“My father—he is older than you, and is counted—more level-headed, shall we say? Sir Jasper Royd, too, is a soldier whose record all men know. They have gone with the ragamuffins and the yellow-haired laddie.”
Underwood was startled by the quiet irony, the security, that were instinct in the girl’s voice, her bearing. She was not the wayward, pleasure-loving Nance he had known; she stood, in some odd way, for all the pride and all the resolution of her race. He had earned his title of “Wild Will” by taking fences which men more sensitively built refused to hazard, and by more doubtful exploits which were laughed at and avoided by the cleaner sort among his comrades. He was good to look at, gay and dominant; yet never, to his life’s end, would he lay hold of the subtle meaning which those of an old race attach to that one word “loyalty.” It was not his fault that his father had been of slight account, except for a gift of money-making; but he had not cared to learn the lessons which the second generation must, if it wished to lay hold of old tradition and make itself a home among the great-hearted, simple gentlemen of Lancashire.
He and Nance were alone here on the uplands. A ragged, crimson sunset lingered over the moor. A cock-grouse got up from the heather on their right, and whirred down the bitter wind, chuckling harshly as it went. It was a man’s land, this, full of hills that stepped, sleety and austere, to the red of the stormy sky. A man should have been easily the master here; and yet Underwood knew that he was dwarfed, belittled, by this slim lass of Demaine’s, whose eyes held truth and looked him through and through.
“Your excuse, Mr. Underwood?” asked Nance, in a tone as wintry as the hills.
He should have known, from the quiet and hungry longing in her face, from the shiver that took her unawares, though the wind’s cold had no part in it, how eagerly she waited for his answer. He had shared her dreams. He had captured a liking that was very near to love; and she was defending the last ditch of her faith in him. If he could make amends, even now—and surely he must, he who was so big and strong—if he could give her one sudden, inspired word that would unravel all the tangle—she was ready to believe in him.
Instead, Will laughed like a country hobbledehoy. “My excuse—why, prudence, Nance; and prudence, they say, is a quiet mare to ride or drive at all times. I’ll join your Rising when there’s a better chance of its success. There were few rode out from Lancashire, after all; I’ve met many a stay-at-home good fellow already since I returned from the business that took me south.”
He regretted the words as soon as they were spoken. Her tone, her contemptuous air of question, had stung him. Until now he had assumed the manners worn by these people into whose midst his father had intruded, had carried lip-service to the Stuart passably enough, had won his way by conformity to the letter of their deep traditions. And here and now, on the moor that would have none of lies, he had plucked the mask aside, so that Nance shrank back a little in the saddle, afraid of the meanness in his face.
There was a silence, broken only by the wind’s fret, by the ripple of a neighbouring stream whose floods were racing banktop high. With sharp insistence, one memory came to Nance. She recalled how, weeks ago, she had left Rupert and his brother to their fight, had ridden down to Demaine House with Will, had found her father eager as a boy because Oliphant of Muirhouse had brought news of the Rising. She recalled, too, how Underwood had seemed cold, how he had followed her out into the hall and answered her distrust of him. And she had listened to his pleading—had bidden him come before the month was out, if he were leal—if he were leal.
The moor, and the frost that made rose-pink and amber of the sunset sky, were very cold to Nance just now. If she had felt distrust of this big, loose-built ruffler, she had been willing enough to let first love cover up her doubts. She had cared for what he might have been, and had been concerned each day to hide the traces of what, in sober fact, he was. For a moment it seemed to her that pride, and strength, and all, had left her. It was hard and bitter to know that something warmer, gayer than she had known as yet, had gone from her, not to return.
Then courage came to her again, borrowed from the hard-riding days that had fathered many generations of her race. “Mr. Underwood,” she said, not looking at him, “you picked up my kerchief not long ago—do you remember?—and asked to keep it.”