“There, my dear, you fatigue me! I have done so little. It grew dull in Lancashire, waiting for news of your father. It was all so simple—Fido, my sweet, you will not bark at Rupert; he’s a friend—and then I had my own fortune, you see, apart from Windyhough, and one must spend money somehow, must one not? So I began playing at ships—just like a child gone back to the nursery—and Nance here was as big a baby as myself.”
If Rupert had changed, so had Lady Royd. There was no faded prettiness now about her face, but there were lines of beauty. Behind her light handling of these past weeks in Edinburgh there was a record of sleepless nights, of harassed days, of discomfort and peril undertaken willingly. She had spent money in providing means of passage for the exiles; but she had spent herself, too, in ceaseless stratagem and watchfulness.
“It was all so piquant,” she went on, in the old, indolent tone. “So many gallant men supped here, Rupert, before taking boat. And they brought each his tale of battle in the hills. And their disguises were so odd, almost as odd as the clothes you’re wearing now, my dear.”
“The Prince’s were little better when I last saw him,” laughed the other.
“Ah, now, you will sit down beside me—here—and Nance shall sit there, like Desdemona listening to Othello. And you will tell us of the Prince. You were very near his person during the Highland flight, they tell me.”
So Rupert, because he had that one night’s leisure at command, forgot his own perils in telling of the Stuart’s. He had no art of narrative, except the soldier’s plain telling of what chanced; but, step by step, he led them through the broken days, talking seldom of himself, but constantly of Prince Charles Edward, until the bare record of their wanderings became a lively and abiding tribute to the Stuart’s strength. And when he had done Lady Royd was crying softly, while Nance felt a strange loyalty play round her like a windy night about the moors of Lancashire.
“He was like that!” said Lady Royd at last. “He was like that, while, God forgive me! I was picturing him all the while in love-locks, dancing a minuet.”
“The sword-dance is better known, mother, where we have been,” said Rupert, with pleasant irony.
Late that night, when Nance had left them together for a while, Lady Royd came and laid a hand on her son’s arm. “You have done enough,” she said. “Oh, I know! There are still many broken men, waiting for a passage. They must take their chance, Rupert. Your father was not ashamed to cross to France, with my help.”
He put an arm about her, for he had learned tenderness in a hard school. “Mother, he was not ashamed, because his work was done here. Mine is not. What Oliphant knew of the byways—what the last months have taught me—I cannot take the knowledge with me, to rust in France. I am pledged to these gentry of the Prince’s.”