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Chapter 02 Test Bank

Student:

1. An individual has an absolute advantage in producing pizzas if that individual:

A. has a lower opportunity cost of producing pizzas than anyone else.

B. can produce more pizzas in a given amount of time than anyone
else. C. has a higher opportunity cost of producing pizzas than
anyone else.
D. charges the lowest price for pizzas.

2. If Al has an absolute advantage over Beth in preparing meals,

then: A. it takes Al more time to prepare a meal than Beth.

B. the problem of scarcity applies to Beth but not to Al.
C. Al's opportunity cost of preparing a meal is lower than is
Beth's. D. Al can prepare more meals in a given time period
than Beth.

3. If Les can produce two pairs of pants per hour while Eva can produce one pair per hour, then it must be true

that: A. Les has a comparative advantage in producing pants.

B. Les has an absolute advantage in producing pants.
C. Eva has a comparative advantage in producing pants.
D. Les has both comparative and absolute advantage in producing pants.

4. If a nation can produce a more computers per year than any other nation, that nation has a(n) advantage in the production of

computers. A. comparative
B. absolute
C. relative
D. natural
5. If you have a comparative advantage in a particular task,

then: A. you are better at it than other people.

B. you give up more to accomplish that task than do others.
C. you give up less to accomplish that task than do
others. D. you have specialized in that task, while others
have not.
6. Larry has a comparative advantage over his classmates in writing term papers if he:

A. can write term papers faster than his

classmates. B. has an absolute advantage in
writing term papers. C. always earns an A on his
term papers.
D. has a lower opportunity cost of writing term papers than his classmates.

7. If a nation has the lowest opportunity cost of producing a good, that nation has a(n) in the production of that

good. A. comparative advantage

B. absolute advantage
C. comparative advantage and an absolute advantage
D. absolute advantage and possibly a comparative advantage.

8. Which of the following statements is true?

A. Absolute advantage implies comparative advantage.

B. Comparative advantage does not require absolute
advantage. C. Absolute advantage requires comparative
advantage.
D. Comparative advantage requires absolute advantage.

9. If Jane can produce 3 pairs of shoes per hour, while Bob can produce 2, then has a(n) advantage in producing shoes.

A. Jane; absolute
B. Jane; comparative
C. Bob; absolute
D. Bob; comparative

10. Refer to the table below. According to the table, Martha has the absolute advantage in:

A. pies.
B. neither pies nor
cakes. C. cakes.
D. both pies and cakes.
11. Refer to the table below. According to the table, Julia has the absolute advantage
in:

A. pies.
B. neither pies nor
cakes. C. cakes.
D. both pies and cakes.

12. Refer to the table below. Martha's opportunity cost of making of a pie
is:

A. 3/4 of a cake.
B. 4/3 of a cake.
C. 8 cakes.
D. 80 cakes.
13. Refer to the table below. Martha's opportunity cost of making a cake
is:

A. 3/4 of a pie.
B. 4/3 of a pie.
C. 6 pies.
D. 60 pies.

14. Refer to the table below. Julia's opportunity cost of making a pie
is:

A. 60 cakes
B. 6 cakes
C. 6/5 of a cake
D. 5/6 of a cake
15. Refer to the table below. Julia's opportunity cost of making a cake
is:

A. 60 cakes
B. 6 cakes
C. 6/5 of a cake
D. 5/6 of a cake

16. Refer to the table above. has the comparative advantage in making pies and the comparative advantage in making cakes.

A. Martha; Martha
B. Julia; Julia
C. Martha; Julia
D. Julia; Martha
17. Refer to the table below. Based on their comparative advantage, Martha should while Julia should specialize in
specialize in .

A. pies; cakes
B. cakes; pies
C. neither pies nor cakes; both pies and cakes
D. both pies and cakes; neither pies nor cakes

18. Suppose it takes Dan 5 minutes to make a sandwich and 15 minutes to make a smoothie, and it takes Tracy 6 minutes to make a sandwich and 12 minutes to
make a smoothie. What is the opportunity cost to Dan of making a sandwich?

A. 1/3 of a smoothie
B. 3 smoothies
C. 15
smoothies D. 5
smoothies

19. Suppose it takes Dan 5 minutes to make a sandwich and 15 minutes to make a smoothie, and it takes Tracy 6 minutes to make a sandwich and 12 minutes to
make a smoothie. Which of the following statements is correct?

A. Dan has the comparative advantage in smoothies, but Tracy has the absolute advantage in
smoothies. B. Dan has the comparative and absolute advantage in sandwiches.
C. Dan has the comparative and absolute advantage in smoothies.
D. Dan has the comparative advantage in sandwiches, but Tracy has the absolute advantage in sandwiches.
20. Suppose it takes Dan 5 minutes to make a sandwich and 15 minutes to make a smoothie, and it takes Tracy 6 minutes to make a sandwich and 12 minutes to
make a smoothie. Which of the following statements is correct?

A. Tracy should specialize in sandwiches and

smoothies.
B. Dan should specialize in smoothies, and Tracy should specialize in
sandwiches. C. Dan should specialize in sandwiches, and Tracy should specialize
in smoothies. D. Dan should specialize in both sandwiches and smoothies.

21. Suppose it takes Paul 3 hours to bake a cake and 2 hours to move the lawn, and suppose it takes Tom 2 hours to bake a cake and 1 hour to mow the lawn.
Which of the following statements is correct?

A. Paul has the absolute advantage in baking cakes

B. Paul has the comparative in mowing the lawn
C. Paul has the comparative in baking cakes
D. Paul has the absolute advantage in mowing the
lawn.

22. Suppose Cathy and Lewis work in a bakery making pies and cakes. Suppose it takes Cathy 1.5 hours to make a pie and 1 hour to make a cake, and suppose it
takes
Lewis 2 hours to make a pie and 1.5 hours to make a cake. Which of the following statements is correct?

A. Cathy has a comparative advantage in pies, and Lewis has an absolute advantage in
pies. B. Cathy has a comparative and absolute advantage in pies.
C. Lewis has a comparative and absolute advantage in
pies.
D. Lewis has a comparative advantage in pies, and Cathy has an absolute advantage in
pies.

23. Suppose Cathy and Lewis work in a bakery making pies and cakes. Suppose it takes Cathy 1.5 hours to make a pie and 1 hour to make a cake, and suppose it
takes
Lewis 2 hours to make a pie and 1.5 hours to make a cake. Which of the following statements is correct?

A. Cathy should specialize in both pies and

cakes. B. There are no gains from specialization
and trade.
C. Lewis should specialize in pies, and Cathy should specialize in
cakes.
D. Cathy should specialize in pies, and Lewis should specialize in
cakes.
24. Suppose Cathy and Lewis work in a bakery making pies and cakes. Suppose it takes Cathy 1.5 hours to make a pie and 1 hour to make a cake, and suppose it
takes
Lewis 2 hours to make a pie and 1.5 hours to make a cake. What is the opportunity cost to Cathy of making a cake?

A. 2/3 of a
pie. B. 1 pie.
C. 1.5 pies.
D. 1.33 pies.

25. Refer to the table below. According to the table, Corey has the absolute advantage in:

A. making pizza.
B. neither making nor delivering
pizza. C. delivering pizza.
D. making and delivering pizza.
26. Refer to the table below. According to the table, Pat has the absolute advantage
in:

A. making pizza.
B. neither making nor delivering
pizza. C. delivering pizza.
D. making and delivering
pizza.

27. Refer to the table below. Corey's opportunity cost of making of a pizza is delivering:

A. 2 pizzas.
B. 3/2 of a pizza.
C. 2/3 of a pizza.
D. 1/2 of a pizza.
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28. Refer to the table below. Corey's opportunity cost of delivering of a pizza is
making:

A. 6 pizzas.
B. 12
pizzas. C. 2
pizzas.
D. 1/2 of a pizza.

29. Refer to the table below. Pat's opportunity cost of making a pizza is delivering:

A. 3 pizzas
B. 2 pizzas
C. 3/2 of a pizza
D. 2/3 of a pizza
30. Refer to the table below. Pat's opportunity cost of delivering a pizza is
making:

A. 12 pizzas
B. 10 pizzas
C. 3/2 of a pizza
D. 2/3 of a pizza

31. Refer to the table below. has the comparative advantage in making pizza, and _ has the comparative advantage in delivering pizza.

A. Corey; Corey
B. Pat; Pat
C. Pat; Corey
D. Corey; Pat
32. Refer to the table below. Based on their comparative advantages, Pat should specialize in , and Corey should .
specialize in

A. delivering pizza; making pizza

B. making pizza; delivering pizza
C. neither making pizza nor delivering pizza; both making pizza and delivering pizza
D. both making pizza and delivering pizza; neither making pizza nor delivering pizza

33. Lou and Alex live together and share household chores. They like to cook some meals ahead of time and eat leftovers. The table below shows the number of
rooms they can each clean and the number of meals they can each cook in an hour.

Which of the following is true?

A. Lou has both an absolute advantage and a comparative advantage over Alex in both
tasks. B. Alex has a comparative advantage over Lou in cleaning.
C. Lou has a comparative advantage over Alex in cleaning.
D. Alex has both an absolute advantage and a comparative advantage over Lou in both tasks.
34. Lou and Alex live together and share household chores. They like to cook some meals ahead of time and eat leftovers. The table below shows the number of
rooms they can each clean and the number of meals they can each cook in an hour.

If Alex and Lou work out an efficient arrangement for these two chores, then under that arrangement:

A. Alex and Lou each would do half of the cooking and half of the
cleaning. B. Alex would do all of the cleaning, while Lou would do all the
cooking.
C. Lou would do all of the cleaning and all of the cooking.
D. Lou would do all of the cleaning, while Alex would do all of the cooking.

35. Lou and Alex live together and share household chores. They like to cook some meals ahead of time and eat leftovers. The table below shows the number of
rooms they can each clean and the number of meals they can each cook in an hour.

For Alex, the opportunity cost of cleaning one room is making meal(s); for Lou the opportunity cost of cleaning one room is making _ meal(s).

A. 4; 4
B. 1; 4/5
C. 1; 5/4
D. 3; 5
36. Dent 'n' Scratch Used Cars and Trucks employs 3 salesmen. Data for their sales last month are shown in this
table:

Based on last month's data, has an absolute advantage in selling cars and _ has an absolute advantage in selling trucks.

A. Joe; Joe
B. Larry; Ralph
C. Ralph; Larry
D. Larry; Joe

37. Dent 'n' Scratch Used Cars and Trucks employs 3 salesmen. Data for their sales last month are shown in this
table:

Based on last month's data, Larry's opportunity cost of selling a truck is selling:

A. 10 cars.
B. 1/2 of a
car. C. 1 car.
D. 2 cars.
38. Dent 'n' Scratch Used Cars and Trucks employs 3 salesmen. Data for their sales last month are shown in this
table:

Based on last month's data, Joe's opportunity cost of selling a truck is selling:

A. 9
cars. B.
1 car. C.
4 cars.
D. 1/3 of a car.

39. Dent 'n' Scratch Used Cars and Trucks employs 3 salesmen. Data for their sales last month are shown in this table:

Based on last month's data, Ralph's opportunity cost of selling a truck is selling:

A. 4 cars.
B. 1/3 of a
car. C. 3 cars.
D. 1/4 of a car.
40. Dent 'n' Scratch Used Cars and Trucks employs 3 salesmen. Data for their sales last month are shown in this
table:

Based on last month's data, Joe's opportunity cost of selling a car is than Ralph's, and Joe's opportunity cost of selling a car is than
Larry's.

A. less; greater
B. greater; less
C. less; less
D. greater; greater

41. Dent 'n' Scratch Used Cars and Trucks employs 3 salesmen. Data for their sales last month are shown in this table:

Based on last month's data, should specialize in truck sales, and _ should specialize in car sales.

A. Joe; Ralph
B. Ralph;
Larry C. Larry;
Ralph D.
Larry; Joe

42. The textbook notes that the last time a major league batter hit .400 was in 1941. This is

because: A. the average quality of batters has fallen.

B. the league imposes harsh penalties for steroid use.
C. specialization by pitchers, infielders, and outfielders has made it harder for batters to
hit. D. baseball diamonds have become larger.
43. Ginger and Maryann are lost in the jungle, where the only things to eat are mangoes and fish. Ginger can gather more mangoes per hour than Maryann and
can also catch more fish per hour than can Maryann. Therefore:

A. There are no gains to specialization and trade for Ginger.

B. There are no gains to specialization and trade for Maryann.
C. Maryann should specialize in the activity for which she has a comparative
advantage. D. Ginger should specialize in the activity for which she has an absolute
advantage.

44. In general, individuals and nations should specialize in producing those goods for which they have

a(n): A. absolute advantage.

B. comparative advantage.
C. absolutely comparative advantage.
D. absolute advantage and a comparative advantage.

45. In general, individuals and nations should specialize in producing goods other individuals or

nations. A. that they can produce more quickly than

B. that they can produce less quickly than
C. for which they have a lower opportunity cost compared to
D. for which they have a higher opportunity cost compared to

46. A country is most likely to have a comparative advantage in the production of

cars if: A. it imports most of the raw materials necessary to produce cars.
B. its citizens prefer driving cars to other forms of transportation.
C. it has strict environmental protection laws governing automobile
emissions. D. it has a relative abundance in the natural resources needed to
produce cars.

47. The United States generally has a comparative advantage in the development of technology because it

has: A. large amounts of natural resources.

B. a disproportionate share of the world's best research universities.
C. the greatest need for new technology.
D. patent laws, which no other country has.

48. The emergence of English as the de facto world language has a comparative advantage in the production of books, movies and popular

music: A. given English•speaking countries

B. given non•English•speaking countries
C. had no effect on which country has
D. given all countries
49. The United States was unable to maintain its dominance in the production of televisions because:

A. the highly technical skills necessary to produce televisions are greater in other
countries. B. the raw materials necessary to build televisions became scarce in the
United States.
C. the product designs evolved too rapidly for engineers in the United States to keep up.
D. automated techniques allowed production to be outsourced to countries with less•skilled workers.

50. A graph that illustrates the maximum amount of one good that can be produced for every possible level of production of the other good is

called a(n): A. production possibilities curve.

B. consumption possibilities curve.
C. production
function. D. supply
curve.

51. The production possibilities curve shows:

A. the minimum production of one good for every possible production level of the other good.
B. how increasing the resources used to produce one good increases the production of the other
good. C. the maximum production of one good for every possible production level of the other
good.
D. how increasing the production of one good allows production of the other good to also rise.

52. Points that lie outside the production possibilities curve are , and points that lie inside the production possibilities curve are .

A. efficient; inefficient
B. inefficient; efficient
C. unattainable; attainable
D. attainable; unattainable

53. Points that lie beneath the production possibilities curve

are: A. unattainable and inefficient

B. unattainable but efficient
C. attainable but inefficient
D. attainable and efficient

54. If a country is producing at point where an increase in the production of one good requires a reduction in the production of another good, then it must be
producing at an:

A. inefficient
point. B. efficient
point.
C. unattainable point.
D. undesirable point.
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55. Suppose Colin brews beer and makes cheese. If Colin can increase his production of beer without decreasing his production of cheese, then he is producing
at an:

A. inefficient
point. B. efficient
point.
C. unattainable point.
D. ideal point.

56. The downward slope of the production possibilities curve illustrates

the: A. Scarcity Principle.

B. Cost•Benefit Principle.
C. Incentive Principle.
D. Principle of Comparative Advantage.

57. The figure below shows the production possibilities curve for the island of Genovia:

The opportunity cost of producing a car in Genovia is:

A. 5,000 tons of agricultural

products. B. 500 tons of agricultural
products.
C. 5 tons of agricultural products.
D. 50 tons of agricultural products.
58. The figure below shows the production possibilities curve for the island of
Genovia:

The opportunity cost of producing one ton of agricultural products in Genovia is:

A. 1,000
cars. B. 1
car.
C. 1/5 of a car.
D. 1/50 of a car.
59. The figure below shows the production possibilities curve for the island of
Genovia:

If 500 cars are produced in Genovia, a maximum of tons of agricultural products can be produced.

A. 50,000
B. 25,000
C. 45,000
D. 40,000

60. The slope of a production possibilities curve is because _.

A. negative; producing more of one good requires producing less of the

other B. negative; producing less of one good requires producing less of
the other C. positive; producing more of one good requires producing
more of the other D. positive; producing more of one good requires
producing less of the other
61. The figure below shows Becky's daily production possibilities curve for dresses and
skirts.

The maximum number of dresses that Becky can make in a day is represented by point:

A. U
B. T
C. V
D. W
62. The figure below shows Becky's daily production possibilities curve for dresses and
skirts.

The maximum number of skirts that Becky can make in a day is represented by point:

A. U
B. T
C. V
D. Z
63. The figure below shows Becky's daily production possibilities curve for dresses and
skirts.

Point U is:

A.
attainable. B.
efficient.
C. unattainable.
D. inefficient.
64. The figure below shows Becky's daily production possibilities curve for dresses and
skirts.

Of the labeled points, only are attainable.

A. T and U
B. X, Y, and Z
C. W, X, Y, Z, and V
D. W, X, Y, Z, V, and T
65. The figure below shows Becky's daily production possibilities curve for dresses and
skirts.

Of the labeled points, only are efficient.

A. T and U
B. X, Y, and Z
C. W, X, Y, Z, and V
D. W, X, Y, Z, V, and T
66. The figure below shows Becky's daily production possibilities curve for dresses and
skirts.

Point T is:

A. attainable
B. efficient
C. both attainable and efficient
D. neither attainable nor efficient
67. The figure below shows Becky's daily production possibilities curve for dresses and
skirts.

Point Y is , and point V is .

A. efficient;
inefficient B.
inefficient; efficient C.
efficient; efficient
D. inefficient;
inefficient
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They faced each other in the little glade. Murray was mathematical,
exact, secure in his gift of fence. Sir Jasper was as God made him—
not reckoning up the odds, but trusting that honesty would win the
day. Young Johnstone watched; and, despite himself, his heart ached
for the older man who pitted Lancashire swordcraft against Murray’s
practised steel.
The fight was quick and brief; and the unexpected happened, as it
had done throughout this march of faith against surprising odds. Sir
Jasper was not fighting for his own hand, but for the Prince’s; and
his gift of fence—to himself, who knew how time had rusted his old
bones—was a thing magical, as if a score of years or so had been
lifted from his shoulders.
At the end of it he got clean through Murray’s guard; and it was now
that the duel grew dull and tragic to him, robbed altogether of its
speed, its pleasant fire. He had fought for this one moment; he had
his chance to strike wherever he chose, to kill or lay aside the worst
enemy Prince Charles had found, so far, in England. And yet,
somehow, his temper was chilled, and the struggle with himself,
short as the flicker of an eyelid, seemed long, because it was so
sharp and bitter. With an effort that was palpable to young
Johnstone, looking on, he drew back his blade, rested its point in the
sodden turf, and stood looking at his adversary.
The action was so deliberate, so unexpected, that Murray let his own
point fall; and even he was roused for the moment from his
harshness. He knew that this Lancashire squire, with the
uncompromising tongue and the old-fashioned view of loyalty, had
given him his life just now—had given it with some sacrifice of
inclination—knew that, in this wet and out-of-the-way corner of the
world, he was face to face with a knightliness that he had thought
dead long ago.
And then Sir Jasper grew ashamed, in some queer way, of the
impulse that had bidden him let Murray go unscathed. He sheathed
his sword, bowed stiffly, untethered his horse, and got to saddle.
“I give you good-day, Lord Murray,” he said curtly. “God bring you
nearer to the Prince in days to come.”
Murray watched him ride through the glade, out toward the open
road where wayfaring loyalists were on the march. And from his
shame and trouble a quiet understanding grew. His starved soul was
quickened. A gleam from the bigger life cut across his precision, his
self-importance, his gospel of arithmetic.
His aide-de-camp looked on. Johnstone was unused to the tumults
that beset older heads; and he had made a hero of this man who
had been defeated—a little more than defeated—at his own game of
swordcraft. And he was puzzled because Murray did not curse his
fortune, or bluster, or do anything but stand, hilt to the ground, as if
he were in a dream.
It was all quick in the doing. Murray got himself in hand, shrugged
his shoulders, searched for his snuff-box. “This is all very dismaying,
Mr. Johnstone,” he drawled. “I said from the start that we were
forgetting every rule of warfare in this mad Rising. And yet—to be
honest, Sir Jasper is something near to what I dreamed of before
the world tired me—he’s very like a man, Mr. Johnstone. And there
are few real men abroad these days.”
Sir Jasper himself, as he rode back into the highway, was in a sad
and bitter mood. He had spoken his mind, had fought and won the
duel he had welcomed, and reaction was telling heavily on him just
now. After all, he had done more harm than good by this meeting
with Lord Murray. Private quarrels, carried as far as this had been,
were treasonable, because they weakened all the discipline and
speed of an attack against the common enemy. Moreover, a man of
Murray’s temper could never understand how serviceable it is to
admit defeat, and forget it, and go forward with the business of the
day; he would plant the grudge, would tend and water it, till it grew
from a sapling into a lusty, evil tree.
He drew rein as he came through the ill-found bridle-track into the
open road. Scattered men, on horse or on foot, passed by him; for
the fight in the wood had been brief, and an army of five thousand
takes long to straggle over slushy, narrow highways. And then Sir
Jasper’s face grew cheery on the sudden. A company, in close and
decent order, rode into view. He saw Lancashire faces once again—
his son’s, and Squire Demaine’s, and Giles the bailiff’s, and fifty
others that he knew by heart.
They met him at the turning of the way, drew up, saluted him. And
Sir Jasper found his big, spacious air again, because he was at home
with men who knew his record—with men reared, like himself, within
sight of Pendle’s round and friendly hill.
“We’re full of heart, lads from Lancashire,” he said, taking the salute
as if he led a pleasant partner out to dance the minuet. “By gad!
we’re full of heart, I tell you,” he broke off, with sharp return to his
habit of command. “The London road is open to the Prince; there
are three armies chasing us, so I’m told, but they seem to shun
close quarters. Lancashire men, I’m old, and all my bones are aching
—and yet I’m gay. Giles, your face is sour as cream in thunder
weather; Maurice, though you’re my son, you look lean and
shrivelled, as if the wind had nipped you; is it only the old men of
this Rising who are full of heart?”
“We’re spoiling for a fight, sir,” said Maurice, with a boy’s outspoken
fretfulness, “and instead there’s only this marching through dull
roads, and no hazards to meet us——”
“No heroics, you mean,” broke in Squire Demaine, who was riding
close beside Maurice. “See you, my lad, this is open war,” he went on
—gruffly, because he, too, was weary of inaction. “And war is not
the thing the ballads sing about. It’s not crammed with battles, and
all the ladies watching, ready with tears and lollipops for the
wounded; it’s a bleak affair of marching, with little porridge and less
cream to it—until—until you’re sick from hunger and fatigue. And
then the big battle comes—and it sorts out the men from the
weaklings. And that is war, I tell you.”
Sir Jasper reined up beside him, and the two older men rode
forward, and the interrupted march moved stolidly again along the
road to London—pad of hoofs, slush of tired footmen through the
sleety mire, whinnying of dispirited horses and murmur of round
Lancashire oaths from the farmers who had left plough and
fieldwork behind them, as they thought, and were finding the like
dour routine on this highway where no adventures met them.
“You heartened our men just now—and, gad! they needed it,” said
Squire Demaine, as they trotted out of earshot. “But you carry a sad
face, old friend, for all that. What ails you?”
“Lord Murray ails me,” snapped the other. “He’s like a pestilence
among us.”
“You’re precise. He is a pestilence. If we could persuade Marshal
Wade—or George—to take him as a gift, why, we’d reach London
sooner. Give away a bad horse, if you can’t sell him, and let him
throw the other man—there’s wisdom in the old saws yet.”
“I’m ashamed, Demaine,” said Sir Jasper, turning suddenly. “You
gave Maurice sound advice just now, when he was headstrong and
asking for a battle as children cry for toys. And yet it was I who
needed your reproof.”
And then he told of his meeting with Lord Murray on the road, of the
fury that he could not check, of the duel in the wood. His tale was
told so simply, with such diffidence and surety that he had been in
the wrong, that Squire Demaine laughed gently.
“There’s nothing to your discredit, surely, in all this,” he said
—“except that you spared the Prince’s evil-wisher. Gad! I wish my
blade had been as near Murray’s heart. I——”
“You would have done as I did. We know each other’s weaknesses,
Demaine—that is why our friendship goes so deep, may be. You’d
have done as I did. We relent—as soon as we are sure that we have
proved our case—have proved it to the hilt.”
So then Squire Demaine blustered a little, and denied the charge,
then broke into a laugh that was heard far back along the line of
march.
“Squire’s found his hunting-laugh again,” said one Lancashire
yeoman to his neighbour.
“Aye. We need it, lad,” the other answered. “There’s been no hunting
these last days.”
The Squire himself rode silently beside his friend, then turned in
saddle. “Yes, we relent,” he said, with his happy-go-lucky air. “Is that
our weakness, Royd—or our strength?”
“I do not know.” Sir Jasper’s smile was grave and questioning. “The
devil’s sitting on my shoulders and I do not know. A week since I’d
have said that faith——”
“Aye, faith. We hold it fast—we know it true—but, to be honest, I’ve
lost my bearings. I’d have dealt more gently with Maurice if I’d not
shared his own longing for a fight.”
“Faith is a practical affair.” Sir Jasper was cold and self-reliant again,
as when he had fought with Murray in the wood. “When the road is
at its worst, and sleet blows up from the east, and we ask only to
creep into the nearest ditch, and die as cowards do—when all seems
lost. Demaine—surely, if faith means anything at all, it means——”
“You’re more devout than I,” snapped the Squire. “So is the Prince. I
talked with him yesterday. He was wet to the skin, and had just
given his last dram of brandy to one Hector MacLean who had cramp
in the stomach—and I was hasty, may be, as I always am when I
see royalty of any sort go beggared. ‘Your Highness,’ I said, ‘the
Blood Royal should receive, not give, and you needed that last dram,
by the look of your tired face.’ And what did he answer, think ye?
‘You’ve an odd conception of royalty, sir,’ said the Prince, his eyes
hard and tender both. ‘The Blood Royal—my father’s and mine—
gives till it can give no more. It lives, or it dies—but it goes giving to
the last hour.’ He’s a bigger man than I am, Royd.”
They jogged forward. And presently Sir Jasper broke the silence.
“We are hurrying to dodge two armies, and we’re succeeding; would
God they’d both find us, here on the road, and give us battle! That is
our need. One battle against odds—and our men riding free and
keen—and Murray would find his answer. I’d rather be quit of him
that way than—than by striking at the bared breast of the man.”
“I know, I know,” murmured the Squire, seeing how hard Sir Jasper
took this battle in the wood. “Let Murray run his neck into the
nearest halter; he’s not fair game for honest gentlemen. You were
right. And yet—my faith runs low, I tell you, and you might have
spared a better man. The mouth of him—I can see it now, like a
rat’s, or a scolding woman’s—you’ve a tenderer conscience than I.”
Into the middle of their trouble rode Maurice, tired of shepherding
men who blamed him because he found no battle for them.
“I was sorry that Rupert could not ride with us,” he said, challenging
Sir Jasper’s glance.
Sir Jasper winced, for his heir was dear to him beyond the
knowledge of men who have never bred a son to carry on the high
traditions of a race. “If pluck could have brought him, he’d have
been with us, Maurice,” he said sharply.
“I was not denying his pluck, sir; he gave me a taste of it that day
he fought like a wild cat on the moor.” His face flushed, for he had
not known, until the separation came, how deep his love went for
his brother. The novelty and uproar of the march had stifled his
heartache for a day or two, but since then he had missed Rupert at
every turn. “It was because I—because I know his temper, sir,” he
went on, with a diffidence unlike his usual, quick self-reliance. “He’d
have been all for high faith, and a battle at the next road-corner;
and these days of trudging through the sleet would have maddened
him. I’m glad he stayed at home. He’d have picked a quarrel long
since with one of our own company, just to prove his faith.”
Squire Demaine glanced dryly at Sir Jasper. “The young pup and the
old pup, Royd. Maurice here has better judgment than I thought. I
always said that Rupert was true to the Royd breed. Your own
encounter in the wood just now——”
“Your encounter, sir?” broke in Maurice eagerly. “Giles was saying to
me just now that he’d rather be riding on his bailiff’s business up
among the hills than be following this dog-trot through the rain. He
said—and he was so quiet that I knew his temper was red-raw—he
said that naught was ever like to happen again, so far as he could
see, and he was longing for a thunderstorm, just to break up the
quietness, like.”
The boy was so apt in his mimicry of Giles that Squire Demaine gave
out the frank, hearty bellow that did duty for a laugh. “We’re all of
the same mind, my lad. Thunder—or a straight, soon over fight—
clears up one’s troubles.”
“Your encounter, father?” said Maurice, persistent in his curiosity.
“Did you meet a spy of George’s, and kill him?”
Sir Jasper looked at this younger-born of his, at the frank, open face
and sturdy limbs. And then he thought, with that keen, recurrent
stab of pain that had been bedfellow to him since first he knew his
heir a weakling, of Rupert, left up at Windyhough to guard a house
that—so far as he could see just now—was in need of no defence.
“It was not—not just a spy of George’s I met,” he said, with a grave
smile. “He may come to that one day. And I did not kill him, Maurice,
though I had the chance.”
“Why, sir?” said Maurice, downright and wondering.
“Why? God knows. We’d best be pushing forward.”
At Windyhough, where the wind had piled a shroud of snow about
the gables, they were thinking, all this time, that those who had
ridden out were fortunate. As day by day went by, and Rupert found
himself constantly alone in a house where only women and old men
were left, he found it harder to stay at home, drilling the household
to their separate parts in an attack whose likelihood grew more and
more remote.
Rupert, with a body not robust and a twisted ankle that was still in
bandages, was holding fast to his allegiance. His mother, less
pampered and less querulous, grew each day a more sacred trust.
Each day, as she watched him go about the house, he surprised
more constantly that look of the Madonna which stood out against
the background of her pretty, faded face. He had something to
defend at last, something that played tender, stifled chords about
that keyboard which we call the soul. He was alone among the
women and the old men; but he was resolute.
And then there came a night when he had patrolled the house, had
looked out through his window, before getting to bed, for a glance
at the hilltops, white under a shrouded moon. He was tired, was
seeking an answer to his faith. And, instead, a darkness came about
him, a denial of all he had hoped for, prayed and striven for. Hope
went by him. Trust in God grew dim and shadowy. There was no
help, in this world or another, and he was a weak fool, as he had
always been, drifting down the path of the east wind.
He recalled, with pitiless clearness, how he had played eavesdropper
before the Rising men rode out, had heard his father say that no
attack on Windyhough was possible, that the guns and ammunition
were nursery toys he had left his heir to play with in his absence.
Rupert—namesake of a cavalier whose name had never stood for
wisdom, but always for high daring—stood with bowed shoulders,
unmanned and desolate. He did not know that the wise, older men
he reverenced were compelled to stand, time and time, as he was
doing, with black night and negation at their elbow. He knew only
that it was cold and dark, with no help at hand. It is moments such
as this that divide true men from the feeble-hearted; and Rupert
lifted his head, and, though he only half believed it, he told himself
that dawn would follow this midwinter night.
And that night he slept like a child, and dreamed that all was well.
And he woke the next day to find Simon Foster watching by his
bedside, patient and trusty as the dogs whose instinct is toward
loyalty.
“You’ve slept, maister!” said Simon. “By th’ Heart, I never saw a
body sleep so sound.”
“We must patrol the house, Simon. The attack is coming—and we’ll
not be late for it, after all these days of waiting.”
“Who says the attack is coming?” growled the other.
“I dreamed it—the clearest dream I ever had, Simon.”
But Simon shook his head. He had no faith in dreams.
 CHAPTER IX
THE STAY-AT-HOMES

Winter is not always rough on the high moors of Lancashire. There

are days when the wind creeps into hiding, and the sun comes up
into a sky of blue and saffron, and the thrush begins to find his
mating-note before its time. The gnats steal out from crannies in the
walls, making pretence of a morris-dance along the slant rays of the
sun; and everywhere there is a pleasant warmth and bustle, as if
faith in this far-off summer, after all, had easily survived the east
wind’s spite.
It was on such a day—the breeze soft from the west, and Pendle Hill
all crimson in the sunset—that Rupert limped out from Windyhough
on the crutch that Simon Foster had made for him. He had gone his
round of the house—that empty round performed for duty’s sake
twice every day—and he was hungry for the smell of the open
country. He hobbled up the pastures, as far as the rough lands
where the moor and the intaken fields were fighting their old,
unyielding battle—a feud as old as the day when the first heath-man
drove his spade into the heather and began to win a scanty living
from the wilderness for wife and bairns.
Rupert, the dreamer, who had stood apart from life, had always
found his sanctuary here, where the broken lands lay troubled, like
himself, between the desert and the harvest. Instinct had led him
here to-night, though weakness of body, never far from him, was
trying once again to sap his courage.
He looked across the moor, strong and comely in its winter
nakedness. He watched a cock-grouse whirr across the crimson sun-
rays. And then, with a sense of thanksgiving and security, he saw
the round, stalwart bulk of Pendle Hill. There is something about
Pendle—a legacy from the far-off fathers, may be—that goes deep to
the heart of Lancashire men. Its shape is not to be mistaken. It
stands like a rounded watch-tower, guarding the moors where
freedom and rough weather go hand in hand. It has seen many
fights of men—feuds, and single-handed combats, and stealthy
ambushes—and has come, stalwart and upstanding, through
weather that would have daunted meaner souls. It has the strong
man’s gift of helping weaker men along the gallant, uphill climb that
stretches from the cradle to the stars.
Pendle Hill, big above the wilderness of bog and heath, never
chatters of destiny, never tells a man that life is hard, that he had
best be done with it, that all his striving has been so much useless
labour. Pendle, the fairest citadel of Lancashire, has won through too
many generations of cold and hardship to be daunted by the
troubles of one man’s lifetime. Rugged, round to the wide, wind-
swept skies, old Pendle keeps the faith, and will not yield.
Rupert had yet to win his spurs, he thought. And yet, as Pendle Hill
viewed the matter, he had won them long ago. Day by day, year by
year, through his unhappy and disastrous boyhood, the lad had
come to the windy lands, for strength and solace. He had been loyal
to the hills, steadfast when stronger men had taken their ease. And
to-night, because it saw a soldier in the making, gruff Pendle sent
out a welcome to Sir Jasper’s heir.
“God knows me for a fool,” said Rupert, afraid of the new message
that had reached him.
And there was stillness, while the sun’s red died behind the moor. No
voice answered Rupert’s challenge to the over-world; but, for all
that, he limped down to Windyhough with a sense that all the birds
were singing. Through the misery and darkness of these days he
was reaching out, with stubborn gallantry, to grasp the forward
hope. The forward hope! He had lived on little else since he was
breeked.
As he came down to Windyhough, he met Nance and old Simon
Foster at the courtyard gate; Simon was carrying a musket, and
polishing the barrel with his sleeve as he hobbled at the girl’s side.
“I’ve news for you, Rupert!” she said gaily.
“Of the Rising?” He was eager, possessed of the one thought only.
“Is trouble nearing Windyhough? Nance, is there real work to be
done at last?”
“Oh, my dear, you ask too much. Nothing ever happens at
Windyhough; nothing will ever happen again, I think. We’re derelict,
Rupert; the Highlandmen are playing their Prince into his kingdom
by this time, and we”—she grew bitter, petulant, for the silence and
the waiting were sapping her buoyant health, her courage, her trust
in high endeavour—“and we in Lancashire are churning our butter
every week, Rupert, and selling cows on market days, and dozing by
the hearth. I am ashamed.”
Simon Foster glanced sharply at Rupert. He knew the lad through
and through, was prepared for the whiteness of his face, the
withdrawal as if a friend had struck him wantonly. “Miss Nance,” he
said bluntly, “shame is for folk that’s earned it. There’s three of us
here, and we’d all be marching into London, if only it could have
happened that way, like.”
Nance would not look at Rupert, though she guessed how she had
wounded him. She did not know this mood that had settled on her
since coming to the draughty, loyal house of Windyhough. The long
inaction, the waiting for news gathered from gruff, hard-ridden
messengers, the day-long wish to be out in the thick of battle, had
troubled her; but there was a deeper trouble—a trouble that was
half delight, a turmoil and unrest to which she could not give a
name. And the trouble centred round Rupert. She liked him so well,
had grown up with his queer, dreamy ways, his uncomplaining
courage.
She had laughed at him, had pitied him; but now she was pitying
herself. If only he would remember that he was a man, the heir to a
fine, loyal record—if only he would clear the cobwebs from his eyes,
and sit a horse as other men did, would show the stuff his soul was
made of, the world would understand him at long last.
Nance was tired, her temper out of hand. “Simon, you can go
indoors,” she said dryly. “Since you did not join the Rising—why,
Lady Royd has work for you.”
She did not know what she needed, or what ailed her. And she and
Rupert stood in the courtyard after old Simon had gone in, fronting
each other like wary duellists.
“What was your news?” asked Rupert, his temper brittle like her
own.
“Oh, we set up a target, Simon and I; and I practised with one of
your clumsy muskets, Rupert, and wished that I had a bow-and-
arrow in my hands instead. I have some skill in archery, have I not?”
“Yes. You’ve skill in all things, Nance. There’s no news in that.”
“And I aimed very wide at first, till I turned and found Simon smiling
as if he were watching a baby at its play. So then I kept him hard at
work—loading, and priming, and the rest, and wasted a good deal of
your ammunition, Rupert—but I learned to hit the target.”
She spoke lightly, hurriedly, as if fearing to sound the depths of this
trouble that had come between Rupert and herself.
“Was it just to pass the time?” he asked by and by. “You’re shut in
here and restless, I know——”
“It was more, perhaps. We are so few, and I said just now that
nothing would ever happen again at Windyhough—but the attack
may come.”
Rupert glanced at his crutch. He was sensitive, from long suffering,
to the least hint that touched his personal infirmities. “And you could
not trust your men to guard you?” he said sharply. “That was your
thought?”
“Oh, Rupert, no! I’m out of heart—I did not mean to hurt you.”
“You’ve not hurt me, Nance. I—I must find Simon and go the round
of the house with him. We call it our drill.” He turned at the door,
glanced at her with the smile of self-derision that she knew. “Simon
is right. He says that, if a man can’t go soldiering, the next best
thing is to play at it, like a bairn with a wooden sword. Good-night,
Nance. I’m tired, and shall get to bed after seeing to the defences.”
Nance heard the delicate irony as he spoke of the defences, saw him
limp into the house. And some new feeling came to her. It was not
pity; it was a strange, fugitive pride in the courage that could keep
so harassed a spirit under control. She had been harsh and bitter,
had wounded him because she needed any outlet from these pent-
up days at Windyhough; and he had gathered his little strength
together, had laughed at himself, had gone to the routine of
guarding a house that did not need defence.
Nance was ashamed to-night. Her reliance and high spirits had
deserted her; and for that reason she saw nearer to the heart of life.
She felt that a great gentleman, marred in the making, had gone
into this house of fine traditions. She asked, with an entreaty
passionate and wilful as herself, why Rupert had been condemned to
sit at home among the women, when so little more was needed to
shape him to the comely likeness of a man.
And then she thought of Will Underwood, who had strength and
grace of body, remembered with obstinate zeal her faith that he had
ridden on some desperate business of the Rising, though men
doubted him. And she was in the turmoil of first love again.
The next day, and the next, she missed Rupert from the house. He
would go his rounds punctiliously after breakfast, and then would
take a crust and a piece of cheese in his pocket and limp up into the
hills. She thought that he was feeding his dreams, as of old, on the
high winds and the high legends of the heath; and she missed him,
with a sense of loneliness that would not let her rest.
Simon Foster, too, was absent these days, and Lady Royd grew
petulant. Though her husband was like to lose his head, and
England was stirred by that throb of coming battle which is like
thunder-heat before the rain and lightning come, she was troubled
because Simon did not perform his indoor duties. For she, who had
little guidance of herself, and therefore less control of serving-folk,
was exact in her demand that all the details of the house should be
well-ordered.
“I thought Simon at least tied by rheumatism to the house,” she
wailed to Nance, on the second day of absence; “but he’s like all our
men—off to the Rising, or off to the fields; any excuse will serve, it
seems, when women feel their indoor loneliness.”
And Nance, though her impulse was to laugh, was subdued by those
blundering, poignant words, “their indoor loneliness.” Nance was a
child of the open fields, meeting all chances of life better in the free
wind than in the stifled houses. Not until her coming to Windyhough
had she understood the heartache, the repression, summed up by
“their indoor loneliness.” A fierce resentment took hold of her.
“Men have all the pleasure,” she said, in a low, hard voice. “It was so
always.”
She would have been the better for a glimpse of the Prince’s tattered
army, fighting through sleet and mud and jealousy for the privilege
of setting a Stuart on the throne. But Nance was young and untried
yet, and thought herself ill-used because she had a roof above her.
And then Rupert came in, with Simon Foster close behind him.
“You’ve been at the ale-house, Simon,” said Lady Royd shrewishly.
“No, by your leave. I’ve been on the King’s business, and other
needs must wait, my lady. So I was taught, leastways, when I was a
bairn at my father’s knee.”
“What is the mystery, Rupert?” asked Nance, after Simon had
grumbled his way toward the servants’ quarters.
“Mystery? None, my dear, except that I’m tired to death, and have
the round of the house to go before I get to bed.”
He spoke the truth. Mystery there was none, except that out of his
great love for her he was learning many lessons. And she tempted
him, meanwhile, to tell her what this business was that had taken
Simon and himself to the open fields; but he gave no answer.
And that evening passed, as many another had done, with a
monotony that seemed to tick the seconds out, deliberate as the
eight-day clock in the hall—a passionless, grave clock that had seen
many generations of the Royds go through their hot youth, their
fiery middle-age, their last surrender—surrender honourable,
upright, staunch in the last hour, to that great general, Death, who
has taken more citadels than any human hero of renown.
The eight-day clock knew that life was not meant to be taken at the
gallop, each moment packed with ambush, high romance, fine-
spoken wooing that could not outlast the honeymoon. It knew that
fine deeds—big moments when the heart finds room to know itself—
are earned by steady preparation, ticked out by the slow-moving
seconds. But Nance had all this to learn as yet, and this evening, of
all evenings she had spent at Windyhough, seemed the longest and
the dreariest. And my lady’s little spaniel—a nervous, unlicked lap-
dog—annoyed her beyond reason.
Lady Royd was full of dread and surmise. First, she heard a mouse
gnawing at the wainscoting, and fell into a panic obviously real.
Then a farm-dog began to yelp and whimper from the stables, and
she was sure it foretold disaster to her husband.
“It was so foolish of him,” she said, “to go on this wild Rising. He
had all to keep him here—his wife and his two sons and the house
he loved, and the hunting in the winter. Why did he leave it all? He
had all to keep him, Nance.”
Because she was tired and heart-sick, perhaps, Nance spoke with a
wisdom not her own; for at these times we do not lash instinct to
the gallop, but let it carry us like a sure-footed horse. “Except his
heart. It was his heart that took him south.”
“But his heart was here, my girl,” put in the other, with sudden spirit.
She had been moved to terror by the sound of a mouse in the
wainscoting; but she was fierce in her defence of the love her
goodman bore her.
“No,” said Nance gently, as if she persuaded a child to learn some
obvious and simple lesson, “his heart could not be here until he had
answered the call of honour.”
“Oh, spare me!” sighed the other languidly. “Honour is so pretty a
thing—like a rapier, or a Frenchman’s wit—when they sing of it in
ballads. But in practice it is like getting up at sunrise to see the
poet’s dawn—so chilly and uncomfortable, Nance.”
“What else?” said Nance, her head thrown up with a sudden, eager
gesture that was vastly like her father’s. “Honour rusts, my lady, if it
stays always in the scabbard. Discomfort? I think honour—Sir
Jasper’s and my father’s—feeds on discomfort, thrives on it——”
“But Sir Jasper, what more did he need? He can find no more if he
returns—no more than he left behind when he went on this wild-
goose chase. I shall be waiting for him—the wife who loves him, no
more, no less——”
“Is there a boundary-wall round love, then?” asked Nance, with eyes
wide open and astonished. “I’m young and fanciful, perhaps. I
thought love was a thing that found wider fields to travel every hour;
that, each day one’s man came home with honour, one cared for him
ever a little the more, and knighted him afresh. For it is knighthood,
surely, a true man asks always from the woman of his choice.”
Lady Royd fingered her scent-bottle, and laughed vaguely, enjoying
the girl’s transparent honesty. “It all has a romantic sound, Nance.
Did you learn it from books, as poor Rupert learned his soldiery?”
The taunt stung Nance, because she had hoped, with odd
persistency, that Rupert would come in, after going his round of the
house, to ask her to sing to him. And he had not come; and she had
tender songs enough in readiness, for she remembered how
wantonly she had hurt him not long ago.
“Where did you learn it, girl?” insisted Lady Royd, with tired irony.
“I’m past the age of glamour—and half regret it—and you may
recapture for me all the fragment silliness. Nance, believe me, I
cannot make a satisfying meal of dew-drops. I must be getting old,
for I grow fonder and fonder of my cook, who sends substantial
rations from the kitchen.”
So then Nance, hot-headed, resentful, not guessing that she was
being gently baited to while away an hour’s boredom from her
companion—Nance stood to her little, queenly height. And her eyes
were beautiful, because her eagerness shone through them. And she
tapped her buckled slipper on the beeswaxed floor, as if she were
impatient to be dancing with true men, or dying with them along the
road that Sir Jasper and his friends had sought.
“I learned it—as Rupert learned his soldiery, I think—not from books
at all, my lady. It was my heart taught me, or my soul, or what you
choose to name that something which is—is bigger, somehow, than
one’s self. Honour—I cannot tell you the keen, sharp strength, the
sweetness and the pity the word spells for me. It is like the swords
my father is so fond of—bright and slim, like toys to look at; but you
can bend them till point touches hilt and yet not break them. And
you can ride out and cleave a way with these same words.”
Lady Royd was no cynic now. The peril and discomfort of the times
had been opening closed windows for her, as for others who lived
near this wind-swept heath. By stealth, and fearing much, she had
peered out through these unshuttered casements; and Nance was
speaking outright of the fugitive, dim thoughts that she herself had
harboured.
“Go, my dear,” she said gently. “You’ve the voice you sing with—the
voice that Rupert praises. Go, sing to me again of—of love and
honour, child.”
Nance flushed. She scarcely knew what she had said. “I do not
need,” she said, with instinctive grace and dignity. “You know so
much of them, and I so little; and I am sorry if—if I spoke in haste. I
am so tired, and I forget the—the deference owing to your years.”
So then, because they stood very near each other for this moment,
and because she feared intimacy just yet with the simple, happy
glimpse of life that Nance had shown her, Sir Jasper’s wife drew her
skirts about her and picked up the yapping, pampered thing she
called a dog and kissed its nose. It was her signal for good-night.
“A woman likes deference, my dear,” she said sharply, “deference of
all kinds, except that owing to—to advancing years. You sang out of
tune there, Nance. Never to be made love to again; never again, so
long as one’s little world lasts, to catch the glance, the little broken
word of tribute—things that do not wrong one’s husband, Nance, but
add a spice to the workaday, quiet road of love for him; they’re hard
to give up, my dear.”
Nance looked at her with frank surprise. She was strong and untried
yet; and Lady Royd was frail, but experienced so far as indolence
allowed. And there was a deep gulf between them.
“I will take my candle up,” said Nance lamely.
“Yes, and sleep well, child. Dream of—oh, of love and honour and
the foolish rosemary of life. And come sing to me to-morrow—of the
things you’ve dreamed. Perhaps I spoke at random, Nance. I’m
widowed of my husband; and this Rising never wore a lucky face to
me—and—my temper is not gentle, Nance, I know.”
That night there were few who slept at Windyhough. Sir Jasper’s
wife, alone with the wind that rattled at her window, made no
disguise of the love that beat, strong and trusty, underneath her
follies. Despite herself, she had come out at last into the road of life
—the road of mire and jealousies and tragedy, lit far ahead by the
single lamp of honour, for those whose eyes were trained to see it.
“I’m not worthy of him,” she moaned, drawing the sleepy spaniel
toward her. “My husband climbs the bigger hills, while I—am weak,
as Rupert is.”
Nance, too, lay awake. She was busy with what Lady Royd had
named the rosemary of life. All her instincts rose in warm defence of
that view of honour which Sir Jasper’s wife had slighted. And there
were men, men in their own midst, who could love in the old
knightly way. There was Will Underwood—and so she lost herself,
half between waking and dreaming, in a maze of high perfection
that she reared about his person. Of a truth Wild Will was in danger,
had he known it. He had pressed his suit on Nance, had urged it, in
and out of season, during the months that preceded this upset of
the Rising. He had captured her fancy already, and her heart might
follow any day; but he did not guess what simplicity and breadth of
tenderness she would bring him, what answering devotion she
would ask. Nance had the double gift—she had the woman’s
instincts, the woman’s suppleness of fancy, but she had been reared
in a house where a big, downright father and big, uncompromising
brothers had trained her to the man’s code of life. She would never
come to the wooing as to a one-sided bargain, giving all meekly and
asking nothing in return. She would ask, with tenderest persistence,
that her man, as she had said to Lady Royd, should claim
knighthood at her hands once every while. Marriage, to her
unproved heart, was a thing magical, renewing its romance each day
—but renewing, too, that every-day and hard endeavour on which
the true romance is founded.
And so she got to sleep at last, and woke in terror. She had dreamed
that Will Underwood, engaged in a single-handed fight against a
company of the Prince’s enemies, lay wounded sorely; and she had
reached out hands, impotent with nightmare, to succour him, and
she had seen him fall.
At the end of the long, draughty corridor, not many yards away from
her, Rupert was fighting his new trouble. He and Simon had been
engaged on the King’s business—or the pretence of it—during these
excursions that had taken them afield for two days past. But he
could only remember now what had driven him into endeavour—how
he had come home to find Nance flushed and eager, Simon carrying
a couple of muskets; and how she had told him, in plain words, that
women must needs take up soldiery, because the men about the
house were so infirm.
Since his soul was launched into the open sea of life, Rupert had
known many a Gethsemane, but the pain had never been so keen as
now. His love for Nance was of the kind she claimed, but his power
to do high deeds lagged far behind the will to be a conqueror. And
Nance, who had always brought a sense of well-being and of
inspiration to him, had wounded him—mortally, he thought. Sir
Jasper had bidden him guard the house, and he had overheard his
father say that the defence was a toy he left his heir to play with;
and the bitterness of that was past, not without hardship and a
struggle that, fought out in loneliness, was fine as a battle against
heavy odds. That was past, but Nance’s taunt was with him still, a
sting that banished sleep and poisoned all his outlook on the hills
where Faith, crowned and a strong monarch, looks down to see into
the hearts of men and choose her soldiers.
Old Simon Foster, for his part, had not slept well to-night. As he put
it to himself, he “was never one to miss sleep or victuals, come
peace or earthquakes”; but to-night he could not rest. He was with
the master, fighting somewhere near to that London which was a
far-off land to him, unknown and perilous, as if wide seas divided it
from Lancashire. And he was itching to be out of a house where the
mistress could still be anxious lest her spaniel missed his proper
meals, where, to his fancy, women crowded all the passages and
hindered him at every turn. Simon was twisted out of shape by
exposure and harsh, rheumatic pains, but he was sick to be out
again with the wind and the weather that had crippled him.
Simon Foster, too infirm to go with his master to the wars, was ill-
tempered these days, as a grey old hound is when he sees the
whelps of his own fathering go out to hunting while he is left at
home. He was in and out of the house, till the women-servants grew
tired of his grim, weather-beaten face. Only Martha put in a good
word for him—Martha who, at five-and-thirty, had not found a mate,
though she would have made a good wife to any man. Simon was
barely turned fifty, she said, and was hale enough “if rheumatiz
would only let him bide in peace.” And when a prim maid-of-all-work
had suggested that bent legs tempted no maid’s fancy, Martha had
answered hotly that the shape of a man’s heart mattered more than
any casual infirmity attaching to his legs.
He got up this morning, two hours before the wintry dawn came red
and buoyant over Pendle Hill, for he could not rest indoors. He went
to the stables, his lantern swinging crazily in his gnarled hands, and
roused the horses from the slumber that is never sleep, because
men ask so much of them at all hours of the day and night, and
patted them, as a father touches his bairns—gently, with a sort of
benediction. For the smell of a horse to Simon was vastly
comforting.
He came to an old, fiddle-headed nag that had been a pensioner at
Windyhough these many years, and stayed and chatted with him
with the ease that comes of long comradeship.
“We’re in the same plight, lad,” he growled—“old, and left at home,
the two of us. Ay, we’re thrown on the lumber-heap, I reckon.”
He went out by and by; and his face cleared suddenly like wintry
sunlight creeping over a grey stubble-field, as he saw Martha cross
from the mistals with a milking-pail over each well-rounded arm.
And, because there seemed little else to to, he stopped to praise the
trim shape of her.
“And your cheeks, Martha,” he added, after a pause—“there’s some
warm wind been at ’em, or they’d never look so bonnie.”
“Winds blow cold up hereabout,” said Martha demurely, setting down
her pails. “And my cheeks are my own, Simon Foster, by your leave.”
Simon had known this game of give-and-take with a lass in the days
before he grew harder and more keen on battle. He returned now
with ease to habits forsworn until the Rising left him derelict among
the women.
“Nay, but they’re not, as the bee said to the clover.”
“For shame, Simon—and at your age, too!”
“At my age! I’d teach ye I’m young if rheumatiz was not like a hive
o’ bees about me.”
She twisted a corner of her apron, half hid her face with it; and
Simon admitted to himself that the brown eyes looking into his
“might be tempting, like, to a younger lad than me.”
“At my age a man’s just beginning to know women,” he said
persuasively. “It takes a long ’prenticeship, Martha. You can learn to
break in a horse, or do smithy work, or aught useful like, in a lile few
years. But to learn the way of a woman—durned if it isn’t a long job
and a tough job, Martha.”
“We’re very simple, if you men weren’t blind as bats at midday.”
“Oh, ay; you’re simple!” put in Simon, with a quiet chuckle. “Simple
as driving sows to market.”
So then Martha put a hand to each of her milking-pails. “I’d best be
getting on with my work. If you’re likening me to a sow——”
“There, there! It wasn’t you lass; it was women not just so bonnie—
the most part o’ women, I mean.”
Martha lingered. The deft flattery had pleased her, and she was
willing to surrender any casual defence of her own sex. “Well, the
most part o’ women, Simon, they’re feather-witted maybe. I’ll own
as much.”
“And like sows,” went on the other, with patient explanation of his
theme. “A man chooses his straight road and sticks to it, but a sow,
when you want to get her Lunnon way, why, you’ve just to twist her
by the tail, backward foremost, and pretend you want her to head
straight for Scotland.”
They eyed each other with a large, impassive silence. There was
plenty of leisure these days at Windyhough, too much of it; and
Simon found it pleasant to watch Martha’s wholesome, wind-sweet
face, to hear the voice that seemed made for singing to the kine
while she sat at the milking-pail. And Martha, for her part, had never
known a wooing, and the prime hunger of her life still went
unsatisfied.
“Human nature—it’s a queer matter,” said Simon by and by.
“And there’s a deal of it about,” sighed Martha. “Human nature—
soon as ever a body can get away from moil and toil and begin to
think, like—why, it’s just made up o’ things we haven’t got, Simon.
And if we’d got them we shouldn’t care so much for ’em, and so it’s
all a round o’ foolishness, like a donkey treading at the mill-wheel.”
A tear fell down on to Martha’s hand, and, because the grief was
come by honestly, Simon felt an odd impulse stirring him. “Martha,
my lass, I wish I was a good twenty years younger. If I were forty,
now, and you——”
“I’m nearing forty, Simon. We’ll not talk of ages, by your leave.”
Simon walked up and down the yard, in a mood that was half
between panic and something worthier. Then he came to Martha’s
side. “I’ve a mind to kiss you,” he said.
“Well, I’m busy,” said Martha; “but I might happen spare time.”
And so they plighted troth. And Simon, when at last he went indoors
to get about the duties Lady Royd found for him, was astonished
that he had no qualms. He had given his promise, and knew that, as
a man of his word, he would keep it. All old instincts whispered that
he had been “varry rash to tie himself in a halter in that fool’s
fashion”; and yet he felt only like a lad who goes whistling to help
his lass bring in the kine to byre.
As he reached the house, Nance, in her riding-habit, stepped out
into the courtyard. Tired of her restless dreams, weary to death of
the inaction and misery at Windyhough, she had stolen out of the
house like a thief, afraid lest Lady Royd should need her before she
made good her escape. She flushed guiltily even at this meeting with
Simon, as if he had detected her in wrong-doing, though her longing
for a gallop was innocent enough.
“You’re for riding on horseback, Miss Nance?” he asked, by way of
giving her good-day.
“Yes, Simon. I shall die if I spend another day indoors. It is like
being wrapped in cotton-wool.”
“Well, now, you’re right! I’ve just been to the stables myself,” he
added dryly, “and you’ve the pick of three rare stay-at-homes to
choose from. One’s broken-winded, and one’s spavined, and t’other’s
lame in the off hind-leg. There’s a fine choice for you!”
“Which of the three shall I choose?” laughed Nance.
“Oh, I’d take the broken-winded one, with the head like Timothy
Wade’s bass-viol that he plays i’ church. He’s a lot o’ fire in him yet—
if you don’t mind him roaring like a half-gale under you. I was
talking to him just now—telling him the oldsters had as much pluck
in ’em as the youngsters. It was a shame, I said, to leave such
spirited folk as him and me behind.”
Nance gave him a friendly smile—he had always been a favourite of
hers, by force of his tough, homespun strength and honesty—and
crossed the yard. The stablemen and grooms were off with Sir
Jasper to the wars—all save two who were past seventy, and were
warming themselves indoors before facing the nipping wind. She
found the three horses left, like the stablemen, because of age and
infirmity, and helped Simon, with a quickness she had learned in
childhood, to saddle the fiddle-headed beast that he had
recommended.
The beast had been eating his head off, and was almost youthful in
caprice and eagerness as Nance rode him up into the moors. He had
watched his comrades go out a week ago—mettled youngsters,
neighing with wide nostrils from sheer lust of adventure—and he had
been left to eat more corn than was good for him, left to think back
along the years when men had needed him to carry the burden of
their hopes.
The horse knew, perhaps, that Nance, like himself, was seeking
respite from indolence and the companionship of ailing folk. He
carried her bravely, and disguised from her for a while, with a certain
chivalry, the fact that he was broken-winded. When they came to the
moor, however, the smell of the marshes and the ling seemed to get
to his head, like too much wine; and twice he all but unseated
Nance, who was thinking of Will Underwood, riding south like her
father into that perilous country where George the Second was
seated on a stolen throne.
The horse, after his display of youthfulness, was content to laze up
and down the sheep-tracks of the heath; and even Nance, blind as
she was by habit to the failings of her comrades, was aware that he
was roaring now like a half-gale from the north.
Then she forgot the horse, forgot the languid mother, the weakling
heir, down yonder at the bleak house of Windyhough. Her thoughts
returned to her father, to Sir Jasper, to gentle and simple of the
Lancashire men who had ridden out against long odds. Last of all,
her maidenly reserve broke down, and she knew that she was eager
for Will Underwood’s safety. She saw him so clearly—fearless, a keen
rider after hounds, a man who sought danger and coveted it. Surely
he was made for such reckless battles as were coming. Through her
anxieties, through her womanish picturing of the wounds and
sickness that were lying in wait along this high-road that led south to
victory and the Stuart, she was glad that “Wild Will” would need her
prayers, her trust in him.
She rode slowly up by way of Hangman’s Snout—a bluff, round hill
that once had carried a gallows-tree. Line by swarthy line the heath
widened out before her as she climbed. Crumpled hillocks, flat
wastes of peat, acre after acre of dead bracken intermixed with ling
and benty grasses, swept out and up to the sky that was big with
sunrise and with storm. The wind blew cold and shrill, and all was
empty loneliness; but to Nance it seemed that she was in a friendly
land, where she was free to breathe. They would not let her fight for
the true cause; she had no skill in arms; but here, on the naked,
friendly heath, she was free at least to grasp the meaning of that
stormy hardship which her folk had been content to undergo.
There was Sir Jasper—her father, and many who had ridden out
from the Loyal Meet at Windyhough under her own eyes—and all of
them had seemed instinct with this large, stormy air that lay above
the moors. She was girlish yet, healthy and in need of pleasure; and
she had wondered, seeing these men ride from Windyhough, that
they were so grave about the matter, intent and quiet, as if they
went to kirk instead of to the wars. Like Rupert, she had pictured the
scene in more vivid colours, had been impatient that no music of the
pipes, no rousing cheers had gone to the farewell. She had longed
for the strong lights and shades of drama, and had found instead a
workaday company of gentlemen who rode about their business and
made no boast of it.
Here on the wintry heights she looked life in the face to-day. These
men who had ridden out—Sir Jasper turning only at the last moment
to kiss his wife, though he was deep in love with her at the end of
many years—had been rugged and silent as the hills that had nursed
their strength and loyalty.
Nance was not herself just now. The superstitious would have said
that she was “seeing far.” And so she was—far as the red sunrise-
glow that reached up to heaven. She and the moors, between them,
struck sparks of vivid faith from the winter’s barrenness and
hardship. She was sure that summer would return, fragrant with the
scent of Stuart roses.
They had reached the top of Hangman’s Snout, she and her broken-
winded horse. And suddenly a doubt came blowing down the breeze
to her. Will Underwood had been absent from the Loyal Meet. She
was aware that men doubted him in some subtle manner that did
not need words to explain its meaning. He was popular, in a
haphazard way, with his own kind; but always, as Nance looked back
along the years, there was a suggestion that he was happier among
the women, because he had the gift of fooling them. And yet men
admitted that he was a good companion in all field-sports—and yet
again Nance remembered how, not long ago, she had overheard her
father talking with Oliphant of Muirhouse, when they did not guess
that she was within earshot.
“Will Underwood will join us,” Squire Roger had said, with the
testiness of a man who only half believes his own words. “He takes
any fence that comes.”
“Yes,” Oliphant had broken in, with the dry smile of one who knew
his world. “Yes, he can gallop well. Can he stand a siege, though?”
“A siege?”
“There’s not always a game fox in front, Squire—and hounds running
with a fine, full-throated cry. I’m on the other side o’ life myself—the
long night rides, when a man would barter all for one clean fight in
open daylight. Underwood will not find this march such a gallop.
Horse and foot go together, and the roads are vile. Can he last,
Squire, crawling at a foot pace?”
Nance remembered the very tone of Oliphant’s voice—the dry, sharp
challenge in it, as of one who had learned to sum up a man’s
character quickly. It was her own judgment of Will Underwood,
though warm liking for him—his bigness and his way of taking
fences—had stifled half her healthy common sense.
She checked her horse, looked out across this land of wintry
nakedness. It was here on the uplands that she had let Underwood
steal into her friendship, here that her quick need for romance had
shaped him to the likeness of a gentleman—gallant, debonair, a man
to count on whether peace or war were in the doing.
Something of the wind’s free-roving heedlessness took hold of her.
She was free to choose her man, free to be loyal to her heart and let
her judgment go.
She looked down the slope. A horseman came suddenly into view,
riding up the trough of the hills. She checked her horse, with a
sharp, instinctive cry. The superstitions of the moor, bred in its lonely
marshes and voiced by its high priests, the curlews and the plover,
crept round her like the hill-mists that bewilder human judgment.
Will Underwood was away with the Stuart, riding south to London
and the Restoration; yet he was coming up to meet her, over the
slopes which they had crossed together on many a hunting-day.
She watched him climb the slope. There was no mistaking the
dashing, handsome figure, the way he had of sitting a horse; and
the wide emptiness of the heath, its savage loneliness, seemed only
to make bigger this intruder who rode up into its silence.
The old, unconquerable legends of the moor returned to Nance. Her
nurse had taught her, long ago, what such apparitions meant. The
dead were allowed to return to those they loved, for the brief hour
before the soul, half between heaven and earth, took its last
departure.
She watched the horseman ride nearer, nearer. And suddenly she
broke into a flood of tears. He had died in battle—had died for the
Stuart—and was riding up, a ghostly horseman on a phantom steed,
to tell her of it. He had died well—yes—but she would miss him in
the coming years. She would miss him——
Again she thought of Rupert. All his life the Scholar had been
struggling against impotence and misery. He had grown used to it by
habit; and, of all her friends, she longed most to have him by her
side, because he would understand this trouble that unsteadied her.
Will Underwood’s wraith came up and up the track. She drooped in
the saddle of the broken-winded horse, and hid her eyes, and waited
for the kiss, cold as an east wind over the marshes, that would tell
her he was loyal in the dying. The tales of nursery days were very
close about her now, and she was a child who walked in the
unknown.
“Why, Nance, what the devil is amiss? You’re crying like a burn in
spate.”
Will’s voice was sharp and human. Nance reined back a pace or two.
They were so near, so big, Will and his horse, that they shattered
her nursery tales with bewildering roughness.
For a while she could not speak, could not check the sobs which
were a tribute, not to the living man but to his wraith. Then she
gathered up her strength, for she came of a plucky stock. Will
Underwood was good at reading women’s faces; it was his trade in
life; but he could make nothing of Nance just now. Her glance was
searching, her eyes quiet and hard, though tears were lying on her
lashes still. All her world had slipped from under her. There seemed
no longer any trust, or faith, or happiness in the bleak years to
come; but at least she had her pride.
“Nance, what is it?” he asked.
“I thought you a ghost just now, Mr. Underwood—the ghost of your
better self, may be. And now——”
“Well, and now?” he broke in, with the hardy self-assurance that had
served him well in days gone by. “I’m alive, and entirely at your
service, Nance. Surely there’s no occasion for distress in that.”
She looked gravely at him for a moment, with clear eyes that
seemed to glance through and beyond him, as if his handsome body
and his strength had disappeared, leaving only a puff of
unsubstantial wind behind.
“There is occasion,” she said, very gravely and in a voice that was
musical with pain and steadfastness. “You had better be lying dead,
Mr. Underwood, along some road of loyalty, than—than be idling
here, when other men are fighting.”
He reddened, seemed at a loss for words. Then, “Nance, what a
child you are—and I fancied you a woman grown,” he said, with an
attempt at playfulness. “What is this Rising, after all? A few Scots
ragamuffins following a laddie with yellow hair and flyaway wits. Let
the women sing ballads, and dream dreams; but level-headed men
don’t risk all on moonshine of that sort.”
“My father—he is older than you, and is counted—more level-
headed, shall we say? Sir Jasper Royd, too, is a soldier whose record
all men know. They have gone with the ragamuffins and the yellow-
haired laddie.”
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