Читать книгу The Lone Adventure - Sutcliffe Halliwell - Страница 3

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In a gorge of the moors, not far away as the crow flies from Pendle Hill, stood a grim, rambling house known to the heath-men as Windyhough. It had been fortified once; but afterwards, in times of ease, successive owners had thought more of dice and hunting than of warfare, and within-doors the house was furnished with a comfort that belied its loopholed walls.

It stood in the county of Lancaster, famed for its loyalty and for the beauty of its women—two qualities that often run together—and there had been Royds at Windyhough since Norman William first parcelled out the County Palatine among the strong men of his following. The Royd pride had been deep enough, yet chivalrous and warm-hearted, as of men whose history is an open book, not fearing scrutiny but asking it.

The heir of it all—house, and name, and lusty pride—came swinging over the moor-crest that gave him a sight of Windyhough, lying far below in the haze of the November afternoon. It was not Rupert’s fault that he was the heir, and less strong of body than others of his race. It was not his fault that Lady Royd, his mother, had despised him from infancy, because he broke the tradition of his house that all its sons must needs be strong and good to look at.

The heir stood on the windy summit, his gun under his arm, and looked over the rolling, never-ending sweep of hills. The sun, big and ruddy, was dipping over Pendle’s rounded slope, and all the hollows in between were luminous and still. He forgot his loneliness—forgot that he could not sit a horse with ease or pleasure to himself; forgot that he was shy of his equals, shy of the country-folk who met him on the road, that his one respite from the burden of the day was to get up into the hills which God had set there for a sanctuary.

Very still, and straight to his full height, this man of five-and-twenty stood watching the pageant of the sun’s down-going. It was home and liberty to him, this rough land where all was peat and heather, and the running cry of streams afraid of loneliness, and overhead the snow-clouds thrusting forward from the east across the western splendour of blue, and red, and sapphire.

He shivered suddenly. As of old, his soul was bigger than the strength of his lean body, and he looked down at Windyhough with misgiving, for he was spent with hunger and long walking over the hills he loved. He thought of his father, kind always and tolerant of his heir’s infirmities; of his mother, colder than winter on the hills; of Maurice, his younger brother by three years, who could ride well, could show prowess in field-sports, and in all things carry himself like the true heir of Windyhough.

A quick, unreasoning hatred of Maurice took him unawares—Esau’s hate for the supplanter. He remembered that Maurice had never known the fears that bodily weakness brings. In nursery days he had been the leader, claiming the toys he coveted; in boyhood he had been the friend and intimate of older men, who laughed at his straightforward fearlessness, and told each other, while the heir stood by and listened, that Maurice was a pup of the old breed.

There was comfort blowing down the wind to Rupert, had he guessed it. The moor loves her own, as human mothers do, and in her winter-time she meant to prove him. He did not guess as much, as he looked down on the huddled chimney-stacks of Windyhough, and saw the grey smoke flying wide above the gables. His heart was there, down yonder where the old house laughed slyly to know that he was heir to it, instead of Maurice. If only he could take his full share in field-sports, and meet his fellows with the frank laugh of comradeship—if he had been less sensitive to ridicule, to the self-distrust inbred in him by Lady Royd’s disdain—his world might have worn a different face to-day. He stooped to pat the setter that had shared a day’s poor sport with him, and then again his thoughts went roving down the years.

He did not hear the sound of hoofs behind him, till Roger Demaine’s daughter rode close up, reined in, and sat regarding him with an odd look of pity, and liking, and reproach.

“You look out of heart, Rupert. What ails you?” she asked, startling him out of his day-dream.

“Life. It is life that ails me,” he muttered, then laughed as if ashamed of his quick outburst. “I’ve been tramping the moors since daybreak, Nance,” he went on, in a matter-of-fact voice, “and all for three brace of grouse. You know how much powder goes to every bird I kill.”

“But, Rupert, why are you so bitter?”

“Because I’m your fool,” he broke in, with easy irony. “Oh, they think I do not know! They call me the scholar—or the dreamer—or any other name—but we know what they mean, Nance.”

The girl’s face was grave and puzzled. Through all the years they had known each other, he and she, he had seldom shown her a glimpse of this passionate rebellion against the world that hemmed him in. And it was true—pitiably true. She had seen men smile good-naturedly when his name was spoken—good-naturedly, because all men liked him in some affectionate, unquestioning way—had heard them ask each other what the Royds had done in times past to deserve such ill-luck as this heir, who was fit only for the cloisters where scholars walked apart and read old tomes.

And yet, for some odd reason, she liked him better for the outburst. Here on his own moors, with the tiredness in his face and the ring of courage in his voice, she saw the manhood in him.

“Rupert,” she said, glancing backward, and laughing to hide her stress of feeling. “You’ve lost me a race to-day.”

“Very likely,” he said, yielding still to his evil humour. “I was always in the way, Nance. My lady mother told me as much, no longer ago than yesterday. This race of yours?” he added, tired of himself, tired of the comrade moor, weary even of Nance Demaine, who was his first love and who would likely, if he died in his bed at ninety, be his last.

She glanced over her shoulder again, and saw two horsemen cantering half a mile away through the crimson sunset-glow. “It was a good wager, Rupert, and you’ve spoilt it. The hunt was all amiss to-day—whenever we found a fox, we lost him after a mile or two—and Will Underwood and your brother, as we rode home——”

“My brother, and Will Underwood—yes. They hunt in couples always.”

“Be patient, Rupert! Your temper is on edge. I’ve never known it fail you until to-day.”

“Fools are not supposed to show temper,” he put in dryly. “It is only wise men who’re allowed to ride their humours on a loose rein. So you had a wager, Nance?”

“Yes. We had had no real gallop; so, coming home, Maurice said that he would give me a fair start—as far as Intake Farm—and the first home to father’s house should——”

She halted, ashamed, somehow, of Rupert’s steady glance.

“And the wager?”

She glanced behind her. The two horsemen were climbing Lone Man’s Hill, and the sight of them, just showing over the red, sunset top, gave her new courage. “You’re brave, Rupert, and I was full of laughter till you spoiled my ride. It was so slight a wager. Maurice has a rough-haired terrier I covet. If—Rupert, you look as if I were a sinner absolute—if I were first home, Maurice was to give me the dog—and, if not——”

“And if not?”

She was dismayed by his cold air of question. “If I lost the wager? Your brother was to have my glove. What harm was there? He’s a boy, Rupert—besides,” she added, with the unheeding coquetry that was constantly leading her astray, “it is you who make me lose the wager. See them, how close they are! And I’d kept my lead so splendidly until you checked me.”

He was not heeding her. His eyes were fixed on the upcoming horsemen, and Nance could not understand this new, tense mood of his. It was only when Will Underwood and young Maurice reined up beside them that she knew there was trouble brewing, as surely as snow was coming with the rising wind.

“We’ve caught you, Nance,” laughed Maurice. “Will you settle the wager now, or later?”

He was big and buoyant, this lad of two-and-twenty. Life had used him well, had given him a hale body, and nerves like whipcord, and a good temper that needed little discipline to train it into shape.

Will Underwood laughed. “Best hasten, Maurice, or I’ll claim the forfeit for you.”

Rupert glanced from Will Underwood to Maurice. There was no hurry in his glance, only a wish to strike, and a temperate, quiet question as to which enemy he should choose. Then, suddenly, the indignities of years gone by came to a head. He recalled the constant yielding to his brother, the gibes he had let pass without retaliation, the long tale of renunciation, weakness.

“Maurice,” he said, with a straightening of his shoulders, “I want a word with you. Mr. Underwood, you will ride home with Nance? We shall not need you.”

Will Underwood gave a smothered laugh, but Nance was grave. She looked first at Maurice’s boyish, puzzled face, then at Rupert.

“I claim your escort, Mr. Underwood,” she said sharply.

Some reproof in her tone ruffled Will Underwood and kept him silent as they rode over the crest of the moor and down the long, rough slopes that led them to the pastures. He was assured of his reputation as a hard rider and a man of the world; and it piqued him to be given marching orders by a boy of five-and-twenty.

“Rupert thought himself his own father just now, Miss Demaine,” he said in his deep, pleasant voice. “For the first time since I’ve known him, he had something of the grand air. What mischief are the two lads getting into up yonder?”

Nance did not know her own mood. She seemed to be free, for the moment, of her light-hearted, healthy girlhood, seemed to be looking, old and wise, into some muddled picture of the days to come. “No mischief,” she answered, as if some other than herself were speaking. “Rupert is finding his road to the grand air, as you call it. It is a steep road, I fancy.”

Up on the moor Maurice was facing his elder brother. “What fool’s play is this, Rupert?” he asked. “Why don’t you hunt instead of prowling up and down the moor with a gun till your wits are addled? Your face is like a hatchet.”

“You made a wager?” said Rupert, with the same desperate quiet.

“Yes, and I’ve won it. Come, old monk, admit there are worse gloves to claim in Lancashire.”

Rupert winced. His thoughts of Nance Demaine were so long, so fragrant. Since his boyhood struggled first into the riper understanding, he had cloistered her image from the world’s rough usage. She had been to him something magical, unattainable, and he was paying now for an homage less healthy than this world’s needs demand. It was all so trifling, this happy-go-lucky wager of a dog against a glove; but he saw in it a supplanting more bitter than any that had gone before.

He stood there for a moment, irresolute, bound by old subservience to Maurice, by remembrance of his weakness and his nickname of “the scholar.” Then the moor whispered in his ear, told him to be a fool no longer; and a strength that was almost gaiety came to him.

“Get out of the saddle, Maurice,” he said peremptorily. “I want to talk to you on foot.”

Maurice obeyed by instinct, as if a ghost had met him in the open and startled him. Here was the scholar—the brother whom he could not any way despise, because he loved him—with a red spot of colour in each cheek, and in his voice the ring of true metal.

“Well?” asked the younger.

“You never would have claimed that glove.”

The boy’s temper, easy-going as it was, was roused. “Would you have hindered me?”

“Yes. I—I love her. That is all.”

So young Maurice laughed aloud, and Rupert ran in suddenly and hit him on the mouth, and the fight began. In his dreams the heir of Windyhough had revelled in battles, in swift assaults, forlorn and desperate hopes; for he had known no waking pleasures of the kind. And always, in his dreams, there had been a certain spaciousness and leisure; he had found time, in between giving and receiving blows, to feel himself the big man of his hands, to revel in the sheer bravery of the thing.

In practice, here on the open moor, with snow coming up across the stormy, steel-grey sky, there was no leisure and no illusion. He had no time to feel, no luxury of sentiment. He knew only that, in some muddled way, he was fighting Nance’s battle; that, by some miracle, he got a sharp blow home at times; that twice Maurice knocked him down; that, by some native stubbornness, he got up again, with the moor dancing in wide circles round him, and hit his man.

It was swift and soon over, as Rupert thought of this battle afterwards. No pipes were playing up and down the hills, to hearten him. Even the wind, whose note he loved, blew swift from the east about deaf ears. He and his brother were alone, in a turmoil of their own making, and his weakening arms were beating like a flail about the head of Maurice, the supplanter. Then the moors whirled round him, a world big with portent and disaster; and dimly, as from a long way off, he heard Maurice’s voice.

“I’ll have to kill him before he gives in. Who ever thought it of the scholar?”

The gibe heartened Rupert. He struggled up again, and by sheer instinct—skill he had little, and strength seemed to have left him long ago—he got another swift blow home. And then darkness settled on him, and he dreamed again of battle as he had known it in the fanciful days of boyhood. He revelled in this lonely moorland fight, counted again each blow and wondered at its strength, knew himself at last a proven man. His dreams were kind to him.

Then he got out from his sickness, little by little, and looked about him, and saw a half-moon shining dimly through a whirl of snow. The east wind was playing shrewdly round his battered face, as if a man were rubbing salt into his wounds. He tried to get up, looked about him again, and saw Maurice stooping over him.

A long glance passed between the brothers, Rupert lying on the heather, Maurice kneeling in the sleety moonlight. There was question in the glance, old affection, some trouble of the jealousy that had bidden them fight just now. Then a little sob, of which he was ashamed, escaped the younger brother.

Rupert struggled to a sitting posture. He could do no more as yet. “So I’m not just the scholar?” he asked feebly.

Maurice, young as he was, was troubled by the vehemence, the wistfulness, of the appeal. Odd chords were stirred, under the rough-and-ready view he had of life. This brother with whom he had fought just now—he understood, in a dim way, the pity and the isolation of his life, understood the daily suffering he had undergone. Then, suddenly and as if to seek relief from too much feeling, the younger brother laughed.

“The next time a man sneers at you for being a scholar, Rupert, give him a straight answer.”

“Yes?” The heir of Windyhough was dazed and muddled still, though he had got to his feet again.

“Hit him once between the eyes. A liar seldom asks a second blow, so father says.”

Then a silence fell between them, while the last of the sunset red grew pale about the swarthy line of heath above them, and the moon sailed dim and phantom-like through the sleety clouds. They had been fond of each other always, but now some deeper love, some intimate communion, gathered the years up and bound them into lasting friendship. Maurice had been jealous of his brother’s heirship, contemptuous of his scholarship. And Rupert had been sick at heart, these years past, knowing how well the supplanter sat his horse, and carried a gun, and did all things reckoned worthy.

And now they met on equal terms. They had fought together, man against man; and their love ripened under the bitter east wind and the stinging sleet, as the man’s way is.

They went down the moor together, Maurice leading his horse by the bridle. They were no heroic figures, the three of them. The horse was shivering, after long waiting in the cold while his master settled private differences; and the two brothers limped and stumbled as they picked their way down the white slope of the moor. There was no speed of action now; there was, instead, this slow march home that in its very forlornness touched some subtle note of humour. Yet Rupert was warm, as if he sat by a peat-fire; for he felt a man’s soul stirring in him.

“What did we fight about?” asked Maurice suddenly. “The fun was so hot while it lasted—and, gad, Rupert, I’ve forgotten what the quarrel was.”

Again the elder brother grew quick, alert. It seemed he was ready to provoke a second fight. “It was Nance’s glove,” he said quietly. “You said you meant to claim it, and I said not. I say it still.”

“There, there, old lad!” laughed Maurice, patting him lightly on the shoulder. “You shall have the glove. She’d rather give it to you than to any man in Lancashire. I said as much to Will Underwood just now, and he didn’t relish it.”

“Rather give it me?” echoed the other, with entire simplicity. “I can do nothing that a woman asks, Maurice.”

A sudden dizziness crossed his eagerness. He could not keep the path, until Maurice steadied him.

“You can hit devilish hard,” said the younger dryly.

The three of them went down the moor, counting the furlongs miles. And again the brothers met on equal terms; for each was bruised and hungry, and body-sickness, if it strike deep enough, is apt to bring wayfarers to one common level.

Nance and Will Underwood had reached the lower lands by now, and she turned to him at the gate of Demaine House with some reluctance.

“You will let my father thank you for your escort?” she asked, stroking her mare’s neck.

“I’ll come in,” he answered, with the rollicking assurance that endeared him to the hard riders of the county—“if only for an hour more with you.” He leaned across and touched her bridle-hand. “Nance, you’ve treated me all amiss these last days. You never give me a word apart, and there’s so much——”

“I’m tired and cold,” she broke in, wayward and sleety as this moorland that had cradled her. “You may spare me—what shall I say?—the flattery that Mr. Underwood gives every woman, when other women are not there to hear.”

She did not know what ailed her. Until an hour ago she had been yielding, little by little, to the suit which Will Underwood had pressed on her—in season and out, as his way was. There had been sudden withdrawals, gusts of coquetry, on her part; for the woman’s flight at all times is like a snipe’s—zig-zag, and only to be reckoned with according to the rule of contraries.

But now, as she went into the house, not asking but simply permitting him to follow her, there was a real avoidance of him. She could not rid herself of the picture of Rupert, standing desolate up yonder on the empty moors—Rupert, who was heir to traditions of hard riding and hard fighting; Rupert, with the eyes of a dreamer and the behaviour of a hermit. She wondered what he and Maurice were doing on the moor. His last words had not suggested need of her—had hinted plainly that he had a man’s work to do.

Her father was in the hall as they came in. A glance at his face told her that Roger Demaine was in no mood for trifles, and she stood apart, willingly enough, while he gravely offered wine to Underwood, and filled his glass for him, and scarcely paused to let him set lips to it before he ran into the middle of his tale.

“There’s muddled news from Scotland. I can’t make head or tail of it,” he said, glancing sharply round to see that no servants were in earshot. “We expected him to come south with the New Year, and I’ve had word just now that he’ll be riding through Lancashire before the month is out—that he means to keep Christmas in high state in London.”

“I’ll not believe it,” said Will Underwood lazily. “The clans up yonder need more than a week or two to rally to the muster.”

“You were always slow to believe,” snapped the Squire. “Have a care, Will, or they’ll say you’re like nine men out of ten—loyal only until the test comes.”

The other glanced at Nance, then at his host. “I would not permit the insult from a younger man, sir,” he said.

“Oh, fiddle-de-dee!” broke in old Roger. “Fine phrases don’t win battles, and never did. Insult? None intended, Will. But I’m sick with anxiety, and you younger men are the devil and all when you’re asked to ride on some one else’s errand than your own.”

Roger Demaine, big of height and girth, his face a fine, fox-hunter’s red, stood palpably for the old race of squires. In his life there were mistakes enough—mistakes of impulse and of an uncurbed temper—but there was no pandering to shame of any sort.

“When I’m asked, sir, I shall answer,” said Will Underwood, moving restlessly from foot to foot.

“Well, I hope so. You’ll not plead, eh, that you are pledged to hunt six days a week, and cannot come? that you’ve a snug house and some thought of bringing a wife to it one day, and cannot come? that you are training a dog to the gun, and cannot come——”

It was Nance who broke in now. She had forgotten Rupert, standing hungry and forlorn up the high moor and looking down on his inheritance of Windyhough. Her old liking for Will Underwood—a liking that had come near, during these last days, to love and hero-worship—bade her defend their guest against a tongue that was sharper than her father guessed.

“I know he will be true. Why should you doubt him, father?”

“Oh, there, child! Who said I doubted him? It’s the whole younger race of men I distrust. Will here must be scapegoat—and, by that token, your glass is empty, Will.”

With entire disregard of anything that had gone before, Squire Demaine filled another measure for his guest, pointed to the chair across the hearth, and was about to give the news from Scotland, word by word, when he remembered Nance. “It will be only recruiting-talk, Nance—men to be counted on in one place, and men we doubt in t’other. It would only weary you.”

Nance came and stood between them, slim and passionate. “I choose to stay, father. Your talk of men, of arms hidden in the hay-mows and the byres, of the marching-out—that is your part of the battle. But what afterwards?”

They glanced at her in some perplexity. She was so resolute, yet so remote, in her eager beauty, from the highways that men tramp when civil war is going forward.

“What afterwards?” grumbled Squire Roger. “Well, the right King on the throne again, we hope. What else, my girl?”

“After you’ve gone, father, and left the house to its women? I’m mistress here, since—since mother died.”

Roger Demaine got to his feet hurriedly and took a pinch of snuff. “Oh, have a care, Nance!” he protested noisily. “There’s no need to remind me that your mother died. I should have taken a whole heart to the Rising, instead of half o’ one, if she’d been alive.”

Nance touched his hair lightly, in quick repentance of the hurt she had given him. But she would not yield her point. “I shall be left mistress here—mistress of a house made up of women and old men—and you? You will be out in the open, giving blows instead of nursing patience by the hearth.”

“Perhaps—Nance, perhaps the Rising will not need us, after all,” said Will Underwood, with a lame attempt to shirk the issue.

“I trust that it will need you, sir—will need us both,” she said, flinging round on him with the speed of her father’s temper. “You thought I complained of the loneliness that is coming? No—but, if I’m to take part in your war, I’ll know what news you have.”

Roger Demaine patted her gently on the shoulder, and smiled as if he watched a kitten playing antics with a serious face. “The child is right, Will,” he said. “It will be long and lonely for her, come to think of it, and there’s no harm in telling her the news.”

“Who was the messenger, father?” she asked, leaning against the mantel and looking down into the blazing log-fire.

“Oh, Oliphant of Muirhouse, from the Annan country. The best horseman north of the Solway, they say. He was only here for as long as his message lasted, and off again for Sir Jasper’s at Windyhough.”

“And his news?” asked Will Underwood, watching the fire-glow play about Nance’s clear-cut face and maidish figure.

The Squire drew them close to him, and glanced about him again and, for all his would-be secrecy, his voice rang like a trumpet-call before he had half told them of the doings up in Scotland. For his loyalty was sane and vastly simple.

They were silent for a while, until Nance turned slowly and stood looking at the two men. “It is all like a dream come true. The hunger and the ache, father—the King in name reigning it here, and that other overseas—and grooms riding while their masters walk——”

“We’ll soon be up in saddle again,” broke in old Roger brusquely. “Oliphant of Muirhouse brings us news that will end all that. The country disaffected, the old loyalty waiting for a breeze to stir it—how can we fail? I tell you there’s to be another Restoration, and all the church bells ringing.”

He halted, glancing at Will Underwood, who was pacing up and down the room.

“You’ve the look of a trapped wild-cat, Will,” he said irascibly. “I fancied my news would please you—but, dear God, you younger men are cold! You can follow your fox over hedge and dyke and take all risks. It’s only when the big hunt is up that you begin to count the value of your necks.”

Underwood turned sharply. Some trouble of his own had stood between him and the Rising news, but the Squire’s gibe had touched him now. “The big hunt has been up many times, sir,” he said impatiently. “We’ve heard the Stuart shouting Tally-ho all down from Solway to the Thames—but we’ve never seen the fox. Oliphant is too sanguine always.”

Old Roger cut him short. “Oliphant, by grace o’ God, is like a bit of Ferrara’s steel. I wish we had more like him. In my young days we did not talk, and talk—we got to saddle when such as Oliphant of Muirhouse came to rouse us. You’re cold, I tell you, Will. Your voice rings sleety.”

Will Underwood glanced slowly from his host to Nance. He saw that she was watching him, and caught fire from her silent, half-disdainful question. Hot words—of loyalty and daring—ran out unbidden. And Nance, in turn, warmed to his mood; for it was so she had watched him take his fences on hunting-days, so that he had half persuaded her to love him outright and have done with it.

But old Roger was still unconvinced. “We may be called out within the month. Have you set your house in order, Will?”

Again the younger man seemed to be looking backward to some trouble that had dwarfed his impulse. “Why, no, sir,” he answered lamely. “Surely I have had no time?”

“Just so,” put in the other dryly. “At my time of life, Will, men learn to set things in order before the call comes. Best have all in readiness.”

A troubled silence followed. They stood in the thick of peril soon to come, and Squire Roger, haphazard and unthinking at usual times, had struck a note of faith that was deep, far sounding, not to be denied. As if ashamed of his feeling, openly expressed, the Squire laughed clumsily.

“I was boasting, Nance,” he said, putting a rough hand on her shoulder, “and that’s more dangerous than hunting foxes—bagged foxes brought overseas from Hanover. Bless me! you were talking of staying here as mistress, and I’ll not allow it. I’ve had a plan in my head since Oliphant first brought the news.”

“But, father, I must stay here. Where else?”

“At Windyhough. No, girl, I’ll have no arguments about it. You’ll be protected there.”

Will Underwood laughed, and somehow Nance liked him none the better for it. “Sir Jasper will go with us, and Maurice, and every able-bodied man about the place—who will be left to play guardian to Nance?”

“Rupert, unless I’ve misjudged the lad,” snapped the Squire.

“He cannot protect himself, sir.”

“No. May be not—just yet. But I’ve faith in that lad, somehow. He’ll look after other folk’s cattle better than his own. Some few are made in that mould, Will. It’s a good mould, and rare.”

His secret trouble, and his jealousy of any man who threatened to come close to Nance, swept Will Underwood’s prudence clean away. He should have known by now this bluff, uncompromising tone of the Squire’s. “She’s safer here, sir,” he blundered on. “We all know Rupert for a scholar—I’d rather trust Nance to her own women-servants.”

“But I would not,” put in old Roger dryly, “and I happen to have a say in the matter. If Rupert’s a fool—well, he shall have his chance of proving it. Nance, you go to Windyhough. That’s understood? The house down yonder can stand a siege, and this cannot. My fool of a grandfather—God rest him, all the same!—dismantled the house here. He thought there’d never again be civil war in Lancashire—but down at Windyhough they lived in hope.”

Nance laughed—the brave laugh of a woman cradled in a house of gallant faith, of loyalty to old tradition. She understood her father’s breezy, offhand talk of civil war, as if it were a pleasant matter. He would have chosen other means, she knew, if peace had shown the road; but better war, of friend against friend, than this corroding apathy that had fallen on men’s ideals since the King-in-name ruled England by the help of foreign mercenaries.

Will Underwood caught infection from these two. The one was hale, bluff and hard-riding, a man proven; the other was a slip of a lassie, slender as a reed and fanciful; yet each had the same eager outlook on this matter of the Rising—an outlook that admitted no compromise, no asking whether the time were ripe for sacrifice and peril. The moment was instinct with drama to Underwood, and he was ready always to step into the forefront of a scene.

“When are we needed, sir?” he asked, with a grave simplicity that was equal to their own.

“Within the month, if all goes well with the march. There’s little time, Will, and much to do.”

“Ay, there’s much to do—but we shall light a fire for every loyalist to warm his hands at. May the Prince come soon, say I.”

The Squire glanced sharply at him. Will’s tone, his easy, gallant bearing, removed some doubts he had had of late touching the younger man’s fidelity; and when, a little later, Nance said that she would leave them to their wine, he permitted Will to open the door for her, to follow her for a moment into the draughty hall. He noticed, with an old man’s dry and charitable humour, that Nance dropped her kerchief as she went out, and that Will picked it up.

“The hunt is up,” he muttered. “The finest hunt is up that England ever saw—and these two are playing a child’s game of drop-kerchief. There’ll be time to make love by and by, surely, when peace comes in again.”

The Squire was restless. To his view of the Prince’s march from Scotland, there was England’s happiness at stake. He would have to wait three weeks or so, drilling his men, rousing his neighbours to the rally, doing fifty things a day to keep his patience decently in bounds. He needed the gallop south, and the quick dangers of the road; and here, instead, were two youngsters who fancied love was all.

Outside in the hall Nance and Will Underwood were facing each other with a certain grave disquiet. The wind was rising fast; its song overhead among the chimney-stacks was wild and comfortless; the draught of it crept down the stairs, and under the main door, and through ill-fitting casements, blowing the candle-flames aslant and shaping the droppings into what the country-folk called “candle-corpsies.” Somewhere from the kitchen a maidservant was singing a doleful ballad, dear to rustic Lancashire, of one Sir Harry of Devilsbridge, who rode out to his wedding one day and never was seen again save as a ghost that haunted Lang Rigg Moss.

“There’s a lively tune for Rising men to march to,” said Underwood, ill at ease somehow, yet forcing a gay laugh. “If I were superstitious——”

“We are all superstitious,” broke in the other, restless as her father. “Since babyhood we’ve listened to that note i’ the wind. Oh, it sobs, and will not any way be still! It comes homeless from the moors, and cries to us to let it in. Martha is right to be singing yonder of souls crying over the Moss.”

Again Will Underwood yielded to place and circumstance. He had watched Nance grow up from lanky girlhood into a womanhood that, if it had no extravagance of beauty, arrested every man’s attention and made him better for the pause. He had hunted with her, in fair weather and in foul, had sat at meat with her in this house that kept open, hospitable doors. Yet, until to-night, he had not seen her as she was, a child of the moors, passionate, wayward, strong for the realities of human pity, human need for faith and constancy.

“I have your kerchief, Nance,” he said. The gravity, the quietness of his tone surprised her. “I’ll keep it, by your leave.”

She glanced at him, and there was trouble in her eyes. This news of the Rising had stirred every half-forgotten longing, inbred in her, that a Stuart might reign again, gallant and debonair and kingly, over this big-little land of England. She wished the old days back, with desperate eagerness—the days when men were not blameless, as in a fairy-tale, but when, at any rate, they served their King for loyalty instead of prudence. Yet, now, with Will Underwood here, her hopes of the Rising grew shadowy and far-away. She was not thinking of England or the Stuart; she was asking herself, with piteous appeal for help, whether her own little life was to be marred or made by this big, loose-built man whom all women were supposed to love at sight. She drew her skirts away from such intemperate, unstable love; but she had known Will Underwood long, had dreamed of him o’ nights, had shaped him to some decent likeness of a hero.

“No, you’ll not keep it. You will give it back to me. Oh, I insist!” she broke off, again with her father’s quick, heedless need to be obeyed.

He put the kerchief into her hand. “So you’re sending me a beggar to the wars,” he said sullenly.

“If you go to the wars”—she was looking wistfully at him, as if asking for some better answer to her need of faith—“you shall take it with you, Mr. Underwood.”

“You doubt me, Nance?”

“Doubt? I doubt everything these days: you, and the Prince’s march from Scotland, and all—why, all I’m too tired to hope for. You do not guess how tired I am. To-morrow, may be, the wind will be quieter—and Martha will not be singing from the kitchens how Sir Harry rode over Devilsbridge and came back, without his body, to haunt the moors. Good-night, Mr. Underwood. Go talk with father of the Rising.”

Yet still they lingered for a moment. Through all her weariness—through the vague distrust that was chilling her—she remembered the day-time intimacy, the nights of long, girlish dreams, that had gone to the making of her regard for Will. It was untrue—it must be untrue—that he was half-hearted in this enterprise that was to set England free of the intolerable yoke. If Will’s honour went by the board, she would begin to doubt her own good faith.

What was passing in Will Underwood’s mind he himself scarcely knew, perhaps. He was full of trouble, indecision; but he glanced at Nance, saw the frank question and appeal in her face, and his doubts slipped by him.

“I shall claim that kerchief, Nance,” he said—“before the month is out, if Oliphant brought a true message south.”

Nance glanced at him. “Mr. Oliphant never lies. His enemies admit as much. So come for what I’ll give—if you come before the month is out.”

She was gone before he could insist on one last word, and Will Underwood turned impatiently to seek his host. A half-hour later, after she had heard him get to saddle and ride away, Nance came downstairs, and found her father pacing up and down the dining-chamber.

“What, you?” growled old Roger. “I thought you were in bed by this time, child.”

“I cannot sleep.” She came to his side, and put a friendly arm through his. “Father, am I right? It seems there are so many—so many of our men who are cold——”

“Why, damme, that’s just what I was thinking,” roared the Squire, his good-humour returning when another shared his loneliness. “It’s the older men who are warm—the older men who are going to carry this business through. It was not so in my young days. Our fathers licked us into better shape, and we’d fewer luxuries, may be. Why, child, we dared not play fast and loose with loyalty, as some of these young blades are doing.”

“They ask for reasons, father. Young Hunter of Hunterscliff rode up to me to-day, as we were waiting for hounds to strike the scent. And I spoke of the Rising, because I can think of little else these days; and he yawned, in the lackadaisical way he brought from London a year ago, and said the Prince was following a wild-goose chase. And he, too, asked for reasons—asked why he should give up a hunting life for the pleasure of putting his neck into a halter.”

Roger Demaine stood, square and big, with his back to the fire. His fine apparel, the ordered comfort of the room, could not disguise his ruggedness. He was an out-of-doors man, simple, passionate, clean as the winds and an open life could make him. “Hunter of Hunterscliff will put his neck into a worse halter if he airs such shallow stuff. I’d have had him ducked in the nearest horse-pond if he’d said that to me.”

The two looked quietly at each other, father and daughter, each knowing that there was need of some deeper confidence.

“You dropped your kerchief just now, Nance,” said Roger dryly, “and Will Underwood picked it up. Did he keep it?”

The girl was full of trouble. Her father’s happiness, the welfare of the English land which she loved almost to idolatry, her trust in Underwood’s honour, were all at stake. But she stood proud and self-reliant. “Did you train me to drop my kerchief for any man to keep? I tell you, sir—as I told Mr. Underwood just now—that he may claim it when—when he has proved himself.”

The Squire was in complete good-humour now. This girl of his was as a woman should be, suave and bendable as a hazel-twig, yet strong, not to be broken by any onset of the wind. He could afford to tease her, now that his mind was easy.

“Why, surely Will has proved himself,” he said, smiling down at her from his big height. “He can take his fences with any man. He can take his liquor, too, when need asks, and watch weaker men slide gently under-table. He can hit four birds out of five, Nance, and is a proper lady’s man as well. Dear heart! what more does the child ask from a lover?”

“I ask so little of him—just to ride out, and ride in again after the bells are ringing a Stuart home. To risk a little hardship. To come out of his hunting and his pretty parlour ways, and face the open. What else does any woman claim from any man, when—oh, when the need is urgent? Father, it was you who taught me what this Rising means—it is Faith, and decency, and happiness for England, fighting against a rabble brought overseas from Germany, because they cannot trust the English army. It is—the breath of our English gardens that’s at stake, and yet such as this Hunterscliff lad can yawn about it.”

“Will Underwood yawns, you mean,” snapped the Squire. “It was Underwood you were thinking of. I share your doubts, Nance. He is this and that, and a few men speaking well of him—but there’s a flaw in him somewhere. I never could set a finger on it, but the flaw is there.”

She turned on him, with hot inconsequence. “He is not proved as yet. I said no more than that. You never liked him, father. You—you are unjust.”

“Well, no; I never liked him. But I’m content to wait. If I’ve misjudged him, I’ll admit it frankly. Does it go so very deep, child, this liking for Wild Will?” he broke off, with rough, anxious tenderness. “I’m clumsy with women—I always was—and you’ve no mother to go to in search of a good, healthy cry.”

“Why should it go deep?” she asked, with a pride that would not yield as yet.

“Oh, I’ve watched you both. The ways of a man and a maid—bless me, they are old as the hills. Of course, he’s good to look at, and there’s naught against him, so far as I know; but——”

“You will let him prove himself. His chance will not be long in coming, father.”

She bade him good-night gravely, yet with a shy, impulsive tenderness, and went up to her own room. The moon was staring in through the low, broad window-space. A keen frost was setting fingers on the glass already; she brushed away the delicate tracery and stood watching the silent, empty lands without. No sleet was falling now. She could see each line of wall that climbed, dead-black by contrast, up the white slope of the pastures. Beyond and high above, a steel-blue sky marked, ridge by ridge, the rough, uncompromising outline of the moor.

It was a scene desolate beyond belief, and would have chilled one foreign to the country; but Nance looked up the wintry slopes as if she found a haven there. There was no illusion attaching to this riding-out of the war-men from Lancashire. She was not swayed by any casual glamour of the pipes, any kilted pageantry of warfare. Her father had taught her, patiently enough, that the Stuarts, though they chanced to capture the liking of most decent women, were intent on graver business. Not once, in the years that had gone before this call to arms, had he trained her to an ideal lower than his own. The Stuart, to his belief, stood for charity, for sacrifice, for unbending loyalty to the Faith once delivered. And such outlook, as he had told her plainly, made neither for pageantry nor sloth.

Nance, watching the sleety wilderness outside, hearing the yelp of the wind as it sprang from the bitter, eastern bank of cloud, recalled her father’s teaching with a new, sudden understanding. This sleety land, with its black field-walls climbing to the windy moor above, was eloquent in its appeal to her. There was storm and disaster now—but there was heather-time to come, and bees among the ling, and the clear, high sunshine over all. Old Squire Demaine, with all his rough-and-ready faults, had taught her faith.

She forgot her trouble touching Will Underwood. The rough, moonlit moor reminded her, in some odd way, of Rupert—of the scholar who a little while ago, up yonder, had taken some fancied quarrel of her own upon his slim shoulders. Somewhere, hidden by the easy pity of the years, was a faith in this scholar who caused misgiving to his friends. She remembered that her father—the last man in Lancashire to be tolerant of a fool—would listen to no gibes at Rupert’s expense, that he had bidden her, soon as the hunt was up in earnest, seek refuge at Windyhough.

These white, rough uplands did not bring Will Underwood back to mind at all. They brought only the picture of a lean, wind-driven dreamer, who had tramped the moors all day for the pleasure of sharing his own thoughts with the wilderness. She recalled the look in his face when she had surprised him—the tired question in it, as if he were asking why circumstances had piled up so many odds against him; then the welcome, idolatrous almost in its completeness, that his eyes had given her when he realised that she was near, and after that the curt request that Will Underwood should ride with her, while he settled some difference with his brother.

A woman likes to be worshipped, likes a man to show fight on her behalf; and Nance, watching the stark, moonlit fields, for the first time felt a touch of something more than pity for the heir of Windyhough.