There was bitterness and heartache about this house of Windyhough. The wind would not be still, and men’s sorrows would not rest. And the stark moor above lay naked to the wintry moon, and shivered underneath her coverlet of sleet.
Nance, by and by, followed Rupert indoors, and went into the parlour, with its scent of last year’s rose-leaves, its pretty, useless ornaments, its air of stifled luxury, warring with the ruddy gloaming light that strode down from the moors and peeped through every window, as if to spy out the shams within doors.
She sat down to the spinet, and touched a mellow, tender chord or two; and then, because needs must, she found relief in song. Her singing voice was like herself, dainty, well-found, full of deep cadences where tenderness and laughter lurked. It was no voice to take the town by storm, but one to hearten men, when they came in from the open, against the next day’s warfare. And she sang Stuart songs, with a little lilt of sorrow in them, because of Oliphant’s news from Derby and because of Will Underwood’s sadder retreat from honour, and hoped somehow that Rupert would hear her and come to her, because she needed him. He was so fond of ballads—those, most of all, that had the Stuart constancy about them—and Nance was sure that she could entice him down, could sing some little of his evil mood away from him.
Instead, as she halted with her fingers on the keys, she heard Rupert tramping overhead, and Simon Foster’s heavy footfall, as they went their round of what, in irony and bitterness, they named the defences.
“This loophole covers the main door, Simon,” she heard Rupert say, with his tired laugh. “In case of a direct attack from the front, I station myself here with six muskets, aim sure and quickly, picking my man carefully each time, and disorder them by making them think we are in force.”
“That’s so, master,” growled Simon. “And while you’re busy that way, I make round to the left wing, and get a few shots in from there across the courtyard. Oh, dangment!” he broke off. “We have it all by heart, and there’s only one thing wanting—the attack itself. I’m nigh wearied o’ this bairn’s play, I own. It puts me i’ mind, it does, of Huntercomb Fair, last October as ever was.”
“What happened there?” asked Rupert, as if the other’s slow, unhurried humour were a welcome respite.
“Well, they were playing a terrible fine piece where soldiers kept coming in, and crossing th’ stage, till you counted ’em by scores. But, after I’d seen what was to be seen, I went out; and I happened to go round by the back o’ the booth, and I saw how it was done. There were just five soldiers, master—one was Thomas Scatterty’s lad, I noticed, who’s said to run away from a sheep if it bleats at him—and these durned five, why, they went in at one end o’ the booth, and marched across th’ stage, and out a t’other end. Then they ran round at th’ back, and in again; and so it went on, like, till th’ sweat fair dripped from them, what with hurrying in and out.”
Nance, listening idly, could hear that low, recurrent laugh of Rupert’s—the laugh that was tired, and hid many troubles.
“Yes, Simon, yes,” he said, with high disdain of himself and circumstance, “it is all very like Huntercomb Fair; but at Huntercomb they had the jostling crowd, the lights, the screech of the fiddles. Here at Windyhough we have—just silence—a silence so thick and damnable, Simon, that I’m praying for a gale, and fallen chimney-stacks, and the wind piping through the broken windows.”