DERMOT'S MARE.
All this time Dermot Tracy had been from home. He had not come back
after the season, but had been staying with friends and going to
various races, in which, as usual, he had heavy stakes. He persuaded
my two nephews to meet him at Doncaster, where he ran one of the horses
bred on his Irish estate, and afterwards to go and make him a visit at
Killy Marey, County Kildare, where he used to stay about once a year,
shooting or hunting, as the season might be, and always looking after
his horses and entertaining all the squires and squireens of the
neighbourhood, and many of the officers from the Curragh. The benefit
of those visits was very doubtful both as to morals and purses, and
Lord Erymanth pointedly said he was sorry when he heard that Harold and
Eustace were of the party.
I do not know whether Lady Diana viewed them as bad companions for her
son, or her son as a bad companion for them; but she was very severe
about it, and when I thought of the hunt dinner at Foling, my heart
sank, even while I was indignant at any notion of distrusting Harold;
and it did indeed seem to me that he had learnt where to look for
strength and self-command, and that he had a real hatred and contempt
of evil. Yet I should have been more entirely happy about him if he
had not still held aloof from all those innermost ordinances, of which
he somehow did not feel the need, or understand the full drift. Nor
would he bow himself to give to any man the confidence or the influence
over him he had given to an incapable girl like me. And if I should
have feared for the best brought up, most religious of young men, in
such scenes as I was told were apt to take place at Killy Marey, how
could I not be anxious for my nephews? But nothing ever turns out as
one expects.
I was at Arked one day, and Lady Diana was telling me of the great
rambling house at Killy Marey, and how, when she arrived as a bride,
none of the doors would shut except two that would not open, behind one
of which lived the family ghost; how the paper hung in festoons on the
walls, and the chairs were of the loveliest primrose-coloured brocade;
and how the green of the meadows was so wonderful, that she was always
remembering it was the Emerald Isle; but how hopeless and impossible it
was to get anything properly done, and how no good could be done where
the Romish priests had interfered. All the old story of course. In
the midst, a telegraph paper was brought to her; she turned deadly
white, and bade me open it, for she could not. I knew she thought her
son had met his father's fate, and expected to astonish her with the
tidings that he was coming home by the next steamer, or that he had
sent some game, or the like. Alas! no; the mother's foreboding had
been too near the truth. The telegram was from Eustace: "Tracy has had
a bad horse accident. The doctor wishes for you."
There was nothing for it but to speed the mother and daughter on their
hurried start to catch the Holyhead packet and cross that night. I
went home to await in terror and trembling the despatch I might
receive, and to be enlivened by Mrs. Sam Alison's cheering accounts of
all the accidents she could recollect. "Horses are dangerous creatures
to meddle with, and your poor papa never would let me take the reins
when we kept a gig--which was when he was living, you know, my dear.
'You never can trust their heels,' he used to say; and it was only last
week little Cocker was kicked off, but that was a donkey, and they were
using him shamefully," &c. &c. &c. I felt as if a swarm of bees were
humming in my ears, and walked about to make the suspense more
tolerable, but I absolutely had no news at all till Viola's letter
came. It was a long one, for she could be of no service as yet, and to
write letters was at once her use and her solace.
Among the horses which Dermot's Irish agent had been buying for
training purposes was a mare, own sister to Harold's hunter--a splendid
creature of three years old, of wonderful beauty, power, and speed, but
with the like indomitable temper. She would suffer no living thing to
approach her but one little stable-boy, and her own peculiar cat, which
slept on her back, and took all sorts of liberties with her. Her value
would be great if she could be trained, but the training was the
problem. Harold, who, partly from early familiarity, partly from the
gentleness of fearless strength, had a matchless power over horses, had
made acquaintance with her one evening, had been suffered in her box,
had fed her, caressed her cat, and led her round the stable-yard as a
first stage in the conquest of horse by man.
In the early morning, Dermot, quite as fearless, and unwilling that
anyone should do or dare more than himself, had gone alone to make the
same attempt, but no sooner did the mare find him beside her, than she
seized him by the shoulder with her teeth, threw him down, and kicked
and trampled on him. None of the grooms could succeed in rescuing him,
and it was only when Eustace's cry had summoned Harold, that, grasping
the mare's halter and forcing her back with his arm of iron, he made it
possible for Eustace and a groom to drag out poor Dermot's senseless
form, in a state that at first appeared to be death itself. For
several days his condition was so extremely precarious, that Harold
never once left him till his mother arrived, and even after that was
his most effective nurse. He sent me a message, in Viola's letter,
that he had not had a moment to write, and hoped I had not been too
anxious.
After this, Viola wrote every day, and told of gradual improvement in
her brother, and at last how he had been lifted to the sofa, and mamma
hoped in a fortnight or three weeks he might be able to be taken home.
By the next post came a note from Harold, saying he could be spared,
and was coming home, and that very evening he walked into the house,
and was welcomed by Dora with shrieks of ecstatic joy.
He said Dermot was better, but he looked worn, and had the indefinable
expression of pain which made me sure that something had gone wrong,
and presently I found out that the bite in the shoulder was a very bad
business, still causing much suffering, but that the most serious
matter was, that a kick in the side had renewed the damage left by the
old Alma bullet, and that great care would be needed all the winter.
But Harold seemed more reluctant to open his mouth than ever, and only,
by most diligent pumping, did Mrs. Alison get out of him what doctors
they had called in, and whether they had used all the recipes for
wounds and bruises that she had entrusted to me to be sent, and which
had for the most part remained in my blotting-book.
The next morning, to my grief and distress, he did not come to my room,
but I found he had been up and out long before it was light, and he
made his appearance at eleven o'clock, saying he had promised to go and
give Lord Erymanth an account of his nephew, and wanted me to come with
him "to do the talking, or he should never stand it." If I did not
object to the dog-cart and Daniel O'Rourke immediately, we should be
there by luncheon time. I objected to nothing that Harry drove, but
all the way to Erymanth not ten words passed, and those were matters of
necessity. I had come to the perception that when he did not want to
speak it was better to let him take his own time.
Lord Erymanth was anxious, not only about Dermot's health, and his
sister's strength and spirits, but he wanted to hear what Harold
thought of the place and of the tone of the country; and, after our
meal, when he grew more confidential, he elicited short plain answers
full of information in short compass, and not very palatable. The
estate was "not going on well." "Did Harold think well of the agent?"
"He had been spoilt." "How?" "By calls for supplies." "Were the
people attached to Dermot?" "To a certain degree." "Would it be safe
for him to live there?" "He ought."
Lord Erymanth entirely assented to this, and we found that he had all
along held that his sister had been in error for not having remained at
Killy Marey, and brought up her son to his duties as a landlord,
whatever the danger; though of course she, poor thing, could hardly be
expected to see it in that light. He evidently viewed this absenteeism
as the cause of the wreck of Dermot's youth, and those desultory habits
of self-indulgence and dissipation which were overcoming that which was
good and noble in him; and the good old man showed that he blamed
himself for what he had conceded to his sister in the first shock of
her misfortune. Harold had told him of the warm feeling shown by the
tenantry when Dermot was lying in danger of his life, and their
rejoicing when he turned the corner and began to recover, and he asked
anxiously whether all this affection might not awaken a responsive
chord, and draw him to "what was undoubtedly his proper sphere."
"It will," said Harold.
"You think so? And there is little doubt but that your cousin's
influence at such a critical period may have great effect in turning
the scale?"
Harold nodded.
"More especially as, from the intelligence I have received, I have
little doubt that the connection will be drawn a good deal closer
before long," said Lord Erymanth with a benignant smile at us both. "I
suppose we must not begin to congratulate one another yet, for I may
conclude that nothing had actually taken place when you came away."
"Nothing."
"When my sister became conscious of the condition of affairs and wrote
to consult me, I had no hesitation in replying that, though Viola's
connections might warrant greater expectations in a worldly point of
view, yet I thought that there was every reason for promoting an
attachment to a gentleman of family equal to her own on one side at
least, and whose noble exertions during the past two years for the
welfare of all concerned with him, not only obliterate all recollection
of past disadvantages, but in every way promise honour and happiness to
all connected with him."
I was not a little excited, but one of the worst fits of restlessness
under Lord Erymanth's harangues had come upon Harold. He only sat it
out by pulling so many hairs out of his beard that they made an audible
frizzle in the fire when he brushed them off his knee, and stood up,
saying gruffly, "You are very good; he deserves it. But I must get
Lucy home in good time. May I go and speak to your coachman? Tracy
gave me a message for him."
Harold was off, and Lord Erymanth observed, "A very fine young man
that. It is much to be regretted that he did not employ the advantages
he enjoyed at Sydney as his cousin Eustace did, and left himself so
rugged and unpolished."
"You must learn to like him, dear Lord Erymanth," I said. "He is all a
very dear brother could be to me."
And allegiance to him kept back every word of that infinite
superiority, which was never more shown than by the opinion of Eustace,
which his great unselfish devotion continued, without the least deceit,
to impress on most people. Lord Erymanth rejoiced, and we agreed that
it was very lucky for me that I preferred Harold, since I should have
had to yield up my possession of Eustace. The old gentleman was most
kind and genial, and much delighted that the old breach with the
Alisons should be healed, and that his niece should make a marriage
which he greatly preferred to her sister's, and together we sung the
praises of our dear Viola, where we had no difference of opinion.
Harold only came back when the carriage came round, and no sooner had
we driven off than I broke out--"Harry, I had no notion matters had
gone so far. Fancy, Lady Diana consulting her brother! It must be
very near a crisis. I can't think why you did not stay to see it."
"Because I am a fool."
The horse flew on till we were nearly out at the park-gates, and a
bewildered sense of his meaning was coming before me. "You wished it,"
said I rather foolishly.
"I did. I do. Only I don't want to see it."
"My poor dear Harold!"
"Pshaw!"--the sound was like a wild beast's, and made the horse
plunge--"I shall get over it."
Then, presently, in a more natural voice, "I must go out again in the
spring. There are things to be looked to at Boola Boola for both of
us. I shall only wait till Tracy is well enough to go with me."
"He! Dermot Tracy?"
"Yes. It will be the best way to break out of the old lines."
"I can fancy that. Oh, Harold! are you going to save him? That will
be the most blessed work of all!" I cried, for somehow a feeling like
an air of hope and joy came over me.
"I don't know about that," said he, in a smothered tone; but it was
getting dark enough to loose his tongue, and when I asked, "Was it his
illness that made him wish it?" he answered, "It was coming before.
Lucy, those horses have done worse for him than that wound in his
shoulder. They had almost eaten the very heart out of him!"
"His substance I know they have," I said; "but not his good warm heart."
"You would say so if you saw the poor wretches on his property," said
Harold. "The hovels in the Alfy Valley were palaces compared with the
cabins. Such misery I never saw. They say it is better since the
famine. What must it have been then? And he thinking only how much
his agent could squeeze from them!"
I could only say he had been bred up in neglect of them, and to think
them impracticable, priest-ridden traitors and murderers. Yes, Lady
Diana had said some of this to Harold already, It was true that they
had shot Mr. Tracy, but Harold had learnt that after a wild, reckless,
spendthrift youth, he had become a Protestant and a violent Orangeman
in the hottest days of party strife, so that he had incurred a special
hatred, which, as far as Harold could see, was not extended to the son,
little as he did for his tenants but show them his careless, gracious
countenance from time to time.
Yet peril for the sake of duty would, as all saw now, have been far
better for Dermot than the alienation from all such calls in which his
mother had brought him up. When her religious influence failed with
him, there was no other restraint. Since he had left the army, he had
been drawn, by those evil geniuses of his, deep into speculations in
training horses for the turf, and his affairs had come into a frightful
state of entanglement, his venture at Doncaster had been unsuccessful,
and plunged him deeper into his difficulties, and then (as I came to
know) Harold's absolute startled amazement how any living man could
screw and starve men, women, and children for the sake of horseflesh,
and his utter contempt for such diversions as he had been shown at the
races, compared with the pleasure of making human beings happy and
improving one's land, had opened Dermot's eyes with very few words.
The thought was not new when the danger of death made him look back on
those wasted years; and resolution began with the dawning of
convalescence, that if he could only free himself from his
entanglements--and terrible complications they were--he would begin a
new life, worthy of having been given back to him. In many a midnight
watch he had spoken of these things, and Harold had soothed him by a
promise to use that accountant's head of his in seeing how to free him
as soon as he was well enough. Biston and the horses would be sold,
and he could turn his mind to his Irish tenants, who, as he already
saw, loved him far better than he deserved. He caught eagerly at the
idea of going out to Australia with Harold, and it did indeed seem that
my brave-hearted nephew was effecting a far greater deliverance for him
than that from the teeth and hoofs of wicked Sheelah.
"But you will not stay, Harold? You will come home?" I said.
"I mean it," he answered.
"Then I don't so much mind," said I, with infinite relief; and he
added, thinking that I wanted further reassurance, that he should never
give up trying to get Prometesky's pardon; and that this was only a
journey for supplies, and to see his old friend, and perhaps to try
whether anything could be done about that other unhappy Harry. I
pressed him to promise me that he would return and settle here, but
though he said he would come back, to settling at home he answered,
"That depends;" and though I could not see, I knew he was biting his
moustache, and guessed, poor dear fellow, that it depended on how far
he should be able to endure the sight of Eustace and Viola married. I
saw now that I had been blind not to perceive before that his heart had
been going out to Viola all this time, while he thought he was courting
her for Eustace, and I also had my thoughts about Viola, which made it
no very great surprise to me, when, in a few days more, intelligence
came that Eustace might be expected at home, and he made his appearance
in a petulant though still conceited mood, that made me suspect his
wooing had not been prosperous, though I knew nothing till Harold told
me that he was not out of heart, though Viola had cut him short and
refused to listen to him, for her mother said she was a mere child who
was taken by surprise, and that if he were patient and returned to the
charge she would know her own mind better.
Harold was certainly more exhilarated than he chose to avow to himself
on this discovery, and the next week came a letter from Lady Diana, and
a short note from Dermot himself, both saying he had not been so well,
and begging Harold to come and assist in the removal, since Dermot
protested that otherwise he could not bear the journey, and his mother
declared that she should be afraid to think of it for him.
Viola's hitherto constant correspondence had ceased; I drew my own
auguries, but I had to keep them to myself, for Harold started off the
next day in renewed spirits, and I had Eustace on my hands in a very
strange state, not choosing or deigning to suppose himself rejected,
and yet exceedingly, angry with all young ladies for their silliness
and caprices, while he lauded Lady Diana up to the skies, and abused
Dermot, who, I think, had laughed at him visibly enough to be at least
suspected by himself. And, oddly enough, Dora was equally cross, and
had a fit of untowardness unequalled since the combats at her first
arrival, till I was almost provoked into acquiescence in Eustace's
threat of sending her to school.
The journey was at last accomplished; Harold only parted with the
Tracys at Arked House, after having helped to carry Dermot to the room
that had been prepared for him on the ground-floor.
I rode over the next afternoon to inquire, and was delighted to meet
Viola close within the gate. We sent away my horse, and she drew me
into her favourite path while answering my questions that Dermot had
had a good night and was getting up; I should find him in the
drawing-room if I waited a little while. She could have me all to
herself, for mamma was closeted with Uncle Ery, talking over
things--and on some word or sound of mine betraying that I guessed what
things, it broke out.
"How could you let him do it, Lucy? You, at least, must have known
better."
"My dear, how could I have stopped him, with all St. George's Channel
between us?"
"Well, at any rate, you might persuade them all to have a little sense,
and not treat me as if I was one of the elegant females in 'Pride and
Prejudice,' who only refuse for fun! Is not that enough to drive one
frantic, Lucy? Can't you at least persuade the man himself?"
"Only one person can do that, Viola."
"But I can't! That's the horrid part of it. I can't get rid of it.
Mamma says I am a foolish child. I could tell her of other people more
foolish than I am. I can see the difference between sham and reality,
if they can't."
"I don't think he means to be sham," I rambled into defence of Eustace.
"Means it! No, he hasn't the sense. I believe he really thinks it was
he who saved Dermot's life as entirely as mamma does."
"No. Now do they really?"
"Of course, as they do with everything. It's always 'The page slew the
boar, the peer had the gloire.'"
"It's the page's own fault," I said. "He only wants the peer to have
the gloire."
"And very disagreeable and deceitful it is of him," cried Viola; "only
he hasn't got a scrap of deceit in him, and that's the reason he does
it so naturally. No, you may tell them that borrowed plumes won't
always serve, and there are things that can't be done by deputy."
And therewith Viola, perhaps perceiving what she had betrayed, turned
more crimson than ever, and hid her face against me with a sob in her
breath, and then I was quite sure of what I did not dare to express,
further than by saying, while I caressed her, "I believe they honestly
think it is all the same."
"But it isn't," said Viola, recovering, and trying to talk and laugh
off her confusion. "I don't think so, and poor Dermot did not find it
so when the wrong one was left to lift him, and just ran his great
stupid arm into the tenderest place in his side, and always stepped on
all the boards that creak, and upset the table of physic bottles, and
then said it was Harold's way of propping them up! And that's the
creature they expect me to believe in!"
We turned at the moment and saw a handkerchief beckoning to us from the
window; and going in, found Dermot established on a couch under it, and
Harold packing him up in rugs, a sight that amazed both of us; but
Dermot said, "Yes, he treats me like Miss Stympson's dog, you see.
Comes over by stealth when I want him."
Dermot did look very ill and pain-worn, and his left arm lay useless
across him, but there was a kind of light about his eyes that I had not
seen for a long time, as he made Harold set a chair for me close to
him, and he and Viola told the adventures of their journey, with mirth
in their own style, and Harold stood leaning against the shutter with
his look of perfect present content, as if basking in sunshine while it
lasted.
When the mother and uncle came in, it was manifestly time for us to
convey ourselves away. Harold had come on foot from Mycening, but I
was only too glad to walk my pony along the lanes, and have his company
in the gathering winter twilight.
"You have spoken to her?" he said.
"Yes. Harold, it is of no use. She will never have him."
"Her mother thinks she will."
"Her mother knows what is in Viola no more than she knows what is in
that star. Has Dermot never said anything--"
"Lady Diana made everyone promise not to say a word to him."
"Oh!"
"But, Lucy, what hinders it? There's nothing else in the way, is
there?"
I did not speak the word, but made a gesture of assent.
"May I know who it is," said Harold in a voice of pain. "Our poor
fellow shall never hear."
"Harold," said I, "are you really so ridiculous as to think any girl
could care for Eustace while you are by?"
"Don't!" cried Harold, with a sound as of far more pain than gladness.
"But why not, Harry? You asked me."
"Don't light up what I have been struggling to quench ever since I knew
it."
"Why?" I went on. "You need not hold back on Eustace's account. I am
quite sure nothing would make her accept him, and I am equally
convinced--"
"Hush, Lucy!" he said in a scarcely audible voice. "It is profanation.
Remember--"
"But all that is over," I said. "Things that happened when you were a
mere boy, and knew no better, do not seem to belong to you now."
"Sometimes they do not," he said sadly; "but--"
"What is repented," I began, but he interrupted.
"The fact is not changed. It is not fit that the purest, gentlest,
brightest creature made by Heaven should be named in the same day with
one stained with blood--aye, and deeds I could not speak of to you."
I could not keep from crying as I said, "If I love you the more, Harry,
would not she?"
"See here, Lucy," said Harry, standing still with his hand on my rein;
"you don't know what you do in trying to inflame what I can hardly keep
down. The sweet little thing may have a fancy for me because I'm the
biggest fellow she knows, and have done a thing or two; but what I am
she knows less than even you do; and would it not be a wicked shame
either to gain the tender heart in ignorance, or to thrust on it the
knowledge and the pain of such a past as mine?" And his groan was very
heavy, so that I cried out:
"Oh, Harry! this is dreadful. Do you give up all hope and joy for ever
because of what you did as an ungovernable boy left to yourself?"
We went on for some time in silence; then he said in an indescribable
tone, between wonder, disgust, and pity, "And I thought I loved Meg
Cree!"
"You knew no one else," I said, feeling as if, when Dora threw away
that ring, the wild, passionate animal man had been exorcised; but all
the answer I had was another groan, as from the burthened breast, as if
he felt it almost an outrage to one whom he so reverenced to transfer
to her the heart that had once beat for Meg Cree. There was no more
speech for a long time, during which I feared that I had merely made
him unhappy by communicating my conjecture, but just as we were
reaching our own grounds he said, "You will say nothing, Lucy?"
"No, indeed."
"I thought it was all over, and for ever," he said, pausing; "it ought
to have been. But the gates of a new world were opened to me when I
saw her and you walking in the garden! If it had only been five or six
years sooner!"
He could not say any more, for Dora, who had been watching, here burst
on us with cries of welcome, and it was long before there was any
renewal of the conversation, so that I could not tell whether he really
persuaded himself that he had no hopes, or was waiting to see how
matters should turn out.
It was never easy to detect expressions of feeling or spirits on his
massive face, and he could hardly be more silent than usual; but it was
noticeable that he never fell asleep after his former wont when sitting
still. Indeed, he seldom was still, for he had a great deal of
business both for the estate and the potteries on his hands, and stayed
up late at night over them; and not only over them, for my room was
next to his, and I heard the regular tramp, tramp of his feet, and the
turn at the end of the room, as he walked up and down for at least an
hour when the rest of the house were asleep, or the closing of the door
when he returned from wandering on the moor at night. And in the early
morning, long before light, he always walked or rode over to Arked
House, bestowed on Dermot's hurts the cares which both had come to look
on as essential, and stayed with him till the family were nearly ready
to appear at their nine o'clock breakfast, not seeing Viola at all,
unless any special cause led to a meeting later in the day, and then
his eyes glowed, and he would do her devoted, unobserved service--no,
not unobserved by her, whom it made blush and sparkle--and utter little
words of thanks, not so gay as of old, but deeper, as if for a great
honour and delight. And then he would bow his head, colour, and draw
into the background, where, with folded arms, he could watch her.
Once, when Dora, in her old way, claimed to be his wife, Harold told
her with some impatience that she was growing too old for that
nonsense. The child looked at him with bent brows and questioning eyes
for a moment, then turned and fled. An hour later, after a long
search, I found her crouched up in the corner of the kangaroo's stall
among the straw, having cried herself to sleep, with her head on the
creature's soft back.
As soon as Dermot was able to bear any strain on mind or attention, he
gave his keys to Harold. All his long and unhappy accumulation of
bills and bonds were routed out from their receptacles at Biston, and
brought over by Harold to his office, where he sorted them, and made
them intelligible, before harassing his friend with the questions he
alone could explain. An hour a day was then spent over them--hours
that cost poor Dermot more than he was equal to; but his mind was made
up, as he told me, "to face anything rather than go on in the old
miserable way." It was much that he had learnt to think it miserable.
Lady Diana was not much obliged to Harold. She could not think why her
patient was so often left out of spirits, and with a headache after
those visits, while he was in a feverish state of anxiety about them,
that made it worse to put them off than to go through with them; and
then, when she had found out the cause, the family pride much disliked
letting an outsider into his involvments, and she thought their
solicitor would have done the thing much better.
Poor woman, it was hard that, when she thought illness was bringing her
son back to her, she found his confidence absorbed by the
"bush-ranger," whom she never liked nor trusted, and his reformation,
if reformation it were to prove, not at all conducted on her views of
visible repentance and conversion. Dermot was responsive to her
awakened tenderness, but he was perversely reticent as to whether
repentance or expedience prompted him. She required so much religious
demonstration, that she made him shrink from manifesting his real
feelings as "humbug," and Viola knew far more that his repentance was
real than she did. Those proofs of true repentance--confession and
restitution--I am sure he gave, and that most bravely, when, after
weeks of weary and sorrowful work on Harold's part and his, the whole
was sufficiently disentangled to make a lucid statement of his affairs.
He made up his mind to make an arrangement with his creditors, giving
up Biston, all his horses--everything, in fact, but Killy Marey, which
was entailed on his Tracy cousins. And this second year of George
Yolland's management had made the shares in the Hydriot Company of so
much value, that the sale of them would complete the clearance of his
obligations. The full schedule of his debts, without reserve, and the
estimate of his means of paying them off, was then given by Dermot to
his mother, and sent to his uncle, who went over them with his
solicitor.
Lady Diana writhed under the notion of selling Biston. It seemed to
her to be the means of keeping her son from the place in Ireland, which
she disliked more than ever, and she hoped her brother would advance
enough to prevent this from being needful; but for this Lord Erymanth
was far too wise. He said, as Dermot felt, that Biston had never been
anything but an unjustifiable and pernicious luxury and temptation; but
he did voluntarily, since it joined his property, propose to purchase
it himself, and at such a sum as secured the possibility of a real
payment of the debts when the other sales should have been effected.
And they were carried out. It was well for Dermot that, as a
convalescent in his mother's house, he was sheltered from all counter
influences, such as his easy good nature might not have withstood; and
under that shelter it was his purpose to abide until the voyage which
would take him out of reach for a time, and bring him home ready for
his fresh start.
Of course Lady Diana hated the notion of the voyage, and though her
brother advised her not to oppose it, yet to the last I think she
entertained hopes that it would end in Harold's going alone.
When Harold came in and told me that Dermot Tracy's horses, English and
Irish, were all sold, and named the sum that they had realised, my
spirits leaped up, and I was certain, after such a voluntary sacrifice,
the dear old companion of my childhood would be a joy and exultation to
us all, instead of a sorrow and a grief.