THE RIDING OUT
SIR JASPER, out at Ben Shackleton’s farm, had been no easy guest to
entertain since he sought refuge there from the pursuit of Goldstein’s
men. He slept for twelve hours, after they had laid him on the
lang-settle and stopped the bleeding from his wound; and then, for an
hour, he had lain between sleep and waking; and, after that, he was
keen to be up and doing.
Shackleton’s wife, dismayed because her goodman had not returned long
since from carrying his message to Windyhough, was sharp of tongue, and
lacking in deference a little, as the way of the sturdy farm-folk is
when they are troubled.
“As you wish, Sir Jasper,” she said tartly. “Just get up and stand on
your two feet, and see how it feels, like.”
He got stubbornly to his feet, and moved a pace or two across the
floor; and then he grew weak and dizzy, and was glad to find his way
again to the lang-settle.
“Ay, so!” said Shackleton’s wife. “It’s good for men-folk to learn,
just time and time, how they can go weak as a little babby.”
“My wife needs me yonder.”
“Ay, and I need my goodman here. Exchange is no robbery, Sir Jasper.”
“She is in danger,” he snapped, with a sick man’s petulance.
“Well, so’s my man, I reckon--they’ve kept him yonder, or he’d have
been home lang-syne.”
Then weariness conquered Sir Jasper; and he slept again till that day
passed, and the next night, and half through the morning. It was his
respite from remembrance of the retreat from Derby, from the wound that
kept him out of action.
“You’ll do nicely now,” said Shackleton’s wife, glancing round from
ironing a shirt of her husband’s. “You’ve got the look of your old self
about you, Sir Jasper.”
The wound itself was of less account than the bleeding that had
followed it; and by nightfall he was waiting impatiently until the
shepherd saddled his mare and brought her to the door.
The farm-wife looked him up and down, with the frank glance that had
only friendliness and extreme solicitude behind it. “Eh, but you look
sick and wambly,” she said. “Can you sit a horse, Sir Jasper?”
“I am hale and well,” he answered--fretfully, because he felt his
weakness and because he was fearing for his wife.
He got to saddle, and the mare and he went slushing up and down the
mile of bridle-track that separated them from home. He was no longer
conscious of pain or weakness; his heart was on fire to see his wife
again, to know her safe. At the turn of the hill, just beyond the
gallows-tree that stood naked against the sky, he saw Windyhough lying
below him, the moonlight keen on snowy chimney-stacks and gables.
“Thank God!” he said, seeing how peaceful the old house lay.
A little later he came to the splintered gateway, and his heart misgave
him. The mare fidgeted and would not go forward; and, looking down, he
saw a dead man lying in the moonlight--the trooper at whom Rupert had
fired his maiden battle-shot.
He got from saddle, left the mare to her own devices, and ran across
the courtyard. Here, too, were bodies lying in the snow. The main door
was gone, save for a charred framework through which the moon showed
him a disordered hall.
Without thought of his own safety here, with a single, savage purpose
to find his wife--dead or worse--he crossed the hall; and at the
stairway foot he met the red-faced squire, coming down with a brisk
tread surprising in a man of his bulk and goutiness.
“By gad! we’re too busy with flesh and blood to care for ghosts,” said
the squire, halting suddenly. His laugh was boisterous, but it covered
a superstition lively and afraid.
“A truce to nonsense,” snapped Sir Jasper. “Where is Lady Royd?”
“Asleep--and her toy spaniel, too.” The squire had come down and
touched Sir Jasper to make sure that he was of this world. “I should
poison that dog if it were mine, Royd. It yapped at every wounded man
we carried in.”
“My wife is asleep--and safe?” asked the other, as if he feared the
answer.
“We’re all safe--except poor Will Underwood; and all busy, thanks to
that game pup of yours. For a scholar, he shaped well.”
“Rupert kept the house?” Through all his trouble and unrest Sir Jasper
tried to grasp the meaning of the charred doorway, the groans of
wounded men above. “It did not seem so when I came indoors.”
So then the Squire told him, all in clipped, hurried speech, the way
of it. And Sir Jasper forgot his wife, forgot his wound, and all the
misery that had dogged his steps since Derby. He had an heir at last.
Rupert, the well-beloved, had proved himself.
“Where is he?” he asked huskily.
“Asleep, too, by your leave. No, we’ll not wake him. He’s had three
days of gunpowder and wakefulness, Royd. Let him sleep the clock round.”
The squire, seeing how weak Sir Jasper was, took him by the arm into
the dining-chamber, filled him a measure of brandy, and pushed him
gently into a chair.
“I came late to the wedding, Royd,” he said dryly, “but I’m in command
here, till you find your strength.”
Sir Jasper, for the first time since Derby, was content. His wife was
safe, and his heir was a man at last. And the red-faced squire, whom he
had always liked, was no recusant, after all.
“You talked of carrying wounded men in?” he asked by and by. “I can
hear them crying out for thirst.”
“That’s where they have us, Royd, these flea-bitten men of George’s,”
said the squire, with another boisterous laugh. “They were crying like
stuck pigs--out in the cold--and we _had_ to take them in. Windyhough
is a hospital, I tell you, owing to the queer Catholic training that
weakens us. They’d not have done as much for us.”
“That is their loss--and, as for training, I think Rupert has proved it
fairly right.”
“Well, yes. But I hate wounds, Royd, and all the sickroom messiness.
It’s an ill business, tending men you’d rather see lying snugly in
their graves.”
Sir Jasper laughed, not boisterously at all, but with the tranquil
gaiety that comes of sadness. “There was a worse business, friend,
at Derby. I went through it; and, I tell you, nothing matters very
much--nothing will ever matter again, unless the Prince finds his
battle up in Scotland.”
And by and by they fell to talking of ways and means. Sir Jasper was
pledged to rejoin the Prince, and would not break his word. Neither
would he leave his son at Windyhough a second time, among the women and
old men. And yet--there was his wife, who needed him.
The red-faced squire, blunt and full of cheery common sense, resolved
his difficulties. “Cannot you trust us, Royd? There’ll be six men
of us--seven, counting Simon Foster, who is getting better of his
hurt--and only wounded prisoners to guard.”
“What if another company of roving blackguards rides this way?”
“Not likely. By your own showing, the hunt goes wide of this. Besides,
we shall get a new doorway up. Rupert held the house with two to help
him--seven of us could do the like.”
Sir Jasper began to pace restlessly up and down. “You forget,” he said
sharply, “it will be my wife you’re guarding--my wife--and she means so
much to me, old friend.”
“We know, we know. D’ye think we’d let hurt come to her? Listen,
Royd. When these jackanapes who groan in German are fit to look after
themselves, we’ll leave them to it, and take all your women with us to
my house at Ravenscliff. And word shall go round that Lady Royd--the
toast of the county to this day--needs gentlemen about her. She’ll not
lack friends, I tell you.”
The squire’s glance fell as it met Sir Jasper’s. His conscience
was uneasy still, and he fancied a rebuke that was far from Royd’s
thoughts. So had the Prince been the county’s toast--until the Prince
asked instant service.
“I can trust you,” said Sir Jasper, with sudden decision. “Guard
her--as God sees us, she is--is very dear to me.”
Then, after a restless silence, Sir Jasper’s doubts, bred of bodily
weakness, ran into a new channel.
“There’s yourself to think of in all this--your own wife, and your
house. The Hanover men will not be gentle if we lose the battle up in
Scotland.”
“Royd,” said the red-faced squire, not fearing now to meet his glance,
“we’ve come badly out of this, we fools who stayed at home. There’s
been no flavour in our wine; we’ve been poor fox-hunters, not caring
whether we were in at the death or no--you’ll not grudge us our one
chance to play the man?”
Sir Jasper understood at last that recusants can have their evil
moments, can find worse cheer than he had met at Derby.
“I warn you, Ned, there’s small chance of our winning now. For old
friendship’s sake, I’ll not let you go blindly into this.”
“What’s the ballad Nance Demaine sings so nattily? _Life’s losing and
land’s losing, and what were they to gi’e?_ Oh, it’s all true, Royd. We
have our chance at last--and, gad! we mean to take it.”
“It bites deep, Ned,” said the other, with grave concern. “It bites
deep, this wife losing and land losing.”
“Not as deep as shame,” snapped the red-faced squire. “I’m a free man
of my hands again. And now, by the look of you, you’d best get to bed.
Honest man to honest man, Royd, you’re dead-beat?”
“Yes--if the house is safe,” said Sir Jasper, with unalterable
simplicity.
“Oh, trust me, Royd! I’m in command here--and, I tell you, all is safe.”
He went upstairs, and into his wife’s room. There was a candle burning
on the table at her elbow, and he forgot his own need of sleep in
watching hers. The strain of the past days was gone. She lay like a
child at peace with God and man, and the peevish, day-time wrinkles
were smoothed away; and she was dreaming, had her husband known it, of
the days when she had come, as a bride, to Windyhough.
A gusty tenderness, a reverence beyond belief, came to Sir Jasper. He
forgot all hardships Derby way. The simple heart of him was content
with the day’s journey, so long as it brought him this--his wife
secure, with happiness asleep about her face.
He stooped to touch her, and the spaniel sleeping at her side stood up
and barked at him, rousing the mistress.
“Be quiet!” she said sleepily. “I was dreaming--that my lord came home
again, forgiving all my foolishness.”
The spaniel only barked the more. And Sir Jasper, who was by way of
being rough just now with all intruders, big or little, pitched him out
on to the landing.
His wife was awake now, and she looked at him with wide eyes of
misery. “You have kept tryst, my dear. You promised--when you rode
out--that, if you died, you would come to tell me of it. And I--God
help me!--was dreaming that we were young again together.”
“We’re very young again together, Agnes,” said Sir Jasper, with a quiet
laugh. “Do I look so ghostly that you all mistake me for a wraith?”
She touched him, as the squire had done--gently at first, and then with
gaining confidence. “You look--as I have never seen you, husband; you
are as grey of face as Rupert, when his work was done and they carried
him upstairs. Your wound--Jasper, it is not mortal?”
“It is healing fast. There, wife, you are only half awake, and I’m
dishevelled. I had no time to put myself in order. I was too eager
just--just to see my wife again.”
And Lady Royd was wide awake now. Not only the husband, but the lover,
had returned. “I shall have to take care of you, Jasper,” she said,
with the woman’s need to be protective when she is happy. “You’ll need
nursing, and----”
“I need sleep,” growled Sir Jasper--“just a few hours’ sleep, Agnes,
and--and forgetfulness of Derby.”
“Ah, sleep! That has been our need, too. We--we none of us went out
with you, Jasper--but we kept the house. And we learned what sleep
means--more than food or drink, more than any gift that we can ask.”
It is in the hurried, perilous moments that men come to understanding.
Sir Jasper, by the little said and the much left unsaid, knew that
his wife, according to her strength, had taken a brave part in this
enterprise.
“You talk of what old campaigners know,” he said.
And there was a little, pleasant silence; and after that Lady Royd
looked into her husband’s face.
“You are home again--to stay until your wound is healed?” she asked.
“No, my dear. I take the road to-morrow. The Prince needs me.”
She turned her face to the wall. And temptation played like a windy
night about Sir Jasper, taking him at the ebb of his strength, as all
cowards do. He was more weak of body than she guessed; he had given
really of himself, and surely he had earned a little ease, a sitting
by the hearth while he told his wife, this once again, what was in his
heart for her.
And his wife turned suddenly. Her eyes were radiant with the faith that
siege had taught her--siege, and the reek of gunpowder, and the way men
carried themselves in the face of the bright comrade, danger.
“Go, Jasper--and good luck to your riding,” she said quietly.
At two of the next afternoon Sir Jasper and Rupert got to saddle; and
the father, knowing the way of his son’s heart, rode on ahead down
the long, sloping bridle-track, leaving him to say good-bye to Nance
Demaine.
Nance had been used to courage, as she was used to wind on the hills;
but all her world was slipping from her now. She had given her kerchief
to Will Underwood, from pity for a love that was dead and hidden out of
sight; she had gone through stress and turmoil; and at the end of all
Rupert, her one friend here, was riding out with his eyes on the hills,
though she stood at his stirrup and sought his glance.
“God speed, Rupert!” she said.
He stooped to kiss her hand, but his thoughts were far away. “It seemed
all past praying for, Nance--and it has come.”
“What has come?” she asked--peevishly, because she was tired and very
lonely. “Fire, and sleeplessness, and the cries of wounded men--what
else has come to Windyhough?”
“Not Stuart songs,” he answered gravely. “Stuart deeds are coming my
way, Nance, at long last.”
“So you--are glad to go, Rupert?”
He looked down at her and for a moment he forgot the road ahead. He
saw only Nance--Nance, whom he had loved from boyhood--Nance, with the
wholesome, bonnie face that discerning men, who could see the soul
behind it, named beautiful. All his keen young love for her was needing
outlet on the sudden. She was so near, so friendly; and about her was
a clear, eager starshine, such as lovers see.
The siege, and killing of a man here and there, stepped in and
conquered this old weakness that was hindering him. “Nance, my dear,”
he said, “I shall come back--when I’m your proven man.”
It was so he went quietly out into the sunlight that had struggled free
awhile of the grey, wintry clouds. And again Nance was chilled, as she
had been when the Loyal Meet rode out--years ago, it seemed--without
sound of drum or any show of pageantry. She had not learned even yet
that men with a single purpose go about their business quietly, not
heeding bugle-calls of this world’s sounding.
She watched him go, old pity and old liking stirred. And she longed to
call him back, but pride forbade her.
Simon Foster came grumbling through the charred courtyard gate. He had
stood at the hilltop, watching the old master and the young go out
along the track he was too infirm to follow; and there was a deep,
abiding bitterness in his heart.
“They shouldn’t have gi’en me a taste o’ fight, Miss Nance,” he said.
“I call it fair shameful just to whet a body’s appetite, and then give
him naught solid to follow. Oh, I tell ye, it’s ill work staying at
home, tied up wi’ rheumatiz.”
Nance was glad of the respite from her own muddled thoughts, from the
sense of loss that Rupert had left her as a parting gift. “It is time
you settled down,” she said, with a touch of the humour that was never
far from her. “And you have Martha to make up for all you’re losing.”
“Ay, true,” grumbled Simon, his eyes far away; “but Martha could have
bided till I’d had my fill, like. She’s patient--it’s in the build of
her--but, I never was.”
“Patience?” said Nance. “It is in no woman’s build, Simon. We have to
learn it, while our men are enjoying the free weather.”
Rupert had overtaken his father on the winding, downhill track, and
they rode in silence together for a mile or so, each thinking of the
other and of the work ahead. It was a pleasant, deep communion for them
both; and the son remembered, for the last time, how Sir Jasper had
lied to him in giving him the house of Windyhough to keep. From the
soldiery learnt there, from the peril waiting for them ahead, Rupert
had won the priceless gift, forgiveness--a herb troublesome and hard to
find.
“You’re silent, lad,” said Sir Jasper, as they came to the stretch of
level track that took them right-handed into the Langton road.
“I was thinking--that dreams come true, sir, as I said to Nance just
now.”
Clouds were hurrying up against the sun--yellow, evil clouds, packed
thick with snow--and a bitter wind was rising. The going underfoot was
vile. Their errand was to join an army in retreat, with likelihood
that they would dine and breakfast on disaster. And yet--because God
made them so--they found tranquillity. Sir Jasper had dreamed of this,
since his first gladness that he had an heir, his first sorrow when he
admitted to himself, grudgingly, that the boy was not as strong as he
had wished. And Rupert, while his shoulders found their scholarly droop
in reading old books at Windyhough, had shared the same dream--that one
day, by a miracle, he might ride out with his father on the Stuart’s
business.
And they were here together. And nothing mattered, somehow, as the way
of men is when their souls have taken the open, friendly road.
They rode hard in pursuit of the Prince’s army, nursing their horses’
strength as far as eagerness would let them; and, at long last, they
overtook their friends on the windy summit of Shap Fell, where the
Stuart army was bivouacked for the night.
Sir Jasper asked audience of the Prince, and found him sitting in his
tent, eating a stew of sheep’s kidneys--the one luxury royalty could
command at the moment. And the Prince rose, forgetting his quality, in
frank welcome of this man who had shared the evil Derby days with him.
“I thought you dead, sir; and I’m very glad to see you--alive, but
thinner than you were.”
No detail ever escaped the Prince’s eye, when he was concerned about
the welfare of his friends; and the solicitude, the affection of this
greeting atoned for many hardships.
“I was wounded, your Highness, or should have been with you long since.”
“So much I knew. No other hindrance would have kept you,” said the
Prince, with flattering trust.
“I bring a volunteer with me.”
“He must be staunch indeed! A volunteer to join us in these days of
havoc? Has he been jilted by one of your Lancashire witches, that he’s
eager to trudge through this evil weather?”
“No. He has just won through a siege on your behalf--the siege of my
own house--and could not rest till he had seen you.”
The Prince had been in a black mood of despair not long ago. He was
alone in his tent, with none to need him for the moment, none to know
if he were sick at heart. Like all men, great or small, he was at once
the victim and the captain of the temperament given him at birth; and
none but the Stuarts knew how dearly they purchased--through lonely
hours of misery, self-doubt, denial of all hope--the charm, the gay,
unyielding courage that touched the dullest wayfarers with some fine
hint of betterment.
Sir Jasper’s coming had cleared the Prince’s outlook. In the man’s
simplicity, in the obvious love he held for this unknown volunteer, the
Stuart read a request unspoke.
“Present him,” he said, with the smile that had tempted men and women
alike to follow him for love. “He’ll forgive me if I finish this stew
of kidneys? For I own I’m devilish hungry.”
Through the toilsome ride from Windyhough to Shap, Rupert had talked
of the Prince, and only of the Prince; and Sir Jasper went now to
find his heir, proud--as simple men are--of the transparent diplomacy
that had secured Rupert his heart’s desire so promptly. He did not
find him at once among the busy camp; and when they were admitted to
the royal tent, his Highness had finished his meal, and was smoking
the disreputable pipe that had been his friend throughout this weary,
meaningless retreat.
“My son, your Highness,” said Sir Jasper.
Rupert, coming out of the stark night outside, blinked as he met the
flickering light of the rush-candles within the tent. Then his eyes
cleared, and some trouble took him by the throat. He was young, and in
the Presence; and his dreams had been greatly daring, sweeping up to
the stars of Stuart loyalty.
“I commend you, sir,” said the Prince, looking the lad through and
through, as his way was, to learn what shape he had. “There are apt to
be volunteers when a cause is gaining, but few when it’s escaping to
the hills.”
The heart of a man, kept bridled for five-and-twenty years, knows no
reticence when it meets at last the comrade of its long desire.
“Your Highness,” said Rupert, with a simplicity larger than his
father’s, because less way-worn, “I begin to live. I asked to serve
you, and--and the prayer is granted.”
“You join us in retreat?” said the Prince, touched by the pity of this
hero-worship.
“I join you either way. I’ve found--why, happiness, I think.”
The Prince was a few months younger than himself; but he touched him
now on the shoulder, as a father might. “Good luck to your honour lad!”
he said. “Clean the world’s mud off from it whenever you find leisure,
as you polish a sword-blade. That’s the soldier’s gospel.”
The next day they were on the march again. The weather was not gentle
on the top of Shap Fell, and the red sun, rising into a clear and
frosty sky, showed them a lonely and a naked land--hills reaching out
to farther hills, desolate, snow-white, and dumb. Not a bird called.
The Highlanders, with their steady, swinging strides, the horsemen
moving at a sober pace, were ringed about with silence. Before
nightfall, however, they reached Clifton village, and here at last they
found diversion from the day’s austerity.
The Prince, with the greater part of his cavalry, had pushed forward to
Penrith; but Lord Elcho, who, with Sir Jasper’s horsemen, had charge of
the rear, gave a sharp sigh of thanksgiving when a messenger brought
news that the Duke of Cumberland, with his own regiment and Kingston’s
light horse, were close at his heels after ten hours’ hard pursuit.
Elcho was glad even of the long odds against him, knowing that his
Highlanders were wearying for battle, and made his dispositions with a
cheery sense that the Duke had done them a good turn in overtaking them.
Taking full advantage of the cover afforded by the country, Elcho
placed his men behind the hedges and stone walls, and as the first of
the dusk came down the Duke’s soldiery delivered their attack. It was
a sharp, bewildering skirmish, ended speedily by nightfall; but to
Rupert, fighting in the open after the stifled days at Windyhough, it
was easy to show a gallantry that roused the applause of men grown old
and hard to combat. And ever he thought less of Nance, and more of this
new comrade, danger, whose face was bright, alluring.
They left the Duke with his dead; and, because they were hopelessly
outnumbered if the daylight found them still in possession of Clifton,
they went through the black night to Penrith, bringing news to the
Prince of their little victory. And after that it was forward to
Carlisle.