CHAPTER XXII.MISS BINGHAM.It was no usual comradeship that held between the Royalists who gathered in one company after Marston Moor was lost to the King. They travelled through vile roads—roads broken up by incessant rains—they camped wherever they found a patch of drier ground for the night's sleep. But never for a moment did they lose the glamour that attached to the person of King Charles. Like a beacon-light, the thought of the half-vanquished Stuart went steadily in front of them. Their strength lay in this—that, whether death or life arrived, they knew the venture well worth while.The life had a strange savour of its own. The Nappa Squire, the late Governor of Knaresborough and his officers, Lady Ingilby—all had known the weight of harsh responsibility so long as the King's cause was alive in the North. The cause was dead now. There was no need to be at strain, sleeping or waking, with the sense that it rested with each of them to keep the monarchy secure. There was asked of them only a haphazard and stimulating warfare, of the sort dear to all hillmen.Scarborough Castle fell, and when the news was brought—they were dining at the moment in a wooded dell between Beamsley and Langbar—the Governor lifted his hat with pleasant gravity."God rest the gentlemen of Scarborough. They have earned their holiday, as we have."Michael was busy with the stew-pot, hanging gipsy-wise on three sticks above a fire of gorse and fir-cones. "It's hey for Skipton-in-Craven," he said with a cheery smile. "I aye liked the comely town, and now the King will know that she was the last in all the North to stand for him.""Maybe Skipton has fallen, too, by this time," chided the Squire. "You were always one for dreams, Michael."Michael was silent till the meal was ended. Then he mowed a swath of thistles with his sword, and brought the spoil to Elizabeth, tethered to a neighbouring tree. She brayed at him with extreme tenderness."Now that we're well victualled, friends," he said lazily, "who comes with me to hear how it fares with Skipton?"The Governor did not like the venture—the hazard of it seemed too great—but Squire Metcalf did."How d'ye hold together at all, Michael?" roared the Squire. "So much folly and such common sense to one man's body—it must be a civil war within yourself."Michael glanced at Joan Grant with an instinct of which he repented instantly. "It is, sir. Since I was born into this unhappy world, there has been civil war inside me. I need an outlet now.""You shall have it, lad.""And you call this common sense?" asked the Governor, with good-tempered irony."Ay, of the Yoredale sort. A blow or two in Skipton High Street—who knows what heart it might give the garrison?""I must remind you that we have women-folk to guard, and our wounded.""But, sir, this is a Metcalf riding, all like the olden time. We never meant your Knaresborough men to share it."Yet some of the Knaresborough men would not be denied; and the Governor, as he saw the sixty horsemen ride over and down to Beamsley-by-the-Wharfe, wished that his private conscience would let him journey with them. He stood watching the hill-crest long after they had disappeared, and started when a hand was laid gently on his arm."It is hard to stay?" asked Lady Ingilby."By your leave, yes. Why should these big Metcalfs have all the frolic?""Ah, frolic! As if there were naught in life but gallop, and cut and thrust, and——sir, is there no glory in staying here to guard weak?"The Governor was in evil mood. He had seen the King's cause go, had seen Knaresborough succumb, had watched the steadfast loyalty of a lifetime drift down the stream of circumstance like a straw in a headlong current."Lady Ingilby," he said wearily, "there is no longer any glory anywhere. It has gone from the land.""It is here among us. Till we were broken folk, I did not know our strength. None but the Stuart, friend, could have kept us in such friendliness and constancy. Oh, I know! I saw you glance round for your horse when the Metcalfs went—saw your struggle fought out, sir—and, believe me, you were kind to stay."They finished their interrupted meal at leisure; and it was not till about four of the clock that Miss Bingham, who had strayed afield to pick a bunch of valley lilies, came running back to camp. The two men in pursuit blundered headlong into the enemy before they saw their peril; and they found scant shrift.Miss Bingham, thoroughbred beneath her whimsies, halted a moment to regain her courage. "These are but outposts, sir," she said. "From the hill-top I could see a whole company of Roundheads.""Their number," asked the Governor—"and are they mounted?""More than our own, I think, and they go on foot.""And half of us wounded. Come, gentlemen, there's no time to waste."His weariness was gone. Alert, masterful, almost happy, he bade the women get further down the hill, out of harm's way. He gave his men their stations—little knots of them cowering under clumps of gorse and broom—until the land seemed empty of all human occupation. Only Elizabeth, the wayward ass, lifted up her voice from time to time, after finishing the last of the thistles Michael had given her. And suddenly, as they waited, the Governor let a sharp oath escape him."This comes of letting women share a fight. In the name of reason, why is Miss Bingham running up the hill again?"They peered over the gorse, saw the tall, lithe figure halt, clearly limned against the sky-line. They heard her voice, pitiful and pleading."Parliament men, I am alone and friendless. Will you aid me?"A steel-capped Roundhead showed above the hill-crest. "There are plenty to aid such a comely lass as thee," he said, his rough Otley burr cutting the summer's silence like a blunt-edged knife."Then follow quickly."The Governor laughed gently as he watched Miss Bingham turn and race down the hill. "A rare plucked one, she," he muttered, "kin to Jael, I fancy, wife of Heber the Kenite."She passed close by him on her breathless run down hill and joined the women-folk below. And the next moment the red havoc of it began. The Roundheads saw their leader race forward, and followed in close order. Down the slope they poured, and every clump of gorse spat out at them with a red and murderous fire. Then the Knaresborough men were up and into them, and when their leader got back to Otley with the remnants of his men, he protested that "he'd fancied, like, they'd ta'en all the hornets' nests i' Yorkshire, but some few thrifty wasps were breeding still.""Why do you laugh?" said Lady Ingilby, when the Governor came down to tell her all was well."Because luck is as skew-tempered as the jackass braying yonder. Have the Metcalfs had such frolic out at Skipton, think ye? And I was keen to ride with them—Miss Bingham, I owe you reparation. When I saw you move up the hill yonder, I cursed you for a woman.""That was unwise, sir. As well curse Elizabeth because she is a donkey, and yearns for absent friends; or the jack-snipe, because his flight is slanting; or any of us who are made as we are made.""We thought you light of heart, child, in the old days at Knaresborough. Yet none of us could have planned a neater ambush.""It was my old pastime, after all. How often you've chided me for luring men into folly. Oh, what wise and solemn discourses you have given me, sir, on the unwisdom of it!""There was wisdom in it this time. But for the ambush, we could not have faced the odds."For the next hour she busied herself with bandaging the men's hurts; then, with a restlessness that had been growing on her since the Metcalfs went, she climbed the hill again. Only Blake saw her go. Unrest had been his comrade, too, since he found himself sharing this odd gipsy life with the woman he asked least to meet on this side or the other of the grave.He followed with reluctance and a smile at his own folly. She was standing on the hill-crest, one hand shading her eyes, as if she looked for some one to arrive."Does he come, Miss Bingham?" asked Blake.She turned with a fury that died away and left her helpless. There was derision, heart-ache, pity, in Blake's mobile face."Is all forgot, then, Mr. Blake? There was a time in Knaresborough, at the ferry-steps, when you thought kindly of me.""There was. I ask you for some explanation of the madness. To my shame, the memory came and weakened me years after—when I found myself in Oxford, to be precise, and heard the nightingales. Answer the riddle. How can a thing so slight and empty hinder a grown man?""You are bitter, unforgiving.""Neither. I've ridden too many evil roads to remember bitterness. It is simply that I'm tired and filled with wonder. Tell me why Oxford and the nightingales opened an old wound afresh.""It goes back to Eve's days, I think," murmured Miss Bingham.Demureness, coquetry, the hint of tears and laughter in her eyes—all should have disarmed Blake."Ay, find other shoulders for the blame," he said impassively."As Adam did."Again the easy insolence failed her at need. She was aware that no nimbleness of tongue could help her now. Blake stood there like some judge whose bias against the prisoner at the bar was hardening."After all, you owe me gratitude," she went on hurriedly. "If it had not been that I'm fickle—oh, I admit as much—you would not stand where you stand now. I remember you so well—gay, easy-going, with a tongue that made one half believe your flattery. And now? You're Blake the rider—little Blake—Blake who never tires. I see men lift their heads when your name is mentioned, and hear their praise. Did I do so ill at Knaresborough, to set you on the road?""You broke my heart. If that was to do well—why, my thanks, Miss Bingham."It was then, for the first time, that knowledge came to her, as if a veil were lifted. She saw the years behind. Vanity, pride of conquest, zest in the hunting for hunting's sake—these had been her luxuries. She had not guessed that the sport might cripple men for life."Why do you tell me this—you who are so proud and reticent?""Not for my pleasure," he answered drily. "There's a lad of the Metcalfs I have a liking for. I would save him from my sort of fate, if that could be."He could not understand the change in her. She was fierce, vindictive. Through the velvet dalliance of her life the claws flashed out. Then, in a moment, she repented. Her voice grew smooth and insolent again."Oh, Puritan, because you have forgotten how to play, you would put all light-hearted folk in prison. Sir, by your leave, I wait here till one Christopher Metcalf returns from Skipton town. I wish him very well.""Then heaven help him, madam," said Blake, and went down the hill in search of better cheer.The Metcalfs long ago had come to Embsay, and up the further hill that gave them a clear view of Skipton. The long, grey church, the Castle's sturdy front, the beautiful, wide street, rich in the summer's greenery that bordered it, lay spread before them in the golden sunlight. The market-square was packed with men, and the hubbub of the crowd came up the rise.The Squire of Nappa had called a halt because their horses needed a breathing-space before they put their project into action. More than once, during the ride out, they had laughed at the humour of their plan, though most men would have been thinking of the extreme hazard. They proposed, in fact, to get behind the Roundheads' position on Cock Hill, to charge them unexpectedly from the rear, and to capture their cannonry by sheer speed of onset."It will be a tale to set the whole North in a roar," said the Squire. "And the Royalists up hereabout, God knows, have need of laughter these days.""Ay, but look yonder, sir," put in Christopher gravely.The Squire followed the direction of his hand. In the sunlit market-square they saw Mallory, the Governor, ride over the lowered drawbridge. After him came the gentry and the ladies of the garrison, then soldiery on foot; and, last of all, the stable-boys and cooks and scullions, who had ministered for two long years to the needs of those besieged.Mallory was erect and buoyant. Standards waved in the merry breeze, their colours glowing in the sunlight."What does it mean?" asked Christopher. "It is no sortie; yet they ride with heads up, as if life went very well with them."The old Squire passed a hand across his eyes. Feeling ran deep with him at all times; and now it was as if he looked years ahead and saw the King himself go out in just this fashion, proud, resolute, content with the day's necessary work."It means, my lad," he said roughly, "that Skipton-in-Craven has yielded at long last. But she goes out with the full honours of war, and she can boast till the Trump o' Doom that she was the last in Yorkshire to stand for the King's Majesty."They rode a little nearer to the town. And now they could see that the crowd thronging the High Street was made up of Parliament men, who moved to one side and the other, clearing a route for the outgoing garrison. They saw Lambert ride forward, salute Sir John Mallory with grave punctilio—heard Mallory's voice come lightly on the wind, as if he exchanged a jest—and then the long procession passed, with banners flying, and the tale of Skipton's siege was ended."Best turn about, Metcalfs," growled the Squire. "We can do nothing here. There'll be the women wanting us out Beamsley way, and Michael has his donkey to attend to.""True," assented Michael. "All's gone—Marston, York, Skipton—but Elizabeth is with us still. There's many a kick left in li'le Elizabeth."So—with laughter, lest they cried—the Metcalf men took route again for Beamsley. And the Squire rode far ahead, with a stormy grief and a sense of utter desolation for companions.Kit, seeing his father's trouble, was minded to spur forward and help him in his need; but Michael checked him."He has the black dog on his shoulders. Best leave him to it.""Why, yes. That is the Metcalf way, I had forgotten, Michael."When they neared the hill that was the last of their climb, up and over into Beamsley, they saw the slim figure of a woman, tall against the sky; and, as they came nearer still, Michael—whose sight was like a hawk's—told them that Miss Bingham was waiting there to bring them back."Kind and sonsy, she," laughed one of the late garrison at Knaresborough."You will unsay that, sir," said Christopher."There's nothing to unsay. Kind and sonsy—daft hot-head, you might say that of your own mother.""In a different tone. You will unsay it.""And why? We Knaresborough men seldom unsay anything, until our windpipes are cut clean in two.""There's for a good Irishman!" said Michael, putting his bulk between the combatants. "He'll talk, says he, when his windpipe is in two. They could not better that in Donegal."So the quarrel was blown abroad by the laughter of their fellows; but Michael, as they jogged up the hill, grew dour and silent. Kit's sudden heat astonished him. He had not guessed that the lad's regard for Miss Bingham went deeper than the splash of a pebble in a summer's pool.When they reached the hill-top, a fresh surprise awaited him. Miss Bingham was standing there, with pale, drawn face; and her eyes searched eagerly for one only of the company, and disdained the rest.[image]"Her eyes searched eagerly for one only of the company, and disdained the rest."Michael could not believe it. Her easy handling of the world she knew by heart—the levity that cloaked all feeling—were gone. She put a hand on Kit's bridle-arm as he rode up, and forgot, it seemed, that many folk were looking on."You are wounded. No? Then how fares it out at Skipton?"The old Squire had seen the drift of things with an eye as keen as Michael's; and in his present mood he was intolerant of women and all gentler matters. "It has sped bonnily," he snapped. "Skipton has gone down-stream with the flood, Miss Bingham, and there's no more to do, save tend women's vapours and feed Michael's jackass."She smiled pleasantly at this man in evil mood. "Sir, that is not like you. If your courtesy towards women has gone, too, then chivalry is ended for all time."The Metcalfs waited for the Squire's rejoinder. None guessed how the rebuke would take him; but all knew how deep he was wading in the chill bog of adversity. They saw him lift his head in fury, saw him relent with hardship."Miss Bingham," he said, "there was a sorrow and a madness at my heart. You are right. If I forget courtesy toward women, I forget the wife who bred tall sons for me in Yoredale."He went apart that night and took counsel of his God, on the high lands where the birds seemed to rise for matins almost as soon as evensong was ended. He came down again for early breakfast in the woodland camp, with all the grace of youth about him, in high spirits, ready for the day's surprises.CHAPTER XXIII.YOREDALE.From that day forward, the first strangeness of their gipsy life grew to be familiar, usual. Little by little the Parliament soldiery went south or westward, to share in the attack on Royalist garrisons still unaffected by the disastrous news from Yorkshire; but the country was infested by roving bands of cut-purses and murderers—men who had hung on the skirts of civil war, ready to be King's men or Levellers, when they knew which side claimed the victory.It was the exploits of these prowling rascals that set many a story going of the outrages committed by true Roundheads, who had no share in them; but the Squire of Nappa was not concerned with public rumour or the judgment of generations to come after. His whole heart—all the untiring watchfulness that had made him a leader of picked cavalry—were centred in this new, appalling peril. Day by day the raff and jetsom of the country moved abroad in numbers that steadily increased. They were not dangerous in the open against the disciplined men of Knaresborough and Nappa; but they asked for constant vigilance, as if the wolf-packs of old days had returned to haunt these moorland solitudes.They were heading by short stages to Nappa; for, as the Squire explained, there was room enough in house and outbuildings to house them all, and they might well hold it for the King, if the chance of war brought the tumult North again."A hard-bitten bull-dog, you," said the Governor of Knaresborough."Ay, maybe. I guard my own, and there's a sort of bite about a Mecca when he's roused.""There is, sir—a Yorkshire bite, they say."Their route was hindered, not only by prowling vagabonds, but by the men who fell sick by the wayside, now that the stress of the big fight was ended, and they had leisure to take count of wounds. Miss Bingham went among the fallen, bandaging a wound here, giving a cup of water there, bringing constantly the gift she had of soothing sick men's fancies.Once—it was when they camped on Outlaw Moss, and the gloaming found her nursing little Blake—the Governor and Squire Metcalf halted as they made their round of the camp."So Blake has given in at last," said the Squire. "Pity he didn't learn that lesson years ago.""That is true, sir," said Miss Bingham gravely. "With a broken heart, there's no shame in lying down by the wayside. He should have done it long since."The Governor laughed, as if a child's fancy had intruded into the workaday routine. "The jest will serve, Miss Bingham. We know Blake, and, believe me, he never had a heart to be broken. Whipcord and sinew—he rides till he drops, with no woman's mawkishness to hinder him.""No mawkishness," she agreed. "I give you good-night, gentlemen. He needs me, if he is not to die before the dawn.""Oh, again your pardon," said the Governor roughly. "You played in Knaresborough—you were always playing—and we thought you light.""So I am, believe me, when men are able to take care of themselves. It is when they're weak that I grow foolish and a nurse."Metcalf and the Governor were silent as they went their round, until the Squire turned abruptly."My wife is like that," he said, as if he had captured some new truth, unguessed by the rest of a dull world. "Ay, and my mother, God rest her. Memories of cradle-days return, when we are weak; they show their angel side.""There's only one thing ails Miss Bingham—she's a woman to the core of her. Eh, Metcalf, it must be troublesome to be a woman. I'd liefer take all my sins pick-a-back, and grumble forward under the weight, and be free of whimsies."Through the short summer's night, Miss Bingham tended Blake. She heard him talk of Knaresborough and the ferry-steps—always the ferry-steps. She learned all that she had seemed to him, and wondered how any man could view any woman through such a pleasant mist of worship. Then she listened to the tale of his rude awakening, and winced as he spoke in delirium words that could never be forgotten. And then again they were watching Nidd River swirl beneath them, and he was busy with a lover's promises. When he slept at last, wearied by the speed of his own fancies, she sat watching him. A round, white moon had climbed over the edge of Outlaw Moss. She saw the lines of hardship in his face—lines bitten in by harsh weather of the world and of the soul."Poor Blake," she thought, "ah, poor li'le Blake!"From the foolery that had been her life till now there came a gust of sickliness. Blake could not live till dawn. She would go afield while they were hiding him under the earth, would bring wild flowers and strew them broadcast over his resting-place. She would pray tenderly at his graveside.Already she half believed these pious exercises would recompense Blake for the loss of all he had cared for in this life. He would know that she was there, and look down on the fret and burden of his heartbreak as a thing well worth the while. She would smother his dead grief with flowers and penitence.It was Blake himself who disordered the well-planned poetry. He did not die at dawn. They waited three days on Outlaw Moss till they knew that he would live, and four days afterwards until his old laugh returned, and he could get his knees about a saddle. Then they went forward another stage on the slow journey out to Nappa.Miss Bingham stood between the old world and the new; and that experience, for any man or woman's soul, is hazardous. She saw herself in true outline. As others gambled with gold and silver pieces, she had played with hearts. She had not known the value of the stakes; but now she understood. One by one, in memory's cold procession, she saw them pass—Blake, his young soul on fire with worship; Anstruther, who had persisted in throning her among the stars, and who was now, they said, no company for any gentry save those of wayside taverns. She hid her eyes. Spoiled, wayward, she resented the discipline of penance. Day by day she thought more of Christopher, and welcomed his sturdy self-reliance as a shield against her past.Day by day, too, Joan Grant grew more silent, more aloof from the haphazard routine of their life among the hills. And the whole camp looked on, afraid for their idol, Christopher, afraid for Joan, great loathing for Miss Bingham growing in their midst.Miss Bingham, well aware of the hostility, did not know whether her heart were hardened or softened by it. It was as if she stood in the thick of a northern March—sunshine on one side of the hedge, sleet and a bitter wind on the other. But there came a day when she carried her troubles to a little, ferny glen hidden deep among the pastures and the heather. Their morning's route had brought them near to Hawes, the grey village that gathers the spreading Yorkshire dales into its hand as a lady holds an open fan. The camp was busy, dining on odds and ends—mutton, cabbage, herbs, all stewing fragrantly in a pot reared gipsy-wise over a fire of wood—and Miss Bingham heard their laughter come up the breeze.They had purchased a barrel of home-brewed ale from a neighbouring tavern, and were toasting Blake at the moment."Here's to li'le Blake, who never tires," said the Squire."Why should he?" put in Michael. "Women have never troubled him, I wager.""At your age, youngster, to go flouting the good sex!" growled the Governor."Your pardon, sir. The sex has flouted me. I'm envying Blake because he had mother-wit to steer wide of trouble. Even Elizabeth, who dotes on me, is full of the most devilish caprices."Kit grew impatient of it all. He was in no mood for the banter and light jests that eased the journey home to Nappa. There was a fever in his blood, a restlessness whose cause was known to every man in camp except himself. He sought some hiding-place, with the instinct of all wounded folk; and his glance fell on a wooded gorge that showed as a sanctuary set in the middle of a treeless land.He came down the path between the honeysuckle and the flowering thorns. There was a splash of water down below, and he had in mind to bathe in some sequestered pool and wash away the heat and trouble of the times.He found the pool, green with reflected leafage, deep and murmurous, and saw Miss Bingham seated at its brink. She turned with a smile of welcome."I knew that you would come, my Puritan. There is room beside me here. Sit and tell me—all that the waterfall is singing—the might-have-beens, the fret and bubble of this life—the never-ending wonder that men should die for their King when there are easier roads to follow.""Ask the stream." Kit's laugh was unsteady, and his voice seemed to come from far-away. "To die for the King—it may not be ease, but surely it is happiness.""Talk to me. Tell me how he looked—the King—when you saw him there in Oxford. And Rupert? His name alone brings back the old Crusading days, before we grew tired of poetry."She beguiled him into talk. She spun a web about him, fine as gossamer and strong as hempen rope. All the route south to Oxford—the return by way of Lathom House—the queer way of their entry into York—took on a new significance and glamour as she prompted him with eager, maidish questions."So you came to York as a Puritan? There would be no great disguise in that, as I have told you often. Ah, no wrath, I pray you! Women laugh at—at those they care for, lest they care too much."Kit seemed to be in some poppyland of dreams. He had travelled that country once already in Miss Bingham's company—at the ferry-steps in Knaresborough. Then he had been weak of body, recovering slowly from a sickness she had nursed. Now he was hale and ruddy; but there is a weakness of great health, and this found him now. Gallop and trot over perilous roads, rude bivouacs by night and rough-handed war by day—these had been his life since, long ago, he had left the ripening Yoredale corn. He was weary of the effort, now that it was over; and all the gardens he had known, all the ease and softness of summer skies, were gathered round this woman who shared the glen with him."And there was Marston," she said, breaking the silence."Ay, God knows there was Marston. Rupert, the Squire, and I—the three of us lying in a bean-field, listening to the wounded there in Wilstrop Wood—I can hear the uproar now.""Ah! forget it. It is over and done with. You have earned your ease."Kit believed it. The poppy odours were about him, thick as the scent of flowering beans that had all but sent Rupert and himself to their last sleep at Marston. The strong, up-country gospel whispered at his ear that no man earns his ease this side the grave. He would not heed the whisper. It was good to be here with the lapping water, the smell of woodland growth, the woman who cast pleasant spells about him.A great pity stirred in her, against her will. She grew aware of things beyond the dalliance of each day's affairs. Here, weak in her hands, was a man to be made or marred; and he seemed well on the way to lose all because she bade him. Compunction came to her. She was minded to laugh out of court this grave affair, and send him out, as she had done others, with great faith in her own instability.Yet she was powerless. The war her men-folk had waged against the adversary—their simple faith in kingship threading all their days, of fight and drink and banter, with a golden skein—had touched the heart that had been cold till now. By his own strength he must win through this combat she had forced on him—or by his own weakness he must take her hand and lead her through the years that must for ever be made up of broken vows.Kit got to his feet, paced up and down irresolutely. He was fighting for the kingship of his soul, and all the glen went dizzying by him. It was a simple matter that brought back the memory of ancient loyalty and faith—just the song of the water as it splashed down its ferny bed. He glanced sharply round, saw the fall of the stream, with sunlight and the glint of shadowed leafage on its ripples. He remembered just such a waterfall, just such a sheltered glen, away in Yoredale.The poppy-sleep was on him still. Yoredale was far away, and Joan's tongue was barbed with nettle-stings these days. Better to take his ease, and have done with effort. He glanced again at the water splashing down its steep rock-face; and suddenly he stood at attention, as if the King confronted him. It might be his fancy; it might be some chance play of light and shade, made up of dancing water and leafage swaying in the summer's breeze; but the thing he saw was a sword, silver-bright—a big, two-handed sword with its hilt clear against the sky, and its point hidden in the pool below. He stood for a moment, bewildered. Then a great sob broke up the grief and hardship that had been his since Marston.She followed the pointing of his finger, but saw nothing save water slipping down the cool rock-front.Then she glanced at his face, and saw that the days of her sorcery were ended.A forlorn self-pity numbed her. If he had broken faith with Joan Grant, she would have recompensed him—have been the tenderest wife in Christendom, because he had found her womanhood for her—had taught her heart to beat, instead of fluttering idly to every breeze that roamed."Sir, I hate you most devoutly," she said. "Get up the wood again. I used to laugh at all good Puritans, and the memory would hurt me if you stayed."Kit was never one to hide his light or darkness from a prying world. The whole camp had seen his madness, had marvelled at the change in him—his sudden tempers, his waywardness, his hot impatience for fight of some kind—with his fellows or with any roaming band of enemies that chanced to cross, their path. Now they wondered that he went among them with a new light about his face, a gaiety that was not so heedless as of old, but riper and more charitable."The Babe grows up," said Michael to the Squire, as they jogged forward over sultry roads."It will be a thrifty growth, lad. If I could say as much of thee, I'd be content.""Oh, I'm past gibes, sir. Elizabeth, alone of you all—she understands me. We have long ears and long wits, she and I. Believe me, we are wise."They came at last to their own country, and the Knaresborough men wondered why jest and high spirits ceased among the Riding Metcalfs. They did not guess how rooted in the homeland were the affections of these men who had gone abroad to play their part in the big issue of King and Parliament. They could not divine the mist of tenderness and yearning that veiled their eyes as they saw the slopes of Yoredale run to meet their eager gallop. Wounds, havoc of battlefields that had seen brave hopes lost, all were forgotten. They were back among the greening corn again.The Squire lost courage, for the first time since the riding out, when he reached the gate of his own homestead and saw his wife run forward in answer to the rousing challenge of "A Mecca for the King!"She came to his saddle, lifted up her face, as a bride might do for the nuptial kiss. She looked for Kit, the well-beloved, and for Michael. Then her glance ran to and fro among the company, seeking for remembered faces; and memory found many gaps. She faced her husband. There was accusation in her voice; for she had sat at home with weariness and fear and abnegation, and all her strength was gone."Where are the rest?" she asked."Serving the King, wife, wherever they be. I'll go warrant for a Metcalf beyond the gates of this world."With a coldness that dismayed them, she counted her living Metcalfs. "A hundred and twenty rode out. Fifty and two return. The sunshine hurts me.""They did well—no man can do more."Those looking on saw courage struggle through her weakness, and in their hearts they knew that warfare had shown nothing finer. "I—I shall pray that this bitterness may go from me. I shall hope to tell them—oh, a little later on—that it is good to die for the King's Majesty."They saw her waver, saw the old, indomitable pride return."Metcalfs, well done—oh, well done! I am proud of my living—and my dead.""God rest their souls, wife. They have harvested their corn."As the weeks passed on, and grief and wounds alike were healing, a new disquiet stole in and out among the men quartered in Nappa's hospitable house and outbuildings. They were idling here. If Marston Moor had killed the cause in the north, there was battle doing further south.The Squire's wife watched it brewing, this new menace to all that was left of her happiness. She knew, that it was idle to resist or to persuade. She had bred men-sons for the King's service, and must abide by it.Joan Grant was younger to experience. First-love was hindering her vision of what her man must do before he came to his kingdom; and she quarrelled openly with Christopher, as they came home together through the gloaming August fields."So you are weary of me in a month?" she said, halting at the stile. "Ah, the pity of it. It was here—or have you forgotten?—that I bade you climb high if you would find my heart. And you climbed and—and found it, and now you talk of battle—only of battle and the King."All his world seemed to fail him—the will to ride out again until there was no more asked of him but to return and claim her—the certainty that she would be the first to give God-speed to his errand—all were drowned in this storm of tears and petulance that broke about him. Yet he remembered the sword that had stood, its point in the woodland stream, its hilt against the clear, blue sky above. He did not waver this time, for his love was no beguilement, but a spur that urged him forward."I go," he said roughly."And if you lose me in the going?""Then I lose you—there's no choice."She got down from the stile, rebellious, fitful as a gusty spring. It was only when they neared the homestead that she turned, her eyes bright and eager, and touched his hand. "I am glad—oh, I am glad!" she said.Late that afternoon Miss Bingham and little Blake had gone for a moorland ride together. Blake had made a false recovery from his weakness, as soon as he learned that there was to be another riding-out, and had urged that he must get his mare in trim again by daily rides. And Miss Bingham had insisted that his nurse went with him, lest he fell by the way.In all her wide experience of men she had not met one so gay, so tranquil, so entirely master of what had been, of what was to come, as this little Irishman whose health had gone down the stream of high adventure. With a broken heart and a broken body, he thought only of the coming rides through lonely night-roads, of Meccas riding again for the King they served, of the dust and rain of circumstance. He remembered droll stories, flavoured by Irish wit and heedlessness. He fell, between whiles, into passionate hope of what was to come, when the King came to his own in the south country, by help of the Riding Metcalfs, and drove the rebels from the north. Then, with a gentleness that laughed at itself, he explained that it was good to have sat on the ferry-steps at Knaresborough."I lost—but the stakes were well worth winning. The Blakes were ever gamblers."She had great skill in tending the wounded. In the man's face she read many signs of bodily weakness. His voice—his detachment from the gross affairs of life—told their own tale. But she did not look for it so soon.At the gate of the farmstead, just as he dismounted, Blake fell prone in the roadway, and tried to rise, and could not.When Joan and Kit Metcalf returned—it might be a half-hour later—they found Miss Bingham kneeling at the dead man's side. And her face, when she lifted it, was a woman's face—grave, charitable, tender with some forward hope."Here's little Blake," she said. "He rides very well, my friends."THE END.LONDON: WARD, LOCK & Co., LIMITED.
CHAPTER XXII.
MISS BINGHAM.
It was no usual comradeship that held between the Royalists who gathered in one company after Marston Moor was lost to the King. They travelled through vile roads—roads broken up by incessant rains—they camped wherever they found a patch of drier ground for the night's sleep. But never for a moment did they lose the glamour that attached to the person of King Charles. Like a beacon-light, the thought of the half-vanquished Stuart went steadily in front of them. Their strength lay in this—that, whether death or life arrived, they knew the venture well worth while.
The life had a strange savour of its own. The Nappa Squire, the late Governor of Knaresborough and his officers, Lady Ingilby—all had known the weight of harsh responsibility so long as the King's cause was alive in the North. The cause was dead now. There was no need to be at strain, sleeping or waking, with the sense that it rested with each of them to keep the monarchy secure. There was asked of them only a haphazard and stimulating warfare, of the sort dear to all hillmen.
Scarborough Castle fell, and when the news was brought—they were dining at the moment in a wooded dell between Beamsley and Langbar—the Governor lifted his hat with pleasant gravity.
"God rest the gentlemen of Scarborough. They have earned their holiday, as we have."
Michael was busy with the stew-pot, hanging gipsy-wise on three sticks above a fire of gorse and fir-cones. "It's hey for Skipton-in-Craven," he said with a cheery smile. "I aye liked the comely town, and now the King will know that she was the last in all the North to stand for him."
"Maybe Skipton has fallen, too, by this time," chided the Squire. "You were always one for dreams, Michael."
Michael was silent till the meal was ended. Then he mowed a swath of thistles with his sword, and brought the spoil to Elizabeth, tethered to a neighbouring tree. She brayed at him with extreme tenderness.
"Now that we're well victualled, friends," he said lazily, "who comes with me to hear how it fares with Skipton?"
The Governor did not like the venture—the hazard of it seemed too great—but Squire Metcalf did.
"How d'ye hold together at all, Michael?" roared the Squire. "So much folly and such common sense to one man's body—it must be a civil war within yourself."
Michael glanced at Joan Grant with an instinct of which he repented instantly. "It is, sir. Since I was born into this unhappy world, there has been civil war inside me. I need an outlet now."
"You shall have it, lad."
"And you call this common sense?" asked the Governor, with good-tempered irony.
"Ay, of the Yoredale sort. A blow or two in Skipton High Street—who knows what heart it might give the garrison?"
"I must remind you that we have women-folk to guard, and our wounded."
"But, sir, this is a Metcalf riding, all like the olden time. We never meant your Knaresborough men to share it."
Yet some of the Knaresborough men would not be denied; and the Governor, as he saw the sixty horsemen ride over and down to Beamsley-by-the-Wharfe, wished that his private conscience would let him journey with them. He stood watching the hill-crest long after they had disappeared, and started when a hand was laid gently on his arm.
"It is hard to stay?" asked Lady Ingilby.
"By your leave, yes. Why should these big Metcalfs have all the frolic?"
"Ah, frolic! As if there were naught in life but gallop, and cut and thrust, and——sir, is there no glory in staying here to guard weak?"
The Governor was in evil mood. He had seen the King's cause go, had seen Knaresborough succumb, had watched the steadfast loyalty of a lifetime drift down the stream of circumstance like a straw in a headlong current.
"Lady Ingilby," he said wearily, "there is no longer any glory anywhere. It has gone from the land."
"It is here among us. Till we were broken folk, I did not know our strength. None but the Stuart, friend, could have kept us in such friendliness and constancy. Oh, I know! I saw you glance round for your horse when the Metcalfs went—saw your struggle fought out, sir—and, believe me, you were kind to stay."
They finished their interrupted meal at leisure; and it was not till about four of the clock that Miss Bingham, who had strayed afield to pick a bunch of valley lilies, came running back to camp. The two men in pursuit blundered headlong into the enemy before they saw their peril; and they found scant shrift.
Miss Bingham, thoroughbred beneath her whimsies, halted a moment to regain her courage. "These are but outposts, sir," she said. "From the hill-top I could see a whole company of Roundheads."
"Their number," asked the Governor—"and are they mounted?"
"More than our own, I think, and they go on foot."
"And half of us wounded. Come, gentlemen, there's no time to waste."
His weariness was gone. Alert, masterful, almost happy, he bade the women get further down the hill, out of harm's way. He gave his men their stations—little knots of them cowering under clumps of gorse and broom—until the land seemed empty of all human occupation. Only Elizabeth, the wayward ass, lifted up her voice from time to time, after finishing the last of the thistles Michael had given her. And suddenly, as they waited, the Governor let a sharp oath escape him.
"This comes of letting women share a fight. In the name of reason, why is Miss Bingham running up the hill again?"
They peered over the gorse, saw the tall, lithe figure halt, clearly limned against the sky-line. They heard her voice, pitiful and pleading.
"Parliament men, I am alone and friendless. Will you aid me?"
A steel-capped Roundhead showed above the hill-crest. "There are plenty to aid such a comely lass as thee," he said, his rough Otley burr cutting the summer's silence like a blunt-edged knife.
"Then follow quickly."
The Governor laughed gently as he watched Miss Bingham turn and race down the hill. "A rare plucked one, she," he muttered, "kin to Jael, I fancy, wife of Heber the Kenite."
She passed close by him on her breathless run down hill and joined the women-folk below. And the next moment the red havoc of it began. The Roundheads saw their leader race forward, and followed in close order. Down the slope they poured, and every clump of gorse spat out at them with a red and murderous fire. Then the Knaresborough men were up and into them, and when their leader got back to Otley with the remnants of his men, he protested that "he'd fancied, like, they'd ta'en all the hornets' nests i' Yorkshire, but some few thrifty wasps were breeding still."
"Why do you laugh?" said Lady Ingilby, when the Governor came down to tell her all was well.
"Because luck is as skew-tempered as the jackass braying yonder. Have the Metcalfs had such frolic out at Skipton, think ye? And I was keen to ride with them—Miss Bingham, I owe you reparation. When I saw you move up the hill yonder, I cursed you for a woman."
"That was unwise, sir. As well curse Elizabeth because she is a donkey, and yearns for absent friends; or the jack-snipe, because his flight is slanting; or any of us who are made as we are made."
"We thought you light of heart, child, in the old days at Knaresborough. Yet none of us could have planned a neater ambush."
"It was my old pastime, after all. How often you've chided me for luring men into folly. Oh, what wise and solemn discourses you have given me, sir, on the unwisdom of it!"
"There was wisdom in it this time. But for the ambush, we could not have faced the odds."
For the next hour she busied herself with bandaging the men's hurts; then, with a restlessness that had been growing on her since the Metcalfs went, she climbed the hill again. Only Blake saw her go. Unrest had been his comrade, too, since he found himself sharing this odd gipsy life with the woman he asked least to meet on this side or the other of the grave.
He followed with reluctance and a smile at his own folly. She was standing on the hill-crest, one hand shading her eyes, as if she looked for some one to arrive.
"Does he come, Miss Bingham?" asked Blake.
She turned with a fury that died away and left her helpless. There was derision, heart-ache, pity, in Blake's mobile face.
"Is all forgot, then, Mr. Blake? There was a time in Knaresborough, at the ferry-steps, when you thought kindly of me."
"There was. I ask you for some explanation of the madness. To my shame, the memory came and weakened me years after—when I found myself in Oxford, to be precise, and heard the nightingales. Answer the riddle. How can a thing so slight and empty hinder a grown man?"
"You are bitter, unforgiving."
"Neither. I've ridden too many evil roads to remember bitterness. It is simply that I'm tired and filled with wonder. Tell me why Oxford and the nightingales opened an old wound afresh."
"It goes back to Eve's days, I think," murmured Miss Bingham.
Demureness, coquetry, the hint of tears and laughter in her eyes—all should have disarmed Blake.
"Ay, find other shoulders for the blame," he said impassively.
"As Adam did."
Again the easy insolence failed her at need. She was aware that no nimbleness of tongue could help her now. Blake stood there like some judge whose bias against the prisoner at the bar was hardening.
"After all, you owe me gratitude," she went on hurriedly. "If it had not been that I'm fickle—oh, I admit as much—you would not stand where you stand now. I remember you so well—gay, easy-going, with a tongue that made one half believe your flattery. And now? You're Blake the rider—little Blake—Blake who never tires. I see men lift their heads when your name is mentioned, and hear their praise. Did I do so ill at Knaresborough, to set you on the road?"
"You broke my heart. If that was to do well—why, my thanks, Miss Bingham."
It was then, for the first time, that knowledge came to her, as if a veil were lifted. She saw the years behind. Vanity, pride of conquest, zest in the hunting for hunting's sake—these had been her luxuries. She had not guessed that the sport might cripple men for life.
"Why do you tell me this—you who are so proud and reticent?"
"Not for my pleasure," he answered drily. "There's a lad of the Metcalfs I have a liking for. I would save him from my sort of fate, if that could be."
He could not understand the change in her. She was fierce, vindictive. Through the velvet dalliance of her life the claws flashed out. Then, in a moment, she repented. Her voice grew smooth and insolent again.
"Oh, Puritan, because you have forgotten how to play, you would put all light-hearted folk in prison. Sir, by your leave, I wait here till one Christopher Metcalf returns from Skipton town. I wish him very well."
"Then heaven help him, madam," said Blake, and went down the hill in search of better cheer.
The Metcalfs long ago had come to Embsay, and up the further hill that gave them a clear view of Skipton. The long, grey church, the Castle's sturdy front, the beautiful, wide street, rich in the summer's greenery that bordered it, lay spread before them in the golden sunlight. The market-square was packed with men, and the hubbub of the crowd came up the rise.
The Squire of Nappa had called a halt because their horses needed a breathing-space before they put their project into action. More than once, during the ride out, they had laughed at the humour of their plan, though most men would have been thinking of the extreme hazard. They proposed, in fact, to get behind the Roundheads' position on Cock Hill, to charge them unexpectedly from the rear, and to capture their cannonry by sheer speed of onset.
"It will be a tale to set the whole North in a roar," said the Squire. "And the Royalists up hereabout, God knows, have need of laughter these days."
"Ay, but look yonder, sir," put in Christopher gravely.
The Squire followed the direction of his hand. In the sunlit market-square they saw Mallory, the Governor, ride over the lowered drawbridge. After him came the gentry and the ladies of the garrison, then soldiery on foot; and, last of all, the stable-boys and cooks and scullions, who had ministered for two long years to the needs of those besieged.
Mallory was erect and buoyant. Standards waved in the merry breeze, their colours glowing in the sunlight.
"What does it mean?" asked Christopher. "It is no sortie; yet they ride with heads up, as if life went very well with them."
The old Squire passed a hand across his eyes. Feeling ran deep with him at all times; and now it was as if he looked years ahead and saw the King himself go out in just this fashion, proud, resolute, content with the day's necessary work.
"It means, my lad," he said roughly, "that Skipton-in-Craven has yielded at long last. But she goes out with the full honours of war, and she can boast till the Trump o' Doom that she was the last in Yorkshire to stand for the King's Majesty."
They rode a little nearer to the town. And now they could see that the crowd thronging the High Street was made up of Parliament men, who moved to one side and the other, clearing a route for the outgoing garrison. They saw Lambert ride forward, salute Sir John Mallory with grave punctilio—heard Mallory's voice come lightly on the wind, as if he exchanged a jest—and then the long procession passed, with banners flying, and the tale of Skipton's siege was ended.
"Best turn about, Metcalfs," growled the Squire. "We can do nothing here. There'll be the women wanting us out Beamsley way, and Michael has his donkey to attend to."
"True," assented Michael. "All's gone—Marston, York, Skipton—but Elizabeth is with us still. There's many a kick left in li'le Elizabeth."
So—with laughter, lest they cried—the Metcalf men took route again for Beamsley. And the Squire rode far ahead, with a stormy grief and a sense of utter desolation for companions.
Kit, seeing his father's trouble, was minded to spur forward and help him in his need; but Michael checked him.
"He has the black dog on his shoulders. Best leave him to it."
"Why, yes. That is the Metcalf way, I had forgotten, Michael."
When they neared the hill that was the last of their climb, up and over into Beamsley, they saw the slim figure of a woman, tall against the sky; and, as they came nearer still, Michael—whose sight was like a hawk's—told them that Miss Bingham was waiting there to bring them back.
"Kind and sonsy, she," laughed one of the late garrison at Knaresborough.
"You will unsay that, sir," said Christopher.
"There's nothing to unsay. Kind and sonsy—daft hot-head, you might say that of your own mother."
"In a different tone. You will unsay it."
"And why? We Knaresborough men seldom unsay anything, until our windpipes are cut clean in two."
"There's for a good Irishman!" said Michael, putting his bulk between the combatants. "He'll talk, says he, when his windpipe is in two. They could not better that in Donegal."
So the quarrel was blown abroad by the laughter of their fellows; but Michael, as they jogged up the hill, grew dour and silent. Kit's sudden heat astonished him. He had not guessed that the lad's regard for Miss Bingham went deeper than the splash of a pebble in a summer's pool.
When they reached the hill-top, a fresh surprise awaited him. Miss Bingham was standing there, with pale, drawn face; and her eyes searched eagerly for one only of the company, and disdained the rest.
[image]"Her eyes searched eagerly for one only of the company, and disdained the rest."
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"Her eyes searched eagerly for one only of the company, and disdained the rest."
Michael could not believe it. Her easy handling of the world she knew by heart—the levity that cloaked all feeling—were gone. She put a hand on Kit's bridle-arm as he rode up, and forgot, it seemed, that many folk were looking on.
"You are wounded. No? Then how fares it out at Skipton?"
The old Squire had seen the drift of things with an eye as keen as Michael's; and in his present mood he was intolerant of women and all gentler matters. "It has sped bonnily," he snapped. "Skipton has gone down-stream with the flood, Miss Bingham, and there's no more to do, save tend women's vapours and feed Michael's jackass."
She smiled pleasantly at this man in evil mood. "Sir, that is not like you. If your courtesy towards women has gone, too, then chivalry is ended for all time."
The Metcalfs waited for the Squire's rejoinder. None guessed how the rebuke would take him; but all knew how deep he was wading in the chill bog of adversity. They saw him lift his head in fury, saw him relent with hardship.
"Miss Bingham," he said, "there was a sorrow and a madness at my heart. You are right. If I forget courtesy toward women, I forget the wife who bred tall sons for me in Yoredale."
He went apart that night and took counsel of his God, on the high lands where the birds seemed to rise for matins almost as soon as evensong was ended. He came down again for early breakfast in the woodland camp, with all the grace of youth about him, in high spirits, ready for the day's surprises.
CHAPTER XXIII.
YOREDALE.
From that day forward, the first strangeness of their gipsy life grew to be familiar, usual. Little by little the Parliament soldiery went south or westward, to share in the attack on Royalist garrisons still unaffected by the disastrous news from Yorkshire; but the country was infested by roving bands of cut-purses and murderers—men who had hung on the skirts of civil war, ready to be King's men or Levellers, when they knew which side claimed the victory.
It was the exploits of these prowling rascals that set many a story going of the outrages committed by true Roundheads, who had no share in them; but the Squire of Nappa was not concerned with public rumour or the judgment of generations to come after. His whole heart—all the untiring watchfulness that had made him a leader of picked cavalry—were centred in this new, appalling peril. Day by day the raff and jetsom of the country moved abroad in numbers that steadily increased. They were not dangerous in the open against the disciplined men of Knaresborough and Nappa; but they asked for constant vigilance, as if the wolf-packs of old days had returned to haunt these moorland solitudes.
They were heading by short stages to Nappa; for, as the Squire explained, there was room enough in house and outbuildings to house them all, and they might well hold it for the King, if the chance of war brought the tumult North again.
"A hard-bitten bull-dog, you," said the Governor of Knaresborough.
"Ay, maybe. I guard my own, and there's a sort of bite about a Mecca when he's roused."
"There is, sir—a Yorkshire bite, they say."
Their route was hindered, not only by prowling vagabonds, but by the men who fell sick by the wayside, now that the stress of the big fight was ended, and they had leisure to take count of wounds. Miss Bingham went among the fallen, bandaging a wound here, giving a cup of water there, bringing constantly the gift she had of soothing sick men's fancies.
Once—it was when they camped on Outlaw Moss, and the gloaming found her nursing little Blake—the Governor and Squire Metcalf halted as they made their round of the camp.
"So Blake has given in at last," said the Squire. "Pity he didn't learn that lesson years ago."
"That is true, sir," said Miss Bingham gravely. "With a broken heart, there's no shame in lying down by the wayside. He should have done it long since."
The Governor laughed, as if a child's fancy had intruded into the workaday routine. "The jest will serve, Miss Bingham. We know Blake, and, believe me, he never had a heart to be broken. Whipcord and sinew—he rides till he drops, with no woman's mawkishness to hinder him."
"No mawkishness," she agreed. "I give you good-night, gentlemen. He needs me, if he is not to die before the dawn."
"Oh, again your pardon," said the Governor roughly. "You played in Knaresborough—you were always playing—and we thought you light."
"So I am, believe me, when men are able to take care of themselves. It is when they're weak that I grow foolish and a nurse."
Metcalf and the Governor were silent as they went their round, until the Squire turned abruptly.
"My wife is like that," he said, as if he had captured some new truth, unguessed by the rest of a dull world. "Ay, and my mother, God rest her. Memories of cradle-days return, when we are weak; they show their angel side."
"There's only one thing ails Miss Bingham—she's a woman to the core of her. Eh, Metcalf, it must be troublesome to be a woman. I'd liefer take all my sins pick-a-back, and grumble forward under the weight, and be free of whimsies."
Through the short summer's night, Miss Bingham tended Blake. She heard him talk of Knaresborough and the ferry-steps—always the ferry-steps. She learned all that she had seemed to him, and wondered how any man could view any woman through such a pleasant mist of worship. Then she listened to the tale of his rude awakening, and winced as he spoke in delirium words that could never be forgotten. And then again they were watching Nidd River swirl beneath them, and he was busy with a lover's promises. When he slept at last, wearied by the speed of his own fancies, she sat watching him. A round, white moon had climbed over the edge of Outlaw Moss. She saw the lines of hardship in his face—lines bitten in by harsh weather of the world and of the soul.
"Poor Blake," she thought, "ah, poor li'le Blake!"
From the foolery that had been her life till now there came a gust of sickliness. Blake could not live till dawn. She would go afield while they were hiding him under the earth, would bring wild flowers and strew them broadcast over his resting-place. She would pray tenderly at his graveside.
Already she half believed these pious exercises would recompense Blake for the loss of all he had cared for in this life. He would know that she was there, and look down on the fret and burden of his heartbreak as a thing well worth the while. She would smother his dead grief with flowers and penitence.
It was Blake himself who disordered the well-planned poetry. He did not die at dawn. They waited three days on Outlaw Moss till they knew that he would live, and four days afterwards until his old laugh returned, and he could get his knees about a saddle. Then they went forward another stage on the slow journey out to Nappa.
Miss Bingham stood between the old world and the new; and that experience, for any man or woman's soul, is hazardous. She saw herself in true outline. As others gambled with gold and silver pieces, she had played with hearts. She had not known the value of the stakes; but now she understood. One by one, in memory's cold procession, she saw them pass—Blake, his young soul on fire with worship; Anstruther, who had persisted in throning her among the stars, and who was now, they said, no company for any gentry save those of wayside taverns. She hid her eyes. Spoiled, wayward, she resented the discipline of penance. Day by day she thought more of Christopher, and welcomed his sturdy self-reliance as a shield against her past.
Day by day, too, Joan Grant grew more silent, more aloof from the haphazard routine of their life among the hills. And the whole camp looked on, afraid for their idol, Christopher, afraid for Joan, great loathing for Miss Bingham growing in their midst.
Miss Bingham, well aware of the hostility, did not know whether her heart were hardened or softened by it. It was as if she stood in the thick of a northern March—sunshine on one side of the hedge, sleet and a bitter wind on the other. But there came a day when she carried her troubles to a little, ferny glen hidden deep among the pastures and the heather. Their morning's route had brought them near to Hawes, the grey village that gathers the spreading Yorkshire dales into its hand as a lady holds an open fan. The camp was busy, dining on odds and ends—mutton, cabbage, herbs, all stewing fragrantly in a pot reared gipsy-wise over a fire of wood—and Miss Bingham heard their laughter come up the breeze.
They had purchased a barrel of home-brewed ale from a neighbouring tavern, and were toasting Blake at the moment.
"Here's to li'le Blake, who never tires," said the Squire.
"Why should he?" put in Michael. "Women have never troubled him, I wager."
"At your age, youngster, to go flouting the good sex!" growled the Governor.
"Your pardon, sir. The sex has flouted me. I'm envying Blake because he had mother-wit to steer wide of trouble. Even Elizabeth, who dotes on me, is full of the most devilish caprices."
Kit grew impatient of it all. He was in no mood for the banter and light jests that eased the journey home to Nappa. There was a fever in his blood, a restlessness whose cause was known to every man in camp except himself. He sought some hiding-place, with the instinct of all wounded folk; and his glance fell on a wooded gorge that showed as a sanctuary set in the middle of a treeless land.
He came down the path between the honeysuckle and the flowering thorns. There was a splash of water down below, and he had in mind to bathe in some sequestered pool and wash away the heat and trouble of the times.
He found the pool, green with reflected leafage, deep and murmurous, and saw Miss Bingham seated at its brink. She turned with a smile of welcome.
"I knew that you would come, my Puritan. There is room beside me here. Sit and tell me—all that the waterfall is singing—the might-have-beens, the fret and bubble of this life—the never-ending wonder that men should die for their King when there are easier roads to follow."
"Ask the stream." Kit's laugh was unsteady, and his voice seemed to come from far-away. "To die for the King—it may not be ease, but surely it is happiness."
"Talk to me. Tell me how he looked—the King—when you saw him there in Oxford. And Rupert? His name alone brings back the old Crusading days, before we grew tired of poetry."
She beguiled him into talk. She spun a web about him, fine as gossamer and strong as hempen rope. All the route south to Oxford—the return by way of Lathom House—the queer way of their entry into York—took on a new significance and glamour as she prompted him with eager, maidish questions.
"So you came to York as a Puritan? There would be no great disguise in that, as I have told you often. Ah, no wrath, I pray you! Women laugh at—at those they care for, lest they care too much."
Kit seemed to be in some poppyland of dreams. He had travelled that country once already in Miss Bingham's company—at the ferry-steps in Knaresborough. Then he had been weak of body, recovering slowly from a sickness she had nursed. Now he was hale and ruddy; but there is a weakness of great health, and this found him now. Gallop and trot over perilous roads, rude bivouacs by night and rough-handed war by day—these had been his life since, long ago, he had left the ripening Yoredale corn. He was weary of the effort, now that it was over; and all the gardens he had known, all the ease and softness of summer skies, were gathered round this woman who shared the glen with him.
"And there was Marston," she said, breaking the silence.
"Ay, God knows there was Marston. Rupert, the Squire, and I—the three of us lying in a bean-field, listening to the wounded there in Wilstrop Wood—I can hear the uproar now."
"Ah! forget it. It is over and done with. You have earned your ease."
Kit believed it. The poppy odours were about him, thick as the scent of flowering beans that had all but sent Rupert and himself to their last sleep at Marston. The strong, up-country gospel whispered at his ear that no man earns his ease this side the grave. He would not heed the whisper. It was good to be here with the lapping water, the smell of woodland growth, the woman who cast pleasant spells about him.
A great pity stirred in her, against her will. She grew aware of things beyond the dalliance of each day's affairs. Here, weak in her hands, was a man to be made or marred; and he seemed well on the way to lose all because she bade him. Compunction came to her. She was minded to laugh out of court this grave affair, and send him out, as she had done others, with great faith in her own instability.
Yet she was powerless. The war her men-folk had waged against the adversary—their simple faith in kingship threading all their days, of fight and drink and banter, with a golden skein—had touched the heart that had been cold till now. By his own strength he must win through this combat she had forced on him—or by his own weakness he must take her hand and lead her through the years that must for ever be made up of broken vows.
Kit got to his feet, paced up and down irresolutely. He was fighting for the kingship of his soul, and all the glen went dizzying by him. It was a simple matter that brought back the memory of ancient loyalty and faith—just the song of the water as it splashed down its ferny bed. He glanced sharply round, saw the fall of the stream, with sunlight and the glint of shadowed leafage on its ripples. He remembered just such a waterfall, just such a sheltered glen, away in Yoredale.
The poppy-sleep was on him still. Yoredale was far away, and Joan's tongue was barbed with nettle-stings these days. Better to take his ease, and have done with effort. He glanced again at the water splashing down its steep rock-face; and suddenly he stood at attention, as if the King confronted him. It might be his fancy; it might be some chance play of light and shade, made up of dancing water and leafage swaying in the summer's breeze; but the thing he saw was a sword, silver-bright—a big, two-handed sword with its hilt clear against the sky, and its point hidden in the pool below. He stood for a moment, bewildered. Then a great sob broke up the grief and hardship that had been his since Marston.
She followed the pointing of his finger, but saw nothing save water slipping down the cool rock-front.
Then she glanced at his face, and saw that the days of her sorcery were ended.
A forlorn self-pity numbed her. If he had broken faith with Joan Grant, she would have recompensed him—have been the tenderest wife in Christendom, because he had found her womanhood for her—had taught her heart to beat, instead of fluttering idly to every breeze that roamed.
"Sir, I hate you most devoutly," she said. "Get up the wood again. I used to laugh at all good Puritans, and the memory would hurt me if you stayed."
Kit was never one to hide his light or darkness from a prying world. The whole camp had seen his madness, had marvelled at the change in him—his sudden tempers, his waywardness, his hot impatience for fight of some kind—with his fellows or with any roaming band of enemies that chanced to cross, their path. Now they wondered that he went among them with a new light about his face, a gaiety that was not so heedless as of old, but riper and more charitable.
"The Babe grows up," said Michael to the Squire, as they jogged forward over sultry roads.
"It will be a thrifty growth, lad. If I could say as much of thee, I'd be content."
"Oh, I'm past gibes, sir. Elizabeth, alone of you all—she understands me. We have long ears and long wits, she and I. Believe me, we are wise."
They came at last to their own country, and the Knaresborough men wondered why jest and high spirits ceased among the Riding Metcalfs. They did not guess how rooted in the homeland were the affections of these men who had gone abroad to play their part in the big issue of King and Parliament. They could not divine the mist of tenderness and yearning that veiled their eyes as they saw the slopes of Yoredale run to meet their eager gallop. Wounds, havoc of battlefields that had seen brave hopes lost, all were forgotten. They were back among the greening corn again.
The Squire lost courage, for the first time since the riding out, when he reached the gate of his own homestead and saw his wife run forward in answer to the rousing challenge of "A Mecca for the King!"
She came to his saddle, lifted up her face, as a bride might do for the nuptial kiss. She looked for Kit, the well-beloved, and for Michael. Then her glance ran to and fro among the company, seeking for remembered faces; and memory found many gaps. She faced her husband. There was accusation in her voice; for she had sat at home with weariness and fear and abnegation, and all her strength was gone.
"Where are the rest?" she asked.
"Serving the King, wife, wherever they be. I'll go warrant for a Metcalf beyond the gates of this world."
With a coldness that dismayed them, she counted her living Metcalfs. "A hundred and twenty rode out. Fifty and two return. The sunshine hurts me."
"They did well—no man can do more."
Those looking on saw courage struggle through her weakness, and in their hearts they knew that warfare had shown nothing finer. "I—I shall pray that this bitterness may go from me. I shall hope to tell them—oh, a little later on—that it is good to die for the King's Majesty."
They saw her waver, saw the old, indomitable pride return.
"Metcalfs, well done—oh, well done! I am proud of my living—and my dead."
"God rest their souls, wife. They have harvested their corn."
As the weeks passed on, and grief and wounds alike were healing, a new disquiet stole in and out among the men quartered in Nappa's hospitable house and outbuildings. They were idling here. If Marston Moor had killed the cause in the north, there was battle doing further south.
The Squire's wife watched it brewing, this new menace to all that was left of her happiness. She knew, that it was idle to resist or to persuade. She had bred men-sons for the King's service, and must abide by it.
Joan Grant was younger to experience. First-love was hindering her vision of what her man must do before he came to his kingdom; and she quarrelled openly with Christopher, as they came home together through the gloaming August fields.
"So you are weary of me in a month?" she said, halting at the stile. "Ah, the pity of it. It was here—or have you forgotten?—that I bade you climb high if you would find my heart. And you climbed and—and found it, and now you talk of battle—only of battle and the King."
All his world seemed to fail him—the will to ride out again until there was no more asked of him but to return and claim her—the certainty that she would be the first to give God-speed to his errand—all were drowned in this storm of tears and petulance that broke about him. Yet he remembered the sword that had stood, its point in the woodland stream, its hilt against the clear, blue sky above. He did not waver this time, for his love was no beguilement, but a spur that urged him forward.
"I go," he said roughly.
"And if you lose me in the going?"
"Then I lose you—there's no choice."
She got down from the stile, rebellious, fitful as a gusty spring. It was only when they neared the homestead that she turned, her eyes bright and eager, and touched his hand. "I am glad—oh, I am glad!" she said.
Late that afternoon Miss Bingham and little Blake had gone for a moorland ride together. Blake had made a false recovery from his weakness, as soon as he learned that there was to be another riding-out, and had urged that he must get his mare in trim again by daily rides. And Miss Bingham had insisted that his nurse went with him, lest he fell by the way.
In all her wide experience of men she had not met one so gay, so tranquil, so entirely master of what had been, of what was to come, as this little Irishman whose health had gone down the stream of high adventure. With a broken heart and a broken body, he thought only of the coming rides through lonely night-roads, of Meccas riding again for the King they served, of the dust and rain of circumstance. He remembered droll stories, flavoured by Irish wit and heedlessness. He fell, between whiles, into passionate hope of what was to come, when the King came to his own in the south country, by help of the Riding Metcalfs, and drove the rebels from the north. Then, with a gentleness that laughed at itself, he explained that it was good to have sat on the ferry-steps at Knaresborough.
"I lost—but the stakes were well worth winning. The Blakes were ever gamblers."
She had great skill in tending the wounded. In the man's face she read many signs of bodily weakness. His voice—his detachment from the gross affairs of life—told their own tale. But she did not look for it so soon.
At the gate of the farmstead, just as he dismounted, Blake fell prone in the roadway, and tried to rise, and could not.
When Joan and Kit Metcalf returned—it might be a half-hour later—they found Miss Bingham kneeling at the dead man's side. And her face, when she lifted it, was a woman's face—grave, charitable, tender with some forward hope.
"Here's little Blake," she said. "He rides very well, my friends."
THE END.
LONDON: WARD, LOCK & Co., LIMITED.