The Lone Adventure

IN a gorge of the moors, not far away as the crow flies from Pendle Hill, stood a grim, rambling house known to the heath-men as Windyhough. It had been fortified once; but afterwards, in times of ease, successive owners had thought more of dice and hunting than of warfare, and within-doors the house was furnished with a comfort that belied its loopholed walls.

It stood in the county of Lancaster, famed for its loyalty and for the beauty of its women--two qualities that often run together--and there had been Royds at Windyhough since Norman William first parcelled out the County Palatine among the strong men of his following. The Royd pride had been deep enough, yet chivalrous and warm-hearted, as of men whose history is an open book, not fearing scrutiny but asking it.

The heir of it all--house, and name, and lusty pride--came swinging over the moor-crest that gave him a sight of Windyhough, lying far below in the haze of the November afternoon. It was not Rupert’s fault that he was the heir, and less strong of body than others of his race. It was not his fault that Lady Royd, his mother, had despised him from infancy, because he broke the tradition of his house that all its sons must needs be strong and good to look at.

The heir stood on the windy summit, his gun under his arm, and looked over the rolling, never-ending sweep of hills. The sun, big and ruddy, was dipping over Pendle’s rounded slope, and all the hollows in between were luminous and still. He forgot his loneliness--forgot that he could not sit a horse with ease or pleasure to himself; forgot that he was shy of his equals, shy of the country-folk who met him on the road, that his one respite from the burden of the day was to get up into the hills which God had set there for a sanctuary.

Very still, and straight to his full height, this man of five-and-twenty stood watching the pageant of the sun’s down-going. It was home and liberty to him, this rough land where all was peat and heather, and the running cry of streams afraid of loneliness, and overhead the snow-clouds thrusting forward from the east across the western splendour of blue, and red, and sapphire.

He shivered suddenly. As of old, his soul was bigger than the strength of his lean body, and he looked down at Windyhough with misgiving, for he was spent with hunger and long walking over the hills he loved. He thought of his father, kind always and tolerant of his heir’s infirmities; of his mother, colder than winter on the hills; of Maurice, his younger brother by three years, who could ride well, could show prowess in field-sports, and in all things carry himself like the true heir of Windyhough.

A quick, unreasoning hatred of Maurice took him unawares--Esau’s hate for the supplanter. He remembered that Maurice had never known the fears that bodily weakness brings. In nursery days he had been the leader, claiming the toys he coveted; in boyhood he had been the friend and intimate of older men, who laughed at his straightforward fearlessness, and told each other, while the heir stood by and listened, that Maurice was a pup of the old breed.

There was comfort blowing down the wind to Rupert, had he guessed it. The moor loves her own, as human mothers do, and in her winter-time she meant to prove him. He did not guess as much, as he looked down on the huddled chimney-stacks of Windyhough, and saw the grey smoke flying wide above the gables. His heart was there, down yonder where the old house laughed slyly to know that he was heir to it, instead of Maurice. If only he could take his full share in field-sports, and meet his fellows with the frank laugh of comradeship--if he had been less sensitive to ridicule, to the self-distrust inbred in him by Lady Royd’s disdain--his world might have worn a different face to-day. He stooped to pat the setter that had shared a day’s poor sport with him, and then again his thoughts went roving down the years.

He did not hear the sound of hoofs behind him, till Roger Demaine’s daughter rode close up, reined in, and sat regarding him with an odd look of pity, and liking, and reproach.

“You look out of heart, Rupert. What ails you?” she asked, startling him out of his day-dream.

“Life. It is life that ails me,” he muttered, then laughed as if ashamed of his quick outburst. “I’ve been tramping the moors since daybreak, Nance,” he went on, in a matter-of-fact voice, “and all for three brace of grouse. You know how much powder goes to every bird I kill.”

“But, Rupert, why are you so bitter?”

“Because I’m your fool,” he broke in, with easy irony. “Oh, they think I do not know! They call me the scholar--or the dreamer--or any other name--but we know what they mean, Nance.”

The girl’s face was grave and puzzled. Through all the years they had known each other, he and she, he had seldom shown her a glimpse of this passionate rebellion against the world that hemmed him in. And it was true--pitiably true. She had seen men smile good-naturedly when his name was spoken--good-naturedly, because all men liked him in some affectionate, unquestioning way--had heard them ask each other what the Royds had done in times past to deserve such ill-luck as this heir, who was fit only for the cloisters where scholars walked apart and read old tomes.

And yet, for some odd reason, she liked him better for the outburst. Here on his own moors, with the tiredness in his face and the ring of courage in his voice, she saw the manhood in him.

“Rupert,” she said, glancing backward, and laughing to hide her stress of feeling. “You’ve lost me a race to-day.”

“Very likely,” he said, yielding still to his evil humour. “I was always in the way, Nance. My lady mother told me as much, no longer ago than yesterday. This race of yours?” he added, tired of himself, tired of the comrade moor, weary even of Nance Demaine, who was his first love and who would likely, if he died in his bed at ninety, be his last.

She glanced over her shoulder again, and saw two horsemen cantering half a mile away through the crimson sunset-glow. “It was a good wager, Rupert, and you’ve spoilt it. The hunt was all amiss to-day--whenever we found a fox, we lost him after a mile or two--and Will Underwood and your brother, as we rode home----”

“My brother, and Will Underwood--yes. They hunt in couples always.”

“Be patient, Rupert! Your temper is on edge. I’ve never known it fail you until to-day.”

“Fools are not supposed to show temper,” he put in dryly. “It is only wise men who’re allowed to ride their humours on a loose rein. So you had a wager, Nance?”

“Yes. We had had no real gallop; so, coming home, Maurice said that he would give me a fair start--as far as Intake Farm--and the first home to father’s house should----”

She halted, ashamed, somehow, of Rupert’s steady glance.

“And the wager?”

She glanced behind her. The two horsemen were climbing Lone Man’s Hill, and the sight of them, just showing over the red, sunset top, gave her new courage. “You’re brave, Rupert, and I was full of laughter till you spoiled my ride. It was so slight a wager. Maurice has a rough-haired terrier I covet. If--Rupert, you look as if I were a sinner absolute--if I were first home, Maurice was to give me the dog--and, if not----”

“And if not?”

She was dismayed by his cold air of question. “If I lost the wager? Your brother was to have my glove. What harm was there? He’s a boy, Rupert--besides,” she added, with the unheeding coquetry that was constantly leading her astray, “it is you who make me lose the wager. See them, how close they are! And I’d kept my lead so splendidly until you checked me.”

He was not heeding her. His eyes were fixed on the upcoming horsemen, and Nance could not understand this new, tense mood of his. It was only when Will Underwood and young Maurice reined up beside them that she knew there was trouble brewing, as surely as snow was coming with the rising wind.

“We’ve caught you, Nance,” laughed Maurice. “Will you settle the wager now, or later?”

He was big and buoyant, this lad of two-and-twenty. Life had used him well, had given him a hale body, and nerves like whipcord, and a good temper that needed little discipline to train it into shape.

Will Underwood laughed. “Best hasten, Maurice, or I’ll claim the forfeit for you.”

Rupert glanced from Will Underwood to Maurice. There was no hurry in his glance, only a wish to strike, and a temperate, quiet question as to which enemy he should choose. Then, suddenly, the indignities of years gone by came to a head. He recalled the constant yielding to his brother, the gibes he had let pass without retaliation, the long tale of renunciation, weakness.

“Maurice,” he said, with a straightening of his shoulders, “I want a word with you. Mr. Underwood, you will ride home with Nance? We shall not need you.”

Will Underwood gave a smothered laugh, but Nance was grave. She looked first at Maurice’s boyish, puzzled face, then at Rupert.

“I claim your escort, Mr. Underwood,” she said sharply.

Some reproof in her tone ruffled Will Underwood and kept him silent as they rode over the crest of the moor and down the long, rough slopes that led them to the pastures. He was assured of his reputation as a hard rider and a man of the world; and it piqued him to be given marching orders by a boy of five-and-twenty.

“Rupert thought himself his own father just now, Miss Demaine,” he said in his deep, pleasant voice. “For the first time since I’ve known him, he had something of the grand air. What mischief are the two lads getting into up yonder?”

Nance did not know her own mood. She seemed to be free, for the moment, of her light-hearted, healthy girlhood, seemed to be looking, old and wise, into some muddled picture of the days to come. “No mischief,” she answered, as if some other than herself were speaking. “Rupert is finding his road to the grand air, as you call it. It is a steep road, I fancy.”

Up on the moor Maurice was facing his elder brother. “What fool’s play is this, Rupert?” he asked. “Why don’t you hunt instead of prowling up and down the moor with a gun till your wits are addled? Your face is like a hatchet.”

“You made a wager?” said Rupert, with the same desperate quiet.