“No!” said Oliphant, sharp as a bugle-call. “We live in the same times, my lady. The way of men’s hearts does not change. I’m tired, and not so young as I was; but your son has marshalled all my courage up.”
So then Rupert stood aside. His chivalry and hero-worship, like his love for Nance, were too delicate as yet, for lack of drill; and he was ashamed that Oliphant of Muirhouse should praise his littleness.
“Mr. Oliphant,” said Lady Royd, with her roguish, faded laugh, “you’re like the rest of my daft men-folk; you are all for remembrance of the days behind——”
“Yes. We take a few steps back, the better to leap forward. That is the strict method of leaping any five-barred gate. There’s been so much surmise about that riddle of ‘Remember,’ and Rupert here has made it plain to me for the first time.”
“‘Out of the mouths of babes,’” said Rupert’s mother, with a flippancy that was born of this long idleness at Windyhough, the long anxiety for the safety of her husband, whom, in some muddled way, she loved.
“He is no babe, by your leave. He is nearly a proven man, my lady, and I think God finds no better praise than that for any of us.”
It was all quick in the saying, this talk of folk who heard disaster sing down the bitter wind; but Nance, looking on and seeking some forward grip of life since Will Underwood had fallen by the way, was aware that Rupert had sounded the rally-call when all seemed lost. He was no longer scholarly, unpractical; from the background, with the murky gloaming round him, he was a figure dominant among them. And from that background he stepped forward, lightly, with self-assurance, because there was no pageantry about this game of sorrow, but only the quick need to take hold of the every-day routine of hardship.
“It might happen that the retreat came up by way of Windyhough?” he asked, straightening the scholarly stoop of his shoulders.
Oliphant looked gravely at him—measured him, with an eye trained to quick judgment of a man—and dared not lie to this son of Sir Jasper’s who stayed here among the women, seeking better work. “There’s no chance of it,” he said gruffly. “They are taking the Langton road. I—I am sorry, Rupert. I wish the thick of it were coming this way. You’re in need of exercise, my lad.”
And Rupert laughed suddenly. “Mr. Oliphant,” he said, with his quiet, disarming humour, “I’ve had drill enough—a useless sort of drill—and I’m praying these days for assault, and musketry, and siege—anything to save us stay-at-homes from sleep.”