“Then I shall go on playing at ships here—till you come to ask a passage.”
And her face was resolute and proud, as if this son of hers had returned a conqueror.
The next day, after nightfall, Rupert went out again, through Edinburgh’s moonlit streets, toward the northern hills and the perils that he coveted. And just before he went Nance Demaine came down into the hall, and stood beside him in the gusty candlelight. Old days and new were tangled in her mind; she was aware only of a great heart-sickness and trouble, so that she did not halt to ask herself if it were maidenly or prudent to come down for another long good-bye. In some muddled way she remembered Will Underwood, his debonair and easy claiming of her kerchief, remembered their meeting on the heath, and afterwards Will lying in the courtyard at Windyhough, his body tortured by a gaping wound. She had given him her kerchief then for pity, and now Rupert was going out without claiming the token she would have given him for love. Rupert seemed oddly forgetful of little things these days, she told herself.
“Would you not wear my favour—for luck?” she asked.
And then, giving no time for answer, she began feverishly to knot her kerchief into a white cockade; and then again she thought better of it, and untied the blue scarf that was her girdle, and snipped a piece from it with the scissors hanging at her waist.
“It is the dear Madonna’s colour; and I think you ride for faith,” she said, with a child’s simplicity. “Rupert, I do not know how or why, but I let you go very willingly. I did not understand until to-night how—how big a man’s love for a woman is.”
They were not easy days that followed. Rupert was among the Midlothian hills—farther afield sometimes—snatching sleep and food when he could, shepherding the broken gentry, leaving nothing undone that a man’s strength and single purpose could accomplish. And in the house near Holyrood Lady Royd and Nance were helping the fugitives he sped forward to get on shipboard. And ever, as they plied this trade of separation under peril, a knowledge and a trust went up and down between Edinburgh and the northern hills—a trust that did not go on horseback or on foot, because its wings were stretched for flight above ground.
And near the year’s end, with an easterly haar that made the town desolate, the last fugitive came to the house that lay near Holyrood. He should have been spent with well-doing, foot-sore and saddle-sore with journeyings among the hills; but, instead he carried himself as if he had found abundant health.
“I’ve done my work, mother,” he said, stooping to Lady Royd’s hand.
“It’s as well, my dear. Nance and I were nearly tired of playing at ships.”