Читать книгу The Lone Adventure - Sutcliffe Halliwell - Страница 6

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Two days later Sir Jasper and Maurice sat at breakfast. There was a meet of hounds that morning, and, because the hour was early, Lady Royd was not down to share the meal. It was cold enough after full sunrise, she was wont to say, with her lazy, laughing drawl, and not the most devoted wife could be expected to break her fast by candlelight.

Sir Jasper, for his part, ate with appetite this morning. The unrest of the past weeks had been like a wind from the north to him, sharpening his vigour, driving out the little weaknesses and doubts bred of long inaction. And, as he ate, old Simon Foster, his man-of-all-work, opened the door and put in the grizzled head which reminded his master always of a stiff broom that had lately swept the snow.

“Here’s Maister Oliphant,” said Simon gruffly. “Must I let him in?”

“Indeed you must,” laughed Oliphant, putting him aside and stepping into the room. “My business will not wait, Sir Jasper, though Simon here is all for saying that it crosses you to be disturbed at breakfast-time.”

The two men glanced quickly at each other. “You’re looking in need of a meal yourself, Oliphant. Sit down, man, and help us with this dish of devilled kidneys.”

Oliphant, long ago, had learned to take opportunity as it came; and meals, no less than his chances of passing on the messages entrusted to him, were apt to prove haphazard and to be seized at once. Old Simon, while they ate, hovered up and down the room, eager for the news, until his master dismissed him with a curt “You may leave us, Simon.”

Simon obeyed, but he closed the door with needless violence; and they could hear him clattering noisily down the passage, as if he washed his hands of the whole Rising business.

“You may leave us, Simon!” he growled. “That’s all Sir Jasper has to say, after I’m worn to skin and bone in serving him. And he must know by this time, surely, that he allus gets into scrapes unless I’m nigh-handy, like, to advise him what to do. Eh, well, maisters is maisters, and poor serving-men is serving-men, and so ’twill be till th’ end o’ the chapter, I reckon. But I wish I knew what Maister Oliphant rade hither-till to tell Sir Jasper.”

Oliphant looked across at his host, after Simon’s heavy footfalls told them he was out of earshot. “The hunt comes this way, Sir Jasper, with hounds in full cry. I see you’re dressed for the chase.”

“And have been since—since I was breeked, I think. When, Oliphant? It seems too good to be true. All Lancashire is asking when, and I’m tired of telling them to bide until they hear Tally-ho go sounding up the moors.”

“You start at dawn to-morrow. Ride into Langton, and wait till you see the hounds in full view.”

“And the scent—how does it lie, Oliphant?”

“Keen and true, sir. I saw one near the Throne three days ago, and he said that he had never known a blither hunting-time.”

They had talked in guarded terms till now—the terms of Jacobite freemasonry; but Sir Jasper’s heart grew too full on the sudden for tricks of speech. “God bless him!” he cried, rising to the toast. “There’ll be a second Restoration yet.”

Maurice, his face recovered from traces of the fight with his stubborn brother, had been abashed a little by Oliphant’s coming, for, like Rupert, he had the gift of hero-worship. But now he, too, got to his feet, and his face was full of boyish zeal. “We’ll hunt that fox of yours, Mr. Oliphant,” he laughed—“ay, as far as the sea. We’ll make him swim—over the water, where our toasts have gone.”

“He’s bred true to the old stock, Sir Jasper,” laughed Oliphant. “I wish every loyalist in Lancashire had sons like Maurice here to bring with him.”

Sir Jasper found no answer. An odd sadness crossed his face, showing lines that were graven deeper than Oliphant had guessed. “Come, we shall be late for the meet,” he said gruffly. “Oliphant, do you stay and rest yourself here, or will you ride with us? The meet is at Easterfield to-day.”

“As far as the cross-roads, then. My way lies into Langton.”

Oliphant’s tone was curt as his host’s, for he was puzzled by this sudden coolness following his praise of Maurice. As they crossed the courtyard to the stables he saw Sir Jasper glance up at the front of the house, and there, at an upper window, Rupert the heir was watching stronger men ride out to hunt the fox. He saw the misery in the lad’s face, the stubborn grief in the father’s, and a new page was turned for him in that muddled book of life which long night-riding had taught him to handle with tender and extreme care.

At the cross-ways they parted. All had been arranged months since; the proven men in Lancashire, as in other counties, were known to the well-wishers of the Prince. Each had his part allotted to him, and Sir Jasper’s was to rally all his hunting intimates. So far as preparation went, this campaign of the Stuart against heavy odds had been well served. The bigger work—the glad and instant wish of every King’s man to rally to the call, forgetting ease of body, forgetting wives and children—was in the making, and none knew yet what luck would go with it.

“At Langton to-morrow,” said Oliphant, over-shoulder, as he reined about.

“Yes, God willing—and, after Langton, such a fire lit as will warm London with its flames.”

When they got to Easterfield, Maurice and his father, the sun was shining on a street of melting snow, following a quick and rainy thaw, on well-groomed men and horses, on hounds eager to be off on the day’s business. And, as luck had it, they found a game fox that took them at a tearing gallop, five miles across the wet and heavy pastures, before they met a check.

The check lasted beyond the patience of the hunters, and Sir Jasper chose his moment well.

“Gentlemen,” he said, rising in his stirrups—“gentlemen, the meet is at my house of Windyhough to-morrow. Who rides with me?”

The field gathered round him. He was a man commanding men, and he compelled attention.

“What meet?” asked Squire Demaine, his ruddy face brick-red with sudden hope.

“The Loyal Meet. Who’s with me, gentlemen?”

Sir Jasper was strung to that pitch of high endeavour which sees each face in a crowd and knows what impulse sways it. They gathered round him to a man; but as he glanced from one to the other he knew that there were many waverers. For loyalty, free and unswerving, sets a light about a man’s face that admits no counterfeit.

Yet the din was loud enough to promise that all were of one mind here. Hounds and fox and huntsmen were forgotten. Men waved their hats and shouted frantically. Nance Demaine and the half-dozen ladies who were in the field to-day found little kerchiefs and waved them, too, and were shrill and sanguine in their cries of “The Prince, God bless him!—the Prince!—the Stuart home again!”

It was all like Bedlam, while the austere hills, lined here and there with snow that would not melt, looked down on this warmth of human enterprise. The horses reared and fidgeted, dismayed by the uproar. Hounds got out of hand and ran in and out between the plunging hoofs, while the huntsman, a better fox-hunter than King’s man, swore roundly and at large as he tried to bring them out of this outrageous riot.

“Where’s Will Underwood?” asked a youngster suddenly. It was young Hunter of Hunterscliff, whose lukewarmness had angered Nance not long ago. “It’s the first meet he’s missed this winter.”

A horseman at his elbow laughed, the laugh that men understood. “He had business in the south, so he told me when I met him taking the coach. Wild Will, from the look of his face, seemed tired of hunting.”

“No!” said Sir Jasper sharply. “I’ll have no man condemned without a hearing. He lives wide of here—perhaps this last news of the Rising has not reached him. Any man may be called away on sudden business.”

“You’re generous, sir. I’m hot for the King, and no other business in the world would tempt me out of Lancashire just now. Besides, he must have known.”

Nance had lost her high spirits; but she was glad that some one had spoken on Will Underwood’s behalf, for otherwise she must have yielded to the impulse to defend him.

“That does not follow, sir,” said Sir Jasper, punctilious in defence of a man he neither liked nor trusted. “At any rate, it is no time for accusation. Mr. Underwood, if I know him, will join us farther south.”

Young Hunter, a wayward, unlicked cub, would not keep silence. “Yes,” he said, in his thin, high-pitched voice, “he’ll join us as far south as London—after he’s sure that a Stuart’s on the throne again.”

An uneasy silence followed. Older men looked at older men, knowing that they shared this boy’s easy summing-up of Underwood’s motives. And Nance wondered that this man, whom she was near to loving, had no friends here—no friends of the loyal sort who came out into the open and pledged their faith in him.

There was a game hound of the pack—a grey old hound that, like the huntsman, was a keener fox-hunter than loyalist; and, through all this uproar and confusion, through the dismayed silence that followed, he had been nosing up and down the pastures, finding a weak scent here, a false trail there. And now, on the sudden, he lifted his grey head, and his note was like a bugle-call. The younger hounds scampered out from among the hoofs that had been playing dangerously near them and gave full tongue as they swung down the pastures.

Sir Jasper spurred forward. “Here’s an omen, friends,” he cried. “The hunt is up in earnest. We shall kill, I tell you! we shall kill!”

It was a run that afterwards, when the fires of war died down and all Lancashire was hunting once again in peace, was talked of beside cottage hearths, on market-days when squires and yeomen met for barter—was talked of wherever keen, lusty men foregathered for the day’s business and for gossip of the gallant yesterdays.

Sir Jasper led, with Squire Demaine close at his heels. It seemed, indeed, the day of older folk; for away in front of them, where the sterns of eager hounds waved like a frantic sea, it was Pincher—grey, hefty, wise in long experience—that kept the running.

Prince Charles Edward was forgotten, though he had need of these gentlemen on the morrow. After all, with slighter excuse, they might any one of them break their necks to-day in pursuit of the lithe red fox that showed like a running splash of colour far ahead. The day was enough for them, with its rollicking hazards, its sense of sheer pace and well-being.

Down Littlemead Ings the fox led them, and up the hill that bordered Strongstones Coppice. He sought cover in the wood, but Pincher, with a buoyant, eager yell, dislodged him; and for seven miles, fair or foul going, they followed that racing blotch of red. There were fewer horsemen now, but most of them kept pace, galloping hard behind Sir Jasper and the Squire, who were riding neck for neck. The fox, as it happened, was in his own country again, after a sojourn he regretted in alien pastures; and he headed straight for the barren lands of rock and scanty herbage that lay up the slopes of Rother Hill. The going was steep and slippery, the scent cold, because snow was lying on these upper lands; and the fox, who knew all this a little better than Pincher, plunged through a snowdrift that hid the opening of his favourite cave and knew himself secure. They could dig him out from a burrow, but this cave was long and winding, and all its quiet retreats were known to him.

Pincher, the grey, hefty hound, plunged his nose into the snow, then withdrew it and began to whimper. He was unused to this departure from the usual rules of fox-hunting; the snow was wet and chilly, and touched, maybe, some note of superstition common to hounds and hill-bred men. Superstition, at any rate, or some grave feeling, was patent in the faces of the riders. The huntsman, knowing the windings of the cave as well as Reynard, gathered his pack.

“They’d be lost for ever and a day, Sir Jasper,” he growled, “if once they got into that cave. I followed it once for a mile and a half myself, and then didn’t reach the end of it.”

Sir Jasper glanced at Squire Demaine, and found the same doubt in his face. They had chosen this gallop as an augury, and they had not killed. It is slight matters of this sort that are apt constantly to turn the balance of big adventures, and the two older men knew well enough how the waverers were feeling.

“Gentlemen,” said Sir Jasper sharply, “we’re not like children. There’s no omen in all this. I jested when I talked of omens.”

“By gad, yes!” sputtered the Squire, backing his friend with a bluster that scarcely hid his own disquiet. “There’s only one good omen for to-morrow, friends—a strong body, a sound sword arm, and a leal heart for the King. We’ll not go back to the nursery, by your leave, because a fox skulks into hiding.”

There was a waving of three-cornered hats again, a murmur of applause; but the note did not ring true and merry, as it had done at the start of this wild gallop. The horses were shivering in a bitter wind that had got up from behind the hollows of the uplands. Grey-blue clouds crept round about the sun and stifled him, and sleet began to fall. They were children of the weather to a man, and to-morrow’s ride for London and the Stuart took on the semblance of a Lenten fast.