THE BRUNT OF IT
THE master turned from the doorway to find the women-servants and old
Nat, the shepherd, crowded at the far end of the hall. They were agape
with mingled fear and curiosity, and they were chattering like magpies.
“We’ll be murdered outright,” said the kitchen-maid, her pertness gone.
“Aye,” wept the housekeeper, “and me that has prayed, day in and day
out for fifty years, that I’d die easy and snuglike i’ my bed. There’s
something not modest in dying out o’ bed, I always did say.”
The master flashed round on them; and, without a word said, they obeyed
the new air of him, and crept shamefacedly along the corridor. Only Nat
stood his ground--Nat, who was old beyond belief, whose hand shook on
the long clay pipe that ceased burning only when he slept.
“There’s a terrible moil and clatter, master,” he said, laughing
vacantly. “There’ll be an odd few wanting to get indoors, I reckon.”
“Yes, Nat, yes,” said the master impatiently.
“Well, ye munnot let ’em. And there’ll be a fight like; but, bless ye,
’twill be naught to what we saw i’ the ’15 Rising. I was out i’ it wi’
your father, and men were men i’ those days. Eh, but there were bonnie
doings!”
Nat had forgotten that the ’15 had been more hapless and ill-conducted
than this present Rising. He was back again with the young hope, the
young ardour, that had taken him afield; and he was living in the
dotard’s sanctuary, where all old deeds seem well done and only the
present lacks true warmth and colour.
“He tells his lie varry well, and sticks to it,” laughed Simon Foster.
“I was out i’ that Rising myself, master, as you know, and if there
were any bonnie doings, I never chanced on them.”
“Nat is not wise. Let him be,” said the master, with a chivalrous
regard that was cradled deep in the superstitions of the moor.
The men without were battering uselessly at the great, nail-studded
door. It had been built in times when callers were apt to come knocking
on no peaceful errand; and it was secure against the battering-ram that
had splintered the weaker courtyard gate. For all that, Rupert bade
Simon and Ben Shackleton help him to up-end the heavy settle that stood
along the wall. They buttressed the door with it, and were safe on this
side of the house from any rough-and-ready method of attack.
Then Rupert, precise in his regard for detail, led them to the
kitchens. The women were huddled over a roaring fire of logs--the
fruits of Simon’s industry not long ago--but Rupert did not heed them.
The mullioned windows of the house were stout and narrow, and the only
inlet, now the main door was safe, was by this kitchen entrance. The
door was not wide enough to admit more than one man at a time, and its
timbers could be trusted to resist attack until warning had been given
to the garrison.
“Martha,” said the master, choosing by instinct the one reliable wench
among these chatterboxes, “your post is at the door here. You will warn
us if there is trouble on this side.”
“Oh, aye,” she answered cheerfully. “I’ve clouted a man’s lugs
before to-day, and can do it again, I reckon.” And she picked up her
milking-stool, which was lying under the sink in readiness for the
morrow’s milking, set it down by the door, and seated herself with a
deliberation that in itself suggested confidence.
Then the master went upstairs, with a light step, and stationed himself
at the window, wider and more perilous than any loophole, which
overlooked the main door. It was the post of greatest hazard, given him
by his father in that make-believe of defence which had preceded Sir
Jasper’s riding-out.
Rupert glanced down at the six muskets, the powder flask, the little
heap of bullets that lay along the window-sill. “We thought them
nursery-toys, Simon?” he said, with his whimsical, quick smile. “We
even took the glass out from the window, pretending that we must be
ready for the sharp attack.”
“Drill pays,” growled Simon. “Aye, keep hard at it enough, and drill
pays.”
“Yes, faith pays--it is drill, as I told you.”
“Faith can bide. We’re here i’ the stark murk of it, master, and we’ll
say our prayers to-morrow--if it happens we’re alive.”
Rupert took up the muskets, one by one, saw to the priming of them.
“You’ll say your prayers to-night, Simon, by getting to your post,” he
said dryly. “Give Ben Shackleton the loophole on the west side. That
gives us three sides guarded.”
The two men went heavy-footed to their posts; and Shackleton turned
to Simon Foster when they were out of earshot. “Young master’s fair
uplifted,” he said. “He’s not fey--that’s all I hope.”
“He’s not fey,” said Foster, blunt and full of common sense. “He’s been
a dreamer, and he’s wakened; and we might do worse, Ben, than waken
just as bright as he’s done.”
The master stood at his post, and felt the rebound from his own high
spirits. He looked out at the blurred moonlight, the scattered flakes
of snow, that hid the over-watching hills from him. The old self-doubt
returned. He was pledged to keep the house secure--he who had been left
behind because he was not trained to join the Rising. And he had little
skill, except for dreams of high endeavour.
He lifted his head suddenly. From the courtyard below he heard the hum
of guttural voices. Goldstein and his men were still gathered about the
main doorway, hungry, wet to the skin, irresolute as to the best plan
of action.
Rupert was no dreamer now. He could see nothing in the yard, through
the thick snow and the moon-haze; but he took up a musket and fired
at random, and picked up a second gun, and a third, and snapped the
trigger; and from below there came a yelp of pain, a running of men’s
feet. And Rupert was his own man again, forgetting dreams, remembering
only that the siege was here in earnest.
Through the smoke and the reek of gunpowder Nance Demaine came into the
room.
“Where is my post?” she asked, standing trim and soldierly at Rupert’s
side.
Again she was met by the glance that looked through and beyond her,
as if she stood between Rupert and some settled purpose. It seemed so
short a while since she had sat at the spinet, had seen his eyes hungry
with her, as if she were all his world; and now he scarcely heeded
her. The riddle was so easy for a man to guess, so hard for a woman;
and Nance, soldier-bred as she was, was piqued by the master’s grave,
single-minded outlook on the task in hand.
“Your post, Nance?” he echoed. “With mother, away from any chance of
bullets.”
“Did I shoot so badly, then--those days we practised up the fields?”
“No; but this is men’s work, Nance.”
“You have a garrison of three.” Some wayward humour, some wish to hurt
him, clouded all her usual kindliness. He was strong and did not need
her; and she missed something pleasant that had threaded the weariness
of these last days. “There’s Simon, steady enough, but old. There is
Ben Shackleton. And there is--yourself, Rupert, very young to musketry.
Are you wise to refuse your last recruit?”
The taunt found its mark. This daughter of Squire Roger’s had an odd
power to touch the depths in him, whether for pain or keen, unreasoning
delight. A moment since he had tasted happiness, had had no thought
save one--that he was master here, fighting an enemy of flesh and blood
at last. And now the old unrest crept in, the vague self-distrust that
had clouded earlier days.
“We’re few, and have no skill,” he said, with an irony that was
stubborn and weary both; “but I was bred, Nance, to put women in the
background at these times.”
She looked at him, as he stood in the cloudy moonlight filtering
through the window. She knew this tone of his so well--knew that
her hold on him was not weakened, after all. “Oh, you were bred to
that superstition?” she said lightly. “As if women were ever in the
background, Rupert! Why, our business in life is to dance in front of
you--always a little in front of you, lest you capture us. Men, so Lady
Royd says, are merry until--until--they have us safe in hand.”
She dropped him a curtsey; and, before he found an answer, she was
gone. And the master turned to the casement, hoping for the sound of
a footfall without, the chance of another quick, haphazard shot. The
wind had dropped to a little, whining breeze; but there was no other
sound about this house that stood for the Stuart against odds. The snow
was thickening. Rupert watched the flakes settle on the window-sill,
ever a little faster, till a three-inch ridge was raised. And the old
trouble returned. This had been his life here--the silence, the dumb
abnegations, slow and cold in falling, that had built a wall between
himself and happiness. And suddenly he brushed his hand sharply across
the sill, scattering the snow. It was his protest against the buried
yesterdays. Then he took up the three muskets he had fired, and one by
one reloaded them. And after that he waited.
An hour later Simon Foster, stiff already from standing at the south
window, made pretence that he must go the round of the house, lest
younger men were not steady at their posts. As he hobbled down the
corridor that led to the north side, he saw Nance Demaine, sitting
ghostlike at the window. And he crossed himself, because the habits of
fore-elders are apt to cling to a man, however dim may be the faith of
his later years.
Nance turned. “Ah! you, Simon?”
“Why, it’s ye, Miss Nance? God forgive me, I thought you a boggart,
come to warn us the old house was tumbling round our ears.”
“Not yet, Simon,” she said quietly. “I heard the master say one side
was unguarded--and I knew where the muskets were stored----”
“But, Miss Nance, it’s no playing at shooting, this. It may varry weel
be a longer siege than you reckon for, and we’re few; and it means
sitting and waiting--waiting and sitting--till ye’re sick for a wink o’
sleep. Nay, nay! You dunnot know what strength it needs.”
“I nursed a sick child once--not long ago. For three days and nights,
Simon, I had no sleep.”
The other was silent. All the countryside knew that story now--knew
how Squire Roger’s daughter had gone on some casual errand of mercy to
a cottage on the Demaine lands, had found a feckless mother nursing a
child far gone in fever, had stayed on and fought for its life with
skill and hard determination. Yet Nance spoke of it now without thought
of any courage she had shown; she was eager only to prove that she had
a right to take her place among the men in guarding Windyhough.
Simon Foster looked at the girl’s figure, the orderly line of muskets.
She seemed workmanlike; and he approved her with a sudden, vigorous nod.
“The light’s dim, Miss Nance,” he growled, turning to hobble down the
corridor, “but I reckon ye can aim.”
It was so the long night began. The wind had ceased altogether. From
out of doors there was no sound, of man or beast. The snow fell in
thicker flakes, and, working silently as those concerned with burials
do, it laid a shroud about the courtyard, about the many gables of the
house, about the firs and leafless sycamores that guarded Windyhough
from the high moors.
On the north side of the house, where the stables and the huddled mass
of farm-buildings stood, Goldstein’s men were preparing to find comfort
for the night as best they could. From time to time there was a sound
of voices or of shuffling footsteps, deadened by the snow; for the
rest, a dismaying stillness lay about the house.
* * * * *
To Rupert, to Nance, guarding the north window, to Simon Foster, this
silence of attack seemed heavier, more unbearable, than the do-nothing
time that had preceded it. There had been the brief battle-fury in the
courtyard, the zest of getting ready for the siege; and now there was
only silence and the falling snow.
And out of doors Goldstein was no less impatient. He did not know that
he was faced by a garrison so slender; for there is a strength about a
house that has shown one bold front to attack, and afterwards gives no
hint of the numbers hidden by its walls. Already two were dead, and two
badly wounded, from among his company of one-and-twenty; and the rest
were hungry, body-sore, and in evil temper. It was no time to force an
entry. Better wait till daylight, get his men out of gunshot, and find
food for them somewhere in the well-stocked farm-steadings.
They got round to the mistals on the west side of the house--moving
close along the walls, afraid of every window that might hide a
musket--and found Sir Jasper’s well-tended cattle mooing softly to each
other as they rattled their stall-chains. The warm, lush smell of the
byres suggested milk to Goldstein, and, since stronger drink seemed
out of reach, he welcomed any liquor that might take the sharpest edge
of hunger from his men. He bade them milk the cows; and into the midst
of this tragic happening that had come to Windyhough there intruded
a frank, diverting comedy, as the way of life is. Not one of them had
milked a cow before, or guessed that Martha had been busy with her
pail already; but each thought it a simple matter, needing no more
than a man’s touch on the udders. They found a milking-stool abandoned
long ago by Martha because one leg was unstable, and one by one they
tried their luck. The first who tried was kicked clean off the stool;
the next man made a beginning so foolish and unhandy that the roan
cow looked back at him in simple wonderment; and Goldstein, a better
officer than his men understood, welcomed the laughter and uproar that
greeted every misguided effort to fill the milking-pail. They had not
laughed once since Derby, these men who were getting out of hand.
By and by the sport palled on them; and Goldstein, faced once again by
their hunger and unrest, found all his senses curiously alert. From
the laithe, next door to the byres, he heard the bleating of sheep
in-driven yesterday from the high lands when the weather-wise were sure
that snow was coming.
“There’s food yonder, lads,” he said sharply. “Drink can wait.”
He opened the laithe door, stood back a while from the steam that
greeted him--the oily heat of sheep close packed together. The
moonlight and the snow filtered in together through the big, open doors
as he ran forward, caught a ewe by the neck, and dragged her out. And
they dispatched her quickly; for butchery came easy to their hands.
A little while after, as Rupert stood at his post by the window
overlooking the main door--waiting for something to happen, as of
old--he heard a slow, heavy footfall down the corridor. A blurred
figure of a man stood in the doorway--for the moon’s light was dim and
snowy--and the master could only guess from the square, massive bulk
who was this night visitor.
“They’ve lit a fire on the west side o’ the house, master,” came
Shackleton’s big voice. “What it means I couldn’t tell ye, but I saw
the red of it go kitty-kelpy fair across the snow.”
Rupert followed him, glad already of the relief from sentry-work.
Across the west window--emptied of its glass, like all the others, in
readiness for action--little, pulsing shafts of crimson were playing
through the snow-flakes. They heard men’s voices, confused and jarring;
and the red glow deepened, though they could see nothing of what was in
the doing.
“We couldn’t expect ’em, like, to light their fire within eye-shot,”
said Shackleton, with his unalterable quiet; “it would mean within
gunshot, as we’ve taught ’em. But I own I’d like to know just what sort
o’ devilry they’re planning. They might varry weel be firing the house
over our heads.”
“No,” said the master. “There are only stone walls on this side,
Ben--five foot thick----”
“Ay, true. But they’re not lads, to light a fire just for the sake o’
seeing it blaze.”
Outside, close under shelter of the house-wall, Goldstein’s men had
carried straw from the laithe where it was stored, had borrowed wood
from the pile of timber left by Simon Foster at the courtyard gate, and
were roasting their sheep as speedily as might be. And one adventurous
spirit, searching the outhouses with a patience born of thirst, had
found an unbroached ale-barrel. The return to good cheer loosened the
men’s tongues; and Goldstein was content to let them have their way
until this better mood of theirs had ripened.
Within doors, Simon Foster had heard the master and Shackleton talking
at the west window, had joined them, had listened till, from the babel
of many voices, he heard what was in the doing.
“They’re cooking their supper,” he said. “I should know the way of it;
for we went stark and wet through the ’15, and cooked many a fat sheep,
we did, just like these unchancy wastrels.”
Into their midst, none knowing how he had drifted there, came Nat the
shepherd, pipe in hand--a figure so old, so palsied, that stronger men
were moved by a pity deep as human courage and human suffering.
“Eh, now, I mind th’ ’15!” he cackled. “I rode out wi’ Sir Jasper--he
was a lad i’ those days, and me a mettlesome man of fifty--and there
were bonnie doings. It was all about some business o’ setting King
Jamie on his throne--and there were bonnie doings. The gentry riding
in, and the gentry riding out--and the bonnie ladies’ een bo-peeping at
them as they went; and all the brave, open road ahead of us. We shall
see no such times again, I warrant.”
His head drooped suddenly. He fumbled for his tinder-box, because in
his enthusiasm for days gone by he had let his pipe go out. He was a
figure pitiful beyond belief--the last, blown autumn leaf, it seemed,
clinging to the wind-blown tree of Stuart loyalty. And the master, in
spite of the hazard out of doors, halted for a word of compassion.
“You did well, Nat,” he said gently. “Tell us how the ’15 went.”
Nat was silent for a while. Across his dotage, across the memories that
were food and drink to him, he returned to present-day affairs. He
looked closely at the master, and nodded sagely.
“You’re varry like your father, Maister Rupert. It seems a pity, like,
you should be left here, to die like a ratten in a trap, when you might
have been crying Tally-Ho along the Lunnon road.”
The master winced. “They’ve not trapped us yet,” he said quietly. “Get
down to the inglenook, Nat, and smoke your pipe.”
“Hark!” said Shackleton, his ear turned to the window. “They’re getting
merry out yonder. Begom! they must have found liquor somewhere, to go
singing out o’ doors on a stark night like this.”
A full-throated chorus was sounding now across the snow and the dancing
red of the fire. The words were German, but the lilt of them was not to
be mistaken.
“I wish I’d known they were coming,” said Simon Foster ruefully. “There
was a barrel of ale, master, left i’ the shippon because I was too lazy
to get it indoors yesterday. And they’ve broached it, they have; and
it’s good liquor going down furrin throats. The waste o’ decent stuff!”
Rupert listened to the uproar out of doors. He had a quick imagination,
and he was picturing an attack by drunken soldiery. These men of
Goldstein’s, he had gathered, were not lambs when sober. He thought of
Nance, of his mother--thought of the virile, tender love that men of
his Faith give their women--and the soul of him caught fire.
“Shackleton,” he said sharply, “keep your post. Simon, get to yours.
And, by the God who made me, I’ll shoot you if you sleep to-night!”
He did not see Nance, nor think of her, as he went to his own station
overlooking the main door. But Nance heard his tread, and glanced up,
and found the night emptier because he did not know that she was near.
For men and women see life from opposite sides of the same hill, and
always will until hereafter they find themselves standing on the same
free, windy summit.
He went to his post, and the long night settled down. And nothing
happened, as of old. From sheer need of occupation, he fell to watching
the snow fall thick and thicker out of doors--tried to count the
flakes--and found the dumb, unceasing crowd of them enticing him to
sleep. And then he sought a better remedy. He remembered the man he
had hit through the opening of the courtyard gate--the others who had
fallen to his musket; and he found the odd zest, the call of future
peril, which spring from action. And to Rupert the call came with a
peculiar sharpness; for he had been accounted slight, a scholar, and
he was here in the thick of the siege perilous, with a deed or two
standing already to his credit.
He was used from of old to sleeplessness, and as the night wore on
his spirits rose to a surprising gaiety and sense of well-being. His
garrison was small; but he was master of his own house, at long last,
and he had powder and ball on the window-sill in front of him. Whether
he lived or died mattered little; but it was of prime importance that
he kept this house of Windyhough to the last edge of his strength.
Out of doors, Captain Goldstein had given up all thoughts of
prosecuting the siege until the dawn. He had detached six men from
the ale-barrel to play sentry round the house, and had got the rest
into shelter of the outhouses a half-hour later. They were bone-tired,
all of them; they were well fed and full of ale; and the beds they
made for themselves, of hay and straw, seemed soft as eider-down.
Only Goldstein kept awake. He was as weary as any of them; but he had
a single purpose, as Rupert had. The Prince was in the house here;
dead or alive, he stood for thirty thousand pounds; and Goldstein
kept himself awake by picturing the life he would enjoy, out yonder
in the Fatherland, when he had claimed his share of the reward. He
would squander a thousand of the thirty among his men--more or less,
according to their temper--and would afterwards retire from service.
For Goldstein, it would seem, did not share the Catholic belief that,
till he dies, no man is privileged to retire from soldiery.
He kept awake; and by and by he could not rest under shelter of the
byre that kept him weather-tight. He went out into the snowy moonlight,
intent on seeing that his sentries were leaving no way open for the
Prince to escape; and he forgot that there were windows looking out at
him.
Rupert was standing at his post meanwhile, finding his high dreams
useful now that the call to arms had come. He was serving for faith’s
sake, and for loyalty’s; and service of that sort is apt to breed an
odd content.
Across his sense of well-being a gunshot sounded--quick, and loud,
and urgent, in this house of silence. He took up a musket, and peered
through the snow-storm out of doors, expecting an assault. And again
nothing happened, for a little while. And then he heard a woman’s step
along the corridor, and Nance’s voice, low and piteous.
“Rupert, where are you? I--I need you.”
It was then Rupert learned afresh, with a vivid pain that seemed
unbearable, how deep his love had gone during the past, silent years.
She was in trouble, and needed him. He ran to her side, but could not
outstrip the fears that crowded round him. There was the gunshot--and
she was hurt; Nance, whom he had longed to keep from the least touch of
harm, was hurt.
He put his arms about her. His eyes had grown used long since to the
dim moonlight of the room, and they sought with feverish concern for
traces of her wound.
“Where are you hurt, Nance?” he asked.
And “Here,” she said, with a wan little smile--“here, right through my
heart, Rupert. I--I have killed a man, I think, just now.”
So then, through the confusion of his thoughts, he remembered that the
gunshot had sounded from within doors, and his heart grew lighter.
“Why, then, there’s one less of the enemy. You should be proud, my
dear.”
“Proud?” Her voice was still and hushed. “You were right when you said
that this was man’s work. I was watching at the north window--and the
time seemed long in passing--and then I saw a man’s thick-set body
coming through the snow. And I--I forgot I was a woman, and took aim,
and he fell, Rupert, so suddenly, with his arms thrown up, and lay
there in the snow.”
“One less,” said the master, with a return to dogged cheerfulness. “We
must get to our posts again.”
Nance looked at him. Now that he knew her safe, he was again the
soldier, forgetting the way of his heart and thinking only of the need
for action. And her pride took fire, as she went back to her window,
resolute to show him that she could be soldierly as he. For a while she
dared not look out, remembering what lay yonder; and then she chided
herself for cowardice, and peeped through the moonlight.
The huddled bulk of a man that had lain prone in the snow was moving
now--slowly, and on hands and knees--and was creeping out of range. And
once again Nance knew herself a woman; for she was glad, with a joy
instant and vehement, that she had a wounded man only on her conscience.
Goldstein, when the shot hit him at close range, had thought the end
had come. He was wearied out by long riding over broken roads, by need
of sleep; and the flare of the gunshot, the sudden hell-fire in his
left thigh, had knocked his hardiness to bits. But by and by, when he
found leisure to pick his courage up, and knew that his wound went only
deep through the fleshy part of his thigh, he made his way back to the
stables, and roused one of his sleeping troopers; and, between them,
they staunched the bleeding, and dressed the wound with odds and ends
torn from the linings of their coats. And then Goldstein lay back on
the straw and slept like a little child, and dreamed that he was home
again in Hanover, in the days before he sought advancement in a foreign
country.
At Will Underwood’s house, meanwhile, the laggard gentry of Lancashire
were sitting over their wine, and were cursing this snowfall that
would not let them hunt to-morrow. And they were troubled, all of
them; for they knew that better men were facing hardship on the London
road, while they, from faults of sloth or caution, were sheltered by
house-walls. They were men, after all, under the infirmities that
hindered them; and ease, for its own sake, never yet appealed for long
to hearts built for weather and adventure. They needed hard exercise,
to blunt the edge of conscience; and they were fretful, ready to pick
quarrels among themselves, because they knew that the morrow must be
spent in idleness.
“We can always drink, gentlemen,” said Underwood, pushing the bottle
round. “That is one consolation.”
“Likely to be our only one,” snapped his neighbour, “if this
cursed snow stays on the ground. And we can drink half the night,
Underwood--but not all the day as well. You can have too much of a
pastime.”
“What are they doing London way, I wonder?” put in a smooth-faced
youngster, gibing at himself and all of them. “They’ll have bonnie
roads to travel.”
Underwood remembered a day, not long ago, when he had met Nance Demaine
on the moor, recalled the look in her face as she gave him her kerchief
and bade him use it as a flag of truce “when her men returned from
the crowning.” He got to his feet and reached across the table with
clenched fist. “How dare you!” he said savagely. “We’re all wearing the
white feather, and you twit us with it, you young fool.”
They drew back from him for a moment. His pain and fury were so
evident, his easy-going temper so completely broken, that they thought
him drunk, when in reality he was vastly sober--so sobered that he saw
himself a creature pitiful and time-serving.
And the youngster, taking fire in turn, said that he would be called
fool by no man without asking satisfaction; and swords would have been
out had not Underwood’s neighbour, a jolly, red-faced squire who liked
to drink his wine in peace, taken the situation at a canter.
“For shame, Underwood!” he said, laying a sharp hand on his shoulder.
“It would be no duel--it would be another slaughter of the innocents.
To fight a boy like that----”
“Not very innocent, by your leave,” broke in the youngster, with such
palpable affront, such pride in his budding vices, that the old squire
laughed outrageously.
“By gad! not very innocent!” he echoed, with another rolling laugh.
“See the cockrel standing up to crow--all red about the gills,
gentlemen. Let’s fill our glasses and drink to his growing comb.”
So it ended in frank laughter as they rose and drowned the quarrel in
a roaring toast. But Underwood, though he joined them, carried no good
look. He was still thinking of Nance Demaine, of the white badge she
had offered him. And an uneasy silence settled on them all.
“I heard a queer tale to-day, Will,” said the red-faced squire
presently, by way of lifting the talk into easier channels. “Old
Luke Faweather met me on the road. He was coming home from market on
that fat, piebald horse of his, and he pulled up. He’d ridden wide
of Windyhough, it seemed, and swore that he heard gunshots through
the snow--rattle after rattle, he said, as if half the moorside were
letting off their guns.”
“Oh, Luke!” laughed Underwood, rousing himself from his evil
mood. “We know his market-days. He hears and sees queer things at
home-coming--carries the bottle in his head, as the saying goes.”
“Aye, but he seemed his own man to-day. The horse wasn’t guiding him
for once. His wife had been at him, maybe. He said they were not firing
fowling-pieces, but something ‘lustier in the bellows,’ and I could
make neither head nor tail of it. Who at Windyhough would be playing
Guy Fawkes’ foolery?”
“Rupert, likely,” growled Underwood, some old jealousy aroused. “He was
all for joining this precious Rising, till he found they had no use for
dreamers. He was left to play nursery games with the women, and grew
tired of it, and rummaged through the house till he found the muskets
stored there.”
“That’s all very well, Underwood; but the lad would not go firing into
the snow just for the frolic of it.”
“Wouldn’t he? I know Rupert. He could dream a whole regiment of enemies
into the courtyard there if his mind were set that way, and go on
firing at the ghosts.”
“Well, he’s past my understanding,” laughed the squire. “Perhaps you’re
right.”
“Oh, I can see him,” Underwood went on, old antipathy gaining on him.
“He’s ambitious. He would like to be the martyred Charles, and the
Prince, and every cursed Stuart of them all. It’s laughable to think
how much our scholar dares--in fancy.”
A low growl went round the table, and Underwood knew that he had gone
too far.
“There’ll be a duel in earnest soon,” sputtered the red-faced squire
who loved his ease. “You were never one of us, Will Underwood--and you
think we’re birds of a feather because we stayed at home with you; but
I tell you plainly, I’ll listen to no slur on a Stuart.”
“Oh, I spoke hastily.”
“You did--and you’ll recant!”
Underwood, tired of himself and all things, gathered something of his
old, easy manner. He filled his glass afresh and lifted it, and passed
it with finished bravado over the jug in front of him. “To the King
across the water, gentlemen!” he said smoothly.
One of the company had gone to the window, and turned now from looking
out on the snow that never ceased. “All this does not help us much,” he
grumbled. “We can talk and talk, and drink pretty-boy toasts till we’re
under the table; but what of to-morrow? There’ll be nothing doing out
of doors.”
“Wait,” said Will Underwood. “When the snow’s tired of falling there’ll
be frost; and the wild duck--say, to-morrow night--will be coming over
Priest’s Tarn, up above Windyhough.”
“Gad! that is a happy notion, Will!” assented the old squire. “It’s
years since I had a shot at duck in the moonlight--and rare sport it
is. Come, we’ve drunk to the Stuart, and to every lady we could call to
mind. Let’s fill afresh, and drink to the wild duck flying high.”
Will was glad when the night’s revelry ended and he found himself alone
in the dining-hall. He had drunk level with his friends, and the wine
had left him untouched. He had diced with them, sung hunting-songs,
and no spark of gaiety had reached him. For, day by day since he lost
Nance once for all, he had been learning how deep his love had gone.
Looking back to-night, as he sat at the littered table, with its empty
bottles and its wine-stains, he could not understand how he had come to
be absent from the Loyal Meet. The meaner side of him was hidden away.
He was a man carrying a love bigger than himself--a love that would
last him till he died; and he had not known as much until these days of
loss and misery came.
At Windyhough the night wore slowly on. The besiegers, since Goldstein
crept into shelter, spent and disabled, were less disposed than ever
to risk attack before the daylight gave them clearer knowledge of this
house that seemed to have a musket behind every window. The besieged
listened to the silence--the silence of expectancy, which grows so deep
and burdensome that a man can almost hear it. From time to time Rupert
went the round of the corridor to see that his garrison was wakeful,
and about the middle of the night he found Ben Shackleton nodding at
his post, and gripped him by the shoulder.
“What’s to do?” growled the farmer, shaking his big bulk like a dog
whistled out of the water. “I was dreaming, master, and as nigh heaven
as a man ever gets i’ this life. I’d have swopped farming and wife and
all for one more blessed hour of it.”
Rupert laughed. He was learning much of human to-and-froing during
these last days, and his first hot contempt of this sleeping sentry
yielded to a broader sympathy. “What was your dream, Ben?” he asked.
“Nay, naught so much--only that I went to Lancashire Market and had a
pig to sell. She wasn’t worth what I was asking, not by th’ half. And
t’other chap he wrangled, and I wrangled; then, blamed if the fool
didn’t gi’e me what I asked, and we were just wetting our whistles on
th’ bargain when ye wakened me. It was a terrible good dream, master.”
“Well, stay awake to remember it, Ben. These folk outside are too quiet
for my liking.”
Ben’s face was impassive as ever, but his glance measured Rupert from
heel to crown. He saw a slim-bodied man, whose face was lit with a
keen and happy fire; he saw, too, that the anxiety which had dulled
even Lady Royd’s eyes--the toast of the county still, though the
eyes were middle-aged--had only strengthened the light of authority
and strength which played about his face. Ben Shackleton was slow to
awake from his dream of pig-selling, but he was aware of some settled
gladness--gladness that Sir Jasper had an heir at last.
“Aye,” he said, shaking himself afresh. “It’s the honest dog that
barks--the biting sort lie quiet. Well, then? What’s afoot, maister?
I’m here to take my orders, I reckon, as Blacksmith Dan said when
parson asked him if he’d have Mary o’ Ghyll to be his wedded wife.”
The man’s lazy tongue, his steadfastness, proved long ago, brought an
odd peace to Rupert. There were snow and a bitter wind outside, and
an enemy that only by convention could be named civilised; but within
there was a little garrison whose members, on the great, main issues,
were not divided.
“Yes. You are here to obey orders,” said the other sharply. “Keep awake
at your post, Ben.”
Shackleton saluted gravely. “I’ll do it for ye, master, though I had a
busyish day before I rade hither-till, getting ewes down from the high
lands--and sleep is sticking round me fair like a bramble-thicket.”
“Well, you’ve to win through the thicket, Ben,” said the master, and
passed on.
He crossed to the north window, saw Nance standing there, her trim head
lifted to the moonlight as she peered over the window-sill; and for a
moment he forgot that they were in the thick of the siege perilous.
“My dear,” he said, with the tenderest simplicity, “you’d best get to
bed. You have done enough for one night.”
She did not turn her head, and her voice was cold. “Have _you_ done
enough, Rupert?”
“Oh, I’m used to lack of sleep, and you are not.”
She thought of the wakeful nights that had been torture to her since
Will Underwood returned. First love, built of the stuff she had given
him, dies hard; for it is the weak things that find easy death-beds,
because their grip on this life and hereafter is languid and of slight
account.
“I can handle a musket,” she said, turning with sharp defiance; “and
our defence is--is not strong.”
In the silence, across the dull moonlight of the corridor, they
measured each other with a long glance. And Nance, in this mood of
hers, was passionately at war with him. Until to-day he had been her
bond-slave, gay when she willed it, foolish and out of heart when she
flouted him. And now her reign was ended. Rupert did not know it yet;
but Nance, with the intuition that seems to do women little service,
was aware that she had lost for the time being a cavalier and found
instead a master.
“You can handle a musket,” he said dryly. “Good-night, Nance--and
remember to keep your head low above the sill. The men outside can aim
straight, too.”
He went back to his post at the window overlooking the main door. And
he began to think of Nance, of the brown, shapely head that had been
magic to him--the head that was in danger of a bullet from one of
Goldstein’s men. Yesterday he would have gone to her side, to ease the
fierce pain for her safety; his feet were willing, and he wondered that
instead he stood obstinately at his post, intent on musketry and the
welfare of his house.
Nance waited for his return. She had had him at call, until peril came
and the attack in front. She was sure that he would come back, anxious
as of old lest the world should use her ill. But he did not come; and
she felt oddly desolate, because he was so resolute and far away from
her. Then she, too, turned to the moonlit window and to soldiery.
And the night crept on to dawn. From the fowl-yard at the rear of the
house a cock began to crow half-heartedly. Nance, from her window, and
the master of the house from his, looked out on a grey whirl of snow,
reddened by the fingers of a frosty dawn.
And nothing happened, as the way had been these days at Windyhough.