“And you aren’t really sorry you didn’t get over?”
“Sorry? Wouldn’t you be?”
“Well, I don’t know. Considering the hordes of disillusioned veterans
I’ve met this winter--”
“At least they had a chance to get disillusioned in action. Something
for their money. With me it’s just two years--practically three
years--gone to pot, and a sort of feeling it isn’t worth while to go
back at all. To college, I mean.”
“You couldn’t start this time of year, could you?”
“I suppose I could do something.”
“It would be fun having you around until Fall--like old times.”
Hal laughed shortly.
“You’d care?”
“I’ve had a good long spell of Thornhill alone, you know. Next year I
shan’t mind, because I’ll be away at school myself.”
“My Lord, Moira, have you anything more to learn?”
“Oh, yes, I could learn to be useful, for instance.”
“You manage to be most anything, if the notion strikes you.”
“I’m not so crazy to go,” she mused. “I imagine it’ll be rather awful.
Formalities, lady lecturers, highbrow girls with shell-rimmed glasses.
They’ve been cramming education down the throats of the fashionable
young for a generation and what’s the result? Country clubs,
prohibition, and a beastly war.”
“Cynical, eh?”
“No more than you would be, if you’d done nothing but read newspapers
these last two years. I suppose now they’ll all combine and squeeze
everything out of Germany that she has left--just as the Persians and
the Greeks did, and the kings in the Bible. And there’ll be a lot of
moralizing--more than ever. Of course, you’ll be glad. The victor is
always spoiled.”
“Pooh,” he laughed. “You’ve got me wrong. I don’t give a damn what
they do. Say, the only principles I have left are principles of
horsemanship. I’m highly interested in the way you sit Elfin.”
“Isn’t she a beauty!”
“She’s a pretty horse. But I wasn’t referring entirely to the equine
part of the combination.”
It was the first real day they had had together since Hal’s discharge
from camp the week before. The weather was like an Indian summer
afternoon, one of those exceedingly mild days of February between
spells of stiff cold. They had been galloping along the high road,
when Moira suddenly pulled up and turned her horse into a meandering
lane, so narrow that the stripped branches met in sharply accentuated
patterns overhead against the sky. The fields were a monotonous, hard
stubbly brown, except where pockets of soiled snow lay in the holes and
under the protecting sides of hillocks.
“Is Selden Van Nostrand coming out to-morrow?” asked Hal, after they
had ridden a hundred yards in silence.
“Yes.”
“Does he come out often?”
“Yes ... let’s go as far as Corey’s Inn for a bite. I’m famishing,
aren’t you?”
“I don’t like him. I suppose you know that.”
“You’re not going to be like the rest of the patriots, are you? Get so
you despise anybody with a critical mind?”
“I admire people who say what they mean as much as anybody. But I do
object to Van Nostrand, because he’s faintly rotten, and even his wit
is literary. He always seems to be rehearsed. Anybody can do that Wilde
thing if they study up on it long enough. The point is, is it worth
while?”
She laughed with a touch of malice.
“You sound like a book review, Hal. His line is pretty easy, but it’s a
line. Nobody ever even tries to be amusing here, and he not only tries
but I think he succeeds.”
“It’s from him, I suppose, you got this fellow-feeling for the Germans.
Well, he had plenty of opportunity to cultivate it, staying at home.”
Moira gave him a glance of friendliness.
“Oh, it’s such fun to have you back, I don’t care what you say. If you
knew all the dreams I’ve had, terrifying dreams, seeing you--hurt and
cut up and dead. I’d wake up mad enough to kill Germans myself.”
“Did you really dream about me, Moira?” He pulled his horse closer to
hers, leaning as far as he could. The girl’s mount, disliking to be
crowded, pranced out of control, and Hal had to swerve away, but he
kept his eyes on the straight, slim figure.
“God, Moira, what a beauty you’ve grown!”
She began to murmur aloud:
“When I was one and twenty
I heard a wise man say
Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away,
Give gold away and rubies
But keep your fancy free,
But I was one and twenty,
No use to talk to me.”
“Moira!” he cried, but she was gone, at full gallop down the lane.
“Hurry!” she called back, “I’m nearly dead with hunger.”
And from there to the inn was a race.
When they returned it was dark, and both were eager to reach the
stables, but as they wheeled into the little pasture road which led
through the tenant’s land and past Hermann Dietz’ house, a curious
scene halted them.
The house was a very old-fashioned small wooden dwelling, with a high
stone foundation, built by the past generation of Dietzes twenty-five
or thirty years before. The barn, larger than the house, was some
twenty yards from the kitchen door, across a squalid cow yard. A dim
lamp or two was burning in the house, but this was completely deserted,
the doors hanging open and giving it a half-witted grimace. The centre
of attraction was a big double barn door. Around this, in a lighted
semi-circle stood the Dietz family, consisting of the bony, tall,
salmon-faced father, the emaciated, dreadfully stooped mother, and four
children of varying ages. A curious murmur arose from the group, and
riding closer, Moira and Hal saw that they were weeping. Beyond, they
could catch a glimpse of the body of a horse, swaying slightly from
side to side in its last agony, and casting monstrous shadows on the
high cobwebbed walls behind, thrown by the lantern which stood on the
ground at Hermann’s feet.
Moira dismounted and signalled to Hal to follow her.
“They’ve been grieving this way since yesterday,” she whispered, “and
to-day the veterinary told them he couldn’t save the horse.”
The sobs arising from the pitiful group, two of the smallest of whom
clung to their mother’s skirts and hid their faces, more frightened
at the commotion than troubled about the horse, rose and fell with
the spasms of suffering that swept over the dying beast. Moira heard
Ellen’s reassuring voice and saw her face for the first time in the
lantern light at the far end of the group.
“Ah, Mrs. Dietz, let them put the poor animal out of its pain,” she was
saying in a loud whisper to the mother. “It can’t live.”
Moira turned to Hal and took his arm. He had been smiling grimly at the
scene, but as her hand fell upon his sleeve he covered it with his own.
The horse, the drama of primitive sorrow, everything was forgotten,
except her features and hair, and gipsy loveliness in the wavering
light.
“They’re Ellen’s children, these people,” she said. “She’s wonderful
to them. She told me yesterday ‘that horse is like a member of their
family, Miss Moira. It’ll be terrible when it dies.’ Isn’t she fine to
come down here and comfort them?”
They turned at the sound of foot-steps crossing the hard earth and
stubble, and two stocky figures passed them.
“Hullo,” said one, with a grin. It was Rob Blaydon, carrying in his
hand something from which they caught a quick gleam as he passed. The
veterinary was with him. Both went up to Hermann and held a hurried
consultation, and during this the family fell silent. Presently the
three men parted. Hermann spoke up in a high, quavering voice.
“Well, Momma, they say it’s jest got to be done. We jest got to give
her up, and put her out of her misery. I don’t know where we’re a-goin’
to git another one like her. I don’t know--that I don’t. Poor old
Molly. She’s been with us now longer than my boy there, pretty near
as long as Lilly here. It breaks me up to lose her. Yes, sir, it goes
hard, but there ain’t no helping it.”
“That’s the way to look at it, Hermann,” said Rob, with gruff good
nature.
Hal raised his voice from where he stood with Moira at some distance.
“I’ll give you another horse, Dietz,” he said. Moira squeezed his arm.
“Thank you, thank you, Mr. Hal,” the farmer responded, obsequiously,
peering for him in the weak light. “Now, Momma, ain’t that fine! Well,
children, I guess we better be movin’ in. Poor Molly--I’d rather not
see you do it, gentlemen, if you don’t mind.”
The family turned to obey, exhibiting a variety of expressions, from
fright to the deepest woe, but Moira observed that there was one who
had not shared the general grief--the short, mature, straw-haired girl
of sixteen or seventeen, whose face bore a stolid, disdainful look. She
followed toward the kitchen after Ellen and one of the small children,
but as she reached the porch she turned and gazed at Rob Blaydon,
fascinated by the revolver in his hand. In the weird light, which cast
a romantic glow over her figure and uncouth clothing, Moira thought the
girl had a touch of beauty, fresh and coarse and natural as earth.
“Poor Hermann,” she said, “he’s a rustic Pierrot, Hal.”
Just as they topped the ridge they heard the harsh double-fire of Rob
Blaydon’s revolver. She was glad to see the lights of Thornhill.
“Well,” said Hal, “Rob had a good hunch to-night--even if it was fun
for him. Just the sort of thing he’d love. There’s the boy who needed
to go to France. As it is he’ll get over that raw streak very slowly.”
“Rob’s a dear,” she broke in, earnestly. “I’m not one of those who
worry about him. He’s a good animal--without a shred of theory in him.
I let him get me most beautifully pickled twice last Fall.”
“The devil you did!” exclaimed Hal.
“Why not? He knows everybody everywhere and they like him. And he
drives like a wild man--when he’s had a few. Now you wouldn’t be such
a good fellow, would you, Hal? You’d be cautious and look after my
morals, and count my drinks and take me home early.”
“Yes, I’m afraid I would,” he said. “And I suppose you wouldn’t like
it.”