“There’ll be a duel in earnest soon,” sputtered the red-faced squire who loved his ease. “You were never one of us, Will Underwood—and you think we’re birds of a feather because we stayed at home with you; but I tell you plainly, I’ll listen to no slur on a Stuart.”
“Oh, I spoke hastily.”
“You did—and you’ll recant!”
Underwood, tired of himself and all things, gathered something of his old, easy manner. He filled his glass afresh and lifted it, and passed it with finished bravado over the jug in front of him. “To the King across the water, gentlemen!” he said smoothly.
One of the company had gone to the window, and turned now from looking out on the snow that never ceased. “All this does not help us much,” he grumbled. “We can talk and talk, and drink pretty-boy toasts till we’re under the table; but what of to-morrow? There’ll be nothing doing out of doors.”
“Wait,” said Will Underwood. “When the snow’s tired of falling there’ll be frost; and the wild duck—say, to-morrow night—will be coming over Priest’s Tarn, up above Windyhough.”
“Gad! that is a happy notion, Will!” assented the old squire. “It’s years since I had a shot at duck in the moonlight—and rare sport it is. Come, we’ve drunk to the Stuart, and to every lady we could call to mind. Let’s fill afresh, and drink to the wild duck flying high.”
Will was glad when the night’s revelry ended and he found himself alone in the dining-hall. He had drunk level with his friends, and the wine had left him untouched. He had diced with them, sung hunting-songs, and no spark of gaiety had reached him. For, day by day since he lost Nance once for all, he had been learning how deep his love had gone. Looking back to-night, as he sat at the littered table, with its empty bottles and its wine-stains, he could not understand how he had come to be absent from the Loyal Meet. The meaner side of him was hidden away. He was a man carrying a love bigger than himself—a love that would last him till he died; and he had not known as much until these days of loss and misery came.
At Windyhough the night wore slowly on. The besiegers, since Goldstein crept into shelter, spent and disabled, were less disposed than ever to risk attack before the daylight gave them clearer knowledge of this house that seemed to have a musket behind every window. The besieged listened to the silence—the silence of expectancy, which grows so deep and burdensome that a man can almost hear it. From time to time Rupert went the round of the corridor to see that his garrison was wakeful, and about the middle of the night he found Ben Shackleton nodding at his post, and gripped him by the shoulder.
“What’s to do?” growled the farmer, shaking his big bulk like a dog whistled out of the water. “I was dreaming, master, and as nigh heaven as a man ever gets i’ this life. I’d have swopped farming and wife and all for one more blessed hour of it.”