There was a splash of water down below, and he had in mind to bathe in
some sequestered pool and wash away the heat and trouble of the times.
He found the pool, green with reflected leafage, deep and murmurous, and
saw Miss Bingham seated at its brink. She turned with a smile of
welcome.
"I knew that you would come, my Puritan. There is room beside me here.
Sit and tell me--all that the waterfall is singing--the
might-have-beens, the fret and bubble of this life--the never-ending
wonder that men should die for their King when there are easier roads to
follow."
"Ask the stream." Kit's laugh was unsteady, and his voice seemed to
come from far-away. "To die for the King--it may not be ease, but
surely it is happiness."
"Talk to me. Tell me how he looked--the King--when you saw him there in
Oxford. And Rupert? His name alone brings back the old Crusading days,
before we grew tired of poetry."
She beguiled him into talk. She spun a web about him, fine as gossamer
and strong as hempen rope. All the route south to Oxford--the return by
way of Lathom House--the queer way of their entry into York--took on a
new significance and glamour as she prompted him with eager, maidish
questions.
"So you came to York as a Puritan? There would be no great disguise in
that, as I have told you often. Ah, no wrath, I pray you! Women laugh
at--at those they care for, lest they care too much."
Kit seemed to be in some poppyland of dreams. He had travelled that
country once already in Miss Bingham's company--at the ferry-steps in
Knaresborough. Then he had been weak of body, recovering slowly from a
sickness she had nursed. Now he was hale and ruddy; but there is a
weakness of great health, and this found him now. Gallop and trot over
perilous roads, rude bivouacs by night and rough-handed war by
day--these had been his life since, long ago, he had left the ripening
Yoredale corn. He was weary of the effort, now that it was over; and
all the gardens he had known, all the ease and softness of summer skies,
were gathered round this woman who shared the glen with him.
"And there was Marston," she said, breaking the silence.
"Ay, God knows there was Marston. Rupert, the Squire, and I--the three
of us lying in a bean-field, listening to the wounded there in Wilstrop
Wood--I can hear the uproar now."
"Ah! forget it. It is over and done with. You have earned your ease."
Kit believed it. The poppy odours were about him, thick as the scent of
flowering beans that had all but sent Rupert and himself to their last
sleep at Marston. The strong, up-country gospel whispered at his ear
that no man earns his ease this side the grave. He would not heed the
whisper. It was good to be here with the lapping water, the smell of
woodland growth, the woman who cast pleasant spells about him.
A great pity stirred in her, against her will. She grew aware of things
beyond the dalliance of each day's affairs. Here, weak in her hands,
was a man to be made or marred; and he seemed well on the way to lose
all because she bade him. Compunction came to her. She was minded to
laugh out of court this grave affair, and send him out, as she had done
others, with great faith in her own instability.
Yet she was powerless. The war her men-folk had waged against the
adversary--their simple faith in kingship threading all their days, of
fight and drink and banter, with a golden skein--had touched the heart
that had been cold till now. By his own strength he must win through
this combat she had forced on him--or by his own weakness he must take
her hand and lead her through the years that must for ever be made up of
broken vows.
Kit got to his feet, paced up and down irresolutely. He was fighting for
the kingship of his soul, and all the glen went dizzying by him. It was
a simple matter that brought back the memory of ancient loyalty and
faith--just the song of the water as it splashed down its ferny bed. He
glanced sharply round, saw the fall of the stream, with sunlight and the
glint of shadowed leafage on its ripples. He remembered just such a
waterfall, just such a sheltered glen, away in Yoredale.
The poppy-sleep was on him still. Yoredale was far away, and Joan's
tongue was barbed with nettle-stings these days. Better to take his
ease, and have done with effort. He glanced again at the water
splashing down its steep rock-face; and suddenly he stood at attention,
as if the King confronted him. It might be his fancy; it might be some
chance play of light and shade, made up of dancing water and leafage
swaying in the summer's breeze; but the thing he saw was a sword,
silver-bright--a big, two-handed sword with its hilt clear against the
sky, and its point hidden in the pool below. He stood for a moment,
bewildered. Then a great sob broke up the grief and hardship that had
been his since Marston.
She followed the pointing of his finger, but saw nothing save water
slipping down the cool rock-front.
Then she glanced at his face, and saw that the days of her sorcery were
ended.
A forlorn self-pity numbed her. If he had broken faith with Joan Grant,
she would have recompensed him--have been the tenderest wife in
Christendom, because he had found her womanhood for her--had taught her
heart to beat, instead of fluttering idly to every breeze that roamed.
"Sir, I hate you most devoutly," she said. "Get up the wood again. I
used to laugh at all good Puritans, and the memory would hurt me if you
stayed."
Kit was never one to hide his light or darkness from a prying world.
The whole camp had seen his madness, had marvelled at the change in
him--his sudden tempers, his waywardness, his hot impatience for fight
of some kind--with his fellows or with any roaming band of enemies that
chanced to cross, their path. Now they wondered that he went among them
with a new light about his face, a gaiety that was not so heedless as of
old, but riper and more charitable.
"The Babe grows up," said Michael to the Squire, as they jogged forward
over sultry roads.
"It will be a thrifty growth, lad. If I could say as much of thee, I'd
be content."
"Oh, I'm past gibes, sir. Elizabeth, alone of you all--she understands
me. We have long ears and long wits, she and I. Believe me, we are
wise."
They came at last to their own country, and the Knaresborough men
wondered why jest and high spirits ceased among the Riding Metcalfs.
They did not guess how rooted in the homeland were the affections of
these men who had gone abroad to play their part in the big issue of
King and Parliament. They could not divine the mist of tenderness and
yearning that veiled their eyes as they saw the slopes of Yoredale run
to meet their eager gallop. Wounds, havoc of battlefields that had seen
brave hopes lost, all were forgotten. They were back among the greening
corn again.
The Squire lost courage, for the first time since the riding out, when
he reached the gate of his own homestead and saw his wife run forward in
answer to the rousing challenge of "A Mecca for the King!"
She came to his saddle, lifted up her face, as a bride might do for the
nuptial kiss. She looked for Kit, the well-beloved, and for Michael.
Then her glance ran to and fro among the company, seeking for remembered
faces; and memory found many gaps. She faced her husband. There was
accusation in her voice; for she had sat at home with weariness and fear
and abnegation, and all her strength was gone.
"Where are the rest?" she asked.
"Serving the King, wife, wherever they be. I'll go warrant for a Metcalf
beyond the gates of this world."
With a coldness that dismayed them, she counted her living Metcalfs. "A
hundred and twenty rode out. Fifty and two return. The sunshine hurts
me."
"They did well--no man can do more."
Those looking on saw courage struggle through her weakness, and in their
hearts they knew that warfare had shown nothing finer. "I--I shall pray
that this bitterness may go from me. I shall hope to tell them--oh, a
little later on--that it is good to die for the King's Majesty."
They saw her waver, saw the old, indomitable pride return.
"Metcalfs, well done--oh, well done! I am proud of my living--and my
dead."
"God rest their souls, wife. They have harvested their corn."
As the weeks passed on, and grief and wounds alike were healing, a new
disquiet stole in and out among the men quartered in Nappa's hospitable
house and outbuildings. They were idling here. If Marston Moor had
killed the cause in the north, there was battle doing further south.
The Squire's wife watched it brewing, this new menace to all that was
left of her happiness. She knew, that it was idle to resist or to
persuade. She had bred men-sons for the King's service, and must abide
by it.
Joan Grant was younger to experience. First-love was hindering her
vision of what her man must do before he came to his kingdom; and she
quarrelled openly with Christopher, as they came home together through
the gloaming August fields.
"So you are weary of me in a month?" she said, halting at the stile.
"Ah, the pity of it. It was here--or have you forgotten?--that I bade
you climb high if you would find my heart. And you climbed and--and
found it, and now you talk of battle--only of battle and the King."
All his world seemed to fail him--the will to ride out again until there
was no more asked of him but to return and claim her--the certainty that
she would be the first to give God-speed to his errand--all were drowned
in this storm of tears and petulance that broke about him. Yet he
remembered the sword that had stood, its point in the woodland stream,
its hilt against the clear, blue sky above. He did not waver this time,
for his love was no beguilement, but a spur that urged him forward.
"I go," he said roughly.
"And if you lose me in the going?"
"Then I lose you--there's no choice."
She got down from the stile, rebellious, fitful as a gusty spring. It
was only when they neared the homestead that she turned, her eyes bright
and eager, and touched his hand. "I am glad--oh, I am glad!" she said.
Late that afternoon Miss Bingham and little Blake had gone for a
moorland ride together. Blake had made a false recovery from his
weakness, as soon as he learned that there was to be another riding-out,
and had urged that he must get his mare in trim again by daily rides.
And Miss Bingham had insisted that his nurse went with him, lest he fell
by the way.
In all her wide experience of men she had not met one so gay, so
tranquil, so entirely master of what had been, of what was to come, as
this little Irishman whose health had gone down the stream of high
adventure. With a broken heart and a broken body, he thought only of
the coming rides through lonely night-roads, of Meccas riding again for
the King they served, of the dust and rain of circumstance. He
remembered droll stories, flavoured by Irish wit and heedlessness. He
fell, between whiles, into passionate hope of what was to come, when the
King came to his own in the south country, by help of the Riding
Metcalfs, and drove the rebels from the north. Then, with a gentleness
that laughed at itself, he explained that it was good to have sat on the
ferry-steps at Knaresborough.
"I lost--but the stakes were well worth winning. The Blakes were ever
gamblers."
She had great skill in tending the wounded. In the man's face she read
many signs of bodily weakness. His voice--his detachment from the gross
affairs of life--told their own tale. But she did not look for it so
soon.
At the gate of the farmstead, just as he dismounted, Blake fell prone in
the roadway, and tried to rise, and could not.
When Joan and Kit Metcalf returned--it might be a half-hour later--they
found Miss Bingham kneeling at the dead man's side. And her face, when
she lifted it, was a woman's face--grave, charitable, tender with some
forward hope.
"Here's little Blake," she said. "He rides very well, my friends."
THE END.
LONDON: WARD, LOCK & Co., LIMITED.