“Your lordship seems to forget the circumstances. To help your lordship to pass this time of tedium (since no horses that ever were foaled could take your coach on through these snows); having the responsibility of entertaining your lordship … since you can find little pleasure but in the cards … and having, in these cursed twenty-four hours, lost every stiver of money, every rood of the poor land I possess … zounds! my lord, that I should have risked a few more throws with nought but my ruin to back them … damnation, my lord Rockhurst, since but a turn of the dice might have set us even again!—these are hard words, it seemeth to me! Aye, and hard thoughts.”
Thus set forth, his own case seemed to the youth so strong that he lifted his head again and displayed his countenance as wrathful and full of reproach now as, a minute ago, it had been shamed.
Lord Rockhurst crossed one lean leg over the other, settled his elbows at the most comfortable angle the carven arms of the chair would afford, and let his brilliant hazel eye wander to the red embers and become dreamy once more.
For a long while silence reigned again in the oak parlour of Farrant Chace.
A resinous knot in the pine log exploded with miniature fierceness—a white flame jetted out, hissing, and dropped. The fire settled itself and the ashes slipped away, sighing. In the tense silence these small sounds made emphasis; while without, ever and anon, the blast came rolling up the slope from the far distance, dashed through the frantic swaying firs with screams of triumph, to hurl itself against the sturdy walls, there to break and part on either side and dash onward once more.
… So comes the charge of horse against the solid mass of foot with ever-gathering speed, rider and beast together, in one frenzied impetus, to break themselves against the serried pikes.…
“Your father fell beside me at Naseby,” said Rockhurst presently, as if speaking to himself.
The incisive note had vanished from his voice. Farrant rose from the table and came towards him, with something of the schoolboy’s mien, who half resents his master’s anger and half hopes to see him mollified. Rockhurst went on musingly:—
“He and I were neck and neck through Edgehill, Newbury, Marston Moor.… Until that hour I was young, younger than you are. And in those days I had mighty thoughts. But in my mightiest I never saw myself reaching to his level. If I could but keep my nag’s head close to his, and go where he led, leap where he leaped—’twas enough for me.… When he fell, struck down by Ireton’s pikes, I thought the world grew dark.… Then I was young, Master Paul. And now, sitting in this chair to-night”—Rockhurst slowly straightened himself and turned his head toward Farrant—“I find there is still something left in me of the old self that I had deemed to be dead this many a year. Enough to be glad to-night, sir, that your father is dead.—Paul Farrant,” went on the elder slowly, “speak: had the luck turned as you hoped, upon what foundation would you have built your winnings?”
The other hesitated, stammered, made a fresh abortive effort to brazen it out.