LOVE IN EXILE
THE Skye boatmen took their Prince safely to the mainland, and were
not ashamed because they wept at parting from him. And then the Stuart
and Sir Jasper’s heir set out again along the lone tracks that taught
them understanding of each other--understanding of the world that does
not show its face among the crowded haunts where men lie and slander
and drive hard bargains one against the other. Their bodies were hard,
for wind and weather had toughened them till they were lean and rugged
as upland trees that have grown strong with storm. Their courage was
steady, because all except life was lost. And at their hearts there
was a quick, insistent music, as if the pipes were playing. They were
fighting against long odds, and they were northern born; and the world,
in some queer way, went not amiss with them.
Rupert, in between the journeys and the vigils shared with the Prince,
was often abroad on the errands that had grown dear to him since coming
into Scotland. He would ride here, ride there, with night and danger
for companions, gathering news of the enemies, the friends, who could
be counted on. And he found constantly the stirring knowledge that,
though he had not been keen to ride to hounds in Lancashire, he was hot
to take his fences now.
On one of these days he rode in, tired and spent, bringing news from
the braes of Glenmoriston, and found the Stuart smoking his pipe, while
he skinned a deer that he had shot.
“You are killing yourself for loyalty,” said the Prince, glancing at
him with a sudden, friendly smile.
“By your leave, sir,” said Rupert, as if he talked of Murray’s plain
arithmetic, “I am alive at last.”
“You’re made of the martyr’s stuff,” said the other.
“Your Highness, they called me the scholar there in Lancashire, and I
knew what that meant. I am trying to outride the shame.”
Rupert was tired out. The Prince was tired at heart, because of
Culloden, because of Miss MacDonald, whom he was not to see again, and
all the dreams that had tumbled from the high skies to sordid earth.
Neither of them had tasted food for six-and-thirty hours. And at these
times men are apt to find a still, surprising companionship, such as
the tramps know who foot it penniless along the roads.
“We have found our kingdom, you and I,” said the Prince, with sudden
intuition--“here on the upland tracks, where a man learns something of
the God who made him.”
Rupert looked out across the mountains, blue-purple in the gloaming,
and caught the other’s mood, and spoke as a friend does to a friend,
when the heart needs a confidant. “It is all a riddle,” he said slowly.
“I thought all lost, after Culloden--and yet I’ve tasted happiness,
tasted it for the first time in my life. To carry your life on the
saddle with me, to keep open eyes when I’m sick for sleep, to know that
the Stuart trusts me--I tell you, I have tasted glory.”
The Prince turned his head aside. This was the loyalty known to him
since he first set foot in Scotland, the service he claimed, he knew
not why, from gentle and simple of his well-wishers. And he was
remembering how many of these eager folk had died on his behalf,
was forgetting that he, too, had gone sleepless through peril and
disaster because he carried at his saddle-bow, not one life only, but a
kingdom’s fate.
“Your news from Glenmoriston, sir?” he asked sharply.
“Pleasant news. A man has died for you, with gallantry.”
“You call it pleasant news?”
“Listen, your Highness! It was one Roderick MacKenzie--he was a
merchant in Edinburgh, and left the town to follow you; and he found
his way, after Culloden, to the hills about Glenmoriston. He was alone,
and a company of the enemy surprised him; and he faced them, and
killed two before they overcame him; and he died in anguish, but found
strength to lift himself just before the end. He knew that he was like
you, in height and face, and cried, ‘God forgive you, you have killed
your Prince!’”
“It was brave; it was well meant. But, sir, it is not pleasant news.”
“He bought your safety. They are carrying his head to London to claim
the ransom. And the troops have left the hills, your Highness--they
believe you dead.”
“I wish their faith were justified,” said the other, with the
bitterness that always tortured him when he heard that men had died on
his behalf. “Your pardon,” he added by and by. “I should thank you for
the news--and yet I cannot.”
The next day they climbed the brae and went down the long, heathery
slope that took them to Glenmoriston; and nowhere was there ambush or
pursuit, as Rupert had foretold--only crying of the birds on hilly
pastures, and warmth of the July sun as it ripened the ling to full
bloom, and humming of the bees among the early bell-heather.
They came to the glen at last, and ahead of them, a half-mile away,
there was blue smoke rising from the chimney of a low, ill-thatched
farmstead. And the Prince touched Rupert’s arm as they moved forward.
“Lord, how hunger drums at a man’s ribs!” he said, with a tired laugh.
“If there were all the Duke’s army lying in wait for us yonder, we
should still go on, I think. There may be collops there, and eggs--all
the good cheer that Mrs. MacDonald thought scanty when we came to the
laird’s house at Kingsborough.”
“By your leave,” said Rupert gravely, “it does not bear speaking of.
I begin to understand how Esau felt when he sold his birthright for a
mess of pottage.”
They reached the house, and they found there six outlaws of the hills,
ready with the welcome Rupert had made secure before he led the Prince
here. They had entrenched themselves in this wild glen, had ridden
abroad, robbing with discretion, but never hurting a man who was too
poor to pay tribute. Their name was a byword for cattle-lifting, and
they lived for plunder. Yet, somehow, when the Stuart came among
them, with thirty thousand pounds easy in the gaining, they disdained
blood-money.
For all that, another hope of the Prince’s crumbled and went by him,
after he had greeted his new hosts. There were neither eggs nor
collops in the house--only a dish of oatmeal, without milk to ease its
roughness. The Glenmoriston men explained that Cumberland’s soldiery
had been about the glen, had raided their cattle and sheep, had laid
bare the countryside.
“For all that,” said the Prince, unconquerable in disaster, “I thank
you for your oatmeal. As God sees me, you have stilled a little of the
ache I had.”
And the Glenmoriston men liked the way of him. And when, next day, he
and Rupert went up the hills and stalked a deer, and brought it home
for the cooking, their loyalty was doubled.
Through the days that followed the outlaws found leisure to prove
the guests they harboured. In the hill countries a man’s reputation
stands, not on station or fair words, but on the knowledgable, quiet
outlook his neighbours bring to bear on him. And ever a little more the
outlaws liked these two, who were lean and hard and weather-bitten as
themselves.
The Prince would not claim shelter in the house, because long use had
taught him to prefer a bed among the heather. And Rupert, lying near by
o’ nights, learned more of the Stuart than all these last disastrous
days had taught him. When a man sleeps in the open, forgetting there
may be a listener, he is apt to lose his hold on the need for reticence
that house-walls bring.
The Prince, half between sleep and waking, would lift himself on an
elbow, would murmur that men had died for him--men better than himself,
who had followed him for loyalty and not for hire, men whom he should
have shepherded to better purpose. And then he would snatch an hour or
two of sleep, and would wake again with a question, sharp and hurried
and unquiet.
“Where’s Miss MacDonald? She’s in danger. The seas are riding
high--they’re riding high, I say!--and there’s only my poor plaid to
cover her.”
And so it was always when the Prince rambled in his sleep. There was
never a complaint on his own behalf, never a wild lament that he was
skulking, a broken man, among the mountains after coming near to London
and high victory. He had two griefs only, in the night hours that probe
to the heart of a man--passionate regret for the slain, passionate
regard for Miss MacDonald’s safety.
And once the Prince, though he lay in a dead sleep, began to speak
of Miss MacDonald with such praise, such settled and devout regard,
that Rupert got up from the heather and went out into the still summer
night, lest he pried too curiously into sacred things. And as he went
up and down the glen, scenting the subtle odours that steal out at
night-time, his thoughts ran back to Lancashire. It seemed long since
he had roamed the moors in bygone summers, with just these keen, warm
scents about him, counting himself the scholar, aching for Nance
Demaine, dreaming high, foolish dreams of a day that should come which
would prove him fit to wear her favour.
And he was here, leaner and harder than of old, with a deed or two to
his credit. And he had learned a week ago, while riding on the Prince’s
business, that Lady Royd and Nance had come to Edinburgh, intent on
sharing the work of brave women there who were aiding fugitives,
by means fair or crafty, to reach the shores of France. He knew
that his father and Maurice were safely overseas; and a sudden hope
flashed across the hard, unremitting purpose that had kept his knees
close about the saddle these last days. When the Prince was secure,
when these hazards were over--the hazards that had grown strangely
pleasant--there might be leisure to return to earlier dreams, to wake
and find them all come true.
For an hour Rupert paced the glen, with gentler thoughts for
company than he had known since he first killed a man at the siege
of Windyhough. Then, with a shrug of the shoulders, he remembered
to-morrow and its needs, and went back and settled himself to sleep;
but he did not lie so near to the Prince as before, lest he overhear
him talk again of Miss MacDonald.
The next day news came that the soldiery were out among the hills
again. The gallant head of Roderick MacKenzie, who had earned a long
respite for his Prince, had been taken to London, and men who knew the
Stuart had sworn that it bore little likeness to him; and news had been
sped north, by riders killing a horse at every journey’s end, that the
Prince was still at large among the Highlands.
The Glenmoriston men were unmoved by this new trouble. They explained,
with careless humour, that their glen was already so stripped of food
as to be scarce worth living in; and they went out with their guests
into the unknown perils waiting for them as if they went to revelry.
And the Prince learned afresh that a man, when his back is to the wall,
had best not seek friends among the sleek and prosperous, who have
cherished toys to love, but among the outlaws and the driven folk who
know the open road of life.
It was by aid of the Glenmoriston men, their knowledge of the passes,
that the fugitives came safe to Lochiel’s country of Lochaber, that,
after dangers so close-set as to be almost laughable--so long the odds
against them were--they reached the shore of Loch Moidart and found a
French privateer beating about the coast. Those on board the ship were
keeping an anxious look-out toward both land and sea; they had been
advised that the Prince, with luck, might reach Moidart about noon, and
they knew, from sharp experience during their voyage to the bay, that
the enemy’s gunboats were thick as flies about the Western Isles.
It was an odd company that gathered on the strand while the ship beat
inshore with the half of a light, uncertain wind. The Prince was there,
Lochiel and Rupert, and a small band of loyal gentry who had been in
hiding round about their homes. Yet a beggar in his rags and tatters
might have joined them and claimed free passage to the French coast,
so far as outward seeming went. Their clothes were made up of odds and
ends, begged or borrowed during the long retreat. All were itching
from the attacks of the big, lusty fleas that abound along the loyal
isles. The one sign that proved them the Stuart’s gentlemen was a
certain temperate ease of carriage, a large disdain of circumstance,
a security, gay and dominant, in the faith that preferred beggarman’s
rags to fine raiment bought by treachery. They did not fear, did not
regret, though they were leaving all that meant home and the cosy
hearth.
The Prince, while the French ships were beating inshore, took Lochiel
aside. Through the wild campaign they had been like twin brothers,
these two, showing the same keen faith, the like courage under hardship.
“Lochiel, you know the country better than I. You’re bred to your good
land, while I was only born to it. You will tell me where the Isle of
Skye lies from here.”
“Yonder,” said the other, pointing across the grey-blue haze of summer
seas.
And the Prince stood silent, thinking of the victory there in Skye--the
victory that had left him wearier than Culloden’s sick defeat had done.
And Lochiel, who had had his own affairs to attend to lately, and had
been aloof from gossip, wondered as he saw the trouble in the other’s
face.
The Prince turned at last. “Lochiel,” he said, with a tired smile,
“how does the Usurper’s proclamation run? Thirty thousand pounds on my
head--dead or alive! Well, alive or dead, I wish this tattered body of
mine were still in Skye--in Skye, Lochiel, where I left the soul of
me.”
“You are sad, your Highness----”
“Sad? Nay, I’ve waded deeper than mere sadness, like the Skye mists out
yonder. Well, we stand where we stand, friend,” he added, with sharp
return from dreams, “and the ship is bringing to.”
There was still a little while before the boats were lowered from the
shore, and the Prince, pacing up and down the strand, encountered
Rupert. “A fine ending!” he said, with temperate bitterness. “I landed
in Lochaber from France with seven gentlemen. I go back with a few
more. This is the fruit of your toil, Mr. Royd--and of mine.”
And, “No, by your leave,” said Rupert. “Your Highness has lit a fire
that will never die--a fire of sheer devotion----”
“Ah! the courtier speaks.”
Rupert’s voice broke, harshly and without any warning. He saw his
Prince in evil case, when he should have been a conqueror. He
remembered the night rides, the faith, that had had the crowning of the
Stuart as their goal. “A broken heart speaks--a heart broken in your
service, sir,” he said.
The man’s strength, his candid, deep simplicity, struck home to the
Prince, bringing a foolish mist about his eyes. “Your love goes deep as
that?” he said.
“It goes deeper than my love of life, your Highness.”
So then, after a silence, the other laid a strong kindly hand on his
shoulder. “You’ll go far and well for me, sir--but put away that
superstition of the broken heart. Believe me, for I know”--he glanced
across the misty stretch of sea that divided him from Skye--“there are
broken hopes, and broken dreams, and disaster sobbing at one’s ears,
but a man--a man, sir, does not permit his heart to break. You and I--I
think we have our pride.”
When the boats grounded on the beach, the Prince waited till his
gentlemen got first aboard, and at last there were only himself and
Rupert left standing on the shore.
“You will precede me, Mr. Royd. It is my privilege just now to follow,
not to lead,” said the Prince.
“Your Highness, I stay, by your leave.”
The mist had been creeping down from the tops for the past hour, and
now the light, outer fringe of it had reached the water-line. The
waiting boat lay in a haze of mystery; the privateer beyond showed big
and wraithlike, though a shrouded sunlight still played on the crests
of mimic waves. And the Stuart and Rupert stood regarding each other
gravely at this last meeting for many weeks to come.
“You stay?” echoed the Prince. “Sir, you have done so much for me--and
I looked to have your company during the crossing; and, indeed, you
must be ill of your exertions to decline safety now.”
Rupert glanced at the ship, then at the Stuart’s face. There was
temptation in the longing, to be near his Prince until France was
reached, but none in the thought of personal safety. “I lay awake
last night,” he said slowly, “and it grew clear, somehow, that I was
needed here in Scotland. There’s the country round Edinburgh, your
Highness--packed thick with loyal men who are waiting their chance to
find a ship across to France--and I hold so many threads that Oliphant
of Muirhouse would have handled better, if he had lived.”
“Why, then,” said the Prince, yielding to impulse after these months of
abnegation, “we’ll let our friends set sail without us. These gentry
did me service. You shall teach me to return it.”
“Your Highness, it would ruin all! I can ride where you cannot, because
I’m of slight account----”
“So you, too, have your mathematics, like the rest,” put in the other
wearily--“and all your sums add up to the one total--that I must be
denied the open hazard. I tell you, Mr. Royd, it is no luxury to take
ship across to France and leave my friends in danger.”
The mist was thickening, and Lochiel, growing anxious on account of the
delay, leaped ashore and came to where the two were standing. And the
Prince, returning to the prose of things, knew that he must follow the
road of tired retreat mapped out for him since Derby.
“Lochiel,” he said grimly, “I was planning an escape--from safety.
And your eyes accuse me, because my heart is with this gentleman who
chooses to stay in Scotland.”
And then he told what Rupert had in mind; and Lochiel, for all the
urgency, halted a moment to appraise this lean, tranquil man who met
the call of destiny as if it were an invitation to some pleasant
supper-party.
“It was so Oliphant carried himself, Mr. Royd,” he said gravely. “God
knows I wish you well.”
They parted. And Rupert watched their boat reach the privateer, watched
the ship’s bulk glide huge and ghostly into the mists. He was hard and
zealous, had chosen his road deliberately; but he was human, too, and a
sense of utter loneliness crept over him. The Cause was lost. Many of
his friends would not tread French or Scottish ground again, because
the soil lay over them. He had not tasted food that day, and the mist
seemed to be soaking into the bones of him. And loyalty, that had
brought him to this pass, showed like a dim, receding star which mocked
him as a will-o’-the-wisp might do.
For all that, he was born and bred a Royd, and the discipline of
many months was on his side. And, little by little, he regained that
steadiness of soul--not to be counterfeited or replaced by any other
joy--which comes to the man whose back is to the wall, with a mob of
dangers assaulting him in front.
The Glenmoriston men had been offered their chance of a passage to
France with the Prince, but had declined it, preferring their own
country and the dangerous life that had grown second nature to them.
And Rupert, knowing the glen to which they had ridden after speeding
the Stuart forward, waited till the mists had lifted a little and found
his way to them.
They crossed themselves when he appeared among them as they sat on the
slope of the brae, cooking the midday meal; but when he proved himself
no ghost and explained the reason of his coming, and his need to be
set on the way to Edinburgh, they warmed afresh to his view of that
difficult business named life. He shared their meal, and afterwards one
of their number, Hector, by name, led him out along the first stage of
his journey south.
The mists had cleared by this time, leaving the braesides russet
where the sun swept the autumn brackens, but the mood they bring to
Highlandmen was strong on Rupert’s guide. Hector could find no joy in
life, no talk to ease the going. Instead, he fell into a low, mournful
chant; and the words of it were not calculated to raise drooping
spirits:
“But I have seen a dreary dream
Beyond the Isle o’ Skye,
I saw a dead man won the fight.
And I think that man was I.”
A little chill crossed Rupert’s courage, as if a touch of east wind
had come from the heart of the warm skies. He had seen many dreary
dreams of late; had fared beyond the Isle o’ Skye; what if Hector were
“seeing far,” and this dirge were an omen of the coming days? And then
he laughed, because in the dangerous tracks men make their own omens or
disdain them altogether.
“You’re near the truth, Hector,” he broke in; “but it’s only a
half-dead man. There’s life yet in him.”
And Hector glowered at him; for the Highland folk, when they are
hugging sadness close, cherish it as a mother does her first-born babe.
For all that, he brought Rupert safely, after three days’ marching,
to the next post of his journey, and passed him on to certain outlaws
whose country lay farther south; and by this sort of help, after good
and evil weather and some mischances by the way, Rupert came at last to
Edinburgh and reached the house where he knew that Lady Royd and Nance
were lodging.
The house lay very near to Holyrood; and as he went down the street
Rupert halted for a while, forgetful of his errand. The tenderest moon
that ever lit a troubled world looked down on this palace of departed
glories. The grey pile was mellowed, transfigured by some light o’
dreams. It was as if the night knew all about the Stuarts who would
haunt Holyrood so long as its walls stood; knew their haplessness,
their charm, their steadfast hold on the fine, unthrifty faith they
held; knew the answer that some of them, who had gone before, had found
in the hereafter that does not weigh with the shopkeepers’ scales.
There is a soul in such walls as Holyrood’s, and Rupert stood as if
he held communion with a friend whose sympathies ran step by step
with his. Here Mary Stuart had stood alone, a queen in name, facing
the barbarous, lewd nobles who were, by title of mere courtesy, her
gentlemen. Here she had seen Rizzio hurried down the twisting stair,
had supped with her fool-husband, Darnley. From here she had gone out,
the queen of hearts and tragedy, to that long exile which was to end at
Fotheringay.
Here, too, the Prince had kept high state, a year ago, and all
Edinburgh had flocked to dance a Stuart measure. He came fresh from his
first battle, crowned with victory and charm of person; and the clans
were rising fast; and hope shone bright toward London and the crown.
Rupert looked at the grey pile and felt all this, as one listens to the
silence of a friend who does not need to speak. And then a drift of
cloud came across the moon, and Holyrood lay wan and grey. It was as if
a sudden gust had quenched all the candles that had lit the ballroom
here when the yellow-haired laddie came dancing south.
And still the fugitive tarried. He had been used so long to night
roads and the constant peril that this dim light, and the wind piping
at his ear, pleased him more than any blaze of candles and lilt of
dance-music. Deep knowledge came to him, bred of the hazards that had
made him hard and lean. He sorrowed no more for Derby and Culloden; his
present thirst and hunger went by him, as things of slight account;
for he remembered the long months of hiding, the intimacy he had
been privileged to share with Prince Charles Edward. There had been
no glamour of the dance, no pomp, about these journeyings through the
Highlands; there had been no swift, eager challenge and applause from
ladies’ eyes; and yet Rupert had tested, as few had done, the fine edge
and temper of the Stuart charm.
Here, under the shadow of grey Holyrood, he loitered to recall their
wayfaring together. There had been winter journeyings through incessant
rain, or snow, or winds that raved down mountain passes; there had been
summer travels through the heather, with the sun beating pitilessly on
them, over the stark length of moors that had none but brackish water
and no shade. They had slept o’ nights with danger for a pillow and the
raw wind for coverlet. And through it all the Prince had shown a brave,
unanswerable front to the sickness of defeat, the hiding when he longed
for action. If food and drink were scarce, he sang old clan songs or
recalled light jests and stories that had once roused the French Court
to laughter. If danger pressed so closely from all four quarters of the
hill that escape seemed hopeless, his cheeriness infected those about
him with a courage finer than their own.
Looking back on these days, Rupert knew that no ball at Holyrood here,
no triumph-march to London, could have proved the Stuart as those
Highland journeyings had done. The Prince and he had learned the way of
gain in loss, and with it the gaiety that amazes weaker men.
From Holyrood--the moon free of clouds and the grey walls finding faith
again--a friendly message came to him. He caught the Stuart glamour
up--the true, abiding glamour that does not yield to this world’s
limitations. What he had read in the library at Windyhough was now a
triumph-song that he had found voice to sing.
He came to the house where Lady Royd was lodging, and knocked at the
door; and presently a trim Scots lassie opened to him, and saw him
standing there in the moonlight of the street, his face haggard, his
clothes, made up of borrowed odds and ends, suggesting disrepute. She
tried to close the door in his face; but Rupert had anticipated this,
and pushed his way inside.
“Is Miss Demaine in the house?” he asked.
The maid recovered a little of her courage and her native tartness.
“She is, forbye. Have you come buying old claes, or are you looking
just for a chance to steal siller from the hoose?”
Rupert caught at the help she gave him. “There’s the quick wit ye have,
my lass,” he said.
“Ah, now, you’ll not be ‘my lassing’ me! I’ll bid ye keep your station,
as I keep mine.”
“Well, then, my dear, go up to your mistress--the young mistress, I
mean--and tell her there’s a pedlar wanting her--a pedlar from the
hills of Lancashire. Tell her he comes _buying and selling white
favours_.”
“So you’re just one of us,” said the maid, with surprising change of
front. Then, her Scots caution getting the better of her again, “Your
voice is o’ the gentry-folk,” she added, “but you’re a queer body i’
your claes. How should I know what you’d be stealing while I ran up to
tell the mistress?”
Rupert, for answer, closed and barred the door behind him, and pointed
up the stair. And then the maid, by the masterful, quiet way of him,
knew that he came peddling honesty.
And by and by Nance came down, guessing who had come, because twice
during the past month Rupert had sent word to her by messengers
encountered haphazard in the Highland country.
At the stairfoot she halted, and never saw what clothes he wore. She
looked only at his hard, tired face, at the straight carriage of him,
as if he stood on parade. And, without her knowing it, or caring either
way, a welcome, frank and luminous, brought a sudden beauty to the face
that had been magical enough to him in the far-off Lancashire days.
The warmth of the lighted hall, the sense of courage and well-being
that Nance had always brought him, were in sharp contrast with the
night and the ceaseless peril out of doors. He went to her, and took
her two hands, and would not be done with reading what her eyes had
to tell him. There could be no doubting what had come to them--the
love deep, and to the death, and loyal; the love, not to be bought or
counterfeited, that touches common things with radiance.
Rupert was giddy with it all. He had only to stoop and claim her,
without question asked or answered. And yet he would not. He
fought against this sudden warmth that tempted him to forget his
friends--those driven comrades who trusted him to see them safely on
board ship to the French coast. He put Nance away, as a courtier might
who fears to hurt his queen, and only the strength of him redeemed his
ludicrous and muddied clothes.
“You are not proved yet?” said Nance, with a gentle laugh of raillery
and comradeship. “And yet the men who come in from the Highlands--the
men we have helped to safety, Lady Royd and I--bring another tale of
you.”
Good women and bad are keen to play the temptress when they see a man
hard set by the peril of his own wind-driven, eager heart; for Eve dies
hard in any woman.
“There are others,” he said stubbornly--“loyal men who trust me to
bring them into Edinburgh.”
“Scruples?” She mocked him daintily. “Women are not won by scruples.”
He looked at her with the disarming, boyish smile that she remembered
from old days--the smile which hid a purpose hard as steel. “Then women
must be lost, Nance,” he answered suavely.
Nance looked at him. He had changed since the days when her least whim
had swayed him more than did the giving of her whole heart now. He was
steady and unyielding, like a rock against which the winds beat idly.
And suddenly a loneliness came over her, a wild impatience of men’s
outlook. She recalled the day at Windyhough, just after Sir Jasper had
ridden out, when Lady Royd had complained that honour was more to a
man than wife-love and his home’s need of him. She remembered how, with
a girl’s untutored zeal, she had blamed Sir Jasper’s wife because she
could not realise the high romance of it. But now she understood.
“You rode out to prove yourself--for my sake and the Cause?” she said,
with cool disdain.
“Yes, Nance.”
“And you found--adventure. And your name is one to kindle hero-worship
wherever loyal fugitives meet and speak of you. Oh, you shall have your
due, Rupert! But in the doing of it the hard endeavour grew dear in
itself--dearer than life, than--than little Nance Demaine, for whose
sake you got to horse.”
He flushed, knowing she spoke truth; and he stood at bay, ashamed of
what should have been his pride. And then he returned, by habit, to the
mood taught him by night-riding and the over-arching skies.
“Men love that way,” he said bluntly.
Nance was twisting and untwisting the kerchief she held between her
capable, strong fingers. She had not guessed till now the bitterness of
tongue she could command.
“Oh, yes, my dear; we learned it together, did we not, in the library
at Windyhough? There was a book of Richard Lovelace, his poems, and he
was very graceful when he bade his wife farewell:
“‘I could not love thee, dear, so much
Loved I not honour more.’
And honour took him to the open--to the rousing hunt--and his wife
stayed on at home.”
Rupert, unskilled in the lore that has tempted many fools afield, was
dismayed by the attack. In his simplicity, he had looked for praise
when he put temptation by him and asked only for a God-speed till the
road of his plain duty was ended and he was free to claim her. He did
not know--how should he?--that women love best the gifts that never
reach their feet.
“Nance,” he said, “what ails you women? It was so at Windyhough, when
the Loyal Meet rode out, and mother cried as if they’d found dishonour.”
“What ails us?” She was not bitter now, but helpless, and her eyes were
thick with tears. “Our birthright ails us. We’re like children crying
in the dark, and the night’s lonely round us, and we are far from home.
And the strong hand comes to us, and we cast it off, because we need
its strength. And then we go crying in the dark again, and wonder why
God made us so. And--and that is what ails us,” she added, with a flash
of sharp, defiant humour. And her eyes clouded suddenly. “I--I have
lost a father to the Cause. It is hard to be brave these days, Rupert.”
So then he looked neither before nor after, but took the straight way
and the ready with her. And by and by the yapping of a pampered dog
broke the silence of the house, and Lady Royd’s voice sounded, low and
querulous, from the stairhead.
“Nance, where are you? Poor Fido is not well--not well at all.”
For the moment Rupert believed that he was home at Windyhough again.
Fido’s bark, the need paramount that his wants must be served at once,
were like old days.
“They have not told her you are here,” said Nance. “I’ll run up and
break the news.”
When Rupert came into the parlour up above, Fido, true to old habit,
ran yapping round him, and bit his riding-boots; for he hated men,
because they knew him for a lap-dog. And, after the din had died down
a little, Rupert stepped to his mother’s side, and stooped to kiss her
hand. And she looked him up and down; and the motherhood in her was
keen and proved, but she could forego old habits as little as could
Fido.
“Dear heart, what clothes to wear in Edinburgh!” she cried. “It’s as
well you’re not known in the town for a Royd.”
“Yes, it’s as well, mother,” he answered dryly.
“You are thinner than you were, Rupert, and straighter in the
shoulders, and--and many things have happened to you.”
“I rode out for happenings.”
“Oh, yes, you’re so like your father; and they tell me what you’ve
done----”
“And you, mother?” he broke in. “There are gentlemen of the Prince’s
who would not be safe in France to-day without your help--yours and
Nance’s.”
“There, my dear, you fatigue me! I have done so little. It grew
dull in Lancashire, waiting for news of your father. It was all so
simple--Fido, my sweet, you will not bark at Rupert; he’s a friend--and
then I had my own fortune, you see, apart from Windyhough, and one must
spend money somehow, must one not? So I began playing at ships--just
like a child gone back to the nursery--and Nance here was as big a baby
as myself.”
If Rupert had changed, so had Lady Royd. There was no faded prettiness
now about her face, but there were lines of beauty. Behind her light
handling of these past weeks in Edinburgh there was a record of
sleepless nights, of harassed days, of discomfort and peril undertaken
willingly. She had spent money in providing means of passage for the
exiles; but she had spent herself, too, in ceaseless stratagem and
watchfulness.
“It was all so piquant,” she went on, in the old, indolent tone. “So
many gallant men supped here, Rupert, before taking boat. And they
brought each his tale of battle in the hills. And their disguises were
so odd, almost as odd as the clothes you’re wearing now, my dear.”
“The Prince’s were little better when I last saw him,” laughed the
other.
“Ah, now, you will sit down beside me--here--and Nance shall sit there,
like Desdemona listening to Othello. And you will tell us of the
Prince. You were very near his person during the Highland flight, they
tell me.”
So Rupert, because he had that one night’s leisure at command, forgot
his own perils in telling of the Stuart’s. He had no art of narrative,
except the soldier’s plain telling of what chanced; but, step by
step, he led them through the broken days, talking seldom of himself,
but constantly of Prince Charles Edward, until the bare record of
their wanderings became a lively and abiding tribute to the Stuart’s
strength. And when he had done Lady Royd was crying softly, while Nance
felt a strange loyalty play round her like a windy night about the
moors of Lancashire.
“He was like that!” said Lady Royd at last. “He was like that, while,
God forgive me! I was picturing him all the while in love-locks,
dancing a minuet.”
“The sword-dance is better known, mother, where we have been,” said
Rupert, with pleasant irony.
Late that night, when Nance had left them together for a while, Lady
Royd came and laid a hand on her son’s arm. “You have done enough,”
she said. “Oh, I know! There are still many broken men, waiting for
a passage. They must take their chance, Rupert. Your father was not
ashamed to cross to France, with my help.”
He put an arm about her, for he had learned tenderness in a hard
school. “Mother, he was not ashamed, because his work was done here.
Mine is not. What Oliphant knew of the byways--what the last months
have taught me--I cannot take the knowledge with me, to rust in France.
I am pledged to these gentry of the Prince’s.”
“Then I shall go on playing at ships here--till you come to ask a
passage.”
And her face was resolute and proud, as if this son of hers had
returned a conqueror.
The next day, after nightfall, Rupert went out again, through
Edinburgh’s moonlit streets, toward the northern hills and the perils
that he coveted. And just before he went Nance Demaine came down
into the hall, and stood beside him in the gusty candlelight. Old
days and new were tangled in her mind; she was aware only of a great
heart-sickness and trouble, so that she did not halt to ask herself if
it were maidenly or prudent to come down for another long good-bye. In
some muddled way she remembered Will Underwood, his debonair and easy
claiming of her kerchief, remembered their meeting on the heath, and
afterwards Will lying in the courtyard at Windyhough, his body tortured
by a gaping wound. She had given him her kerchief then for pity, and
now Rupert was going out without claiming the token she would have
given him for love. Rupert seemed oddly forgetful of little things
these days, she told herself.
“Would you not wear my favour--for luck?” she asked.
And then, giving no time for answer, she began feverishly to knot her
kerchief into a white cockade; and then again she thought better of it,
and untied the blue scarf that was her girdle, and snipped a piece from
it with the scissors hanging at her waist.
“It is the dear Madonna’s colour; and I think you ride for faith,” she
said, with a child’s simplicity. “Rupert, I do not know how or why,
but I let you go very willingly. I did not understand until to-night
how--how big a man’s love for a woman is.”
They were not easy days that followed. Rupert was among the Midlothian
hills--farther afield sometimes--snatching sleep and food when he
could, shepherding the broken gentry, leaving nothing undone that a
man’s strength and single purpose could accomplish. And in the house
near Holyrood Lady Royd and Nance were helping the fugitives he sped
forward to get on shipboard. And ever, as they plied this trade of
separation under peril, a knowledge and a trust went up and down
between Edinburgh and the northern hills--a trust that did not go on
horseback or on foot, because its wings were stretched for flight above
ground.
And near the year’s end, with an easterly haar that made the town
desolate, the last fugitive came to the house that lay near Holyrood.
He should have been spent with well-doing, foot-sore and saddle-sore
with journeyings among the hills; but, instead he carried himself as if
he had found abundant health.
“I’ve done my work, mother,” he said, stooping to Lady Royd’s hand.
“It’s as well, my dear. Nance and I were nearly tired of playing at
ships.”
That night they got aboard at Leith; and, after a contrary and troubled
crossing, they came into harbour on the French coast. The night
was soft and pleasant, like the promises that France had made the
Stuart--the promises made and broken a score of times before ever the
Prince landed in the Western Isles. A full moon was making a track of
amethyst and gold across the gentle seas, and a faint, salt breeze was
blowing.
“Are you content?” asked Nance.
“Content? My dear, what else?”
And yet she saw his glance rove out across the moonlit track that led
to England; and a jealous trouble, light as the sea-breeze, crossed her
happiness; and she conquered it, because she had learned in Edinburgh
the way of a man’s heart.
“You’re dreaming of the next Rising?” she said, with a low, tranquil
laugh. “I shall forgive you--so long as you let me share your dreams.”
FINIS
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Lone Adventure, by Halliwell Sutcliffe