THE GLAD DEFENCE
AT Windyhough the gale sobbed and moaned about the leafless trees
that sheltered it from the high moors. Sleet was driving against the
window-panes, and there was promise, if the wind did not change,
of heavy snow to follow. And indoors were Lady Royd and Nance,
the women-servants, and the men too old to carry arms behind Sir
Jasper--these, and the lean scholar who was heir to Windyhough.
Simon Foster--he who had carried a pike in the ’15 Rising, and felt
himself the watch-dog here--had been moving restlessly up and down all
day, like a faithful hound whose scent is quick for trouble. And now,
near three of the afternoon, he was going the round of the defences
once again with the young master.
“You’re not looking just as gay as you were yesternight,” he growled,
snatching a glance at Rupert’s face. “Summat amiss wi’ the Faith ye
hold by, master?”
Rupert was sick with bitter trouble, sick with inaction and the
frustration of long hopes; yet he held his head up suddenly and smiled.
“Nothing amiss with that,” he answered cheerily. “I’m too weak to carry
it at times, that is all, Simon.”
Simon stroked his cheek thoughtfully. “Well, it’s all moonshine to
me--speaking as a plain man; but I’ve noticed it has a way o’ carrying
folk over five-barred gates and walls too high to clamber. For my part,
I’m weary, dead weary; and I see naught before us, master, save a heavy
snow-storm coming, and women blanketing us wi’ whimsies, and a sort
o’ silent, nothing-doing time that maddens a body. You’ve the gift o’
faith--just tell me what it shows you, Maister Rupert.”
The master laughed. It tickled his humour that he, who was wading deep
in sickness and disillusion, should be asked for help in need by this
grizzled elder, who had loved and pitied him, who had tried, these
last days, to teach him the right handling of a musket. “Just this,
Simon--square shoulders, and a quick eye, and the day’s routine ahead.
What else?”
“Then faith is a soldier’s game, after all.”
“Yes, a soldier’s game,” Rupert answered dryly.
And so they went forward from room to room, from loophole to loophole,
that cast slant, grey eyes on the sleet that was blowing across the
troubled moonlight out of doors. And, at the end of the round, after
Simon had gone down to see if he could catch a glimpse of Martha in the
kitchen, Rupert heard the sound of spinet keys, touched lightly from
below. And then he heard Nance Demaine singing the ballads that were
dear to him, and a sudden hunger came upon him.
He went down to the parlour, stood silent in the doorway. Lady Royd was
upstairs, putting her toy spaniel to bed with much ceremony; and Nance
was alone with the candlelight and the faded rose-leaf scents. With
ache of heart, with a longing strong and troublesome, he saw the trim
figure, the orderly brown hair, the whole fragrant person of this girl
who was singing loyal ballads--this girl who kept his feet steady up
the hills of endeavour, and of longing for the battle that did not come
his way.
And the mood took Nance to sing a ballad of the last Stuart Rising,
thirty years ago, when all was lost because the leaders of the
enterprise were weaker than the men who rode behind them.
“There’s a lonely tryst to keep, wife,
All for the King’s good health.
God knows, when we two bid farewell
I give him all my wealth.”
It was the song of a cavalier, written to his wife the night before
he went to execution for the Stuart’s sake. And it had lived, this
ballad, because to its core it rang true to the heart’s love of a man.
And Nance was singing it as if she understood its depth and meaning.
This was the man’s love, royal, simple, courageous, of which she had
talked to Lady Royd not long ago, for which she had been laughed at by
the older woman. Yet one man at least had found grace to carry such
love with him unblemished to the scaffold. The resignation, the willing
sacrifice for kingship’s sake summed up by “the lonely tryst to keep,”
as if this were a little matter--the human note of loss and heartbreak
when she reached the last love confession, strong, tender, final in its
simplicity--Nance’s voice found breadth and compass for them all, as if
she had stood by this cavalier long dead, feeling pulse by pulse with
him. And so, in a sense, she had; for these royalists of Lancashire had
faults and weaknesses in plenty, but they had been strong in this--from
generation to generation they had reared their children to a gospel
resolute and thorough as the words of this old ballad.
Nance lingered on those last words as if they haunted her--“I give
him all my wealth.” And Rupert, standing in the doorway, was aware
that, even to his eyes, Nance had never shown herself so tender and
complete. She leaned over the spinet, touching a key idly now and
then; and her thoughts were of Will Underwood, who had courage of a
sort, a fine, reckless horsemanship that was needed by the Rising; of
Wild Will, whose whole, big, dashing make-believe of character was
ruined by a mean calculation, a need to keep houseroom and good cheer
safe about him. She remembered her trust in him, their meeting on the
moor, the sick, helpless misery that followed. And then she thought of
Rupert, standing scholarly and apart from life--no figure of a hero,
but one whom she trusted, in some queer way, to die for the faith
that was in him, if need asked. And then again she laughed, a little,
mournful laugh of trouble and bewilderment. Life seemed so wayward and
haphazard, such a waste of qualities that were hindered by weaknesses
tragic in their littleness. If Rupert’s steady soul could be housed in
Will Underwood’s fine, dominant body, the world would see a man after
its own heart.
And Rupert had his own thoughts, too, in this silence they were
sharing. He knew to a heart-beat the way of his love for Nance, the
gladness and the torture of it; and again he wondered, with passionate
dismay, that he had done so little to make himself a man of both
worlds, ready to fight through the open roads for her. He had given her
a regard that, by its very strength and quality, was an honour in the
giving and the receiving; he had built high dreams about her, feeling
her remote and unattainable; but he had failed in common sense, in
grasp of the truth that a man, before he reaches the hilltops where
high dreams find reality, must climb the workaday, rough fields. He
understood all this, knew for the first time that his father had been
just in leaving him behind, because the fighting-line needs men who can
use their two hands, can sit a horse, can face, not death only but all
the harsh, unlovely details that war asks of men. His humiliation was
bitter and complete. There was Nance, sitting at the spinet, the gusty
candlelight playing about her trim, royal little figure, and she was
desirable beyond belief; and yet he knew that she stood, not for faith
only but for deeds, that he had only gone a few paces on the road that
led to the fulfilment of his dreams.
The silence was so intimate, so full of the strife that hinders comrade
souls at times, that Nance knew she was not alone. She glanced up, saw
Rupert standing in the doorway, read the misery and longing in his
face. For women have a gift denied to men--they see us as an open book,
clear for them to read, while we can only sight them at odd moments,
like startled deer that cross the mountain mists.
“You’re sad, my dear,” she said, with pleasant handling of the intimacy
that had held between them since they were boy and girl together.
“No,” he answered, hard pressed and dour. “I am--your fool, Nance, as I
always was.”
“Come sit beside me,” she commanded. “I shall sing Stuart songs to
you--sing them till you hear the pipes go screeling up Ben Ore, till I
see the good light in your face again.”
Her tenderness was hard to combat. “I need no Stuart songs,” he said,
with savage bluntness.
“Why, then, you’re changeable. You liked them once.”
“I’ll like them again, Nance--but not to-night. It is Stuart deeds I
ask, and they do not come my way.”
Rupert had crossed to the spinet, and, as he stood looking down at her
with grave eyes, Nance was aware of some new mastery about him, some
rugged strength that would have nothing of this indoor, parlour warmth.
“Rupert, what is amiss with you?” she asked gravely.
He was himself again--scholarly, ironic. “What is amiss? You, and
the house where I’m left among the women, because I have learned no
discipline--it is a pleasant end, Nance, to my dreams of the riding
out. Your fool, listening to his mother’s spaniel whining as she puts
him to bed, and the empty house, and the wind that calls men out to the
open--just that.”
She came near to understanding of him now. While there was peace,
and no likelihood at all of war, he had been content, in his odd,
indifferent way, to stand apart from action. But now that war had come
he reached back along the years ashamed and impotent, for the training
other men had undergone--the training that made his fellows ready to
follow the unexpected call, the sudden hazard.
“It is cruel!” said Nance, with a quick, peremptory lifting of the
head. “You could fight, if only they would let you----”
“Just so. The bird could fly, if its wings had not been broken in the
nest.”
She knew this dangerous, still mood of his. He was a civilian,
untrained, unready, left at home while stronger men were taking the
hardships. In every line of his face, in the resolute, dark eyes,
there was desperate shame and self-contempt; and yet he fancied he was
hiding all show of feeling from her. Nance felt the pity of it--felt
more than pity--found the tears so ready that she turned again to the
spinet and began playing random odds and ends of ballads. And through
all the stress she took a grip of some purpose that had been with her
constantly these last days. Will Underwood--his dominant, big person,
his gift of wooing--had gone from her life. She was lonely and afraid,
and found no help except along the road of sacrifice--the road trodden
hard and firm by generations of women seeking help in need.
“Let me mend your life for you,” she said, glancing up with bewildering
appeal and tenderness.
Rupert was young to beguilement of this sort. Her eyes were kindly with
him. There was a warmth and fragrance round about the parlour that
hindered perception of the finer issues. And he knew in this moment
that even a good love and steady can tempt a man unworthily.
From the moors that guarded Windyhough there came a sudden fury of the
wind, a rattle of frozen sleet against the windows. And Rupert lifted
his head, answering the bidding of the open heath. “You cannot mend my
life,” he said sharply. “How could you, Nance?”
“You thought so once.” Her glance was friendly, full of affection and
great liking; and so well had she been schooling herself to the new,
passionate desire for sacrifice that Rupert read more in it than the
old comradeship. “What have I done, that I cannot help you now?”
He was dizzied by the unexpectedness, the swiftness of this night
surprise. Here was Nance, her face turned eagerly toward him, and she
was reminding him of the devotion he had shown her in years past. He
had no key to the riddle, could not guess how desperate she was in her
wish to hide Will Underwood’s indignities under cover of this sacrifice
for Rupert’s sake--Rupert, whom she liked so well and pitied.
“Shall I not sing to you now?” she repeated, with pleasant coquetry.
“If you have no Stuart songs--why, let me sing you Martha’s doleful
ballad of Sir Robert who rode over Devilsbridge, and came riding back
again without his head. It was a foolish thing to do, but it makes a
moving ballad, Rupert.”
Her mood would not be denied. Tender, gay, elusive, she tempted him
to ask what she was ready--for sake of sacrifice--to give. There was
reward here for the empty boyhood, the empty days of shame since the
men of the house rode out. It was all unbelievable, unsteadying. He
had only to cross to Nance’s side, it seemed, had only to plead, as
he had done more than once in days past, for the betrothal kiss. He
recalled how she had met these wild love-makings of his--with pity and
a little laughter, and a heart untouched by any sort of love for him.
And now--all that was changed.
The moment seemed long in passing. Within reach there was Nance,
desirable beyond any speech of his to tell; and yet he could not cross
to her. It was as if a sword divided them, with its keen edge set
toward him. He did not know himself, could not understand the grip that
held him back from her, though feet and heart were willing. Then it
grew clear to him.
“Nance,” he said sharply, “do you remember the Brig o’ Tryst?”
“Why, yes,” she answered, with simple tenderness. “I remember that I
hurt you there. You pleaded so well that day, Rupert--and now you’re
dumb, somehow.”
“Because--Nance, there has war come since then, and it has proved us
all.” He laughed, the old, unhappy laugh of irony and self-contempt.
“There’s Simon Foster, bent with rheumatism, and Nat the Shepherd, too
infirm to do anything but smoke his pipe and babble of the ’15 Rising,
and--your fool, Nance. You’ve a gallant house of men about you.”
And Nance was silent. Some deeper feeling than pity or haphazard
sacrifice was stirring her, for she saw Rupert as he was, saw him
with a clearness, a knowledge of him, that would never leave her.
In retreat, against his will, in utter darkness of hope and forward
purpose, he had found the right way and the ready to Nance’s heart. His
grip of honour was so resolute. There was nothing scholarly or fanciful
about him now. Through temptation of her own making, through a desire
extreme and passionate and easy to be read, he had won through to this
starry sort of abnegation that set well on him. He was no proven man,
and he disdained for that reason to claim a woman’s favours; and the
breed of him showed clear.
The wind swept down from the moors with a snarl that set the windows
shaking. And Rupert, without a backward glance, went into the hall and
opened the main door. The wind came yelping in, powdering the threshold
with driven sleet and chilling him to the bone. He was aware only of
heart-sickness, of the fragrance that was Nance Demaine, of his need to
get out into the open road; and there was something in the lash of the
sleet across his face that was friendly as the moors he loved.
And as he stood there he heard the _tippety-tap_ of hoofs, far down
the bridle-road that led to Windyhough. And hope, a sudden vivid hope,
returned to him. He had not needed the warm, scented parlour, the songs
of old allegiance; but, to the heart of him, he was eager for this
music of a hard-riding man who brought news, maybe, of Stuart deeds.
_Tippety-tap, tappety-tip_, the sound of hoofs came intermittently
between the wind-bursts, and it seemed now to be very near the gate.
While he waited, his head bent eagerly toward the track, Lady Royd came
downstairs after bidding her spaniel good-night, shivered as the wind
swept through the hall, and ran forward fretfully when she saw Rupert
standing in the doorway.
“My dear, is it not cold enough already in the house?” she complained.
“You need not let the wind in through open doors.”
“Listen, mother!” he said, not turning his head. “There’s a horseman
riding fast. He is bringing news.”
“Oh, you are fanciful. This Hunter’s Wind always sent your wits astray,
Rupert. You heard too many nursery-tales of the Ghostly Hunt, and
Gabriel’s Hounds, and all their foolish superstitions.”
“I hear a rider coming up with news,” said Rupert obstinately, moving
out into the courtyard. “It may be Oliphant of Muirhouse.”
Simon Foster, at this time, was just outside the gate, working to the
last edge of dusk to get in a few more barrow-loads of wood for the
indoor fires. Not all the scoldings of the other servants had persuaded
him to so necessary a bit of work, but Martha had, when she drew a
tearful picture of the cold kitchen they would have to sit in to-night
if he failed them. There were barely logs enough, it seemed, to feed
the rest of the house, and the kitchen must go fireless. And Simon,
with steady contempt of household labour when he longed to be out in
the open fight, had grumbled his way to the pile of tree-trunks that
littered the outside of the courtyard.
“And I thought myself a fighting man,” he muttered, sawing and chopping
with a speed born, not of zeal, but of ill-temper; “and the end of it
all is just bringing wood in, so that silly wenches can sit up late and
gossip over a wasteful fire. Well, life’s as it’s made, I reckon, but
I’m varry thankful I had no hand i’ the making.”
He had filled his barrow, and was stooping to the handles, when he,
too, heard the beat of hoofs come ringing up between the wind-beats.
The storm, perhaps, had stirred even his unfanciful outlook upon life;
for he was strangely restless to-night, and ready to believe that
some miracle might come to rouse them from their fireside life at
Windyhough. He turned his head up-wind, one hairy ear cocked like a
spaniel’s, and listened for a while. The gale began to fall a little,
and he could hear the quick, recurrent _tippety-tap_ more frequently.
He left his barrow, hobbled across the courtyard, saw Rupert and his
mother standing in the light of the scudding moon that fought for
mastery with the gloaming.
“There’s a horse galloping, Simon,” said Rupert. “Did you hear him?”
“Ay, I heard him right enough; and I’m wondering who the rider is.
It might be Sir Jasper, or it might be one o’ Maister Oliphant’s
wild-riding breed----”
“Oh, you’re mistaken, both of you!” broke in Lady Royd fretfully. “The
snow would deaden hoof-beats. I can hear none, I tell you.”
“Nay,” said Simon stolidly, “the road’s harder than the snow’s soft
just yet. By and by it will be different, when the wind drops. We’ll be
snowed up by morn, my lady.”
And now her untrained ear caught the _tippety-tap_, the ring of a
gallop close at hand. “It may be Sir Jasper,” she echoed. “Oh, I trust
you are right, Simon--so long as he rides unwounded,” she added, quick
to find the despondent note.
The wind was settling fast. Now and then it yelped and whined like a
dog driven out from home on a stark night; but the snow was falling
ever a little more steadily, more thickly. And into the blur of snow
and moonlight, across the last edge of the gloam, the galloping
horseman rode through the open gate into the courtyard, and pulled up,
and swung from saddle. He looked from one to another of those who stood
this side the porch.
“Is that you, Master Rupert?” he asked, without sign of haste or
emotion.
“Yes, Shackleton. What’s your news?”
“Sir Jasper’s lying at my farm. He’s ta’en a hurt, and sent me
forrard--seeing he couldn’t come himself--and he said to me that you’re
to keep Windyhough against a plaguy lot o’ thieves.”
“What thieves, Ben?”
“Nay, I know not. He said they were riding an odd mile or two behind,
and no time to waste.”
Lady Royd was crying softly in the background, secure in her belief
that the worst had happened and that her husband’s hurts were mortal.
Rupert did not heed her, did not heed anything except the tingling
sense of mastery and strength that was firing his young, unproved soul.
Through the long nights and days of self-contempt he had longed for
this. When his heart had been sick to find himself among the women
and the greybeards, he had fought, as if his life depended on it,
for the dim hope that his chance would come one day. And, because he
was prepared, there was no surprise in Shackleton’s news, no hurried
question as to how this sudden onset must be met.
“My father sent no other message, Ben?” he asked curtly.
“Aye, he did, and he seemed rare and anxious I shouldn’t forget it,
like. He said he _trusted you_--just trusted you.”
Rupert had kept his watch, through the sickness of the waiting-time;
and at the end of it was this trumpet-call from the father who had bred
him. And Simon Foster, watching him with affection’s close scrutiny,
saw the scholarly, lean years slip off from the shoulders that were
squared already to the coming stress.
“Bar the outer gate, Simon,” he said. Then, with a soldier’s brisk
attention to detail, he turned to Ben Shackleton. “How many of them?”
he asked.
“A score or more, so Sir Jasper said.”
“Then step indoors. We need you, Ben.”
Shackleton made a movement to get up to saddle again. “Nay, nay! I’ve
the kine to fodder, and a wife waiting for me.”
“I’m in command here,” said the master sharply. “We need you, and you
say there’s no time to waste.”
Simon Foster came back from drawing the stout oaken bars across the
gate. “They’re riding up the gap,” he said. “I could hear their horses
slipping all ways, master, as if the roads had teazed ’em; but they’re
riding varry near. We haven’t a year and a day to waste in talk, though
Shackleton fancies we have. Besides,” he added grimly, “the gate’s
barred, and they’ll be here before you could open it and ride through.”
“What’s to be done with my horse, supposing I did stay?” asked
Shackleton. Like a true farmer, he was not to be hurried, and his first
thought was always for his live-stock.
Simon Foster snatched the bridle from his hand, went across to the
stables, and was back again before Shackleton had recovered from his
surprise.
“That is horse-stealing, Simon, or summat like it,” grumbled the farmer.
“No,” answered Simon, “it’s horse-keeping. We need you, Ben. The master
spoke a true word there.”
“And what’s all the moil about? I relish a square fight as well as
another; it’s a bit of a holiday, like, fro’ farming peevish lands; but
I like to know just what I’m fighting for. Stands to plain reason I do.”
“For the honour of the Royds,” said Rupert, with sharp appeal.
“Well, then, you have me, master. Just tell me what I’ve to do; I’m
slow i’ my wits, but quick wi’ my hands, and always was; and I learned
young to fire a musket.”
“It’s a varry good habit to learn,” growled Simon Foster, “’specially
when a body learns it young.” And then again he turned his head
sharply. “They’ve come, I reckon, master,” he said, with stolid
satisfaction.
Goldstein’s men had ridden the last mile of their journey in evil
temper. The track was rough, full of steep hills and sharp, dangerous
corners that rendered it difficult enough in a dry season; in this
weather, and in the snowy, muddled light, it seemed impassable to
horsemen used only to flat country. They were hungry, moreover, and wet
to the skin, and their only achievement so far was to lose the first
fugitive they had pursued since Derby town was left behind. Goldstein
himself was thankful for one thing only--that this lonely track had no
byways opening out on either hand. The road, twist as it would, kept to
its single line, showing them no choice of route in a country unknown
and difficult.
It seemed interminable, this travelling at a slow, uneasy trot over
broken ground; but, just as he began to fear that his men would mutiny
outright, he looked up the rise ahead and saw lights twinkling through
the moonlit storm of snow. The lights were many, blinking down on
him from a house that surely, by the length of its front, was one of
quality.
“We’re home, my lads,” he said, with a sharp laugh of relief. “That
yokel lied about the distance.”
“Time we were,” snarled one of the troopers, with a rough German oath.
Goldstein did not heed, but slipped from saddle and put a hand to the
courtyard gate. When he found it barred, he thrust his heavy bulk
against it. It did not give to his weight. And this daunted him a
little; for he had not looked for resistance of any sort, once they had
reached the end of this long, hilly road. He had pictured, indeed, a
house of women, with only the Prince and Sir Jasper to stand against
them, a swift surprise, and after that food and licence and good
liquor to reward them for the hardships of the day. He kicked the gate
impatiently, and cried to those within to open; and the dogs shut up in
kennel answered him with long, running howls.
Rupert standing with Simon Foster on the threshold of the porch, felt
gaiety step close to his elbow, like a trusted friend. He crossed the
yard and stood just this side the gateway.
“Who knocks?” he asked.
“The King,” snapped Goldstein.
“You will be more explicit,” said Rupert, with a touch of the old
scholarly disdain. “By your voice, I think you come from Hanover. We
serve the Stuart here.”
Through the spite of the falling wind, through his weariness of mind
and body, Goldstein knew that a gentleman stood on the far side of this
gateway. And breeding, in a farm-hand or a king, disturbed his sordid
outlook on this life.
“You’ll not serve him long. Where’s Sir Jasper Royd?”
“Somewhere on the open road, following his Prince. I am his son, and
master here, at your service, till he returns.”
Nance, hearing the confusion out of doors, had run into the courtyard.
Lady Royd was standing apart, as if nothing mattered, now she had
heard that Sir Jasper lay wounded at the farm; if her man had not been
strong enough to ride in and guard her at such a time, he must be near
to death, she felt. She had made him her idol, starving her sons of
love because the father claimed it; and she was paying her debts now,
in confusion and humiliation. Nance scarcely heeded her. Her eyes
passed from Simon and Ben Shackleton to the slim, erect figure at the
gate, and instinctively she crossed to Rupert’s side. There was peril
on the far side of this gate--peril grave and urgent--and yet she
was conscious only of a thrill of pride and tenderness. The scholar
had longed for his chance to come; and the answer had reached him,
without warning or preparation, from the heart of the stormy night. Her
thoughts were running fast; she contrasted Will Underwood’s response
to the first call of the Rising with Rupert’s gay acceptance of this
hazard; and she was glad to be here at Windyhough.
“Sir Jasper’s ‘on the open road, following his Prince’?” mimicked
Goldstein, breaking the uneasy silence. “To be plain, he has followed
the Pretender indoors here, and I know it.”
Rupert had known only that he was bidden to guard the house against
what Shackleton had named “a plaguy lot o’ thieves,” had accepted
the trust with soldierly obedience; but the venture showed a new
significance. He was cool-headed, practical, now that his years of high
dreaming were put to the touchstone; and he snatched at Goldstein’s
explanation of this night assault.
“You think the Prince is a guest here at Windyhough?” he asked suavely.
“I know it. We’ve followed the two of them over the foulest
bridle-track in England--just because we were so sure.”
Sir Jasper’s heir looked at the sturdy, snow-blurred gate that stood
between the honour of his house and these troopers, whose oaths, with
an odd lack of discipline, threaded all their leader’s talk. And he
laughed, so quietly that Nance glanced sharply up, thinking his father
had returned; for Sir Jasper carried just this laugh in face of danger.
“The Prince is here?” he said. “Then hack your way through the gate and
take him. He is well guarded.”
Goldstein, chilled for a moment by the unexpected strength of the
defence, grew savage. “You’ll not surrender?”
“No Royd does, sir. We live leal, or we die leal.”
“Then God help you when my troopers hack a way in! They’re not tame at
any time, and your cursed roads have not smoothed their tempers.”
“We are waiting,” said the master quietly.
“Oh, well done, Rupert!” whispered Nance, with a light touch on his arm.
He looked down at her--down and beyond her, for in truth he had no
need of Stuart glamour till this night’s business was well through.
“You Nance? Get back to the house, and take my mother with you; the
gate will be down, I tell you, and after that--it will be no place for
women. And, Simon,” he added, “bring three muskets out. Hurry, man!”
Nance, high-spirited and new to commands of this sharp, peremptory
kind, went submissively enough, she knew not why. And, near the porch,
she found Lady Royd busy with the spaniel which had run out to find her.
“Poor little man!” Sir Jasper’s wife was murmuring, as she kissed the
foolish, pampered brute that, under happier auspices, would have been
a dog. “He missed me, Nance, and he came, getting wet feet in the snow,
and you know how delicate he is. He is all I have, Nance,” she added,
with a touch of pathos, real in its futility “since--since they told me
Sir Jasper was dying at the farm.”
Nance remembered how Rupert had met the sudden call to arms, and
gathered something of his buoyancy. “Sir Jasper is not dying,” she said
sharply. “I’ll not believe it. He will come by and by, when he has
recovered from his wound----”
“You think he will come?” put in the other, helpless and snatching at
any straw of comfort.
“Oh, I know it; but we must get indoors, and let Rupert guide the
siege.”
Lady Royd had not learned the true gaiety of danger; but Nance, from
the childhood shared with hard-riding brothers, had gained a courage
and experience that served her well just now. None knew what would
chance to Windyhough before the dawn; and, for her part, she did not
look before or after, but took the present as it came. And her instinct
was Rupert’s, as she shepherded Lady Royd into the hall--that here at
last, thank God! was action after long sitting by the hearth.
Captain Goldstein, meanwhile, convinced that his entry into Windyhough
was not to be bloodless, after all, had tried his strength once more
against the gate of the courtyard, and, finding it solid, had cast
about for some way of breaking through it. The moon was making greater
headway now through the rifted snow-clouds, and he saw the pile of
tree-trunks at which Simon Foster had been busy until Sir Jasper’s
messenger had disturbed him at the wood-chopping.
Like his troopers, Goldstein was wet and hungry and impatient, and his
one thought was to rive the gate down, whatever strength opposed him on
the far side of it. He gave a sharp order, and six of his men lifted a
trunk of sycamore, and poised it for a while, and rammed the gate. The
first thrust strained the gate against the cross-bars, and broke back
sharply on the men who held the ram, disordering them for a moment.
The master waited, his musket ready primed. “Simon,” he said, “and you,
Ben Shackleton, we’re bidden to hold the house, but gad! we’ll do a
little in the courtyard first.”
Goldstein’s men came at the gate again, struck savagely, found by
chance a weak spot in the wood. And this time they splintered a wide
opening. They drew back a little, to get their breath, and through the
opening Rupert saw faintly in the moonlight the half of a man’s body.
Simon Foster, watching him, saw a still, passionless light steal into
his eyes as he lifted the musket to his shoulder and fired with brisk
precision. There was a cry of anguish from without, a sudden, heavy
fall, and afterwards the guttural voice of Captain Goldstein, bidding
his troopers clear the dead away and ram the gate again.
Rupert, for his part, was reloading. And he was tasting that exquisite,
tragic glee known only to those who kill their first man in righteous
battle. He was drinking from a well old as man’s history; and its
waters, while they swept compunction and all else away, gave him a
strange zest for this world’s adventures.
The troopers were desperate now. They rammed the splintered gate with a
fury that broke the cross-bars; and Lady Royd, watching it all from the
porch, saw a troop of savages, dusky in the moonlight--let loose from
hell, so it seemed to her disordered fancy--swarm through the opening.
She glanced at Rupert, saw him take careful aim again; and this time
there was no cry from the fallen, for he dropped dead in his paces, so
suddenly that the man behind tripped over him.
Simon Foster, who had preached the gospel of steadiness so constantly
to the young master, aimed wildly at Goldstein, and missed him by
a foot; but Shackleton, slow and sure by temperament, picked out a
hulking fellow for his mark and hit him through the thigh.
“Get to the house!” said Rupert, his new mastery sitting firm and
lightly on him.
Like the Prince in retreat, he stood aside till his men had found
safety, and then passed in himself. A few shots spattered on the
house-front, and one grazed his shoulder; but the enemy were huddled
too close together in the courtyard, and they jostled one another while
talking hurried aim. Just in time he leaped across the threshold,
clashed the main door in Goldstein’s face, and shot the bolts home.
Inside, the first note that greeted him was the yapping of his mother’s
spaniel. And his eyes sought Nance’s with instinctive humour.
“Rupert, how can you smile?” asked Lady Royd, distraught and fretful.
“Because needs must, mother,” he answered gently. “And now, by your
leave, you will take Nance upstairs. There’s work to be done down here.”
Nance touched his arm in passing. He did not know it. Body, and soul,
and mind, he was bent on this work of holding Windyhough for his father
and the Prince. He had lived with loneliness and patience and denial of
all enterprise; and now there was a virile havoc about the house.
“Now for the good siege, Simon,” he said, listening to the uproar out
of doors.