CHAPTER IX
THE STAY-AT-HOMES
Winter is not always rough on the high moors of Lancashire. There are days when the wind creeps into hiding, and the sun comes up into a sky of blue and saffron, and the thrush begins to find his mating-note before its time. The gnats steal out from crannies in the walls, making pretence of a morris-dance along the slant rays of the sun; and everywhere there is a pleasant warmth and bustle, as if faith in this far-off summer, after all, had easily survived the east wind’s spite.
It was on such a day—the breeze soft from the west, and Pendle Hill all crimson in the sunset—that Rupert limped out from Windyhough on the crutch that Simon Foster had made for him. He had gone his round of the house—that empty round performed for duty’s sake twice every day—and he was hungry for the smell of the open country. He hobbled up the pastures, as far as the rough lands where the moor and the intaken fields were fighting their old, unyielding battle—a feud as old as the day when the first heath-man drove his spade into the heather and began to win a scanty living from the wilderness for wife and bairns.
Rupert, the dreamer, who had stood apart from life, had always found his sanctuary here, where the broken lands lay troubled, like himself, between the desert and the harvest. Instinct had led him here to-night, though weakness of body, never far from him, was trying once again to sap his courage.
He looked across the moor, strong and comely in its winter nakedness. He watched a cock-grouse whirr across the crimson sun-rays. And then, with a sense of thanksgiving and security, he saw the round, stalwart bulk of Pendle Hill. There is something about Pendle—a legacy from the far-off fathers, may be—that goes deep to the heart of Lancashire men. Its shape is not to be mistaken. It stands like a rounded watch-tower, guarding the moors where freedom and rough weather go hand in hand. It has seen many fights of men—feuds, and single-handed combats, and stealthy ambushes—and has come, stalwart and upstanding, through weather that would have daunted meaner souls. It has the strong man’s gift of helping weaker men along the gallant, uphill climb that stretches from the cradle to the stars.
Pendle Hill, big above the wilderness of bog and heath, never chatters of destiny, never tells a man that life is hard, that he had best be done with it, that all his striving has been so much useless labour. Pendle, the fairest citadel of Lancashire, has won through too many generations of cold and hardship to be daunted by the troubles of one man’s lifetime. Rugged, round to the wide, wind-swept skies, old Pendle keeps the faith, and will not yield.
Rupert had yet to win his spurs, he thought. And yet, as Pendle Hill viewed the matter, he had won them long ago. Day by day, year by year, through his unhappy and disastrous boyhood, the lad had come to the windy lands, for strength and solace. He had been loyal to the hills, steadfast when stronger men had taken their ease. And to-night, because it saw a soldier in the making, gruff Pendle sent out a welcome to Sir Jasper’s heir.
“God knows me for a fool,” said Rupert, afraid of the new message that had reached him.
And there was stillness, while the sun’s red died behind the moor. No voice answered Rupert’s challenge to the over-world; but, for all that, he limped down to Windyhough with a sense that all the birds were singing. Through the misery and darkness of these days he was reaching out, with stubborn gallantry, to grasp the forward hope. The forward hope! He had lived on little else since he was breeked.