CHAPTER I THE FIGHT ON THE MOOR

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,[2] 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[3] 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[4] 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,[5] 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[6] 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.

“Yes, and I’ve won it. Come, old monk, admit there are worse gloves to claim in Lancashire.”

Rupert winced. His thoughts of Nance Demaine were so long, so fragrant. Since his boyhood struggled first into the riper understanding, he had cloistered her image from the world’s rough usage. She had been to him something magical, unattainable, and he was paying now for an homage less healthy than this world’s needs demand. It was all so trifling, this happy-go-lucky wager of a dog against a glove; but he saw in it a supplanting more bitter than any that had gone before.

He stood there for a moment, irresolute, bound by old subservience to Maurice, by remembrance of his weakness and his nickname of “the scholar.” Then the moor whispered in his ear, told him to be a fool no longer; and a strength that was almost gaiety came to him.

“Get out of the saddle, Maurice,” he said peremptorily. “I want to talk to you on foot.”

[7]Maurice obeyed by instinct, as if a ghost had met him in the open and startled him. Here was the scholar—the brother whom he could not any way despise, because he loved him—with a red spot of colour in each cheek, and in his voice the ring of true metal.

“Well?” asked the younger.

“You never would have claimed that glove.”

The boy’s temper, easy-going as it was, was roused. “Would you have hindered me?”

“Yes. I—I love her. That is all.”

So young Maurice laughed aloud, and Rupert ran in suddenly and hit him on the mouth, and the fight began. In his dreams the heir of Windyhough had revelled in battles, in swift assaults, forlorn and desperate hopes; for he had known no waking pleasures of the kind. And always, in his dreams, there had been a certain spaciousness and leisure; he had found time, in between giving and receiving blows, to feel himself the big man of his hands, to revel in the sheer bravery of the thing.

In practice, here on the open moor, with snow coming up across the stormy, steel-grey sky, there was no leisure and no illusion. He had no time to feel, no luxury of sentiment. He knew only that, in some muddled way, he was fighting Nance’s battle; that, by some miracle, he got a sharp blow home at times; that twice Maurice knocked him down; that, by some native stubbornness, he got up again, with the moor dancing in wide circles round him, and hit his man.

It was swift and soon over, as Rupert thought of this battle afterwards. No pipes were playing up and down the hills, to hearten him. Even the wind, whose note he loved, blew swift from the east about deaf ears. He and his brother were alone, in a turmoil of their own making, and his weakening arms were beating like a flail about the head of Maurice, the supplanter. Then the moors whirled round him, a world big with portent and disaster; and dimly, as from a long way off, he heard Maurice’s voice.

[8]“I’ll have to kill him before he gives in. Who ever thought it of the scholar?”

The gibe heartened Rupert. He struggled up again, and by sheer instinct—skill he had little, and strength seemed to have left him long ago—he got another swift blow home. And then darkness settled on him, and he dreamed again of battle as he had known it in the fanciful days of boyhood. He revelled in this lonely moorland fight, counted again each blow and wondered at its strength, knew himself at last a proven man. His dreams were kind to him.

Then he got out from his sickness, little by little, and looked about him, and saw a half-moon shining dimly through a whirl of snow. The east wind was playing shrewdly round his battered face, as if a man were rubbing salt into his wounds. He tried to get up, looked about him again, and saw Maurice stooping over him.

A long glance passed between the brothers, Rupert lying on the heather, Maurice kneeling in the sleety moonlight. There was question in the glance, old affection, some trouble of the jealousy that had bidden them fight just now. Then a little sob, of which he was ashamed, escaped the younger brother.

Rupert struggled to a sitting posture. He could do no more as yet. “So I’m not just the scholar?” he asked feebly.

Maurice, young as he was, was troubled by the vehemence, the wistfulness, of the appeal. Odd chords were stirred, under the rough-and-ready view he had of life. This brother with whom he had fought just now—he understood, in a dim way, the pity and the isolation of his life, understood the daily suffering he had undergone. Then, suddenly and as if to seek relief from too much feeling, the younger brother laughed.

“The next time a man sneers at you for being a scholar, Rupert, give him a straight answer.”

“Yes?” The heir of Windyhough was dazed and muddled still, though he had got to his feet again.

“Hit him once between the eyes. A liar seldom asks a second blow, so father says.”

[9]Then a silence fell between them, while the last of the sunset red grew pale about the swarthy line of heath above them, and the moon sailed dim and phantom-like through the sleety clouds. They had been fond of each other always, but now some deeper love, some intimate communion, gathered the years up and bound them into lasting friendship. Maurice had been jealous of his brother’s heirship, contemptuous of his scholarship. And Rupert had been sick at heart, these years past, knowing how well the supplanter sat his horse, and carried a gun, and did all things reckoned worthy.

And now they met on equal terms. They had fought together, man against man; and their love ripened under the bitter east wind and the stinging sleet, as the man’s way is.

They went down the moor together, Maurice leading his horse by the bridle. They were no heroic figures, the three of them. The horse was shivering, after long waiting in the cold while his master settled private differences; and the two brothers limped and stumbled as they picked their way down the white slope of the moor. There was no speed of action now; there was, instead, this slow march home that in its very forlornness touched some subtle note of humour. Yet Rupert was warm, as if he sat by a peat-fire; for he felt a man’s soul stirring in him.

“What did we fight about?” asked Maurice suddenly. “The fun was so hot while it lasted—and, gad, Rupert, I’ve forgotten what the quarrel was.”

Again the elder brother grew quick, alert. It seemed he was ready to provoke a second fight. “It was Nance’s glove,” he said quietly. “You said you meant to claim it, and I said not. I say it still.”

“There, there, old lad!” laughed Maurice, patting him lightly on the shoulder. “You shall have the glove. She’d rather give it to you than to any man in Lancashire. I said as much to Will Underwood just now, and he didn’t relish it.”

“Rather give it me?” echoed the other, with entire simplicity. “I can do nothing that a woman asks, Maurice.”

[10]A sudden dizziness crossed his eagerness. He could not keep the path, until Maurice steadied him.

“You can hit devilish hard,” said the younger dryly.

The three of them went down the moor, counting the furlongs miles. And again the brothers met on equal terms; for each was bruised and hungry, and body-sickness, if it strike deep enough, is apt to bring wayfarers to one common level.

Nance and Will Underwood had reached the lower lands by now, and she turned to him at the gate of Demaine House with some reluctance.

“You will let my father thank you for your escort?” she asked, stroking her mare’s neck.

“I’ll come in,” he answered, with the rollicking assurance that endeared him to the hard riders of the county—“if only for an hour more with you.” He leaned across and touched her bridle-hand. “Nance, you’ve treated me all amiss these last days. You never give me a word apart, and there’s so much——”

“I’m tired and cold,” she broke in, wayward and sleety as this moorland that had cradled her. “You may spare me—what shall I say?—the flattery that Mr. Underwood gives every woman, when other women are not there to hear.”

She did not know what ailed her. Until an hour ago she had been yielding, little by little, to the suit which Will Underwood had pressed on her—in season and out, as his way was. There had been sudden withdrawals, gusts of coquetry, on her part; for the woman’s flight at all times is like a snipe’s—zig-zag, and only to be reckoned with according to the rule of contraries.

But now, as she went into the house, not asking but simply permitting him to follow her, there was a real avoidance of him. She could not rid herself of the picture of Rupert, standing desolate up yonder on the empty moors—Rupert, who was heir to traditions of hard riding and hard fighting; Rupert, with the eyes of a dreamer and the behaviour of a hermit. She wondered what he and Maurice were doing on[11] the moor. His last words had not suggested need of her—had hinted plainly that he had a man’s work to do.

Her father was in the hall as they came in. A glance at his face told her that Roger Demaine was in no mood for trifles, and she stood apart, willingly enough, while he gravely offered wine to Underwood, and filled his glass for him, and scarcely paused to let him set lips to it before he ran into the middle of his tale.