Читать книгу The Lone Adventure - Sutcliffe Halliwell - Страница 5

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Uneasy days had come to Lancashire. The men had grown used to security, save for the risk of a broken neck on hunting-days, their wives pampered and extravagant; for peace, of the unhealthy sort, saps half their vigour from men and women both. They had nothing to fear, it seemed. There had been wars overseas, and others threatened; but their battles had been fought for them by foreign mercenaries of King George’s. For the rest, Lancashire hunted and dined and diced, secure in the beauty of her women, the strength of her men who rode to hounds and made love in the sleepy intervals.

And now the trumpet-call had sounded. None spoke abroad of the news that Oliphant of Muirhouse and other messengers were bringing constantly; but, when doors were closed, there was eager talk of what was in the doing. And the elders of the company were aware that, for every man who held loyalty fast in his two hands, there were five at least who were guarded in devotion, five who spoke with their lips, but whose hearts were set on safety and the longing to enjoy more hunting days.

It was this lukewarmness that harassed and exasperated men like Sir Jasper and Squire Demaine. Better open enemies, they felt—those who were frankly ranged against the Old Faith, the Old Monarchy, the old traditions—than easy-going friends who would talk but would not act. Here on the windy heights of Lancashire they were learning already what the stalwarts farther north were feeling—an intolerable sickness, an impatience of those who wished for the return of the old order, but had not faith enough to strike a blow for it.

Yet there were others; and day by day, as news of the Prince’s march drifted down to Windyhough, Sir Jasper was heartened to find that after all, he would bring a decent company to join the Rising. Meanwhile, the lives they were living day by day seemed odd to thinking men who, like Sir Jasper, understood how imminent was civil war, and what the horrors of it were. The farmers rode to market, sold their sheep and cattle, returned sober or otherwise according to force of habit, just as at usual times. In the village bordering Windyhough the smith worked at his bellows, the cobbler was busy as ever with making boots and scandal, the labourers’ wives—the shiftless sort—scolded their husbands into the ale-house, while the more prudent ones made cheery hearths for them at home. It seemed incredible that before the year was out there would be such a fire kindled in this peaceful corner of the world as might burn homesteads down, and leave children fatherless, if things went amiss with Prince Charles Edward.

But Sir Jasper let no doubts stay long with him. Things would go well. If the risks were great, so was the recompense. A Stuart safely on the throne again; English gentlemen filling high places where foreigners were now in favour; the English tongue heard frequently at Court; a return of the days when Church and King meant more than an idle toast—surely the prize was worth the hazard.

He carried a sore heart on his own account these days. He had a wife and sons at Windyhough; he loved the house that had grown old in company with his race; he had no personal gain in this adventure of the Prince’s, no need of recompense nor wish for it; and sometimes, when he was tired-out or when he had found the younger gentry irresolute in face of the instant call to arms, he grew weak and foolish, as if he needed to learn from the everlasting hills about him that he was human after all. And at these times his faith shone low and smoky, like a fire that needs a keen breath of wind to kindle it afresh.

On one of these days, near dusk, as he rode home across the moor, dispirited because no news had followed Oliphant’s message of a week ago, a rider overtook him at a spurring gallop, checked suddenly, and turned in saddle.

“I was for Windyhough,” he panted. “You’ve saved me three miles, sir—and, gad! my horse will bless you.”

“The news, Oliphant? The news? I’m wearying for it.”

“Be ready within the week. The Prince is into Annan—Carlisle will fall—get your men and arms together. Pass on the word to Squire Demaine.”

“And the signal?”

“Wait till I bring it, or another. Be ready, and—God save the King!”

Here on the hilltops, while Oliphant of Muirhouse breathed his horse for a moment, the two men looked, as honest folk do, straight into each other’s eyes. Sir Jasper saw that Oliphant was weary in the cause of well-doing; that was his trade in life, and he pursued it diligently; but the older man was not prepared for the sudden break and tenderness in the rider’s voice as he broke off to cry “God save the King!” There was no bravado possible up here, where sleety, austere hills were the only onlookers; the world’s applause was far off, and in any case Oliphant was too saddle-sore and hungry to care for such light diet; yet that cry of his—resolute, gay almost—told Sir Jasper that two men, here on the uplands, were sharing the same faith.

“God save the King!” said Sir Jasper, uncovering; “and—Oliphant, you’ll take a pinch of snuff with me.”

Oliphant laughed—the tired man’s laugh that had great pluck behind it—and dusted his nostrils with the air of one who had known courts and gallantry. “They say it guards a man against chills, Sir Jasper—and one needs protection of that sort in Lancashire. Your men are warm and Catholic—but your weather and your roads—de’il take them!”

“Our weather bred us, Oliphant. We’ll not complain.”

Oliphant of Muirhouse glanced at him. “By gad! you’re tough, sir,” he said, with that rare smile of his which folk likened to sun in midwinter frost.

“By grace o’ God, I’m tough; but I never learned your trick of hunting up tired folk along the roads and putting new heart into them. How did you learn the trick, Oliphant?”

It was cold up here, and the messenger had need to get about his business; but two men, sharing a faith bigger than the hills about them, were occupied with this new intimacy that lay between them, an intimacy that was tried enough to let them speak of what lay nearest to their hearts. Oliphant looked back along the years—saw the weakness of body, the tired distrust of himself that had hindered him, the groping forward to the light that glimmered faint ahead.

“Oh, by misadventure and by sorrow—how else? I’ll take another pinch of snuff, Sir Jasper, and ride forward.”

“If they but knew, Oliphant!” The older man’s glance was no less direct, but it was wistful and shadowed by some doubt that had taken him unawares. “We’ve all to gain, we loyalists, and George has left us little enough to lose. And yet our men hang back. Cannot they see this Rising as I see it? Prosperity and kingship back again—no need to have a jug of water ready when you drink the loyal toast—the Maypole reared again in this sour, yellow-livered England. Oliphant, we’ve the old, happy view of things, and yet our gentlemen hang back.”

A cloud crossed Oliphant’s persistent optimism, too. In experience of men’s littleness, their shams and subterfuges when they were asked to put bodily ease aside for sake of battle, he was older than Sir Jasper. The night-riders of this Rising saw the dark side, not only of the hilly roads they crossed, but of human character; and in this corner of Lancashire alone Oliphant knew to a nicety the few who would rise, sanguine at the call of honour, and the many who would add up gain and loss like figures in a tradesman’s ledger.

“Sir Jasper,” he said, breaking an uneasy silence, “the Prince will come to his own with few or many. If it were you and I alone, I think we’d still ride out.”

He leaned from the saddle, gripped the other’s hand, and spurred forward into the grey haze that was creeping up the moor across the ruddy sundown.

Sir Jasper followed him, at an easier pace. For a while he captured something of Oliphant’s zeal—a zeal that had not been won lightly—and then again doubt settled on him, cold as the mist that grew thicker and more frosty as he gained the lower lands. He knew that the call had come which could not be disobeyed, and he was sick with longing for the things that had been endeared to him by long-continued peace. There was Rupert, needing a father’s guidance, a father’s help at every turn, because he was a weakling; he had not known till now how utterly he loved the lad. There was his wife, who was wayward and discontented these days; but he had not forgotten the beauty of his wooing-time. There was all to lose, it seemed, in spite of his brave words not long ago.

Resolute men feel these things no less—nay, more, perhaps—than the easy-going. Their very hatred of weakness, of swerving from the straight, loyal path, reacts on them, and they find temptation doubly strong. Sir Jasper, as he rode down into the nipping frost that hung misty about the chimney-stacks below him, had never seen this house of his so comely, so likeable. Temptation has a knack of rubbing out all harsher lines, of showing a stark, midwinter landscape as a land of plenty and of summer. There were the well ordered life, the cheery greetings with farmer-folk and hinds who loved their squire. There was his wife—she was young again, as on her bridal-day, asking him if he dared leave her—and there was his heir. Maurice, the younger-born, would go out with the Rising; but Rupert must be left behind.

Sir Jasper winced, as if in bodily pain. Every impulse was bidding him stay. Every tie, of home and lands and tenantry, was pulling him away from strict allegiance to the greater Cause. He had but to bide at home, to let the Rising sweep by him and leave him safe in his secluded corner of the moors; it was urgent that he should stay, to guard his wife against the licence that might follow civil war; it was his duty to protect his own.

The strength of many yesterdays returned to help Sir Jasper. Because he was turned sixty, a light thinker might have said that he might take his ease; but, because he was turned sixty, he had more yesterdays behind him than younger men—days of striving toward a goal as fixed as the pole-star, nights of doubt and disillusion that had yielded to the dawn of each succeeding sunrise. He had pluck and faith in God behind him; and his trust was keen and bright, like the sword-blade that old Andrew Ferrara had forged in Italy for Prince Charles Edward.

“The Prince needs me,” he muttered stubbornly. “That should be praise enough for any man.”

He rode down the bridle-track to Windyhough; and the nearer he got to the chimneys that were smoking gustily in the shrewd east wind, the more he loved his homestead. It was as if a man, living in a green oasis, were asked to go out across the desert sands, because a barren, thirsty duty called him.

Again the patient yesterdays rallied to his aid. He shook himself free of doubts, as a dog does when he comes out of cold waters; and he took a pinch of snuff, and laughed. “After all, I was growing fat and sleepy,” he thought, stooping to pat the tired horse that carried him. “One can sleep and eat too much.”

He found Lady Royd in the hall, waiting for him, and a glance at her face chilled all desire to tell her the good Rising news.

“What is the trouble, wife?” he asked, with sudden foreboding. “Is Rupert ill?”

She stamped her foot, and her face, comely at usual times, was not good to see. “Oh, it is Rupert with you—and always Rupert—till I lose patience. He is—why, just the scholar. He does not hunt; he scarce dares to ride—we’ll have to make a priest of him.”

“There are worse callings,” broke in Sir Jasper, with the squared jaw that she knew by heart, but would not understand. “If my soul were clean enough for priesthood, I should no way be ashamed.”

“Yes, but the lands? Will you not understand that he is the heir—and there must be heirs to follow? We have but two, and you’re taking Maurice to this mad rising that can only end on Tower Hill.”

“That is as God wills, wife o’ mine.”

Again she stamped her foot. “You’re in league together, you and he.”

“We share the same Faith,” he put in dryly, “if that is to be in league together.”

“Only to-day—an hour before you came—I found him mooning in the library, when he should have been out of doors. ‘Best join the priests at once, and have done with it,’ said I. And ‘No,’ he answered stubbornly, ‘I’ve been reading what the Royds did once. They fought for Charles the First, and afterwards—they died gladly, some of them. I come of a soldier-stock, and I need to fight.’ The scholar dreamed of soldiery! I tapped him on the cheek—and he a grown man of five-and-twenty—and”—she halted, some hidden instinct shaming her for the moment—“and he only answered that he knew the way of it all—by books—dear heart, by books he knew how strong men go to battle!”

“Rupert said that?” asked Sir Jasper gently. “Gad! I’m proud of him. He’ll come to soldiery one day.”

“By mooning in the library—by roaming the moors at all hours of the day and night—is that the way men learn to fight?”

Sir Jasper was cool and debonair again. “Men learn to fight as the good God teaches them, my lady. We have no part in that. As for Rupert—I tell you the lad is staunch and leal. He was bred a Christian gentleman, after all, and breed tells—it tells in the long run, Agnes, though all the fools in Lancashire go making mouths at Rupert.”

He strode up and down the hall, with the orderly impatience that she knew. And then he told the Rising news; and she ran towards him, and could not come too close into his arms, and made confession, girlish in its simplicity, that she, who cared little for her son, loved her husband better than her pride.

“You’ll not go? It is a mad Rising—here with the Georges safe upon the throne. You need not go, at your age. Let younger men bear the brunt of it, if they’ve a mind for forlorn hopes.”

He put her arms away from him, though it helped and heartened him to know that, in some queer way, she loved him.

“At any age one serves the Prince, wife. I’m bidden—that is all.”

Lady Royd glanced keenly at her husband. She had been spoilt and wilful, counting wealth and ease as her goal in life; but she was sobered now. Sir Jasper had said so little; but in his voice, in the look of his strong, well-favoured face, there was something that overrode the shams of this world. He was a simple-minded gentleman, prepared for simple duty; and, because she knew that he was unbreakable, her old wilfulness returned.

“For my sake, stay!” she pleaded. “You are—my dear, you do not know how much you are to me.”

He held her at arm’s length, looking into her face. Her eyes were pixie-like—radiant, full of sudden lights and fugitive, light-falling tears. So had he seen her, six-and-twenty years before, when he brought her as a bride to Windyhough. For the moment he was unnerved. She was so young in her blandishment, so swift and eager a temptation. It seemed that, by some miracle, they two were lad and lass again, needing each other only, and seeing the world as a vague and sunlit background to their happiness.

“Ah, you’ll not go!” she said softly. “I knew you would not.”

“Not go?” He stood away from her, crossed to the window that gave him a sight of the last sunset-red above the heath. “You are childish, Agnes,” he said sharply.

“So are all women, when—when they care. I need you here—need you—and you will not understand.”

Sir Jasper laughed, with a gentleness, a command of himself, that did not date from yesterday. “And a man, when he cares—he cares for his honour first—because it is his wife’s. Agnes, you did not hear me, surely. I said that the Prince commands me.”

“And I command you. Choose between us.”

Her tone was harsh. She had not known how frankly and without stint she loved this man. She was looking ahead, seeing the forlornness of the waiting-time while he was absent on a desperate venture.

He came and patted her cheek, as if she were a baby to be soothed. “I choose both,” he said. “Honour and you—dear heart, I cannot disentangle them.”

She felt dwarfed by the breadth and simplicity of his appeal. The world thought her devout, a leal daughter of the Church; but she had not caught his gift of seeing each day whole, complete, without fear or favour from the morrow. And, because she was a spoilt child, she could not check her words.

“You’ve not seen the Prince. He’s a name only, while I—I am your wife.”

Sir Jasper was tired with the long day’s hunting, the news that had met him by the way; but his voice was quiet and resolute. “He is more than a name, child. He’s my Prince—and one day, if I live to see it, his father will be crowned in London. And you’ll be there, and I shall tell them that it was you, Agnes, who helped me fasten on my sword-belt.”

And still she would not heed. Her temperament was of the kind that afterwards was to render the whole Rising barren. She had no patience and little trust.

“Why should I give you God-speed to Tower Hill?” she snapped. “You think the name of Stuart is one to conjure with. You think all Lancashire will rise, when this wizard Prince brings the Stuart Rose to them. Trust me—I know how Lancashire will wait, and wait; they are cautious first and loyal afterwards.”

“Lancashire will rise,” broke in Sir Jasper; “but, either way, I go—and all my tenantry.”

“And your heir? He will go, too, will he not?”

She did not know how deep her blow struck. He had resisted her, her passionate need of him. He would leave her for a Rising that had no hope of success, because the name of Stuart was magical to him. In her pain and loneliness she struck blindly.

He went to the door, threw it open, and stood looking at the grey, tranquil hills. There was the sharp answer ready on his tongue. He checked it. This was no time to yield to anger; for the Prince’s men, if they were to win home to London, had need of courage and restraint.

“My son”—he turned at last, and his voice was low and tired—“our son, Agnes—he is not trained for warfare. I tell you, he’ll eat his heart out, waiting here and knowing he cannot strike a blow. His heart is big enough, if only the body of him would give it room.”

She was desperate. All the years of selfishness, with Sir Jasper following every whim for love of her, were prompting her to keep him at her apron-strings. Her own persuasion had failed; she would try another way, though it hurt her pride.

“He’ll eat his heart out, as you say. Then stay for the boy’s sake,” she put in hurriedly. “He will feel the shame of being left behind—he will miss you at every turn—it is cruel to leave him fatherless.”

She had tempted him in earnest now. He stood moodily at the door, watching the hills grow dark beneath a sky of velvet grey. He knew the peril of this Rising—knew that the odds were heavy against his safe return—and the pity of that one word “fatherless” came home to him. This weakling of his race had not touched compassion in the mother, as the way of weaklings is; but he had moved his father to extreme and delicate regard for him, had threaded the man’s hardihood and courage with some divine and silver streak.

He turned at last. There was something harsh, repellent in his anger, for already he was fighting against dreary odds.

“Get to your bed, wife! Fatherless? He’d be worse than that if I sat by the fireside after the Prince had bidden me take the open. He’d live to hear men say I was a coward—he’d live to wish the hills would tumble down and hide him, for shame of his own father. God forgive you, Agnes, but you’re possessed of a devil to-night—just to-night, when the wives of other men are fastening sword-belts on.”

It was the stormy prelude to a fast and hurrying week. Messengers rode in, by night and day, with news from Scotland. They rode with hazard; but so did the gentlemen of Lancashire, whenever they went to fair or market, and listened to the rider’s message, and glanced about to see if George’s spies were lingering close to them.

Men took hazards, these days, as unconcernedly as they swallowed breakfast before getting into saddle. Peril was part of the day’s routine, and custom endeared it to them, till love of wife and home grew like a garden-herb, that smells the sweetest when you crush it down.

Lady Royd watched her husband’s face, and saw him grow more full of cheeriness as the week went on. Oliphant’s news had been true enough, it seemed, for Scotland had proved more than loyal, and had risen at the Stuart’s call as a lass comes to her lover. The Highlanders had sunk their quarrels with the Lowlanders, and the ragged beginning of an army was already nearing Carlisle. Then there came a morning when Sir Jasper rode into the nearest town on market-day, and moved innocent and farmer-like among the thick-thewed men who sold their pigs and cattle, and halted now and then to snatch news of the Rising from some passer-by who did not seem, in garb or bearing, to be concerned with Royal business; and he returned to Windyhough with the air of one who has already come into his kingdom.

“They are at Carlisle, wife,” he said. “They’ve taken the Castle there——”

“It’s no news to Carlisle Castle, that,” she broke in—shrewishly, because she loved him and feared to let him go. “It stands there to be taken, if you’ve taught me my history—first by the Scots, and the next day by the English. Carlisle is a wanton, by your leave, that welcomes any man’s attack.”

He had come home to meet east wind and littleness—the spoilt woman’s littleness, that measures faith by present and immediate gains. He was chilled for the moment; but the loyalty that had kept him hale and merry through sixty years was anchored safe.

“The Prince comes south, God bless him!” he said gravely. “We shall go out at dawn one of these near days, Agnes. We shall not wait for his coming—we shall ride out to meet him, and give him welcome into loyal Lancashire.”

She was not shrewish now. Within the narrow walls she had built about her life she loved him, as a garden-flower loves the sun, not asking more than ease and shelter. And her sun was telling her that he must be absent for awhile, leaving her in the cold, grey twilight that women know when their men ride out to battle.

“You shall not go,” she said, between her tears. “Dear, the need I have of you—the need——”

He stooped suddenly and kissed her on the cheek. “I should love you less, my dear, if I put slippers on at home and feared to take the open.”

And still she would not answer him, or look him in the eyes with the strength that husbands covet when they are bent on sacrifice and need a staff to help them on the road.

“You’re not the lover that you were—say, more years ago than I remember,” she said with a last, soft appeal.

He laughed, and touched her hand as a wooer might. “I love you twice as well, little wife. You’ve taught me how to die, if need be.”

She came through the door of the garden that had sheltered her. For the first time in her life she met the open winds; and Sir Jasper’s trust in her was not misplaced.

“Is that the love you’ve hidden all these years?” she asked.

“Yes, my dear. It’s the love you had always at command, if you had known it. Men are shy of talking of such matters.”

She ran to get his sword, docile as a child, and laid it on the table. “I shall buckle it on for you, never fear,” she said, with the light in her eyes at last—the light he had sought and hungered for.

“Sweetheart, you—you care, then, after all?” He kissed her on the lips this time. “We shall go far together, you and I, in the Prince’s cause. Women sit at home, and pray—and their men fight the better for it. My dear, believe me, they fight the better for it.”

They faced each other, searching, as wind-driven folk do, for the larger air that cleanses human troubles. And suddenly she understood how secure was the bond that intimacy had tied about them. She had not guessed it till she came from her sheltered garden and faced the breezy hills of Lancashire at last.

And her husband, seeing her resolute, allowed himself a moment’s sickness, such as he had felt not long ago after saying good-bye to Oliphant high up the moor. He might not return. The odds were all against it. He was bidding a last farewell, perhaps, to the ordered life here, the lover’s zeal which his wife commanded from him still—to the son whom he had watched from babyhood, waiting always, with a father’s dogged hope, for signs of latent strength. In some queer way he thought most of his boy just now; the lad was lonely, and needed him.

Then he crushed the sickness down. The night’s road was dark and troublesome; but, whether he returned or no, there must needs be a golden end to it.

“What does it matter, wife?” he said, his voice quivering a little. “A little loneliness—in any case it would not be for long, sweetheart—and then—why, just that the Prince had called me, and we had answered, you and I——”

She swept round on him in a storm of misery and doubt. “Oh, Faith’s good enough in time of Peace. Women cherish it when days go easily, and chide their men for slackness. And the call comes—and then, God help us! we cling about your knees while you are resolute. It is the men who have true faith—the faith that matters and that helps them.”

He took her face into his two hands. She remembered that he had worn just this look, far off in the days of lavender and rosemary, when he had brought her home a bride to Windyhough and had kissed her loneliness away.

“What’s to fear? War or peace—what’s to fear? We’re not children, wife o’ mine.”

And “No!” she said, with brave submissiveness. And then again her face clouded with woe, and tenderness, and longing, as when hill-mists gather round the sun. “Ah, but yes!” she added petulantly. “We are like children—like children straying in the dark. You see the Prince taking London, with skirl of the pipes and swinging Highland kilts. I see you kneeling, husband, with your head upon the block.”

Sir Jasper laughed quietly, standing to his full, brave height. “And either way it does not matter, wife—so long as the Prince has need of me. You’ll find me kneeling, one way or the other.”

From the shadowed hall, with the candles flickering in the sconces, their son came out into the open—their son, who could not go to war because he was untrained. He had been listening to them.

“Father,” he said, “I must ride with you. Indeed, I cannot stay at home.”

Sir Jasper answered hastily, as men will when they stand in the thick of trouble. “What, you? You cannot, lad. Your place is here, as I told you—to guard your mother and Windyhough.”

The lad winced, and turned to seek the shadows again, after one long, searching glance at the other’s unrelenting face. And Lady Royd forgot the past. She followed him, brought him back again into the candlelight. One sharp word from the father had bidden her protect this son who was bone of her bone. Rupert looked at her in wonder. She had been his enemy till now; yet suddenly she was his friend.

He looked gravely at her—a man of five-and-twenty, who should have known better than to blurt out the deeper thoughts that in prudent folk lie hidden. “Mother,” he said, striving to keep the listless, care-naught air that was his refuge against the day’s intrusions—“mother——”

She had not heard the word before—not as it reached her now—because she had not asked for it. It was as if she had lived between four stuffy walls, fearing to go out into the gladness and the pain of motherhood.

“Yes, boy?” she asked, with lover-like impatience for the answer.

“You are kind to—to pity me. But it seems to make it harder,” he said with extreme simpleness. “I’m no son to be proud of, mother.” His voice was low, uncertain, as he looked from one to the other of these two who had brought him into a troubled world.

Then he glanced shyly at his father. “I could die, sir, for the Prince,” he added, with a touch of humour. “But they say I cannot live for him.”

The wife looked at the husband. And pain crossed between them like a fire. He was so big of heart, this lad, and yet he was left stranded here in the backwater of life.

Sir Jasper laid a hand on his shoulder. “You’re no fool, Rupert,” he said, fierce in his desire to protect the lad from his own shame. “I give you the post of honour, after all—to guard your mother. We cannot all ride afield, and I’m leaving some of our men with you.”

“Yes,” said Rupert; “you leave the lamesters, father—the men who are past service, whose joints are crazy.”

He was bitter. This Rising had fired his chivalry, his dreams of high adventure, his race-instinct for a Stuart and the Cause. He had dreamed of it during these last, eager nights, had freed himself from day-time weakness, and had ridden out, a leader, along the road that led through Lancashire to London. And the end of it was this—he was to be left at home, because straight-riding men were hindered by the company of an untrained comrade.

The father saw it all. He had not watched this son of his for naught through five-and-twenty years of hope that he would yet grow strong enough to prove himself the fitting heir. It was late, and Sir Jasper had to make preparation for a ride to market at dawn; but he found time to spare for Rupert’s needs.

“Come with me, Rupert,” he said, putting an arm through his son’s. “It was always in my mind that Windyhough might be besieged, and I leave you here—in command, you understand.”

“In command?” Rupert was alert, incredulous. “That was the way my dreams went, father.”

“Dreams come true, just time and time. You should count it a privilege, my lad, to stay at home. It is easier to ride out.”

Lady Royd, as she watched them go arm-in-arm together through the hall, was in agreement with her husband. It was easier to ride out than to sit at home, as scholars and women did, waiting emptily for news that, when it came, was seldom pleasant. Already, though her husband had not got to saddle, she was counting the hazards that were sure to meet him on the road to London. And yet some sense of comfort whispered at her ear. Her son was left behind to guard her. She lingered on the thought, and with twenty womanish devices she hedged it round, until at last she half believed it. This boy of hers was to guard her. In her heart she knew that the storm of battle would break far away from Windyhough, that in the event of peril Rupert must prove a slender reed; but she was yielding to impulse just now, and felt the need to see her son a hero.

Sir Jasper, meanwhile, was going from room to room of the old house, from one half-forgotten stairway to another. He showed Rupert how each window—old loopholes, most of them, filled in with glass to fit modern needs—commanded some useful outlook on an enemy attacking Windyhough. He showed him the cellars, where the disused muskets and the cannon lay, and the piles of leaden balls, and the kegs of gunpowder.

“You’re in command, remember,” he said now and then, as they made their tour of the defences. “You must carry every detail with you. You must be ready.”

To Sir Jasper all this was a fairy-tale he told—a clumsy tale enough, but one designed to soften the blow to his heir; to Rupert it was a trumpet-note that roused his sleeping manhood.

“I have it all by heart, father,” he said eagerly. Then he glanced sharply at Sir Jasper. “No one ever—ever trusted me till now,” he said. “It was trust I needed, maybe.”

Sir Jasper was ashamed. Looking at Rupert, with his lean body, the face that was lit with strength and purpose, he repented of the nursery-tale he had told him—the tale of leadership, of an attack upon the house, of the part which one poor scholar was asked to play in it.

“Get up to bed, dear lad,” he said huskily. “I’ve told you all that need be. Sleep well, until you’re wanted.”

But Rupert could not sleep. He was possessed by the beauty of this hope that had wound itself, a silver thread, through the drab pattern of his life. He let his father go down into the hall, then followed, not wishing to play eavesdropper again, but needing human comradeship.

Lady Royd, weaving dreams of her own downstairs, glanced up as she heard her husband’s step.

“Oh, you were kind to the boy,” she said, comelier since she found her motherhood.

He put her aside. “I was not kind, wife. I lied to him.”

“In a good cause, my dear.”

“No!” His fierceness shocked her; for until now she had been unused to vehemence. “Lies never served a good cause yet. I told him—God forgive me, Agnes!—that he would be needed here. He has pluck, and this notion of leadership—it went to his head like wine, and I felt as if I’d offered drink to a lad whose head was too weak for honest liquor.”

She moved restlessly about the hall. “Yet in the summer you had kegs of gunpowder brought in,” she said by and by—“under the loaded hay-wagons, you remember, lest George’s spies were looking on?”

There would be little room for tenderness in the days that were coming, and, perhaps for that reason, Sir Jasper drew his wife toward him now. He was thinking of the haytime, of the last load brought in by moonlight, of the English strength and fragrance of this country life to which he was saying good-bye.

“I wooed you in haytime, Agnes, and married you when the men were bending to their scythes the next year, and we brought the gunpowder in at the like season. We’ll take it for an omen.”

“And yet,” she murmured, with remembrance of her son—the son who was the firstfruit of their wooing—“you said that you had lied to Rupert when you bade him guard the house. Why bring in gunpowder, except to load your muskets with?”

He sighed impatiently. This parting from the wife and son grew drearier the closer it approached. “We had other plans in the summer. It was to be a running fight, we thought, from Carlisle down through Lancashire. Every manor was to be held as a halting-place when the Prince’s army needed rest.”

He crossed to the big western window of the hall, and stood looking up at the moonlit, wintry hills. Then he turned again, not guessing that his son was standing in the shadows close at his right hand.

“Other counsels have prevailed,” he said, with the snappishness of a man who sees big deeds awaiting him and doubts his human strength. “I think the Prince did not know, Agnes, how slow we are to move in Lancashire—how quick to strike, once we’re sure of the road ahead. Each manor that held out for the King—it would have brought a hundred doubters to the Cause; the army would have felt its way southward, growing like a snowball as it went. They say the Prince overruled his counsellors. God grant that he was right!”

“So there’s to be no siege of Windyhough?” asked Lady Royd slowly.

“None that I can see. It is to be a flying charge on London. The fighting will be there, or in the Midlands.”

“That is good hearing, so far as anything these days can be called good hearing. Suppose your lie had prospered, husband? Suppose Rupert had had to face a siege in earnest here? Oh, I’ve been blind, but now I—I understand the shame you would have put on him, when he was asked to hold the house and could not.”

“He could!” snapped Sir Jasper. “I’ve faith in the lad, I tell you. A Royd stands facing trouble always when the pinch comes.”

She looked at him wistfully, with a sense that he was years older than herself in steadiness, years younger in his virile grip on faith. It was an hour when danger and the coming separation made frank confession easy. “I share your Faith,” she said quietly, “but I’m not devout as you are. Oh, miracles—they happened once, but not to-day. This boy of ours—can you see him holding Windyhough against trained soldiery? Can you hear him sharp with the word of command?”

“Yes,” said the other, with the simplicity of trust. “If the need comes, he will be a Royd.”

“Dear, you cannot believe it! I, who long to, cannot. No leader ever found his way—suddenly—without preparation——”

“No miracle was ever wrought in that way,” he broke in, with the quiet impatience of one who knows the road behind, but not the road ahead. “There are no sudden happenings in this life—and I’ve trained the lad’s soul to leadership. I would God that I’d not lied to him to-night—I would that the siege could come in earnest.”

Rupert crept silently away, down the passage, and through the hall, and out into the night. Through all his troubles he had had one strength to lean upon—his father’s trust and comradeship. And now that was gone. He had heard Sir Jasper talk of the siege as of a dream-toy thrown to him to play with. In attack along the London road, or in defence at home, he was untrained, and laughable, and useless.

There was war in his blood as he paced up and down the courtyard. His one ally had deserted him, had shown him a tender pity that was worse to bear than ridicule. He stood alone, terribly alone, in a world that had no need of him.

The wind came chill and fretful from the moor, blowing a light drift of sleet before it; and out of the lonely land a sudden hope and strength reached out to him. It was in the breed of him, deep under his shyness and scholarly aloofness, this instinct to stand at his stiffest when all seemed lost. He would stay at home. He would forget that he had overheard his father’s confession of a lie, would get through each day as it came, looking always for an attack that, by some unexpected road, might reach the gates of Windyhough.

But there was another task he had—to forgive Sir Jasper for the make-believe—and this proved harder. Forgiveness is no easy matter to achieve; it cannot be feigned, or hurried, or find root in shallow soil; it comes by help of blood and tears, wayfaring together through the dark night of a man’s soul.

Rupert went indoors at last, and met Sir Jasper at the stairfoot.

“Why, lad, I thought you were in bed long since.”

“I could not rest indoors, sir. I—I needed room.”

“We’re all of the same breed,” laughed his father. “House-walls never yet helped a man to peace. Good-night, my lad—and remember you’re on guard here.”