THE INVOLUNTARY HUNT AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.
At last an event arose that completely destroyed the beautiful, but dull
quietude of our lives. Lord Clare’s sister arrived unexpectedly at
Greenhurst, and a large party were to follow her and her son down from
London, to spend the shooting season.
This sudden invasion of the woods and grounds that had been exclusively
ours for so many years, was a source of great annoyance to old Turner.
His usual quaint good-humor was sadly disturbed. He seemed quite beside
himself with anxiety, and nervously besought me to give up my usual
rides, and remain confined to the house if possible during the time Lady
Catherine and her son might remain at Greenhurst.
This was asking much of a young creature just verging into girlhood, and
full of a strong, fresh curiosity for seeing and feeling the life of
which she began to know herself a vital part. Besides, I was a creature
of the open air. No bird ever felt a keener necessity for the bright
atmosphere, and all the rich beauty of out-door life. Shut up in the
house, I was like a wild lark in its cage, moaning, moping, and with no
hearty relish of existence left in me. I wished to obey good old Turner.
He was so anxious on the point, and seemed so grieved at the idea of
depriving me of a single pleasure, that had the thing been possible, I
would have kept myself a prisoner for weeks rather than increase his
unaccountable perturbation.
But he was seldom with us now, that kind, strange man, and my
confinement became terrible—when would it end? How long was I, who had
never been confined in-doors a whole day in my life, unless in that one
fever—how was I to endure weeks and weeks of this dull imprisonment?
It was too much. Not even to please Turner could I submit to this
longer.
One day, I think it was the fourth, my restless spirit broke bounds. I
took an opportunity when Maria was occupied, to steal out into the open
air. Jupiter’s stable, a pretty building that might have passed for a
summer-house, stood a little back from the kitchen garden, and I heard
him neighing sharply, as if he, like his mistress, were beginning to
rebel.
For some reason, I never knew what, except that Turner disliked to have
servants about our place, the old man had always taken care of Jupiter
with his own hands. With so few objects of love, I naturally often
followed him to the pretty building where Jupiter was stalled, more like
a fairy courser than the matchless pony he was.
The pleasant neigh which the animal set up as I approached, awoke all
the wild-wood spirit that Turner’s interdict had kept down in my bosom
so long. I ran to the stable, dragged the side-saddle with its pretty
embroidered trappings from its closet, and girded it breathlessly upon
Jupiter’s back. The creature seemed eager as myself to be upon the
hill-side. His ears quivered with delight; he rubbed his head against my
shoulder with a mellow whimper, and opened his mouth for the bit the
moment he saw the embossed bridle in my hand.
Patting him on the back with a promise of speedy return, I entered the
house, ran up to my room, and hurried on my habit, of soft green cloth,
and the beaver hat with a long black ostrich plume that floated from one
side.
The blood was hot in my cheek as I tied the hat on. Without staying to
twist up the curls that floated away with the feather in picturesque
confusion, I ran off to the stables, huddling up the skirt of my
riding-dress with both hands.
I knew that it was wrong—that I should be sorry enough for it before
night, but in my willfulness this only gave a keener zest to the
enjoyment I proposed to myself.
Away we went, Jupiter and I, dashing through the trees, over the velvet
sward, and across the broad avenues, along which the morning sunshine
lay in rivers of light. The branches rained down their ripe brown and
golden leaves on me as I passed; and a crisp white frost that lay like
quicksilver among the grass, gave forth a rasping sound more
exhilarating than music, as Jupiter’s feet flew over it. The air was
clear and bright, with mingled frost and sunshine as it fell upon my
face and swept my garments. The blood kindled like wine in my veins. I
was wild with the joyousness of free motion, ready for leaping a ditch,
flying through the air—any thing wild or daring that had life and quick
motion in it.
Away we went toward the uplands, from which a view of Marston Court
could be obtained. I thought of the strange man who had surprised me on
that spot as we rushed along—laughed aloud as I remembered how Jupiter
and I had baffled him once, how ready we were to do it again. I longed
to see him, not for any specified purpose. Nothing then was important
enough to have kept me motionless a moment. But abroad as I was, with a
wild thirst for adventure of any kind, it would have been something like
the excitement I wanted, could the mysterious language with which he
cursed me have threatened us with danger once more.
But though I searched for this being, riding around and over the
eminence on which he had appeared but once, nothing but the cool,
beautiful solitude rewarded me. The luxurious stretch of country between
me and Marston Court, brown, hazy, and many-tinted, with the picturesque
old building looming up through the rich shadows—all its clear outlines
drowned in soft autumnal colors—all its hoariness and age mellowed down
and lost in the dreamy distance—this rare view, with the upland on which
we stood, was wrapped in quiet. Not a human being was in sight.
A strange desire seized me to visit this building, which had so often
charmed me with its loneliness and beauty. It was some miles distant. I
knew that, but Jupiter had merely tried his strength as yet, simply
breathed himself in our progress to the uplands. He had been shut up in
the stable for days, and seemed as wild for action as his mistress.
“Shall we try it, Jupiter?” I said, smoothing his mane with my whip.
“There is a glorious run for us, Jupiter, as we have determined to be
disobedient and naughty. Ju! suppose we do something worth while?”
At the sound of my voice, the pony began to quiver his ears, and snuffed
the air saucily, as if he knew some mischief was afloat, and was eager
for his share.
“Come, then,” and I gathered up the bridle, shaking it gleefully.
Jupiter gave his head a toss, and away we went toward Marston Court.
The eminence lay behind, and we were in a thickly wooded little valley,
moving rather slowly, for I was charmed by broken glimpses of a small
stream that flashed up from the shadows, when the having of hounds, the
tramp of horses, and a wild confusion of sounds swept down the hollow.
Before I could tighten my reins, a stag shot by me, so close that
Jupiter reared with a wild snort, almost flinging me backward from the
saddle.
The stag, a noble animal, cleared the stream with one desperate bound,
and for an instant I saw him turn his great, wild eyes, glowing with
pain and terror through the shadows. Blood-specked foam dropped from his
jaws; and his strained limbs quivered with an agony of terror, that made
me tremble upon my saddle with sympathy.
As I looked, the poor animal, whose head was beginning to droop, gave a
sudden start, flung up his antlers, and with a desperate staggering leap
disappeared up the valley. I had not caught my breath again, when down
through the opposite gorge came a train of hounds, leaping forward with
cruel ferocity, some breast to breast, others in single file, but all
with great, savage eyes and open jaws, howling and baying out their
blood-thirsty eagerness. They rushed by me, some on one side of Jupiter,
some on the other, spotting his black coat with flakes of foam, and
making him start with the fury of their noise.
For myself, I struck at the dogs with my whip, and madly flung it after
them. My sympathy for the poor stag was a pang of such agony that it
made me wild. But they swept away like the wind, howling back, as it
seemed to me, their brutal defiance and derision of my helplessness.
Then like the rush of a tempest, heavy with thunder and red with
lightning, came the hunt. The flaming uniforms; those dark horses; the
long riding shirts, streaming back like dusky banners; ostrich plumes
flashing blackly upon the strong current of wind created by the quick
motion of their owners. All this rushed by me, as I have said, like a
sudden storm.
Directly over the spot where we stood bore down the hunt, sweeping us
away with it as a swollen stream tosses onward the straws which it
encounters.
The stag was nearly run down; the hunters were becoming tired; but
Jupiter was fresh as a lark, and held his own bravely with the most
noble-blooded hunter of them all.
The hounds were yelling, like fiends, ahead. Some one called out that
the stag was at bay. A huntsman, all in scarlet, shot out from the rest
onward like an arrow. Jupiter made a sudden bound. It may be in the
fierce excitement that I urged him; but he gave a great leap, and kept
neck and neck with the huntsman.
Beneath a pile of rocks that choked up one end of the valley, the poor
stag was run down. With his delicate fore hoofs lifted up with a
desperate effort at another spring, he stood one instant with his head
turned back, and his great, agonized eyes fixed upon the dogs. The rocks
were too high. His poor limbs exhausted, he could not make the leap, but
wheeled back and desperately tossed the first hound, who fell with a
yelp upon the stones.
But the whole pack was upon him, scrambling up the rocks, and making
fiercely for his throat from all points.
“Save him—save him!” I shouted, striking Jupiter with my clenched hand.
“Save him—save him!”
I rushed by the huntsman. Hitherto we had kept, as I have said, neck and
neck; but Jupiter felt the sting of my blow, and gave a mad bound that
brought us in the midst of the dogs. I still urged him on, striving to
trample down the fierce brutes beneath his hoofs. The stag knew it, I do
believe. The poor animal felt that I was his friend. No human eyes ever
had a deeper agony of appeal in them. I sprang from Jupiter’s back down
among the dogs, and cast myself before their victim.
I saw the huntsman leap from his horse and plunge among the dogs.
“Move—come away, the hounds will tear you to pieces,” he shouted,
beating fiercely about with his whip.
“They shall not kill him; call them off, I say, these beasts shall _not_
kill him,” I shrieked, in reply.
“That moment a hound sprang upon me, tearing my riding-skirt, and almost
bringing me to the earth.”
I cried aloud, but not with fear. The excitement was terrible, but there
was no cowardice in it.
“Great heavens! she will be devoured,” I heard him say; then he leaped
like a flame upon the dog, and grappling him by the throat, bore him
backward to the earth.
“Now run, run!” he cried, panting with the hound in his power.
“No!” I answered stoutly, “they will tear him to pieces if I do. Keep
them off—keep them off.”
He made no answer, but wrestled more fiercely with the hound.
That moment the whole hunt came up, men, keepers, and women surrounding
us in their gorgeous dresses like a battalion of cavalry.
I heard a clamor of voices, the shrieks of women, the excited shouts of
huntsmen giving orders. Keepers rushed in among the hounds with their
clubs. In a few moments the dogs were driven back crouching and snarling
among their masters. I stood alone by the poor stag, with a host of eyes
upon me; then, for the first time, I began to tremble.
“Here,” said a stout old squire, whose white hair fell like snow from
under the close hunting cap, “here, George Irving, you have won the
right to cut his throat. Thomas, where is the knife?”
A keeper came forward, presenting a sharp hunting-knife.
“You will not—you will _not_,” I said, clasping my hands, and standing
face to face with the youth who had saved me. I felt that my lips were
quivering, and that great tears were dropping like hail-stones down my
burning cheeks—“you will not.”
“No,” answered the youth, taking the knife and holding it toward me. “It
is not mine, this brave child was in first. I found her, like the stag,
at bay, braving the hounds. Tell me, shall not the life of this animal
be hers?”
A loud hallo answered him, echoed by a chorus of musical female voices.
The youth reached forth his knife again, but I rejected it. The stag was
safe, and my heart so full of joy, that I felt it breaking all over me.
The noble face before me brightened as if from the reflection of mine,
and for the first time I saw that it was a very young man who had saved
me. Young and—but I will not describe him—for upon his features at that
moment there was something of which no language can give the least idea.
I felt the blood rushing up to my face, for now all things became clear,
and I knew that a score of strange eyes were wondering at me. The
feather in my hat was broken, and fell prone upon my shoulder; my skirt
had been badly wrenched and mangled by the dogs; their muddy foot-prints
were trampled all over it; a morbid sense of the beautiful made me
shrink with shame, as I saw all those eyes fixed upon my dilapidated
state.
“Where is Jupiter?” I said, turning to my young friend.
“Will you search for him, I should like to go away?”
But my pony had retreated beyond the crowd, and could not be seen. This
increased my distress. I sat down upon a stone, and looking at the
exhausted stag, began to think myself the most miserable object of the
two.
I heard a buzz of voices around me, and could distinguish the words,
“Who is it? She is strange to every one here. Where can the picturesque
creature have sprung from?”
That moment a pang shot through my heart. Who indeed was I? How came I
there? By a gross act of disobedience to my best friend? I felt that my
face was bathed with blushes and with tears; for the first time in my
life I was ashamed of myself.
A lady rode close up to me, so close that her skirts swept my shoulder.
“Whose little girl are you?” she said. “You are by far too young for a
scene like this.”
I looked up and knew the face. It was Lady Catherine Irving, a little
more spare, and with a host of fine wrinkles accumulated on her haughty
face, but with the same cold, white complexion; the same self-satisfied
look.
“Ah, you seem to know me,” she said, settling her beaver hat with one
hand. “Now tell me your name; don’t be afraid.”
“I am not afraid, not in the least,” I answered. “Why should I be?”
“True enough; what a bright little wood-nymph it is,” she continued,
smiling back upon two scarlet clad gentlemen behind her. “I suppose
there really is nothing superlatively frightful about me—ha!”
“Something superlatively the reverse,” answered the gentleman thus
challenged.
“You hear, little wood-nymph,” she said, after appropriating this
compliment with a bend of the head, “there is nothing to fear, so speak
out. Where do you live? How came you among all these gentlemen and
ladies?”
“I live in the park, near Greenhurst, madam, with Mr. Turner”——
“Ha!” exclaimed Lady Catherine, with a sharp glance at my face. “Go
home, child—how came you here?”
“I came on my pony, madam.”
“But the hunt, what on earth brought you there?” cried the lady, seeming
to become more and more displeased.
“The hunt—if all this company means that—came across me, and carried
Jupiter and I along.”
“But how came you dismounted and among the hounds?”
“They were all upon the poor stag, and I could not bear it,” I replied,
simply.
“Mother,” said the young man walking close to the lady and speaking in a
low voice, “let us take some other time for questioning her. Lead off
the party, so many persons terrify the poor child.”
“Mount your horse then,” she replied, sharply, “I will see you again
child. I must have some explanation of all this. You are right, George,
this is no place. Mount—mount!”
The youth hesitated, looked at me, at the stag, and then rather
wistfully at his mother.
“We are waiting,” she said, with an impatient wave of her whip, and a
glance at me that brought a flash of red to my cheeks. I, in my
innocence, thought that she was displeased with the torn state of my
poor dress.
The youth mounted, and the hunt dispersed, breaking up into groups and
pairs, and scattering a red gleam through the woods.