The back stairs at Mount Music were old and precipitous. To descend
them at high noon demanded circumspection at night, when the armies of
the cockroaches were abroad; and marauding rats came flopping up and
down them, upon their unlawful occasions, only that man of iron,
Robert Evans, was proof to their terrors. Christian, even though
inured from childhood to the backstairs, held her habit skirt high,
and thanked, heaven for her riding-boots, as she made her way down the
worn stone steps, at some half-past four of a September morning.
Mount Music was one of the many houses of its period that, with, to
quote Mrs. Dixon, "the globe of Ireland to build over," had elected to
bestow its menials in dark and complex basements. Christian and her
candle traversed the long maze of underground passages. The smell of
past cooking was in the air, the black and evil glitter of cockroaches
twinkled on the walls on either hand. This was the horrible part of
subbing, thought Christian, and told herself that nothing but the
thought of seeing the _début_ of Dido, the puppy that she had
walked, would compensate her for facing the cockroaches.
As she opened the kitchen door she was surprised to find a lighted
lamp on the table. In the same glance she caught a glimpse of a
figure, retreating hastily, with slippered shuffle, followed by the
trailing tappings of braces off duty. On one end of the long kitchen
table was seated a cat, in motionless meditation, like a profile in an
Egyptian hieroglyphic; at the other end was a steaming cup of cocoa
and plateful of bread and butter.
"Long life to Evans!" thought Christian, seating herself, like the
cat, on the edge of the table, and entering upon the cocoa.
"Miss Christian!" a raven-croak came through a slit of the
pantry-door; "keep off the Carmodys' land! Mind now what I'm tellin'
you!" The slit ceased.
"Thank you for the cocoa, Evans, but why must I?" called Christian,
in a breath.
A lower croak, that seemed to end with the words "black papishes,"
came through the closed door.
"Old lunatic!" thought Christian; she drank the cocoa, and putting out
the lamp, groped her way to the back-door. It opened on a shrieking
hinge, and she was out into a pale grey dawn, pure and cold, with the
shiver and freshness of new life in it.
The Mount Music stable yard was an immense square, with buildings
round its four sides, and a high, ivy-covered battlemented wall
surrounding and overlooking all. In the middle of the yard was an
island of grass, on which grew three wide-armed and sombre Irish yews,
dating, like the walls, from the days of Queen Elizabeth. Weeds were
growing in the gravel of the wide expanse; more than one stable-door
dropped on broken hinges under its old cut-stone pediments; the
dejection of a faded and remembered prosperity lay heavy on all things
in the thin, cold air of that September dawn.
The clatter of a horse's hoofs came cheerfully from a stable, and, as
Christian crossed the yard, a dishevelled young man, with a large red
moustache, put his head over the half-door.
"I'm this half-hour striving to girth her, Miss," he complained, "she
got very big entirely on the grass; the surcingle's six inches too
short for her, let alone the way she have herself shwoll up agin me!"
Charles, once ruler and lawgiver, was dead, and, with the departure of
the hounds, Major Dick's interest in the stables had died too; his
tall, grey horse was ending his days in bondage to the outside car;
the meanest of the underlings who had grovelled beneath Charles'
top-boots, was now in sole charge, and had grown a moustache,
unchecked; and Christian's only mount was a green four-year-old filly,
in whom she had invested the economies of a life-time, with but a
dubious chance of their recovery.
"Can't you get a bit of string and tie up the surcingle Tommy?"
suggested Christian, who was now too well used to these crises in the
affairs of the stable to be much moved by them.
"Sure, I'm after doing it, Miss. T'would make a cat laugh the ways I
have on it! She's a holy fright altogether with the mane and the tail
she have on her! I tried to pull them last night, and she went up as
straight as a ribbon in the stable!"
The flushed face and red moustache were withdrawn, and with
considerable clattering and shouting, the holy fright was led forth.
She was a small and active chestnut mare, with a tawny fleece, a mane
like a prairie fire, and a tail like a comet. Her impish eyes
expressed an alarm that was more than half simulated, and the task of
manoeuvring her into position beside the mounting block, was
comparable only to an endeavour to extract a kitten from under a bed
with the lure of a reel of cotton. An apple took the place of the reel
of cotton, and its consumption afforded Christian just time enough to
settle herself in her saddle. Since the days of Harry the Residue
Christian had ridden many and various horses, and she had a reputation
for making the best of a bad job that had often earned her mounts from
those who, wishing to sell a horse as a lady's hunter, were anxious to
impart some slight basis of fact into the transaction.
Tommy Sullivan watched her admiringly.
"Where's the meet, Miss?" he said, quickly, as she started, and as if
he were struck by a sudden thought.
"Nad Wood."
"If they run the Valley, Miss, mind out for wire!" called Tommy after
her, as she rode out of the yard. "Carmody's fences are strung with
it!"
He ran to the gate to watch the mare as she capered and lunged
sideways along the drive, and thanked God, not for the first time, for
the heavy hands that preserved him from the duty of riding Miss
Christian's horses.
Christian rode past the long ivy-covered lace of the house, that
stared at her with the wall-eyed glare of shuttered windows, and down
the long avenue, that curved submissive to the windings of the
Onwashee, now black and brimming after a week of rain. Young cattle,
that had slept, according to their custom, on the roadway, scrambled
up as she came near, and crashed away through the evergreens, whose
bared lower branches bore witness to their depredations. They were a
sight hateful to Christian, who, in spite of her resignation to the
methods of her groom, cherished a regard for tidiness that she had
often found was more trouble than it was worth.
She let Nancy, the chestnut mare, have her head, a privilege that made
short work of the remaining half-mile of avenue, and soon the stones
and mud of the high road were flying behind her, as the little mare,
snatching at her bridle, and neglecting no opportunity for a shy,
fretted on towards the sunrise, and the covert that lay, purple, on a
long hill, three miles away.
Bill Kirby's foible was not punctuality; when Christian arrived at
the appointed cross-roads in the middle of Nad Wood she found a
patient little group of three or four men, farmers, all of them, she
thought, waiting under the dewy branches of the beeches for the
arrival of the hounds. One of them rode quickly from the group to meet
her. A young man, with a slight figure and square shoulders, who was
riding a long-legged bay horse, that, like its rider, was unknown to
Christian. The light under the beech trees was dim and green, and such
faint illumination as the grey and quiet sky afforded, was coming,
like this rider, to meet Christian. He was close to her before he
spoke, then he caught his cap off his head and waved it, and shouted:
"Hurrah, Christian! Here I am! Home again! Don't pretend you never saw
me before, because I won't stand swagger from you!"
"Larry! Not you? Not really?"
He had her hand by this time, and was shaking it wildly despite the
resentment of the chestnut mare, at the sudden proximity of the bay
horse.
"Yes! Me all right! _Moi qui vous parle_--as we say in French
Paris! I only got home last night. I bought this chap at Sewell's on
my way through. He's a County Limerick horse. I bet he's a goer! How
do you like him?"
It was like Larry to require, instantly, praise and recognition for
his new purchase, but Christian wasn't thinking of the horse. Her
wide, clear eyes were fixed on his rider, her mind was a hustle of
questions.
Had he changed? Would he stay? Did he know that he was "in black
books" with her father? Would he care if he did know? What ages it
seemed--! Four years, wasn't it? Her brain was working too hard to
remember, but she certainly remembered that he had not had a moustache
when he was last at home; such a fanciful little French scrap of a
moustache as it was too, made of pure gold!
"I rather like it, Larry!" she said, beaming at him; "_quite_
nice!"
"What? What's quite nice?" says Larry, beaming back; "oh,
_this_?" He gave the moustache an extra upward twist. "Yes,
rather so! Beats the Kaiser's to fits, I flatter myself! I'm glad you
like it, but I don't see how you could help it!"
Yes! This was the old Larry, the right one; Christian felt very glad.
It might so easily have been some one else, some one not half so nice
as her own old Larry.
"Why on earth didn't you say you were coming? Cousin Freddy told us
that you were painting at Étaples."
"So I was till one fine day I 'took the notion for to cross the raging
ocean,' and I'm jolly glad I did too! Oh, by Jove! Look at old Bill
and the hounds! What a swell! Christian, do you know I haven't seen a
hound for four years! Do you mind if I call them 'dogs,' just till I
get used to them a bit?"
There are few bonds more enduring than those that are woven round the
playmates of childhood. In how many raids had Larry not been
Christian's trusted leader! What stolen dainties had they not shared,
what punishments not endured together! Larry's three years of
seniority had only deepened the reverence and loyalty that he had
inspired in his youngest follower; he had never presumed upon them; he
had been a chieftain worthy of homage, and he had Had all Christian's.
There are some people who appear to change their natures when they
grow up. They may have been pleasing as little boys or girls; they may
be equally agreeable as men and women, but there is no continuity and
no development. They have become new creatures. Christian, alone of
her family, was essentially as she had ever been, and, being of those
whose inward regard is as searching as their outward observation, she
knew it. Now, Larry had come back again, and in half-a-dozen sentences
she knew that neither had he changed, and that with him her ancient
leader had returned.
The Wood of Nad (which, being interpreted, means a nest) filled a
pocket on the side of Lissoughter Hill, and had thence spread over the
crest of the hill, and ended near the cross-roads at which the hounds
had met.
"Don't holloa away an old fox. I want to kill a cub if I can. I'll let
you know if the hounds get away below. You needn't be afraid I won't!
Open the gate!"
Thus, magisterially, the Master, standing at the gate into the wood,
with the hounds crushing round his horse's heels, "Leu in there!"
With a squeal or two of excitement from Dido and her brethren-puppies,
the hounds squeezed through the narrow gateway, and were swallowed up
by the wood.
Larry returned to Christian's side.
"I hate not seeing Cousin Dick out," he began; "what a pity he gave
'em up! Why did he? You know, Christian, you were pretty rotten about
writing to me! Aunt Freddy never tells me a thing about the Hunt! I
didn't even know Cousin Dick had chucked till I saw it in _The
Field_."
Larry was staring at Christian as he spoke. He, like her was searching
for his former comrade; but, unlike her, was doing so unconsciously,
as Larry did most things: What he believed himself to be doing was
appraising her appearance from a painter's point of view. He found he
had forgotten her eyes. He tried to think of them in terms of paint;
_Brun de Bruxelles_, and a touch of cadmium, or was it _Verte
Émeraude_? Hang it! How can paint do more than suggest the colours of
a sunlit moorland pool? Was it the white hunting-tie that gave that
special "value" to her face He had forgotten how delicious in tone was
the faint colour that just tinted her cheek; so hopeless a word as
pink was not to be thought of; just a hint of _Rose Garance doré_,
might do it. And to get the drawing of those subtle outlines the
ineffable refinement of all her features. Larry put his head on one
side, and screwed up his eyes (remembering faithfully the injunctions
of "dear old Chose," _en clignant bien les yeux_) and said to himself
that she would put dear old Chose himself to his trumps, and then
maybe he wouldn't get her right!
Aloud he said, peremptorily and professionally:
"Christian, I'm going to paint you! Eight o'clock at the studio
to-morrow morning, _Ma'mselle, s'il vous plaît_!"
Christian's response was closured by a wild outcry from the wood,
hounds and horn lifting up their voices together in sudden delirium.
Old horses pricked their ears, and young ones, and notably, Nancy,
began to fret and to fidget. Some one said, unnecessarily: "That's
him!" A man, farther down the road, turned his horse, and standing in
his stirrups, stared over the wall into the thick covert, rigid as a
dog setting his game. Then he held up his hat, and, a moment later,
something brown glided, with the fluent swiftness of a fish in a
stream, across the road and over the opposite wall. The scream that
followed him was not needed; was, indeed, hardly heard in the
crashing, clashing clamour of the back, as they came pitching headlong
over the wall of the wood, and hurling themselves at the opposite
wall. It was high, and had a coped, top, and the yelling hounds broke
against it, and fell, like waves against a cliff. A couple achieved
it, and the anguish of their comrades, as they heard them go away,
full-cry, on the line, redoubled. In the same instant, Larry was off
his tall bay. He flung his reins to Christian, and was into the
struggling pack. It is no easy matter to heave a hound over a high
wall, but Larry and a young farmer had somehow shoved over four
couple, before Bill Kirby and his whipper-in came and swept the
remainder to a place of possible entrance a little further on.
Larry snatched his plunging horse from Christian, and started to
gallop before he was fairly in the saddle, kicking his right foot into
the stirrup as he went, and shouting gratitude to Christian for having
held the horse. It had not been easy. Nancy had proved the accuracy of
her groom's statement by again "going up as straight as a ribbon" when
the hounds crossed the road, and the bay had not been backward in
emulating her efforts. Bill Kirby had had luck; the fox had run
left-handed under the wall, and the leading hounds met the Master,
with the body of the pack, at the verge of the wood on its farther
side. A bank, pitted with rabbit-holes, a space of stony lane with a
pole at its farther end, and Nad Wood was a thing of the past.
Outside, a fair stretch of grass presented itself, falling in mild
gradients to the banks of the Broadwater, sprinkled with cattle,
dotted with groups of trees clustering round white farm houses, from
whose chimneys the thin, blue lines of the smoke of morning fires were
just beginning to ascend.
But few are able to spare much thought for others during a first burst
out of covert, their strictly personal affairs being as sufficient for
them as is the day's share of good and evil for the day; but Larry,
looking often over his shoulder as he galloped, did not fail to note,
despite his engrossment in his new purchase, the ease and competence
that marked Christian's dealings with the chestnut mare, to whom the
twin gifts of imagination and invention had been lavishly granted. It
has been ingeniously said that the enemy of the aboriginal horse was a
creature of about the size of a dinner-plate, that lay hidden in
grass; nothing less than a concealed dinner-service would have
sufficed to account for the mysterious alarms that repeatedly swept
Nancy from her course; wafting her, like a leaf, sideways from a
stream, impelling her to swing, from the summit of a bank, back to the
field from which she had wildly sprung; suggesting to her that safety
from the besetting dangers could alone be secured by following the bay
horse (whom, after the manner of young horses, she had adopted as a
father) so closely, and at such a rate of speed, that a live torpedo
attached to his tail could hardly have been a less desirable
companion.
At a momentary check, an elderly farmer, many of whose horses had owed
to Christian their first introduction to a side saddle, spoke to her.
"For God's sake, Miss Christian," he said, fervently, "go home with
that mare! She's very peevish! I wouldn't like to be looking at her!
She has that way of jumping stones her nose'd nearly reach the ground
before her feet!"
"Never fear that young lady's able for her!" struck in another farmer,
the former owner of Nancy. "How well yourself'd be asking her to be
riding nags that couldn't see the way that little mare'd go! Didn't I
see her go mountains over the stone gap awhile ago? And yourself seen
the same, John Kearney!"
"If it was mountains and pressy-pices that was in it itself," returned
John Kearney, severely, "I'd say the same, Michael Donovan. Miss
Christian knows me, and I'm telling her--"
At this point, however, Christian's attention was absorbed by Dido,
who was comporting herself with precocious zeal, and, an instant
after, the dispute was ended by the shriek with which she proclaimed
her success. For some fifteen minutes the hounds ran hard and fast;
Nancy began to settle down, and to realise that her adopted parent
invariably changed feet on a bank, and never jumped stones as if he
were a cork bursting perpendicularly from a bottle of champagne. The
fox was taking them through the best of the Broadwater Vale country;
pasture-field followed pasture-field, in suave succession, the banks
were broad and benevolent, the going clean and firm. The sun had just
risen, and was throwing the long blue shadows of the hedge-row trees
on the dew-grey grass. The river valley was full of silver mists,
changing and thinning, like the visions of a _clairvoyant_,
yielding slowly the beauty of the river, and of its garlanding trees,
to those who had eyes to see. The sky became bluer each instant as the
sun rushed up, and Bill Kirby said to himself that the hunt was too
good to last, and the scent would soon be scorched out.
Not long afterwards came the check. The fox had run through a strip of
plantation, and in the succeeding field the scent failed. It was a
wide pasture-field, in which a number of young cattle were running,
snorting, bellowing, and gathering themselves into defensive groups at
the unwonted sight of hounds.
"That's a nice little plan of a mare!" said the young farmer who had
helped Larry with the hounds, drawing up beside Christian, "and you
have her in grand condition, Miss; she's as round as a bottle! She has
a great jump in her!" he went on. "She fled the last fence entirely;
she didn't leave an iron on it! She was hopping off the ground like a
ball!"
"That was no credit to her!" said John Kearney, eyeing the mare and
her rider gloomily.
"'Twas a sweet gallop altogether," said Nancy's former owner,
addressing Christian, and ignoring Mr. Kearney's challenge, "and the
mare carried you to fortune! But sure it'd be as good for you to take
her home now, Miss Christian, she has enough done. The fences from
this out aren't too good at all." He cast a glance at Kearney.
"Faith, and that's true for you," said Kearney quickly, "Be said by us
now, Miss Christian, and go home. The road isn't but two fields back.
The hounds'll do no more good, sure the sun's too strong."
"Where are we?" broke in Larry, joining the group; "I've lost my
bearings."
"Them's the Carmodys' bounds, sir," said Michael Donovan in a
colourless voice, indicating the next fence.
"Carmody's?" said Larry. "Then isn't the Derrylugga gorse somewhere
hereabouts? I see he's casting them ahead."
"It's burnt down," said Christian, hurriedly. Something in her face
checked Larry's exclamation. In Ireland people learn to be silent on a
very imperceptible hint.
The farmers moved away. Said Michael Donovan in a low voice to John
Kearney:
"Will she go back, d'ye think?"
"I d'no. Har'ly, I think!"
"It'd be a pity anything'd happen her. She's a lovely girl to ride!"
"You may say that, Michael! The father gave her the sate, but it was
the Lord Almighty gave her the hands!" said old Kearney, devoutly.
"Maybe He'll mind her, so!" responded Michael Donovan, without
irreverence.
The shifting of responsibility brought some ease of mind.
"God grant it!" said John Kearney.
Christian was ordinarily possessed of an innate reasonableness that
responded to reason, but fear was not in her, and an appeal to reason
was least potent with her when she was in the saddle. The veiled hints
of danger, by which from, Evans onwards, she had been beset, only woke
the spirit of revolt that slept in her but little less lightly than it
had slept in her childhood, and were as fuel on the flame the run had
kindled.
"Larry," she said, with a light in her eyes, and a flush in her
cheeks, "do _you_ think I ought to go back?"
"Go back? Why should you?"
Larry, having received a hasty sketch of the position, gave his advice
with all the assurance of complete ignorance. "Your father has the
sporting rights--anyhow, I don't believe they'll stop you. Irishmen
are--"
Dissertation as to what Irishmen were or were not, attractive though
it was to a young man who knew nothing of the subject, was checked by
the success of Bill Kirby's cast ahead. Half way across the big field,
the hounds, who had been industriously spreading themselves, and
examining blades of grass and fronds of bracken with the intentness of
botanists, came, with a sudden rush, to a deep note from old Bellman,
and, as suddenly, broke into full-cry, with the unanimity of an
orchestra when the baton comes down. They headed for "Carmody's
bounds," and were over that solid barrier, and running hard across the
succeeding field, before most of the riders had realised what had
happened. The bounds fence was an honest jump--big, but safe. Nancy,
at the heels of the bay horse, came up on to it with a perfection that
banished all other thoughts from Christian's mind. On the landing
side, under the bank, was a strong-running stream, and two or three of
the horses, at sight of it, checked on the wide top of the bank, and
tried to turn. Not so Nancy. It was enough for her that her father by
adoption had not hesitated. She slid her forefeet a little way down
the grassy side and went out over the water as if the bank had been a
springboard. It was only then, at the gorgeous moment of successful
landing, that Christian was aware of a young man running towards the
riders, bawling, and demonstrating with something that might be a gun.
"That's one of the Carmodys, Miss," said old Kearney, galloping near
her. "Don't mind him! It's as good for you to go on now. That's the
house below--"
"Come on, Christian!" shouted Larry; "he'll do no harm!"
The thought crossed Christian's mind that it might be better to
disregard these counsels, and to stop and speak to the assailant, but
Nancy had views of her own, and such arguments as a snaffle could
offer were quite unavailing. "I might as well go on," thought
Christian, "we shall be off his land in a minute."
A very high bank, crowned with furze and thorn bushes, divided them
from the next field; there was but one gap in it, near the farm-house,
and this was filled with a complicated erection of stones and sods,
built high, with light boughs of trees laid upon them; not a nice
place, but the only practicable one. Bill Kirby and his whipper-in
jumped it; some of the farmers drew back, but Larry's bay horse
charged it unhesitatingly, and soared over it with the whole-souled
gallantry of a well-bred horse. Nancy, pulling hard, followed him.
Christian heard Larry shout, and, looking round, saw him turn in his
saddle and strike with his crop at something unseen. At the last
instant, as the mare was making her spring, a second man appeared on
the farther side of the jump, yelling, and brandishing a wide-bladed
hay-knife. To stop was impossible; Christian could only utter a sharp
cry of warning, as Nancy, baulked by the suddenness of the attack, but
unable to stop herself, went up almost straight into the air, and came
down on the boughs, with her hindlegs on one side of them and her
forelegs on the other. Then she fell forward on to her knees, and
rolled on to her off shoulder, her hind legs still entangled in the
boughs. Christian fell with her, and as the mare's shoulder came to
the ground, her rider was thrown a little beyond her on the off side.
The man, having saved himself by a leap to one side, had instantly
taken to his heels.
Christian was on her feet before even Larry, quick as he was in
stopping his horse and flinging himself from his back, could reach
her.
"Are you hurt?" The question, so fraught with fear, and breathless
with remembered disasters, was answered almost before it was uttered.
"Not a scrap! Absolutely all right; but I don't know about Nancy--"
One of the mare's hind feet was wedged in the fork of a bough; she
struggled fiercely, and in a second or two she had freed both her hind
legs from the tangle of twigs, and lay prone at the foot of the
barricade.
"She's all right! He didn't touch her," said Larry, catching her by
the bridle. "Come, mare!"
Nancy made an effort, attempting to get on to her feet, and rolled
over again on to her side.
"Oh, get the mare up, one of you!" shouted Larry, wild with the rage
that had gathered force from the terror by which it had first been
strangled. "I want to go after that damned coward--"
He caught his horse's bridle from a man who had climbed over the bank,
leaving his own horse on the farther side.
"Why the devil did none of you stop the brute?" he stormed at the
little group, now standing on the bank, looking down upon the
prostrate mare, while he tried to steady his plunging horse in order
to mount.
"It's no good for you, sir!" called John Kearney to him; "he's away
back of the house, ye'll never get him!"
"Don't go, Larry," said Christian, who was kneeling by Nancy,
caressing her and murmuring endearments. "I'm afraid she's badly
hurt."
The mare was lying still. Michael Donovan, who had bred her, slipped
his hand under her, and drew it out, red with blood.
"Go after him, if ye like, the bloody ruffian!" he said, furiously,
"but the mare will never rise from this! Oh, my lovely little mare!"
"What do you mean?" Larry let his horse go, and flung himself on his
knees beside Donovan. Christian, colourless continued to try and
soothe Nancy, who lay without moving, though her frightened eye turned
from one to another, and her ears twitched.
"Staked she is!" roared Donovan; "that's what I mean! Look at what's
coming from her!"
He broke into a torrent of crude statements, made, if possible, more
horrible by curses.
Larry struck him on the mouth with his open hand.
"Shut your mouth! Remember the lady!"
Michael Donovan took the blow as a dog might take it, and without more
resentment.
Christian quickly put her hand on his shoulder.
"Don't mind, Michael. Let me see what has happened to her--"
Nancy's eye rolled back at Christian, as she stooped over her, leaning
on Donovan. Already, a dark pool was forming beside her.
"You couldn't see where the branch bet her, Miss," said Donovan,
quieted by Christian's touch, "but there's what done it!" He pointed
to the sharp, jagged end of one of the branches, red with blood.
"The Vet--" said Christian, trying to think, speaking steadily.
"Couldn't someone fetch Mr. Cassidy?"
"No good, my dear," said old Kearney, wagging his head; "No good at
all! There's no medicine for her now but what'll come out of a gun!"
Christian looked up into the faces of the little knot of men round
her.
"Is that true?" she said, watching them.
And all the time a voice in her mind said to her that it was true.
"God knows I wouldn't wish it for the best money ever I handled," said
one man, and looked aside from her eyes.
Another shook his head, and muttered something about the Will o' God.
A third said it was the sharp end of the branch that played hammock
with her; he lost a cow once himself the same way. Old Kearney summed
up for the group.
"There is no doubt in it, Miss Christian, my dear child--"
Christian leaned hard on Larry's shoulder as she rose to her feet.
"I'm going to get Carmody's gun," she said, beginning to walk away.
"He had one. I saw it. I don't suppose he'll mind lending it to me."