“We’re few, and have no skill,” he said, with an irony that was stubborn and weary both; “but I was bred, Nance, to put women in the background at these times.”
She looked at him, as he stood in the cloudy moonlight filtering through the window. She knew this tone of his so well—knew that her hold on him was not weakened, after all. “Oh, you were bred to that superstition?” she said lightly. “As if women were ever in the background, Rupert! Why, our business in life is to dance in front of you—always a little in front of you, lest you capture us. Men, so Lady Royd says, are merry until—until—they have us safe in hand.”
She dropped him a curtsey; and, before he found an answer, she was gone. And the master turned to the casement, hoping for the sound of a footfall without, the chance of another quick, haphazard shot. The wind had dropped to a little, whining breeze; but there was no other sound about this house that stood for the Stuart against odds. The snow was thickening. Rupert watched the flakes settle on the window-sill, ever a little faster, till a three-inch ridge was raised. And the old trouble returned. This had been his life here—the silence, the dumb abnegations, slow and cold in falling, that had built a wall between himself and happiness. And suddenly he brushed his hand sharply across the sill, scattering the snow. It was his protest against the buried yesterdays. Then he took up the three muskets he had fired, and one by one reloaded them. And after that he waited.
An hour later Simon Foster, stiff already from standing at the south window, made pretence that he must go the round of the house, lest younger men were not steady at their posts. As he hobbled down the corridor that led to the north side, he saw Nance Demaine, sitting ghostlike at the window. And he crossed himself, because the habits of fore-elders are apt to cling to a man, however dim may be the faith of his later years.
Nance turned. “Ah! you, Simon?”
“Why, it’s ye, Miss Nance? God forgive me, I thought you a boggart, come to warn us the old house was tumbling round our ears.”
“Not yet, Simon,” she said quietly. “I heard the master say one side was unguarded—and I knew where the muskets were stored——”
“But, Miss Nance, it’s no playing at shooting, this. It may varry weel be a longer siege than you reckon for, and we’re few; and it means sitting and waiting—waiting and sitting—till ye’re sick for a wink o’ sleep. Nay, nay! You dunnot know what strength it needs.”
“I nursed a sick child once—not long ago. For three days and nights, Simon, I had no sleep.”
The other was silent. All the countryside knew that story now—knew how Squire Roger’s daughter had gone on some casual errand of mercy to a cottage on the Demaine lands, had found a feckless mother nursing a child far gone in fever, had stayed on and fought for its life with skill and hard determination. Yet Nance spoke of it now without thought of any courage she had shown; she was eager only to prove that she had a right to take her place among the men in guarding Windyhough.