The house lay very near to Holyrood; and as he went down the street Rupert halted for a while, forgetful of his errand. The tenderest moon that ever lit a troubled world looked down on this palace of departed glories. The grey pile was mellowed, transfigured by some light o’ dreams. It was as if the night knew all about the Stuarts who would haunt Holyrood so long as its walls stood; knew their haplessness, their charm, their steadfast hold on the fine, unthrifty faith they held; knew the answer that some of them, who had gone before, had found in the hereafter that does not weigh with the shopkeepers’ scales.
There is a soul in such walls as Holyrood’s, and Rupert stood as if he held communion with a friend whose sympathies ran step by step with his. Here Mary Stuart had stood alone, a queen in name, facing the barbarous, lewd nobles who were, by title of mere courtesy, her gentlemen. Here she had seen Rizzio hurried down the twisting stair, had supped with her fool-husband, Darnley. From here she had gone out, the queen of hearts and tragedy, to that long exile which was to end at Fotheringay.
Here, too, the Prince had kept high state, a year ago, and all Edinburgh had flocked to dance a Stuart measure. He came fresh from his first battle, crowned with victory and charm of person; and the clans were rising fast; and hope shone bright toward London and the crown.
Rupert looked at the grey pile and felt all this, as one listens to the silence of a friend who does not need to speak. And then a drift of cloud came across the moon, and Holyrood lay wan and grey. It was as if a sudden gust had quenched all the candles that had lit the ballroom here when the yellow-haired laddie came dancing south.
And still the fugitive tarried. He had been used so long to night roads and the constant peril that this dim light, and the wind piping at his ear, pleased him more than any blaze of candles and lilt of dance-music. Deep knowledge came to him, bred of the hazards that had made him hard and lean. He sorrowed no more for Derby and Culloden; his present thirst and hunger went by him, as things of slight account; for he remembered the long months of hiding, the intimacy he had been privileged to share with Prince Charles Edward. There had been no glamour of the dance, no pomp, about these journeyings through the Highlands; there had been no swift, eager challenge and applause from ladies’ eyes; and yet Rupert had tested, as few had done, the fine edge and temper of the Stuart charm.
Here, under the shadow of grey Holyrood, he loitered to recall their wayfaring together. There had been winter journeyings through incessant rain, or snow, or winds that raved down mountain passes; there had been summer travels through the heather, with the sun beating pitilessly on them, over the stark length of moors that had none but brackish water and no shade. They had slept o’ nights with danger for a pillow and the raw wind for coverlet. And through it all the Prince had shown a brave, unanswerable front to the sickness of defeat, the hiding when he longed for action. If food and drink were scarce, he sang old clan songs or recalled light jests and stories that had once roused the French Court to laughter. If danger pressed so closely from all four quarters of the hill that escape seemed hopeless, his cheeriness infected those about him with a courage finer than their own.
Looking back on these days, Rupert knew that no ball at Holyrood here, no triumph-march to London, could have proved the Stuart as those Highland journeyings had done. The Prince and he had learned the way of gain in loss, and with it the gaiety that amazes weaker men.
From Holyrood—the moon free of clouds and the grey walls finding faith again—a friendly message came to him. He caught the Stuart glamour up—the true, abiding glamour that does not yield to this world’s limitations. What he had read in the library at Windyhough was now a triumph-song that he had found voice to sing.
He came to the house where Lady Royd was lodging, and knocked at the door; and presently a trim Scots lassie opened to him, and saw him standing there in the moonlight of the street, his face haggard, his clothes, made up of borrowed odds and ends, suggesting disrepute. She tried to close the door in his face; but Rupert had anticipated this, and pushed his way inside.
“Is Miss Demaine in the house?” he asked.