“He’ll eat his heart out, as you say. Then stay for the boy’s sake,” she put in hurriedly. “He will feel the shame of being left behind—he will miss you at every turn—it is cruel to leave him fatherless.”
She had tempted him in earnest now. He stood moodily at the door, watching the hills grow dark beneath a sky of velvet grey. He knew the peril of this Rising—knew that the odds were heavy against his safe return—and the pity of that one word “fatherless” came home to him. This weakling of his race had not touched compassion in the mother, as the way of weaklings is; but he had moved his father to extreme and delicate regard for him, had threaded the man’s hardihood and courage with some divine and silver streak.
He turned at last. There was something harsh, repellent in his anger, for already he was fighting against dreary odds.
“Get to your bed, wife! Fatherless? He’d be worse than that if I sat by the fireside after the Prince had bidden me take the open. He’d live to hear men say I was a coward—he’d live to wish the hills would tumble down and hide him, for shame of his own father. God forgive you, Agnes, but you’re possessed of a devil to-night—just to-night, when the wives of other men are fastening sword-belts on.”
It was the stormy prelude to a fast and hurrying week. Messengers rode in, by night and day, with news from Scotland. They rode with hazard; but so did the gentlemen of Lancashire, whenever they went to fair or market, and listened to the rider’s message, and glanced about to see if George’s spies were lingering close to them.
Men took hazards, these days, as unconcernedly as they swallowed breakfast before getting into saddle. Peril was part of the day’s routine, and custom endeared it to them, till love of wife and home grew like a garden-herb, that smells the sweetest when you crush it down.
Lady Royd watched her husband’s face, and saw him grow more full of cheeriness as the week went on. Oliphant’s news had been true enough, it seemed, for Scotland had proved more than loyal, and had risen at the Stuart’s call as a lass comes to her lover. The Highlanders had sunk their quarrels with the Lowlanders, and the ragged beginning of an army was already nearing Carlisle. Then there came a morning when Sir Jasper rode into the nearest town on market-day, and moved innocent and farmer-like among the thick-thewed men who sold their pigs and cattle, and halted now and then to snatch news of the Rising from some passer-by who did not seem, in garb or bearing, to be concerned with Royal business; and he returned to Windyhough with the air of one who has already come into his kingdom.
“They are at Carlisle, wife,” he said. “They’ve taken the Castle there——”
“It’s no news to Carlisle Castle, that,” she broke in—shrewishly, because she loved him and feared to let him go. “It stands there to be taken, if you’ve taught me my history—first by the Scots, and the next day by the English. Carlisle is a wanton, by your leave, that welcomes any man’s attack.”
He had come home to meet east wind and littleness—the spoilt woman’s littleness, that measures faith by present and immediate gains. He was chilled for the moment; but the loyalty that had kept him hale and merry through sixty years was anchored safe.