Nance’s one desire was to hurt this man, to get through his armour of good living and complacency; it was her way—the woman’s way—of digging a grave in which to hide the first love that was dead, unlovely, pitiful.
“Well, we hunted yesterday,” said the other doggedly. “There were plenty of Lancashire gentlemen in my own case—our heads sounder than our hearts—and we had fine sport. And, coming home—you’ll forgive me—we laughed at Sir Jasper and his handful of enthusiasts. We like them—we shall miss them when they’re gibbeted in London—but we laughed at their old-fashioned view of honour. Honour trims pretty rosettes for a man to wear, but doesn’t save his head. Honour’s a woman’s pastime, Miss Demaine.”
Nance looked at him with frank astonishment. This man knew that her own father was of Sir Jasper’s company, that she was troubled, like all stay-at-homes, lest ill news should come. And he chose this time to defend himself by confessing that he and others had laughed at better men. And he talked of Tower Hill.
“When the gentlemen of Lancashire return—when the Prince has come to his own, and England is free again and happy—what then, Mr. Underwood? It will go ill, I think, with masqueraders.”
They faced each other, the man insolent, ungroomed—true to his breed, as folk are apt to be in time of stress—Nance in that mood of hot fury and contempt which is cool and debonair.
“What then?” he said, stroking his horse’s neck. “The Vicar of Bray was a very good man of the world, after all, and he prospered. We shall toast the Stuart openly; it will save all that clumsy ritual of passing the wine across the water.”
Nance was healthy, eager, human. She shrank, with an odd, childish loathing, from this man who counted the world—the big, gallant world of faith, and strife, and loyalty—as a dining-table, no more, no less, where wise men took their ease. She gathered the reins into her hand, turned in saddle.
“Keep the kerchief, sir,” she said gently. “As I told you, you will need it when”—her voice broke suddenly, against her will—“when our men come home from the crowning.”
And then she left him. He watched her go down the slope on her fiddle-headed nag. All his buoyancy was gone. He had been spoiled by flattery, of word and glance; he had been accustomed to be taken at his surface value, giving his friends little opportunity to test whether he rang true or not. And now he was like a pampered child that meets its first rebuff. His pluck had left him. He had no heart to follow Nance, though by and by he would regret the lost opportunity to claim rough satisfaction for her handling of him. She had spoken, with such security and pride, of the loyalty that was an instinct with her. Her men who had ridden out were of the like mind; and Underwood, in a flash of enlightenment and dismay, saw how the coming days would go with him if this haphazard venture of the Prince’s carried him to London and the throne. His comfortable house of Underwood, his easy life, the dinners and the hunting and the balls—all would have to be given up. He had no illusions now as to his power to continue here among them, explaining his share in the enterprise, winning his way back to favour by excellence in field-sports and in ladies’ parlours. If the Prince came to his own, there would be an end of Wild Will, so far as loyal Lancashire was concerned; for at every turn he would have to meet the scorn that Nance had given him so unsparingly to-day.
Nance looked back once, when she was half down the slope, and saw him sitting rigid in the saddle, horse and man showing in clear, lonely outline against the rainy sky. He would be himself again to-morrow, for shallowness can never suffer long; but she would have pitied him, may be, could she have guessed his bitter loneliness just now. Shorn of his self-love, Nance lost beyond hope of regaining—instinct told him so much—alive to the cowardice which no longer wore the more pleasant air of prudence, Underwood looked out on lands as forlorn as himself; and, far down the slope, he saw Nance’s little figure, and knew that, in some odd way that was better than himself, he loved this trim lass of Demaine’s.