Oliphant looked down at the years of his own misshapen boyhood, saw himself a weakling, unproven, hidden by the mists of his own high desires. And he gripped Rupert’s hand, said farewell to Lady Royd, and got to saddle.
“Is that all?” asked Rupert, with sharp, disconsolate dismay. “Take me with you, sir. There’s a broken-winded horse or two still left in stable.”
“I obey orders,” snapped Oliphant, with brusque command. “You will do no less, and Sir Jasper was exact in his wish that you should guard the women here.”
Rupert was sick at heart, restless to be in the open, lest faith and courage were killed outright by these stifled days at Windyhough.
“They’re safe, you tell me,” he said, yielding to the queer, gusty temper that few suspected in him. “Then I’m free to breathe again. With you, or without you, I shall join the Rising at long last.”
Oliphant’s heart went out to the mettle of this ill-balanced, stormy lad. For there are many who are keen to follow victory at the gallop; but Oliphant was a man who knew his world—knew it through all its tricks of speech and manner—and he had met few who were eager to ride out along the unsung, unhonoured road where retreat goes slowly through the mire.
“You know what this retreat means?” he asked, in the same sharp tones, as if on parade. “Sullen men, and sullen roads, and northeast winds that cut the heart out of a man’s body? Hard-bitten soldiers find it devilish hard to follow, Rupert—and there are the pipes, too, to reckon with. These daft Highland bodies will ever go playing ‘The Flowers of the Forest,’ till the pity of it goes up and down the wind, like Rachel seeking for strayed children. It is all made up of emptiness and sorrow, I tell you, this road from Derby.”
“I should go from worse emptiness and sorrow, here at Windyhough,” said Rupert stubbornly. “I fear house-walls, Mr. Oliphant, and the foulest road would seem easy-going——”
Oliphant broke sharply in. This was his own feeling, but it was not the time to give sympathy to Sir Jasper’s heir. “You come of a soldier-stock, lad. You want to learn soldiery one day? Well, you’ll learn it—I’ve trust absolute in that—and you begin to-night.”
“Then I’ll go saddle,” said Rupert, eager to try a second fall from horse again.