Governor of Knaresborough and his officers, Lady Ingilby--all had known
the weight of harsh responsibility so long as the King's cause was alive
in the North. The cause was dead now. There was no need to be at
strain, sleeping or waking, with the sense that it rested with each of
them to keep the monarchy secure. There was asked of them only a
haphazard and stimulating warfare, of the sort dear to all hillmen.
Scarborough Castle fell, and when the news was brought--they were dining
at the moment in a wooded dell between Beamsley and Langbar--the
Governor lifted his hat with pleasant gravity.
"God rest the gentlemen of Scarborough. They have earned their holiday,
as we have."
Michael was busy with the stew-pot, hanging gipsy-wise on three sticks
above a fire of gorse and fir-cones. "It's hey for Skipton-in-Craven,"
he said with a cheery smile. "I aye liked the comely town, and now the
King will know that she was the last in all the North to stand for him."
"Maybe Skipton has fallen, too, by this time," chided the Squire. "You
were always one for dreams, Michael."
Michael was silent till the meal was ended. Then he mowed a swath of
thistles with his sword, and brought the spoil to Elizabeth, tethered to
a neighbouring tree. She brayed at him with extreme tenderness.
"Now that we're well victualled, friends," he said lazily, "who comes
with me to hear how it fares with Skipton?"
The Governor did not like the venture--the hazard of it seemed too
great--but Squire Metcalf did.
"How d'ye hold together at all, Michael?" roared the Squire. "So much
folly and such common sense to one man's body--it must be a civil war
within yourself."
Michael glanced at Joan Grant with an instinct of which he repented
instantly. "It is, sir. Since I was born into this unhappy world,
there has been civil war inside me. I need an outlet now."
"You shall have it, lad."
"And you call this common sense?" asked the Governor, with good-tempered
irony.
"Ay, of the Yoredale sort. A blow or two in Skipton High Street--who
knows what heart it might give the garrison?"
"I must remind you that we have women-folk to guard, and our wounded."
"But, sir, this is a Metcalf riding, all like the olden time. We never
meant your Knaresborough men to share it."
Yet some of the Knaresborough men would not be denied; and the Governor,
as he saw the sixty horsemen ride over and down to
Beamsley-by-the-Wharfe, wished that his private conscience would let him
journey with them. He stood watching the hill-crest long after they had
disappeared, and started when a hand was laid gently on his arm.
"It is hard to stay?" asked Lady Ingilby.
"By your leave, yes. Why should these big Metcalfs have all the
frolic?"
"Ah, frolic! As if there were naught in life but gallop, and cut and
thrust, and----sir, is there no glory in staying here to guard weak?"
The Governor was in evil mood. He had seen the King's cause go, had
seen Knaresborough succumb, had watched the steadfast loyalty of a
lifetime drift down the stream of circumstance like a straw in a
headlong current.
"Lady Ingilby," he said wearily, "there is no longer any glory anywhere.
It has gone from the land."
"It is here among us. Till we were broken folk, I did not know our
strength. None but the Stuart, friend, could have kept us in such
friendliness and constancy. Oh, I know! I saw you glance round for
your horse when the Metcalfs went--saw your struggle fought out,
sir--and, believe me, you were kind to stay."
They finished their interrupted meal at leisure; and it was not till
about four of the clock that Miss Bingham, who had strayed afield to
pick a bunch of valley lilies, came running back to camp. The two men
in pursuit blundered headlong into the enemy before they saw their
peril; and they found scant shrift.
Miss Bingham, thoroughbred beneath her whimsies, halted a moment to
regain her courage. "These are but outposts, sir," she said. "From the
hill-top I could see a whole company of Roundheads."
"Their number," asked the Governor--"and are they mounted?"
"More than our own, I think, and they go on foot."
"And half of us wounded. Come, gentlemen, there's no time to waste."
His weariness was gone. Alert, masterful, almost happy, he bade the
women get further down the hill, out of harm's way. He gave his men
their stations--little knots of them cowering under clumps of gorse and
broom--until the land seemed empty of all human occupation. Only
Elizabeth, the wayward ass, lifted up her voice from time to time, after
finishing the last of the thistles Michael had given her. And suddenly,
as they waited, the Governor let a sharp oath escape him.
"This comes of letting women share a fight. In the name of reason, why
is Miss Bingham running up the hill again?"
They peered over the gorse, saw the tall, lithe figure halt, clearly
limned against the sky-line. They heard her voice, pitiful and
pleading.
"Parliament men, I am alone and friendless. Will you aid me?"
A steel-capped Roundhead showed above the hill-crest. "There are plenty
to aid such a comely lass as thee," he said, his rough Otley burr
cutting the summer's silence like a blunt-edged knife.
"Then follow quickly."
The Governor laughed gently as he watched Miss Bingham turn and race
down the hill. "A rare plucked one, she," he muttered, "kin to Jael, I
fancy, wife of Heber the Kenite."
She passed close by him on her breathless run down hill and joined the
women-folk below. And the next moment the red havoc of it began. The
Roundheads saw their leader race forward, and followed in close order.
Down the slope they poured, and every clump of gorse spat out at them
with a red and murderous fire. Then the Knaresborough men were up and
into them, and when their leader got back to Otley with the remnants of
his men, he protested that "he'd fancied, like, they'd ta'en all the
hornets' nests i' Yorkshire, but some few thrifty wasps were breeding
still."
"Why do you laugh?" said Lady Ingilby, when the Governor came down to
tell her all was well.
"Because luck is as skew-tempered as the jackass braying yonder. Have
the Metcalfs had such frolic out at Skipton, think ye? And I was keen
to ride with them--Miss Bingham, I owe you reparation. When I saw you
move up the hill yonder, I cursed you for a woman."
"That was unwise, sir. As well curse Elizabeth because she is a donkey,
and yearns for absent friends; or the jack-snipe, because his flight is
slanting; or any of us who are made as we are made."
"We thought you light of heart, child, in the old days at Knaresborough.
Yet none of us could have planned a neater ambush."
"It was my old pastime, after all. How often you've chided me for
luring men into folly. Oh, what wise and solemn discourses you have
given me, sir, on the unwisdom of it!"
"There was wisdom in it this time. But for the ambush, we could not
have faced the odds."
For the next hour she busied herself with bandaging the men's hurts;
then, with a restlessness that had been growing on her since the
Metcalfs went, she climbed the hill again. Only Blake saw her go.
Unrest had been his comrade, too, since he found himself sharing this
odd gipsy life with the woman he asked least to meet on this side or the
other of the grave.
He followed with reluctance and a smile at his own folly. She was
standing on the hill-crest, one hand shading her eyes, as if she looked
for some one to arrive.
"Does he come, Miss Bingham?" asked Blake.
She turned with a fury that died away and left her helpless. There was
derision, heart-ache, pity, in Blake's mobile face.
"Is all forgot, then, Mr. Blake? There was a time in Knaresborough, at
the ferry-steps, when you thought kindly of me."
"There was. I ask you for some explanation of the madness. To my
shame, the memory came and weakened me years after--when I found myself
in Oxford, to be precise, and heard the nightingales. Answer the riddle.
How can a thing so slight and empty hinder a grown man?"
"You are bitter, unforgiving."
"Neither. I've ridden too many evil roads to remember bitterness. It
is simply that I'm tired and filled with wonder. Tell me why Oxford and
the nightingales opened an old wound afresh."
"It goes back to Eve's days, I think," murmured Miss Bingham.
Demureness, coquetry, the hint of tears and laughter in her eyes--all
should have disarmed Blake.
"Ay, find other shoulders for the blame," he said impassively.
"As Adam did."
Again the easy insolence failed her at need. She was aware that no
nimbleness of tongue could help her now. Blake stood there like some
judge whose bias against the prisoner at the bar was hardening.
"After all, you owe me gratitude," she went on hurriedly. "If it had
not been that I'm fickle--oh, I admit as much--you would not stand where
you stand now. I remember you so well--gay, easy-going, with a tongue
that made one half believe your flattery. And now? You're Blake the
rider--little Blake--Blake who never tires. I see men lift their heads
when your name is mentioned, and hear their praise. Did I do so ill at
Knaresborough, to set you on the road?"
"You broke my heart. If that was to do well--why, my thanks, Miss
Bingham."
It was then, for the first time, that knowledge came to her, as if a
veil were lifted. She saw the years behind. Vanity, pride of conquest,
zest in the hunting for hunting's sake--these had been her luxuries.
She had not guessed that the sport might cripple men for life.
"Why do you tell me this--you who are so proud and reticent?"
"Not for my pleasure," he answered drily. "There's a lad of the Metcalfs
I have a liking for. I would save him from my sort of fate, if that
could be."
He could not understand the change in her. She was fierce, vindictive.
Through the velvet dalliance of her life the claws flashed out. Then,
in a moment, she repented. Her voice grew smooth and insolent again.
"Oh, Puritan, because you have forgotten how to play, you would put all
light-hearted folk in prison. Sir, by your leave, I wait here till one
Christopher Metcalf returns from Skipton town. I wish him very well."
"Then heaven help him, madam," said Blake, and went down the hill in
search of better cheer.
The Metcalfs long ago had come to Embsay, and up the further hill that
gave them a clear view of Skipton. The long, grey church, the Castle's
sturdy front, the beautiful, wide street, rich in the summer's greenery
that bordered it, lay spread before them in the golden sunlight. The
market-square was packed with men, and the hubbub of the crowd came up
the rise.
The Squire of Nappa had called a halt because their horses needed a
breathing-space before they put their project into action. More than
once, during the ride out, they had laughed at the humour of their plan,
though most men would have been thinking of the extreme hazard. They
proposed, in fact, to get behind the Roundheads' position on Cock Hill,
to charge them unexpectedly from the rear, and to capture their cannonry
by sheer speed of onset.
"It will be a tale to set the whole North in a roar," said the Squire.
"And the Royalists up hereabout, God knows, have need of laughter these
days."
"Ay, but look yonder, sir," put in Christopher gravely.
The Squire followed the direction of his hand. In the sunlit
market-square they saw Mallory, the Governor, ride over the lowered
drawbridge. After him came the gentry and the ladies of the garrison,
then soldiery on foot; and, last of all, the stable-boys and cooks and
scullions, who had ministered for two long years to the needs of those
besieged.
Mallory was erect and buoyant. Standards waved in the merry breeze,
their colours glowing in the sunlight.
"What does it mean?" asked Christopher. "It is no sortie; yet they ride
with heads up, as if life went very well with them."
The old Squire passed a hand across his eyes. Feeling ran deep with him
at all times; and now it was as if he looked years ahead and saw the
King himself go out in just this fashion, proud, resolute, content with
the day's necessary work.
"It means, my lad," he said roughly, "that Skipton-in-Craven has yielded
at long last. But she goes out with the full honours of war, and she
can boast till the Trump o' Doom that she was the last in Yorkshire to
stand for the King's Majesty."
They rode a little nearer to the town. And now they could see that the
crowd thronging the High Street was made up of Parliament men, who moved
to one side and the other, clearing a route for the outgoing garrison.
They saw Lambert ride forward, salute Sir John Mallory with grave
punctilio--heard Mallory's voice come lightly on the wind, as if he
exchanged a jest--and then the long procession passed, with banners
flying, and the tale of Skipton's siege was ended.
"Best turn about, Metcalfs," growled the Squire. "We can do nothing
here. There'll be the women wanting us out Beamsley way, and Michael
has his donkey to attend to."
"True," assented Michael. "All's gone--Marston, York, Skipton--but
Elizabeth is with us still. There's many a kick left in li'le
Elizabeth."
So--with laughter, lest they cried--the Metcalf men took route again for
Beamsley. And the Squire rode far ahead, with a stormy grief and a
sense of utter desolation for companions.
Kit, seeing his father's trouble, was minded to spur forward and help
him in his need; but Michael checked him.
"He has the black dog on his shoulders. Best leave him to it."
"Why, yes. That is the Metcalf way, I had forgotten, Michael."
When they neared the hill that was the last of their climb, up and over
into Beamsley, they saw the slim figure of a woman, tall against the
sky; and, as they came nearer still, Michael--whose sight was like a
hawk's--told them that Miss Bingham was waiting there to bring them
back.
"Kind and sonsy, she," laughed one of the late garrison at
Knaresborough.
"You will unsay that, sir," said Christopher.
"There's nothing to unsay. Kind and sonsy--daft hot-head, you might say
that of your own mother."
"In a different tone. You will unsay it."
"And why? We Knaresborough men seldom unsay anything, until our
windpipes are cut clean in two."
"There's for a good Irishman!" said Michael, putting his bulk between
the combatants. "He'll talk, says he, when his windpipe is in two.
They could not better that in Donegal."
So the quarrel was blown abroad by the laughter of their fellows; but
Michael, as they jogged up the hill, grew dour and silent. Kit's sudden
heat astonished him. He had not guessed that the lad's regard for Miss
Bingham went deeper than the splash of a pebble in a summer's pool.
When they reached the hill-top, a fresh surprise awaited him. Miss
Bingham was standing there, with pale, drawn face; and her eyes searched
eagerly for one only of the company, and disdained the rest.
[Illustration: "Her eyes searched eagerly for one only of the company,
and disdained the rest."]
Michael could not believe it. Her easy handling of the world she knew
by heart--the levity that cloaked all feeling--were gone. She put a
hand on Kit's bridle-arm as he rode up, and forgot, it seemed, that many
folk were looking on.
"You are wounded. No? Then how fares it out at Skipton?"
The old Squire had seen the drift of things with an eye as keen as
Michael's; and in his present mood he was intolerant of women and all
gentler matters. "It has sped bonnily," he snapped. "Skipton has gone
down-stream with the flood, Miss Bingham, and there's no more to do,
save tend women's vapours and feed Michael's jackass."
She smiled pleasantly at this man in evil mood. "Sir, that is not like
you. If your courtesy towards women has gone, too, then chivalry is
ended for all time."
The Metcalfs waited for the Squire's rejoinder. None guessed how the
rebuke would take him; but all knew how deep he was wading in the chill
bog of adversity. They saw him lift his head in fury, saw him relent
with hardship.
"Miss Bingham," he said, "there was a sorrow and a madness at my heart.
You are right. If I forget courtesy toward women, I forget the wife who
bred tall sons for me in Yoredale."
He went apart that night and took counsel of his God, on the high lands
where the birds seemed to rise for matins almost as soon as evensong was
ended. He came down again for early breakfast in the woodland camp, with
all the grace of youth about him, in high spirits, ready for the day's
surprises.
*CHAPTER XXIII.*
*YOREDALE.*
From that day forward, the first strangeness of their gipsy life grew to
be familiar, usual. Little by little the Parliament soldiery went south
or westward, to share in the attack on Royalist garrisons still
unaffected by the disastrous news from Yorkshire; but the country was
infested by roving bands of cut-purses and murderers--men who had hung
on the skirts of civil war, ready to be King's men or Levellers, when
they knew which side claimed the victory.
It was the exploits of these prowling rascals that set many a story
going of the outrages committed by true Roundheads, who had no share in
them; but the Squire of Nappa was not concerned with public rumour or
the judgment of generations to come after. His whole heart--all the
untiring watchfulness that had made him a leader of picked cavalry--were
centred in this new, appalling peril. Day by day the raff and jetsom of
the country moved abroad in numbers that steadily increased. They were
not dangerous in the open against the disciplined men of Knaresborough
and Nappa; but they asked for constant vigilance, as if the wolf-packs
of old days had returned to haunt these moorland solitudes.
They were heading by short stages to Nappa; for, as the Squire
explained, there was room enough in house and outbuildings to house them
all, and they might well hold it for the King, if the chance of war
brought the tumult North again.
"A hard-bitten bull-dog, you," said the Governor of Knaresborough.
"Ay, maybe. I guard my own, and there's a sort of bite about a Mecca
when he's roused."
"There is, sir--a Yorkshire bite, they say."
Their route was hindered, not only by prowling vagabonds, but by the men
who fell sick by the wayside, now that the stress of the big fight was
ended, and they had leisure to take count of wounds. Miss Bingham went
among the fallen, bandaging a wound here, giving a cup of water there,
bringing constantly the gift she had of soothing sick men's fancies.
Once--it was when they camped on Outlaw Moss, and the gloaming found her
nursing little Blake--the Governor and Squire Metcalf halted as they
made their round of the camp.
"So Blake has given in at last," said the Squire. "Pity he didn't learn
that lesson years ago."
"That is true, sir," said Miss Bingham gravely. "With a broken heart,
there's no shame in lying down by the wayside. He should have done it
long since."
The Governor laughed, as if a child's fancy had intruded into the
workaday routine. "The jest will serve, Miss Bingham. We know Blake,
and, believe me, he never had a heart to be broken. Whipcord and
sinew--he rides till he drops, with no woman's mawkishness to hinder
him."
"No mawkishness," she agreed. "I give you good-night, gentlemen. He
needs me, if he is not to die before the dawn."
"Oh, again your pardon," said the Governor roughly. "You played in
Knaresborough--you were always playing--and we thought you light."
"So I am, believe me, when men are able to take care of themselves. It
is when they're weak that I grow foolish and a nurse."
Metcalf and the Governor were silent as they went their round, until the
Squire turned abruptly.
"My wife is like that," he said, as if he had captured some new truth,
unguessed by the rest of a dull world. "Ay, and my mother, God rest
her. Memories of cradle-days return, when we are weak; they show their
angel side."
"There's only one thing ails Miss Bingham--she's a woman to the core of
her. Eh, Metcalf, it must be troublesome to be a woman. I'd liefer
take all my sins pick-a-back, and grumble forward under the weight, and
be free of whimsies."
Through the short summer's night, Miss Bingham tended Blake. She heard
him talk of Knaresborough and the ferry-steps--always the ferry-steps.
She learned all that she had seemed to him, and wondered how any man
could view any woman through such a pleasant mist of worship. Then she
listened to the tale of his rude awakening, and winced as he spoke in
delirium words that could never be forgotten. And then again they were
watching Nidd River swirl beneath them, and he was busy with a lover's
promises. When he slept at last, wearied by the speed of his own
fancies, she sat watching him. A round, white moon had climbed over the
edge of Outlaw Moss. She saw the lines of hardship in his face--lines
bitten in by harsh weather of the world and of the soul.
"Poor Blake," she thought, "ah, poor li'le Blake!"
From the foolery that had been her life till now there came a gust of
sickliness. Blake could not live till dawn. She would go afield while
they were hiding him under the earth, would bring wild flowers and strew
them broadcast over his resting-place. She would pray tenderly at his
graveside.
Already she half believed these pious exercises would recompense Blake
for the loss of all he had cared for in this life. He would know that
she was there, and look down on the fret and burden of his heartbreak as
a thing well worth the while. She would smother his dead grief with
flowers and penitence.
It was Blake himself who disordered the well-planned poetry. He did not
die at dawn. They waited three days on Outlaw Moss till they knew that
he would live, and four days afterwards until his old laugh returned,
and he could get his knees about a saddle. Then they went forward
another stage on the slow journey out to Nappa.
Miss Bingham stood between the old world and the new; and that
experience, for any man or woman's soul, is hazardous. She saw herself
in true outline. As others gambled with gold and silver pieces, she had
played with hearts. She had not known the value of the stakes; but now
she understood. One by one, in memory's cold procession, she saw them
pass--Blake, his young soul on fire with worship; Anstruther, who had
persisted in throning her among the stars, and who was now, they said,
no company for any gentry save those of wayside taverns. She hid her
eyes. Spoiled, wayward, she resented the discipline of penance. Day by
day she thought more of Christopher, and welcomed his sturdy
self-reliance as a shield against her past.
Day by day, too, Joan Grant grew more silent, more aloof from the
haphazard routine of their life among the hills. And the whole camp
looked on, afraid for their idol, Christopher, afraid for Joan, great
loathing for Miss Bingham growing in their midst.
Miss Bingham, well aware of the hostility, did not know whether her
heart were hardened or softened by it. It was as if she stood in the
thick of a northern March--sunshine on one side of the hedge, sleet and
a bitter wind on the other. But there came a day when she carried her
troubles to a little, ferny glen hidden deep among the pastures and the
heather. Their morning's route had brought them near to Hawes, the grey
village that gathers the spreading Yorkshire dales into its hand as a
lady holds an open fan. The camp was busy, dining on odds and
ends--mutton, cabbage, herbs, all stewing fragrantly in a pot reared
gipsy-wise over a fire of wood--and Miss Bingham heard their laughter
come up the breeze.
They had purchased a barrel of home-brewed ale from a neighbouring
tavern, and were toasting Blake at the moment.
"Here's to li'le Blake, who never tires," said the Squire.
"Why should he?" put in Michael. "Women have never troubled him, I
wager."
"At your age, youngster, to go flouting the good sex!" growled the
Governor.
"Your pardon, sir. The sex has flouted me. I'm envying Blake because
he had mother-wit to steer wide of trouble. Even Elizabeth, who dotes
on me, is full of the most devilish caprices."
Kit grew impatient of it all. He was in no mood for the banter and
light jests that eased the journey home to Nappa. There was a fever in
his blood, a restlessness whose cause was known to every man in camp
except himself. He sought some hiding-place, with the instinct of all
wounded folk; and his glance fell on a wooded gorge that showed as a
sanctuary set in the middle of a treeless land.