
figure enough, but bent about the legs and shoulders. It was Simon
Foster, coming in tired out from roaming up and down the pastures.
Though scarce turned fifty, he had been out with the ’15 Rising, thirty
years ago; but rheumatism had rusted his joints before their time, and
to-day, because he was not fit to ride with haler men, he had kept away
from the Meet at Windyhough, for he dared not trust himself to stand an
onlooker at this new Rising.
Martha got down from the gate, and opened it with a mock curtsey. “I’m
pleased to see a man, Simon,” she said, moved by some wintry coquetry.
“I began to fancy, like, we were all women here at Windyhough.”
“So we are,” he growled--“but I’d set ye in your places, that I would,
if nobbut I could oil my joints.”
“You’ve come home in a nice temper, Simon.”
“Ay, lass, and I’ll keep it, till I know whether Sir Jasper has set
a crown on the right head. It isn’t easy, biding here wi’ Lancashire
weather----”
“And Lancashire witches,” put in Martha, with sly provocation.
Simon was tired, and had nothing especial to do; so he stayed awhile,
telling himself that a maid’s blandishments, though daft and idle, were
one way of passing the time. “Oh, ay, you’re snod enough, Martha,” he
said, rubbing his lean chin. “I’ve seen few in my time to better ye.”
“Now, Simon! And they say your tongue is rough as an old file. For my
part, I allus knew ye could be kind and easy, if ye’d a mind to.”
“I war a bit of a devil once, may be,” he admitted, with a slow,
pleasant laugh, as if he praised himself unduly for past escapades.
“Ay, a bit of a devil, Martha. I’ll own to it. But rheumatiz has taught
me sense since them days.”
“Sense is as you take it, Simon. Ye might shoot wider o’ the mark than
to peep at a lass’s een, just whiles, like.”
Simon Foster, feeling that their talk grew warmer than mere pleasantry
demanded, glanced away from the topic. “I saw summat on my way down
fro’ the moor,” he said, dry and matter-of-fact once more. “There’s no
accounting for it, but I saw it with my two eyes, and I’m puzzled. You
wouldn’t call me less than sober, Martha?”
“No,” she put in dryly. “Sobriety was allus a little bit of a failing
wi’ ye, Simon. There’s times to be sober, I allus did say--and times to
be playful, as the kitten said to the tabby-cat.”
“Well, I happened to look into th’ sky, just as I’d getten past Timothy
Wantless’s barn, and I saw summat,” went on Simon stolidly.
“So ye went star-gazing? Shame on ye! Only lads i’ their courting time
go star-gazing.”
“Maybe. But it was daylight, as it happened, and I wasn’t thinking o’
courtship--not just then,” he added guardedly. “I war thinking of an
old mare I meant to sell Timothy Wantless to-morn for twice as much
as she’s worth. She wasn’t fit to carry one o’ Sir Jasper’s men, and
she’ll ruin him i’ corn afore he comes back fro’ Lunnon, and it stands
to reason she mun be sold for what she’ll fetch. And I war scratching
my head, like, wondering how I’d get round Timothy--he’s stiff and
snappy at a bargain--when I happened to look up--and there war men on
horseback, fair i’ th’ middle o’ the sky, riding all as it might have
been a hunting day.”
“Good sakes! I’ll go skerry to my bed, Simon.”
“It war queer, I own; and, if they’d been on safe ground, I’d have
run in to see what ’twas all about; but, seeing they were up above, I
watched ’em a while, and then I left ’em to it.”
Martha’s brief mood of superstition passed. “Simon, you’re as sober as
a man that’s never had th’ chance to step into an ale-house, and you’re
over old to be courting-daft----”
“Not so old, my lass,” he broke in, with the heat she had tempted from
him. “I should know, at my age, how to court a woman.”
“I believe you do, Simon--if nobbut you’d try your hand, like.”
“Lads go daft about ye women--think ye’re all made up of buttercups and
kiss-me-quicks. But I know different.”
“Oh, ay?” asked Martha gently. “What d’ye know, Simon?”
“Naught so much, lass--only that women are like nettles. Handle ’em
tenderly, and they’ll gi’e ye a rash ye can feel for a week o’ days.
But grasp ’em--and they’re soft as lettuces.”
“I allus did say older men had more sense than lads. You’re right,
Simon. Grasp us----”
“Ay, another day,” said Simon--bluntly, and with a hint of fear. “For
my part, I’m too full o’ Sir Jasper’s business to heed any sort o’
moonshine.”
He was half up the road already, but she enticed him back.
“These men you saw riding in the sky, Simon? You’ve frightened me--and
I was allus feared o’ ghosties.”
Simon, though he would not admit it, was troubled by the picture he
had seen, up yonder on the moors; and, after the human fashion, he was
willing to share his trouble with another.
“Well, I saw ’em--no denying that,” he said, returning slowly. “There
were two riding at the front--like as it might have been Sir Jasper
and Squire Demaine--and a lot o’ horsemen scampering after. There
was thick haze all across the sky, and I saw ’em like a picture in a
printed book. I’d have thought less about it, Martha, if it hadn’t been
that Maister Rupert--the day, ye mind, he came home from fighting his
brother--told me how, that varry morn, he’d seen the like picture up
above his head--just horsemen, he said, galloping up and down where
honest sky should be.”
“Ben o’ the stables war talking of it awhile since, now I call to mind.
One here and there had seen the same sort o’ picture, he said; but I
paid no heed. Ben was allus light and feather-brained--not steady,
Simon, like ye.”
Her glance was tender, frank, dismaying; and Simon answered it with a
slow, foolish smile. “Steady is as steady does. For my part--what wi’
rheumatiz, and seeing other folk get all the fighting, and me left at
home--ye could mak a bit of a lile fool o’ me, Martha, I do believe.
Ye’re so bonnie, like----”
“No harm i’ that, is there?”
“Well, not just what ye’d call harm--not exactly harm--but my day’s
over, lass.”
“That’s what the rooster said when he war moulting, Simon; but he lived
to crow another day.”
Simon had learned from the far-off days of soldiering that there are
times when the bravest are counselled to retreat in good order. “Well,
I’m i’ the moult just now,” he said impassively, “and it’s time I gat
into th’ house, now they’re made me some queer sort of indoor servant.
Lady Royd will be wanting this and that--ye know her pretty-prat way,
needing fifty things i’ a minute.”
“But, Simon----”
He trudged steadily forward, not turning his head; and Martha sighed as
she climbed the gate again and began to rock gently to and fro. “Men
are kittlesome cattle,” she said discontentedly.
Round the bend of the road below she heard the sound of
footsteps--halting steps that now and then ceased for a while. She
forgot Simon, forgot her peevishness, as she saw the figure that came
up the road towards her. All the motherhood that was strong and eager
in this lass came to the front as she saw Rupert, the heir--Rupert,
who had been missing since the dawn--come home in this derelict, queer
fashion. She ran out and put an arm about him. He was not the heir
now, the master left in charge of Windyhough; he was the lad whose
cries she had helped to still, long since in nursery days.
“Why, sir, ye’re i’ th’ wars, and proper. You’re limping sorely.”
Rupert steadied himself against her arm for a moment, then put her away
and went forward. “Nay, I’m out of the wars, Martha,” he said, with the
rare smile that made friends among those who chanced to see it. “I’m
out of the wars--and that’s my trouble.”
“But you’re limping----”
“Yes,” he snapped, with sudden loss of temper. “I’m limping,
Martha--since my birth. That’s no news to me.”
He went in at the door of Windyhough, and in the hall encountered Lady
Royd. The light was dim here, and she did not see his weariness.
“Where have you been, Rupert?” she asked peevishly.
He kissed her lightly on the cheek. “I’ve been up the moors, mother,”
he said, “planning how best to defend Windyhough if the attack should
come.” He was here to take up the post allotted to him, and to his last
ebb of strength he meant to be debonair and cheery, as his father would
have been under like hardship. “There are so few men left here, and all
of us are either old, or--or useless,” he added, with his whimsical,
quiet smile.
Lady Royd, oppressed by loneliness, swept out of her self-love by the
storm of this Loyal Meet that had left her in its wake, stood near to
the life which is known to workaday folk--the life made up of sleet and
a little sun, of work and the need for faith and courage. She looked at
her boy, trying to read his face in the dull, uncertain light; and her
heart ached for him.
“But, Rupert,” she said by and by, “there’s no fear of attack. The
march has gone south--the fighting will be there, not here--you
overheard your father say as much.”
He winced, remembering the eagerness with which he had followed Sir
Jasper round the house, the pride he had felt in noting each loophole,
the muskets, and the piles of shot entrusted to his care. He recalled,
with minute and pitiful exactness, how afterwards he had been an
unwilling listener while his father said it had been all a fairy-tale
to lull his elder-born to sleep.
“My father said it was child’s-play,” he answered quietly. “Yes, I’m
not likely to forget just what he said--and what he left unsaid. But,
mother, the storm might blow this way again, and I’m here to guard you,
as I promised.”
The day was no easy one for Rupert, accustomed from childhood to find
himself in the rear of action. Yet it was harder to Lady Royd, who
had known little discipline till now, who looked at this son who was
counted scholarly, and, with eyes accustomed to the dim light of the
hall, saw at last the stubborn manhood in his face.
“I did not guess,” she said, her voice gentle, wondering,
submissive--“Rupert, I did not guess till now why your father was
always so full of trust in you.”
His eyes brightened. He had expected a colder welcome from this
pretty, sharp-tongued mother. It seemed, after all, he had done well
to return to his post at Windyhough. His thoughts ran forward, like
a pack in full cry. The battle might shift north again--there might
be some hot skirmish in the open, or the need to protect fugitives at
Windyhough--or twenty pleasant happenings that would give him escape
from idle sentry-duty here. Rupert was at his dreams again. An hour
since he had dragged himself along the road, sick at heart, sick of
body, disillusioned altogether; and now he was eager with forward hope
because Lady Royd, from the pain of her own trouble, had found one
swift word of encouragement. Encouragement had been rare in the lad’s
life, and he found it a fine stimulant--too fine a one for his present
needs. He moved quickly forward. His damaged foot bent under him, and
for a moment the pain made him wince.
“It is nothing, mother,” he said, dropping on to the settle and
looking up with the quiet smile that haunted her. “I’m tired and
wet--wet through to the heart, I think--let me get up and help you.”
She did not know what to do with this son, who was growing dearer to
her each moment. Shut off from real life too long, she had no skill
such as workaday mothers would have learned by now, and she called
shrilly for the servants.
A big man, bent in the body, made his way forward presently through
the women, pushing, them aside as if he picked his way through useless
lumber. It was Simon Foster, who had grown used, in the far-off ’15
Rising, to the handling of wounded men.
“A baddish sprain--no more, no less,” he growled, after he had taken
off boot and stocking and looked at the swollen ankle.
“Oh, the poor lad!” cried Lady Royd, fidgety and useless. “Go, one of
you, for the surgeon----”
“There’s no need, my lady,” broke in Simon Foster. He had forgotten the
manners of a trained servant, and was back again in the happy days when
he had carried a pike for the Cause and did not know it lost. “I’ve
mended worse matters than this in my time. You, Martha, get bandages.
They’re somewhere handy--we brought plenty in at haytime, along with
the powder-kegs.”
Lady Royd did not rebuke him. Martha, who not long since had tempted
him to folly, went off submissively to do his bidding. It seemed
natural to these women that a man should be in command--a man who knew
his mind and did not turn aside.
“There,” said Simon, after he had strapped the ankle. “It will bother
ye a while, master, but there’s a lot o’ time for rest these days at
Windyhough. Let me gi’e ye an arm up the stair. Ye’d best get to bed, I
reckon.”
Nance Demaine had kept to her room this morning. They had brought her
to Windyhough, had taken her mare, had left her derelict in a house
that harboured only memories of past deeds. The active men were gone;
the mettled horses were gone; she was bidden to keep within four walls,
and wait, and pray. And she wished neither to pray nor to be stifled by
four house-walls; she longed to be out in the open country, following
the open road that had led to her heart’s desire. Tired of her own
thoughts at last, she went out on to the landing, with a restless sense
that duty was calling her below-stairs; but she got no farther than the
window that looked on a stormy sweep of moorland.
Nance was in a bitter mood, as she sat in the window-seat and watched
the white, lifeless hills, the sodden fields. Squire Demaine had
trained her to love of galloping and loyalty, had taught her that
England’s one, prime need was to see a Stuart on the throne again; and
now, when deeds were asked of men and women both, he had left her here,
to weave samplers, or to help Lady Royd brew simples in the stillroom,
while they waited for their men to come home from the slaying.
There was Will Underwood, too. With the obstinacy that attaches to a
girl’s first love, she was warm in defence of him against the men who
had liked him--some few of them--but had never trusted him. He had not
come to claim her kerchief. Well, he would claim it another day; he
had his own reasons, doubtless, for joining the Meet farther south.
Some urgent message had reached him--from the Prince himself, may
be--bidding him ride out on an errand of especial danger. No surmise
was too wild to find acceptance. He was so strong, so graceful and
well-favoured; he sat his horse so well, courted risks which prudent
riders declined. It was fitting that he should be chosen for some post
demanding gaiety, a firm seat in saddle, and reckless courage.
Nance, for all the sleety outlook, was seeing this Rising again as a
warm, impulsive drama. She had watched Sir Jasper and her father ride
out, had been chilled by their simple gravity; but she had forgotten
the lesson already, in her girl’s need for the alluring and the
picturesque. This love of hers for Underwood was an answer to the
like need. At all hazards she must have warmth and colour, to feed her
young, impulsive dreams of a world built in the midst of fairyland. She
could not know, just yet, that the true warmth, the true, vivid colours
come to those who, not concerned with the fairyland of make-believe,
ride leal and trusty through the wind that stings their faces, over the
sloppy, ill-found roads that spatter them with mud.
She was desolate, this child who sat in the window-seat and constructed
all afresh the picture of her hero-lover. She was weaving one of
the samplers she despised, after all--not with wool and canvas, but
in fancy’s loom. Obstinate in her demand for vivid drama, she was
following Will Underwood already on this errand that the Prince had
entrusted to his care. She saw him riding through the dangerous night
roads, and prayed for his safety, at each corner of a highway peopled
with assassins. She saw him galloping recklessly in open daylight,
meeting odds laughable in their overwhelming number, killing his men,
not singly but by scores, as he rode on, untouched, and gay, and
loyal to his trust. It is so that young love is apt to make its idol
a knight miraculous, moving through a cloud-land too ethereal for the
needs of each day as it comes. Nance Demaine could hold her own in
the open country; but here, shut in by the walls of a house that was
old and dumb, waiting for the men’s return, she reached out for Will
Underwood’s help, and needed him--or needed the untried, easy air of
romance that he carried with him.
She got up from the window-seat at last. The sleet and the piping wind
wearied her. She was tired already of inaction, ashamed of the thoughts
that could not keep away from pictures of Will Underwood, riding on the
Prince’s service. She remembered that she was a guest here, that she
must get away from her dreams as best she might.
“I must go down,” she said fretfully. “Lady Royd will be needing me.
And she’ll take my hands, and cry a little, and ask me, ‘Will Sir
Jasper live?’ And then she’ll kiss me, and cry again, and ask, ‘Will
Sir Jasper die?’ Oh, I know it all beforehand! But I must go down.”
Even now she could not bring herself to the effort. She paced up
and down the floor of her bedchamber. Disdain of her position here,
intemperate dislike of weaklings, the longing to be out and about under
the free sky, were overwhelming in their call to this child who needed
discipline. And, though she was Squire Demaine’s child, she resented
this first, drab-coloured call of duty.
She braced herself to the effort. But she was bitter still, and some
remembrance of her father’s teaching took her unawares. “Lady Royd
comes from the south country, where they killed a Royal Stuart once,”
she muttered. “She does not know--she cannot even learn--our northern
ways. Sir Jasper lives or dies--but either way he lives. She does not
know that either way he _lives_--as we count life up here.”
Nance was shaken by the passion known to women who have seen
their men go out to war--the passion that finds no outlet in hard
give-and-take--the desperate, keen heartache that is left to feed upon
itself.
“I must go down,” she said, as if repeating a lesson hard to learn.
As she opened the door and crossed the landing, she heard a heavy
footfall on the stair below, then Simon Foster’s laboured breathing.
Some instinct of disaster chilled her. In this house of emptiness,
with the wind roaming like an unquiet ghost down every corridor, she
listened to the uncanny, stealthy upcoming. Once, years ago, she had
heard men bringing home her brother, killed in the hunting-field; and
it seemed to her that she was listening to the same sounds again, was
feeling the same vague, unreasoning dread. Then she remembered that
Rupert had been missing since dawn, and she was moved by some grief
that struck deeper than she understood.
They turned the corner of the stair at last, and Nance saw Rupert
coming up--Rupert, his face grey and tired as he leaned on Simon’s arm;
Rupert, who looked older, manlier, more like Sir Jasper. And then, for
no reason she could have given, she lost half her grief. At least he
was not dead; and there was a look about him which stronger men of her
acquaintance had worn when they were in the thick of trouble.
There was a long, mullioned window lighting the stairway head. And
Rupert, looking up, saw Nance standing there--close to him, yet far
away as some lady of dreams might stand. The keen winter’s sun, getting
out from sleet-clouds, made a St. Luke’s summer round about her; and
Nance, who was just comely, good to see, at other times, borrowed a
strange beauty from the hour and place, and from the human pity that
was troubling her.
Rupert halted on the landing, and looked at her as if she were food and
drink to him. Then he flushed, and turned his head.
“You?” he said quietly. “I’d rather have met any one but you just now.”
“And why, my dear?” asked Nance, with simple tenderness.
“Why? Because I’m maimed, and sick at heart,” he said savagely.
“How did it come about?” she interrupted, with the same impulsive
tenderness.
“I tried to join the Rising, and was thrown. So much was to be
expected, Nance?”
She had been thinking hard things of stay-at-homes and weaklings; and,
as she looked at Rupert now, she was touched by keen reproach. He was
ashamed, tired out, in pain of soul and body; yet he was smiling, was
making a jest of his indifferent horsemanship.
Nance recalled once more that evening on the moors, when Rupert had
bidden Will Underwood ride with her to Windyhough, while he stayed with
his brother. In his voice, in the set of his whole face, there had been
a stubborn strength that had astonished her; and here again, on the
sunlit, draughty stairhead, he was showing her a glimpse of his true
self.
“I wish you better luck,” she said simply--“oh, so much better luck.”
He saw that there were tears in her eyes, and felt his weakness coming
on him like a cloud, and fought it for a moment longer.
“It will come, Nance,” he said--cheerily, though he felt himself a
liar. “Go down to mother. She--she needs help more than I. Now, Simon,
you’ve got your breath again.”
“Ay, maister--as mich as I shall ever get, as the short-winded horse
said when they asked him why he roared like a smithy-bellows.”
“Then I’ll go forward”--again the keen, bitter smile--“to the
lumber-room, Simon, among the broken odds and ends.”
Nance stood aside, finding no words to help herself or him, and watched
them go along the corridor, and in at the door of Rupert’s bedchamber.
And she knew, beyond doubt or surmise, that the Loyal Meet had left one
useful volunteer at home to-day.
She found Lady Royd in the low-raftered parlour that always carried
an air of luxury and ease. In summer it was heavy with the scent of
garden flowers; and now there was a tired, luxurious appeal from bowls
of faded rose-leaves set everywhere about the room. A fire, too big
for the comfort of open-air folk, was crackling on the hearth. In
all things this parlour was a dainty frame enough for the mistress
whose beauty had been nipped, not strengthened, by the keen winds of
Lancashire.
“Nance, will he live?” asked Lady Royd, running forward with the
outstretched hands, the very words, that she had looked for. But she
spoke of Rupert, not of Sir Jasper. “He came home so wearied-out--so
lame and grey of face----”
“Oh, I met him on the stairhead just now,” broke in Nance, with sharp
common sense. “He’s had a fall from his horse--and he made a jest of
it--and that is all.”
“Then he’ll not die, you think? Nance, tell me, he’ll not die. I’ve
been unkind to him in days past, and I--I am sorry.”
It seemed to Nance that in this house of Windyhough she was never to
escape from pity, from the sharper, clearer insight into life that
these hopeless days were teaching her. This pretty matron, whom her
husband had spoiled, sheltering her from draughts as if she were a
hothouse flower too rare to take her chance in the open border--she was
foolish as of old, so far as speech and manner went. But in her face,
in her lisping, childish voice, there was a new, strong appeal that
touched the younger woman.
“I think that he--will _live_,” said the girl, with sudden passion.
“He’s here among the women now--but to-morrow--or the next day, or the
next--he’ll prove himself.”
Lady Royd moved aimlessly about the room, warmed her hands at the fire,
shivered as she glanced at the wintry sunlight out of doors. Then she
came close to Nance, as if asking protection of some kind. “You hold
the Faith, child. I do not,” she said, with bewildering candour.
“But, Lady Royd--indeed, we’re of the same Faith----”
“Yes, in the open shows, when folk are looking on. I’d as lief go
abroad without my gown as not be seen at Mass. It is asked of Sir
Jasper’s wife; so is constancy to the yellow-haired laddie who has sent
sober men astray. Veiled lids are asked for when Will Underwood makes
pretty speeches, with his eyes on fire; but at my heart, child--at my
heart I’ve faith only in each day’s ease as it comes.”
“Mr. Underwood has gone to the wars,” broke in Nance, with an odd sense
of misery and an obstinate contempt, for all that, of this woman’s
prattling. “He’ll come back in his own time, Lady Royd, after the King
is on his throne again.”
“But _has_ he gone to the wars? I missed him among our friends to-day.”
“Because he has ridden on a private errand of the Prince’s.” Nance was
reckless in her protection of Will’s honour. “He was the likeliest
rider of them all to be chosen for such service.”
“Oh, there! And I hoped he would be wise, and stay at home, and ride
over now and then to cheer us with his pleasant face.” Her smile was
frail and listless, with a certain youthful archness in it that drew
men to her side; but its appeal was lost on Nance. “Of course, I am
loyal to Sir Jasper--and I shall cry each night till he returns--but
Will’s homage is charming, Nance. It is so delicate, child--a word
here, and a glance there--that one forgets one is middle-aged. He spent
some years in Paris, they say--to escape from his father’s money-making
and from the bleak chapel on the hill--and I can well believe it. The
French have that gift of suggesting a grand passion, when neither actor
in the comedy believes a word of it.”
Nance moved away, and looked out at the sunlight and the sleety hills.
So strong, so impulsive, was her resistance to Sir Jasper’s wife that
even the “bleak chapel on the hill”--she knew it well, a four-square,
dowdy little building not far from her own home--took on an unsuspected
strength and dignity. It was reared out of moor-stone, at least--reared
by stubborn, if misguided, folk who were bred on the same uplands as
herself. Will Underwood had learned follies in Paris, undoubtedly; but,
if her liking for him, her care for his honour, had any meaning, it
rested on the faith that he had outgrown these early weaknesses, that
he was English to the core. He could ride straight--there was something
pathetic in her clinging to this one, outstanding virtue--he was known
among men to be fearless, strong in all field-sports; he had endurance
and a liking for the open air. And Lady Royd, in her vague, heedless
way, had painted him as a parlour lap-dog, who could while a pleasant
hour away for women who lived in over-heated rooms.
Nance was obstinate in her loyalty to friends; yet she remembered now
stray hints, odds and ends of scandal passed between the women after
dinner, while they waited for the men to join them; and all had been
agreed that Will Underwood had the gift of making the last woman who
engaged his ardour believe she was the first.
Lady Royd warmed her hands at the fire again, and laughed gently. “Why,
child, you’re half in love with him, like the rest of us. I know it by
your silence.”
And Nance, whose good-humour was a byword among her intimates, found
her temper snap, like any common, ill-forged sword might do. “By your
leave,” she said, “I never did anything by halves. My friends are my
friends. I’m loyal, Lady Royd.”
“Yes, yes--and I--am middle-aged, my dear, and the fire grows cold
already.”
There was appeal in the older woman’s voice. She needed the girl’s
strength, her windy, moor-swept grasp of the big hills and the bigger
faith. But Nance was full of her own troubles, and would not heed.
“There are dogs left at Windyhough?” she said, moving to the door.
“Well, then, let me take them for a scamper. I cannot stay in prison,
Lady Royd.”
Nance swept out of the parlour, with its faded scent of rose-leaves,
donned hat and cloak, and went out in hot rebellion to cool her fever
in the nipping wind. She did not guess how she was needed by this
frail, discontented woman she had left indoors.
Lady Royd, indeed, was human--no more, no less. She could not escape in
a moment from the spoiled, settled habits of a lifetime. Sir Jasper had
ridden out, and the misery of it had been sudden, agonising. Rupert had
blundered home, in his derelict way, with a sprained ankle and a face
as white as the hills he loved; and the motherhood in her, untrained,
suppressed, had cut through her like a knife. All was desolation here;
and she thought of her homeland--of the south country, where winds
blew soft and quiet, and lilac bloomed before the leaf-buds had well
broken here in Lancashire--and she was hidden by a mist of desperate
self-pity.
Like Rupert, when he found himself lying in the mud of Langton Road not
long ago and heard his horse go galloping down the wind, she thought
of death as an easy pathway of escape. Like Rupert, she was not needed
here. She was not of the breed that rides out, easy in saddle, on such
heroic, foolish errands as Sir Jasper coveted. And yet, when she came
to face the matter, she had not courage, either, to die and venture
into the cold unknown beyond.
She had talked of Will Underwood, of his easy gallantry, and Nance had
thought her heartless; yet she had sought only a refuge from the stress
of feeling that was too hard for her to bear.
She moved up and down the parlour, in her haphazard, useless way. Her
husband had ridden out on a venture high and dangerous; and she was
setting a cushion to rights here, smoothing the fold of a curtain
there, with the intentness of a kitten that sees no farther than its
playthings. But under all there was a fierce, insistent heartache, a
rebellion against the weakness that hindered her. She began to think of
Rupert, to understand, little by little, how near together they were,
he and she. Her cowardice seemed lifted away by friendly hands, as she
told herself that she would go up and sit at the lad’s bedside. She
had known him too little in years past; there was time now to repair
mistakes.
Simon Foster was watching the master, as he lay in that sleep of sheer
exhaustion, following long effort and self-doubt, which was giving him
strength and respite before the morrow needed him. Simon heard a low
tapping at the door, opened it, saw Lady Royd standing on the threshold.
“Is he asking for me?” she said diffidently.
“No, my lady. He’s asking for twelve hours o’ sleep--and he’ll get
them, if I’ve any say i’ the matter.”
“But you’ll be tired, Simon, and I--I am wide awake. Let me sit by
him----”
“You’re kind,” he interrupted bluntly; “but I’m watch-dog here, by
your leave. It happens to be war, not peace--and no offence, my lady.”
She turned, aware that a man was in command here; and Simon was left to
his interrupted musings.
“By the Heart,” he growled, “if only he could find his way! He’s lean
and weak; but the lad’s keen, hard-bitten pluck--it’s killing him
before his time, it is. He can find no outlet for it, like.”