OF THE EARLDOM OF ANCESTER, AND ITS EARL'S COUNTESS'S OPINION OF
HIM. HOW HER SECOND DAUGHTER CAME OUT IN THE GARDEN. HOW SHE SAW A
TRESPASSER, WITH SUCH A NICE DOG! HE MUSTN'T BE SHOT, _COUTE QUE
COUTE_! A LITTLE STONE BRIDGE. A SLIT IN A DOG'S COLLAR. OLD
MICHAEL'S OBSTINACY. HOW GWENDOLEN RAN AWAY TO DRESS, AND WAS
UNSOCIABLE AT DINNER. THE VOICE OF A DOG IN TROUBLE. ACHILLES, AND
HIS RECOGNITION. HOW THEY FOLLOWED ACHILLES, AT HIS OWN REQUEST,
AND WHAT HE SHOWED THE WAY TO. BUT THE MAN WAS NOT DEAD
If a stranger from America or Australia could have been shown at a
glance all that went to make up the Earldom of Ancester, he would have
been deeply impressed. All the leagues of parkland, woodland, moorland,
farmland that were its inheritance would have impressed him, not because
of their area--because Americans and Australians are accustomed to mere
crude area in their own departments of the planet--but because of the
amazing amount of old-world History transacted within its limits; the
way the antecedent Earls meddled in it; their magnificent record of
treachery and bloodshed and murder; wholesale in battle, retail in less
showy, but perhaps even more interesting, private assassination;
fascinating cruelties and horrors unspeakable! They might have been
impressed also, though, of course, in a less degree, by the Earldom's
very creditable show of forbears who, at the risk of being
uninteresting, behaved with common decency, and did their duty in the
station to which God or Debrett had called them; not drawing the sword
to decide a dispute until they had tried one or two of the less popular
expedients, and slighting their obligations to the Melodrama of the
future. Which rightly looks for its supplies of copy to persons of high
birth and low principles.
The present Earl took after his less mediaeval ancestry; and though he
received the sanction of his wife, and of persons who knew about things,
it was always conceded to him with a certain tone of allowance made for
a simple and pastoral nature. In the vulgarest tongue it might have been
said that he would never cut a dash. In his wife's it was said that
really the Earl was one of the most admirable of men, only never
intended by Providence for the Lord-Lieutenancy of a County. He was
scarcely to blame, therefore, for his shortcomings in that position. It
could not rank as one to which God had called him, without imputing
instability, or an oversight, to his summoner. As a summons from
Debrett, there is no doubt he was not so attentive to it as he ought to
have been.
His own opinion about the intentions of Providence was that they had
been frustrated--by Debrett chiefly. If they had fructified he would
have been the Librarian of the Bodleian. Providence also had in view for
him a marvellous collection of violins, unlimited Chinese porcelain, and
some very choice samples of Italian majolica. But he would have been
left to the undisturbed enjoyment of his treasures. He could have passed
a peaceful life gloating over Pynsons and Caxtons, and Wynkyn de Wordes,
and Grolier binding, and Stradivarius, and Guarnerius, and Ming, and
Maestro Giorgio of Gubbio. But Debrett got wind of the intentions of
Providence, and clapped a coronet upon the head of their intended
_beneficiaire_ without so much as with your leave or by your leave, and
there he was--an Earl! He had all that mere possessions could bestow,
but always with a sense that Debrett, round the corner, was keeping an
eye on him. He had to assuage that gentleman--or principle, or lexicon,
or analysis, whatever he is!--and he did it, though rather grudgingly,
to please his Countess, and from a general sense that when a duty is a
bore, it ought to be complied with. His Countess was the handsome lady
with the rings whom Dave Wardle had taken for a drive in her own
carriage.
This sidelight on the Earl is as much illumination as the story wants,
for the moment. The sidelight on the terrace of Ancester Towers, at the
end of a day in July following the winter of Dave's accident, was no
more than the Towers thought their due after standing out all day
against a grey sky, in a drift of warm, small rain that made oilskins
and mackintoshes an inevitable Purgatory inside; and beds of lakes, when
horizontal, outside. It was a rainbow-making gleam at the end of
thirty-six depressing hours, bursting through a cloud-rift in the South
with the exclamation--the Poet might have imagined--"Make the most of
me while you can; I shan't last."
To make the most of it was the clear duty of the owner of a golden head
of hair like that of Lady Gwendolen, the Earl's second daughter. So she
brought the head out into the rainbow dazzle, with the hair on it,
almost before the rain stopped; and, indeed, braved a shower of jewels
the rosebush at the terrace window drenched her with, coming out. What
did it matter?--when it was so hot in spite of the rain. Besides, India
muslin dries so quick. It isn't like woollen stuff.
If you could look back half a century and see Gwendolen on the terrace
then, you would not be grateful to any contemporary malicious enough to
murmur in your ear:--"Old Lady Blank, the octogenarian, who died last
week, was this girl then. So reflect upon what the conventions are quite
in earnest--for once--in calling your latter end." You would probably
dodge the subject, replying--for instance--"How funny! Why, it must have
taken twelve yards to make a skirt like that!" For these were the days
of crinolines; of hair in cabbage-nets, packed round rubber-inflations;
of what may be called proto-croquet, with hoops so large that no one
ever failed to get through, except you and me; the days when _Ah che la
morte_ was the last new tune, and Landseer and Mulready the last words
in Art. They were the days when there had been but one Great
Exhibition--think of it!--and the British Fleet could still get under
canvas. We, being an old fogy, would so much like to go back to those
days--to think of daguerreotypes as a stupendous triumph of Science,
balloons as indigenous to Cremorne, and table-turning as a nine-days'
wonder; in a word, to feel our biceps with satisfaction in an epoch when
wheels went slow, folk played tunes, and nobody had appendicitis. But we
can't!
However, it is those very days into which the story looks back and sees
this girl with the golden hair, who has been waiting in that
rainbow-glory fifty years ago for it to go on and say what it may of
what followed. She comes out on the terrace through the high
middle-window that opens on it, and now she stands in the blinding
gleam, shading her eyes with her hand. It is late in July, and one may
listen for a blackbird's note in vain. That song in the ash that drips a
diamond-shower on the soaked lawn, whenever the wind breathes, may still
be a thrush; his last song, perhaps, about his second family, before he
retires for the season. The year we thought would last us out so well,
for all we wished to do in it, will fail us at our need, and we shall
find that the summer we thought was Spring's success will be Autumn,
much too soon, as usual. Over half a century of years have passed since
then, and each has played off its trick upon us. Each Spring has said to
us:--"Now is your time for life. Live!" and each Summer has jilted us
and left us to be consoled by Autumn, a Job's comforter who only
says:--"Make the best of me while you can, for close upon my heels is
Winter."
You can still see the terrace much as this young woman, Lady Gwendolen
Rivers--that was her name--saw it on that July evening, provided always
that you choose one with such another rainbow. There is not much garden
between it and the Park, which goes on for miles, and begins at the sunk
fence over yonder. They are long miles too, and no stint; and it is an
hour's walk from the great gate to the house, unless you run; so says
the host of the Rivers Arms, which is ten minutes from the gate. You can
lose yourself in this park, and there are red-deer as well as
fallow-deer; and what is more, wild cattle who are dangerous, and who
have lived on as a race from the days of Welsh Home Rule, and know
nothing about London or English History. Even so in the Transvaal it is
said that some English scouts came upon a peaceful valley with a
settlement of Dutch farmers therein, who had to be told about the War to
check their embarrassing hospitality. The parallel fails, however, for
the wild white cattle of Ancester Park paw the earth up and charge, when
they see strangers. The railway had to go round another way to keep
their little scrap of ancient forest intact; for the family at the
Castle has always taken the part of the bulls against all comers. Little
does Urus know how superficial, how skin-deep, his loneliness has
become--that he is really under tutelage unawares, and even
surreptitiously helped to supplies of forage in seasons of dearth! Will
his race linger on and outlive the race of Man when that biped has
shelled and torpedoed and dynamited himself out of existence? And will
they then fill the newest New Forest that will have covered the
smokeless land, with the descendants of the herds that Caesar's troops
found in the Hercynian wilds? They are a fascinating subject for a
wandering pen, but the one that writes this must not be led away from
Lady Gwendolen on the terrace that looks across this cramped inheritance
of beech and bracken. If she could always look like what the level sun
makes her now, in the heart of a rainbow, few things the world can show
would outbid her right to a record, or make the penning of it harder.
For just at this moment she looks simply beautiful beyond belief. It is
not all the doing of the sunrays, for she is a fine sample of nineteen,
of a type which has kindled enthusiasm since the comparatively recent
incursion of William the Norman, and will continue to do so till finally
dynamited out of existence, _ut supra_.
She is looking out under her hand--to make sight possible against the
blaze--at a man who is plodding across the nearest opening in the
woodland. How drenched he must be! What can possess him, to choose a day
like this to go afoot through an undergrowth of bracken a day's
raindrift has left water-charged? She knows well what a deluge meets him
at every step, and watches him, pressing through it as one who has felt
the worst pure water can do, and is reckless. She watches him into a
clear glade, with a sense of relief on his behalf. She does not feel
officially called upon to resent a stranger with a dog--in a territory
sacred to game!--for the half-overgrown track he seems to have followed
is a world of fallow-deer and pheasants. She is the daughter of the
house, and trespassers are the concern of Stephen Solmes the head
gamekeeper.
The trespasser seems at a loss which way to go, and wavers this way and
that. His dog stands at his feet looking up at him, wagging a slow tail;
deferentially offering no suggestion, but ready with advice if called
upon. The young lady's thought is:--"Why can't he let that sweet dog
settle it for him? _He_ would find the way." Because she is sure of the
sweetness of that collie, even at this distance. Ultimately the
trespasser leaves the matter to the dog, who appears gratified and
starts straight for where she stands. Dogs always do, says she to
herself. But there is the haw-haw fence between them.
The dog stops. Not because of the obstacle--what does he care for
obstacles?--but because of the courtesies of life. The man that made
this sunk fence did it to intercept any stray collie in the parkland
from scouring across into the terraced garden, even to inaugurate
communications between a strange young lady and the noblest of God's
creatures, his owner. That is the dog's view. So he stands where the
fence has stopped him, a beseeching explanatory look in his pathetic
eyes; and a silky tail, that is nearly dry already, marking time slowly.
A movement of permission would bring him across into the garden; but
then--is he not too wet? Young Lady Gwendolen says "No, dear!"
regretfully, and shakes her head as though he would understand the
negative. Perhaps he does, for he trots back to his master, who,
however--it must be admitted--has whistled for him.
The pedestrian turns to go, but sees the lady well, though not very near
her yet. She knows he sees her, as he raises his hat. She has an
impression of his personality from the action; which, it may be, guides
her conduct in what follows.
He seems to have made up his mind to avoid the house, taking a visible
path which skirts it, and possibly to strike away from it into the wider
parkland, over yonder where the great oaks are. He is soon lost in a
hazel coppice.
Then she thinks. That dog will be shot if Solmes catches sight of it.
She knows old Stephen. Oh, for but one word with the dog's master! It
might just make the whole difference.
She does not think long; in fact, there is no time to lose. The man and
the dog must pass over Arthur's Bridge if they follow the path. She can
intercept them there by taking a short cut through the Trings; a name
with a forgotten origin, which hugs the spot unaccountably. "I wonder
what a tring was, and when" says Gwendolen to herself, between those
unsolved riddles and the bridge.
The bridge is a little stone bridge, just wide enough for a chaise to go
through gently. Gwendolen has soaked her shoes to reach it. Still, she
_must_ save that dog from the Ranger's gun at any cost. A fig for the
wet! She has to dress for dinner--indeed, her maid is waiting for her
now--and dry stockings will be a negligible factor in that great total.
There comes the pedestrian round by Swayne's Oak--another name whose
origin no man knows.
The dog catches sight of her, and is off like a shot, his master trying
vainly to whistle him back. The young lady is quite at ease--_she_ is
not afraid of dogs! She even laughs at this one's demonstrative salute,
which leaves a paw-mark on either shoulder. For dogs do not scruple to
kiss those they love, without making compliments.
His master is apologetic, coming up with a quickened pace. At a rebuke
from him the collie becomes apologetic too; would be glad to explain,
but is handicapped by language. He is, however, all repentance, and
falls back behind his master, leaving matters in his hands. At the
least--though the way of doing it may have been crude--he has brought
about an introduction, of a sort.
There is no intrusive wish on the man's part to take undue advantage of
it. His speech, "Achilles means well; it is only his cordiality," seems
to express the speaker's feeling that somehow he is certain to be
understood. His addendum--"I am really as sorry as I can be, all the
same"--may be credited to ceremonial courtesy, flavoured with
contrition. His wind-up has a sort of laugh behind it:--"Particularly
because I have no business in this part of the Park at all. I can only
remedy that by my absence."
"You will promise me one thing, if you please...."
"Yes--whatever you wish."
"Lead your dog till you are outside the Park. If he is seen he may be
shot. I could not bear that that dog should be shot." Something in the
man's tone and manner has made it safe for the girl to overstep the
boundaries of chance speech to an utter stranger.
He has no right--that he feels--to presume upon this semi-confidence of
an impulsive girl, whoever she is. True, her beauty in that last glory
of the sunset puts resolution to the test. But he _has_ no right, and
there's an end on't! "I will tie Achilles up," he says. "I should not
like him to be shot."
"Oh!--is he Achilles?"
"His mother was Thetis."
"Then, of course, he is Achilles." At this point the boundaries of
strangership seem insistent. After all, this man may be Tom or Dick or
Harry. "You will excuse my speaking to you," says the young lady. "I had
no one to send, and I saw you from the terrace. It was for the dog's
sake."
In his chivalrous determination not to overdraw the blank cheque she has
signed for him unawares, the stranger conceives that a few words of dry
apology will meet the case, and leave him to go on his way. So, though
powerfully ignoring the fact that that outcome will be an unwelcome one,
he replies:--"I quite understand, and I am sincerely grateful for your
caution." He gets at a dog-chain in the pocket of his waterproof
overcoat, and at the click of it Achilles comes to be tied up. As he
fastens the clasp to its collar, he adds:--"I should not have let him
run loose like this, only that I am so sure of him. He is town-bred and
a stranger to the chase. He can collect sheep, owing to his ancestry;
but he never does it now, because he has been forbidden." While he
speaks these last words he is examining something in the dog's leather
collar. "It will hold, I think," says he. "A cut in the strap--it looks
like." Then this oddly befallen colloquy ends and each gives the other a
dry good-evening. The young lady's last sight of that acquaintance of
five minutes shows him endeavouring to persuade the dog not to drag on
his chain. For Achilles, for some dog-reason man will never know, is no
sooner leashed than he makes restraint necessary by pulling against it
with all his might.
"I hope that collar won't break," says the young lady as she goes back
to dress for dinner. The sun's gleam is dead, and the black cloud-bank
that hides it now is the rain that is coming soon. See!--it has begun
already.
* * * * *
Old Mrs. Solmes at the Ranger's Lodge, a mile distant, said to her old
husband:--"Thou'rt a bad ma-an, Stephen, to leave thy goon about
lwoaded, and the vary yoong boy handy to any mischief. Can'st thou not
bide till there coom time for the lwoadin' of it?"
Said old Stephen sharply, "Gwun, wench? There be no _gwun_. 'Tis a
roifle! And as fower the little Seth, yander staaple where it hangs is
well up beyond the reach of un. Let a' be, Granny!"
The old woman, in whom grandmotherhood had overweighted all other
qualities, by reason of little Seth's numerous first cousins, made no
reply, but looked uneasily at the rifle on the wall. Little Seth--her
appropriated grandchild, both his parents being dead--was too small at
present to do any great harm to anyone but himself; but the time might
come. He was credited with having swallowed an inch-brad, without
visible inconvenience; and there was a threatening appearance in his eye
as of one who would very soon climb up everywhere, fall off everything,
appropriate the forbidden, break the frangible, and, in short, behave
as--according to his grandmother--his father had done before him.
His old grandfather, who had a combative though not unamiable
disposition, took down the rifle as an act of self-assertion, and walked
out into the twilight with it on his shoulder. It was simply a
contradictious action, as there was no warranty for it in vert and
venison. But he had to garnish his action with an appearance of
plausibility, and nothing suggested itself. The only course open to him
was to get away out of sight, with implication of a purpose vaguely
involving fire-arms. A short turn in the oak-wood--as far, perhaps, as
Drews Thurrock--would fortify his position, without committing him to
details: he could make secrecy about them a point of discipline. He
walked away over the grassland, a fine, upright old figure; in whose
broad shoulders, seen from behind, an insight short of clairvoyance
might have detected what is called _temper_--meaning a want of it. He
vanished into the oak-wood, where the Druid's Stone attests the place of
sacrifice, human or otherwise.
Some few minutes later the echoes of a rifle-shot, unmistakable alike
for that of shot-gun or revolver, circled the belt of hills that looks
on Ancester Towers, and died at Grantley Thorpe. Old Stephen, when he
reappeared at the Lodge half an hour later, could explain his share in
this with only a mixed satisfaction. For though his need of his
rifle--whether real or not--had justified its readiness for use, he had
failed as a marksman; the stray dog he fired at, after vanishing in a
copse for a few minutes, having scoured away in a long detour; as he
judged, making for the Castle.
"And a rare good hap for thee, husband!" said the old woman when she
heard this. "Whatever has gotten thy wits, ma'an, to win out and draa'
trigger on a pet tyke of some visitor lady at the Too'ers?"
"Will ye be tellun me this, and tellun me that, Keziah? I tell 'ee one
thing, wench, it be no consarn o' mine whose dog be run loose in th'
Park. Be they the Queen's own, my orders say shoot un! Do'ant thee know
next month be August?" Nevertheless, the old man was not altogether
sorry that he had missed. He might have been called over the coals for
killing a dog-visitor to the Towers. He chose to affect regret for
discipline's sake, and alleged that the dog had escaped into the wood
only because he had no second cartridge. This was absurd. In these days
of quick-shooters it might have been otherwise. In those, the only
abominations of the sort were Colonel Colt's revolvers; and _they_ were
a great novelty, opening up a new era in murder.
The truth was that this view of the culprit's identity had dawned on him
as soon as he got a second view of the dog visibly making for the
Castle--almost too far in any case for a shot at anything smaller than a
doe--and he would probably have held his hand for both reasons even if a
reload had been possible.
* * * * *
Lady Gwendolen, treasuring in her heart a tale of adventure--however
trivial--to tell at the dinner-table in the evening, submitted herself
to be prepared for that function. She seemed absent in mind; and
Lutwyche her maid, observing this, skipped intermediate reasonings and
straightway hoped that the cause of this absence of mind had come over
with the Conqueror and had sixty thousand a year. Meanwhile she wanted
to know which dress, my lady, this evening?--and got no answer. Her
ladyship was listening to something at a distance; or, rather, having
heard something at a distance, was listening for a repetition of it. "I
wonder what that can have been?" said she. For fire-arms in July are
torpid mostly, and this was a gunshot somewhere.
"They are firing at the Butts at Stamford Norton, my lady," said
Lutwyche; who always knew things, sometimes rightly--sometimes wrongly.
This time, the latter.
"Then the wind must have gone round. Besides, it would come again.
Listen!" Thus her ladyship, and both listened. But nothing came again.
Lady Gwendolen was as beautiful as usual that evening, but contrary to
custom silent and _distraite_. She did not tell the story of the Man in
the Park and his dog. She kept it to herself. She was unresponsive to
the visible devotion of a Duke's eldest son, who came up to Lutwyche's
standard in all particulars. She did not even rise to the enthusiasm of
a very old family friend, the great surgeon Sir Coupland Merridew, about
the view from his window across the Park, although each had seen the
same sunset effect. She only said:--"Oh--have they put you in the
Traveller's Room, Sir Coupland? Yes--the view is very fine!" and became
absent again. She retired early, asking to be excused on the score of
fatigue; not, however, seriously resenting her mother's passing
reference to a nursery rhyme about Sleepy-head, whose friends kept late
hours, nor her "Why, child, you've had nothing to tire you!" She was
asleep in time to avoid the sound of a dog whining, wailing, protesting
vainly, with a great wrong on his soul, not to be told for want of
language.
She woke with a start very early, to identify this disturbance with
something she lost in a dream, past recovery, owing to this sudden
awakening. She had her hand on the bell-rope at her bed's head, and had
all but pulled it before she identified the blaze of light in her room
as the exordium of the new day. The joy of the swallows at the dawn was
musical in the ivy round her window, open through the warm night; and
the turtle-doves had much to say, and were saying it, in the world of
leafage out beyond. But there was no joy in the persistent voice of that
dog, and no surmise of its hearer explained it.
She found her feet, and shoes to put them in, before she was clear about
her own intentions; then in all haste got herself into as much clothing
as would cover the risks of meeting the few early risers possible at
such an hour--it could but be some chance groom or that young
gardener--and, opening her door with thief-like stealth, stole out
through the stillness night had left behind, past the doors of sleepers
who were losing the sweetest of the day. So she thought--so we all
think--when some chance gives us precious hours that others are wasting
in stupid sleep. But even _she_ would not have risen but for that
plaintive intermittent wail and a growing construction of a cause for
it--all fanciful perhaps--that her uneasy mind would still be at work
upon. She _must_ find out the story of it. More sleep now was absurd.
Two bolts and a chain--not insuperable obstacles--and she was free of
the side-garden. An early riser--the one she had foreseen, a young
gardener she knew--with an empty basket to hold flowers for the still
sleeping household to refresh the house with in an hour, and its
bed-bound sluggards in two or three, was astir and touched a respectful
cap with some inner misgiving that this unwonted vision was a ghost. But
he showed a fine discipline, and called it "My lady" with presence of
mind. Ghost or no, that was safe! "What _is_ that dog, Oliver?" said the
vision.
The question made all clear. The answer was speculative. "Happen it
might be his lordship's dog that came yesterday--feeling strange in a
strange place belike?"
"No dog came yesterday. Lord Cumberworld hasn't a dog. I _must_ know.
Where is it?"
Oliver was not actor enough not to show that he was concealing
wonderment at the young lady's vehemence. His eyes remained wide open in
token thereof.
"In the stables, by the sound of it, my lady," was his answer.
His lady turned without a word, going straight for the stables; and he
followed when, recollecting him, she looked back to say, "Yes--come!"
Grooms are early risers in a well-kept stable. There is always something
to be done, involving pails, or straps, or cloths, or barrows, or
brushes, even at five in the morning in July. When the young gardener,
running on ahead, jangled at the side-gate yard-bell, more than one pair
of feet was on the move within; and there was the cry of the dog, sure
enough, almost articulate with keen distress about some unknown wrong.
"What _is_ the dog, Archibald?--what _is_ the dog?" The speaker was too
anxious for the answer to frame her question squarely. But the old
Scotch groom understood. "Wha can tell that?" says he. "He's just
stra'ad away from his home, or lost the track of a new maister. They do,
ye ken, even the collies on the hillsides. Will your ladyship see him?"
"Yes--yes! That is what I came for. Let me." A younger groom, awaiting
this instruction, goes for the dog, whose clamour has increased tenfold,
becoming almost frenzy when he sees his friend of the day before; for he
is Achilles beyond a doubt. Achilles, mad with joy--or is it unendurable
distress?--or both?
"Your leddyship will have seen him before, doubtless," says old
Archibald. He does not say, but means:--"We are puzzled, but submissive,
and look forward to enlightenment."
"Let him go--yes, _I_ know him!--don't hold him. Oh, Achilles, you
darling dog--it _is_ you!... Yes--yes--let him go--he'll be all
right.... Yes, dear, you _shall_ kiss me as much as you like." Thia was
in response to a tremendous accolade, after which the dog crouched
humbly at his idol's feet; whimpering a little still, beneath his
breath, about something he could not say. She for her part caressed and
soothed the frightened creature, asking the while for information about
the manner of his appearance the night before.
It seemed that on the previous evening about eight o'clock he had been
found in the Park just outside the door of the walled garden south of
the Castle, as though he was seeking to follow someone who had passed
through. That at least was the impression of Margery, a kitchen-maid,
whom inquiry showed to have been the source of the first person plural
in the narrative of Tom Kettering, the young groom, who had come upon
the dog crouched against this door; and, judging him to be in danger in
the open Park, had brought him home to the stables for security.
How had the collie behaved when brought up to the stable? Well--he had
been fair quiet--only that he was always for going out after any who
were leaving, and always "wakeriff, panting, and watching like," till
he, Tom Kettering, tied him up for the night. And then he started crying
and kept on at it till they turned out, maybe half an hour since.
"He has not got his own collar," said the young lady suddenly. "Where is
his own collar?"
"He had ne'er a one on his neck when I coom upon him," says Tom. "So we
putten this one on for a makeshift."
"It's mair than leekly, my lady,"--thus old Archibald--"that he will
have slipped from out his ain by reason of eempairfect workmanship of
the clasp. Ye'll ken there's a many cheap collars sold...." The old boy
is embarking on a lecture on collar-structure, which, however, he is not
allowed to finish. The young lady interrupts.
"I saw his collar," says she, "and it was _not_ a collar like
this"--that is, a metal one with a hasp--"it was a strap with a buckle,
and his master said there was a cut in it. That was why it broke." Then,
seeing the curiosity on the faces of her hearers, who would have thought
it rather presumptuous to ask for an explanation, she volunteers a short
one ending with:--"The question is now, how can we get him back to his
master?" It never crossed her mind that any evil hap had come about.
After all, the dog's excitement and distress were no more than his
separation from his owner and his strange surroundings might have
brought about in any case. The whole thing was natural enough without
assuming disaster, especially as seen by the light of that cut in the
strap. The dog was a town-bred dog, and once out of his master's sight,
might get demoralised and all astray.
No active step for restoring Achilles to his owner seeming practicable,
nothing was left but to await the action that gentleman was sure to
adopt to make his loss known. Obviously the only course open to us now
was to take good care of the wanderer, and keep an ear on the alert for
news of his owner's identity. All seemed to agree to this, except
Achilles.
During the brief consultation the young lady had taken a seat on a clean
truss of hay, partly from an impulse most of us share, to sit or lie on
fresh hay whenever practicable; partly to promote communion with the
dog, who crouched at her feet worshipping, not quite with the
open-mouthed, loose-tongued joy one knows so well in a perfectly
contented dog, but now and again half-uttering a stifled sound--a sound
that might have ended in a wail. When, the point seeming established
that no further step could be taken at present, Lady Gwendolen rose to
depart, a sudden frenzy seized Achilles. There is nothing more pathetic
than a dog's effort to communicate his meaning--clear to him as to a
man--and his inability to do it for want of speech.
"You darling dog!" said Gwendolen. "What can it be he wants? Leave him
alone and let us see.... No--don't touch his chain!" For Achilles,
crouched one moment at her feet, the next leaping suddenly away, seemed
like to go mad with distress.
The young groom Tom said something with bated breath, as not presuming
to advise too loud. His mistress caught his meaning, if not his words.
"What!"--she spoke suddenly--"knows where he is--his master?" The
thought struck a cold chill to her heart. It could only mean some mishap
to the man of yesterday. What sort of mishap?
Some understanding seems to pass between the four men--Archibald, the
two young grooms, and the gardener--something they will not speak of
direct to her ladyship. "What?--what's that?" says she, impatient of
their scrupulousness towards her sheltered inexperience of calamity.
"Tell me straight out!"
Old Archibald takes upon himself, as senior, to answer her question. "I
wouldna' set up to judge, my lady, for my ain part. But the lads are all
of one mind--just to follow on the dog's lead, for what may come o't."
Then he is going on "Ye ken maybe the mon might fall and be ill able to
move...." when he is caught up sharp by the girl's "Or be killed.
Yes--follow the dog." Why should she be kept from the hearing of a
mishap to this stranger, even of his death?
Old Stephen at the Lodge saw the party and came out in haste. He had his
story to tell, and told it as one who had no blame for his own share in
it. Why should he have any? He had only carried out his orders.
Yes--that was the dog he drew trigger on. He could not be mistaken on
that point.
"And you fired on the dog to kill it," says the young lady, flashing out
into anger.
The old man stands his ground. "I had my orders, my lady," says he. "If
I caught sight of e'er a dog unled--to shoot un."
"The man he belonged to--did you not see him?"
"No ma'an coom in my sight. Had I seen a ma'an, I would have wa'arned
and cautioned him to keep to the high road, not to bring his dog inside
o' the parkland. No--no--there was ne'er a ma'an, my lady." He goes on,
very slightly exaggerating the time that passed between his shot at the
dog and its reappearance, apparently going back to the Castle. He rather
makes a merit of not having fired again from a misgiving that the dog's
owner might be there on a visit. Drews Thurrock, he says, is where he
lost sight of the dog, and that is where Achilles seems bent on going.
Drews Thurrock is a long half-mile beyond the Keeper's Lodge in Ancester
Park, and the Lodge is a long half-mile from the Towers. Still, if it
was reasonable to follow the dog at all, where would be the sense of
holding back or flagging till he should waver in what seemed assurance
of his purpose. No--no! What he was making for might be five miles off,
for all that the party that followed him knew. But trust in the
creature's instinct grew stronger each time he turned and waited for
their approach, then scoured on as soon as it amounted to a pledge that
he would not be deserted. There was no faltering on his part.
The river, little more than a brook at Arthur's Bridge, is wide enough
here to deserve its name. The grove of oaks which one sees from the
Ranger's Lodge hides the water from view. But Gwendolen has it in her
mind, and with it a fear that the dog's owner will be found drowned. It
was there that her brother Frank died four years since, and was found in
the deep pool above the stepping-stones, caught in a tangle of weed and
hidden, after two days' search for him far and wide. If that is to be
the story we shall know, this time, by the dog's stopping there.
Therefore none would hint at an abandonment of the search having come
thus far, even were he of the mind to run counter to the wish of the
young lady from the Castle. None dares to do this, and the party
follows her across the stretch of gorse and bracken called the Warren to
the wood beyond. There the dog has stopped, waiting eagerly, showing by
half-starts and returns that he knows he would be lost to sight if he
were too quick afoot. For the wood is dark in front of him and the
boughs hang low.
"Nigh enough to where I set my eye on him at the first of it, last
evening," says old Stephen. He makes no reference to the affair of the
gunshot. Better forgotten perhaps!
But he is to remember that gunshot, many a wakeful night. For the
forecast of a mishap in that fatal pool is soon to be dissipated. As the
party draws nearer the dog runs back in his eagerness, then forward
again. And then Lady Gwendolen follows him into the wood, and the men
follow her in silence. Each has some anticipation in his mind--a thing
to be silent about.
There is a dip in the ground ahead, behind which Achilles disappears.
Another moment and he is back again, crying wildly with excitement. The
girl quickens a pace that has flagged on the rising ground; for they
have come quickly. And now she stands on the edge of a buttress-wall
that was once the boundary--so says tradition--of an amphitheatre of
sacrifice. Twenty yards on yonder is the Druids' altar, or the top of
it. For the ground has climbed up stone and wall for fifteen hundred
years, and the moss is deep on both; rich with a green no dye can rival,
for the soaking of yesterday's rain is on it still. But she can see
nothing for the moment, for the dog has leapt the wall and vanished.
"'Tis down below, my lady--beneath the wall." It is the young gardener
who speaks. The others have seen what he sees, but are shy of speech. He
has more claim than they to the position of a friend, after so many
conferences with her ladyship over roots and bulbs this year and last.
He repeats his speech lest she should not have understood him.
"Then quick!" says she. And all make for the nearest way down the wall
and through the fern and bramble.
What the young gardener spoke of is a man's body, seeming dead. No doubt
of his identity, for the dog sits by him motionless, waiting. _His_ part
is finished.
Now that the thing is known and may be faced without disguise the men
are all activity. Knives are out cutting away rebellious thorny stems
that will not keep down for trampling, and a lane is made through the
bush that keeps us from the body, while minutes that seem hours elapse.
That will do now. Bring him out, gently.
Shot through the head--is that it? Is there to be no hope? The girl's
heart stands still as old Stephen stoops down to examine the head, where
the blood is that has clotted all the hair and beard and run to a pool
in the bracken and leaked away--who can say how plentifully?--into a
cleft in the loose stones fallen from the wall. The old keeper is in no
trim for his task--one that calls for a cool eye and a steady
finger-touch. For it is he that has done this, and the white face and
lifeless eye are saying to him that he has slain a man. He has too much
at stake for us to accept his statement that the wound on the temple is
no bullet-hole in the skull, but good for profuse loss of blood for all
that. He has seen such a wound before, he says. But then his wish for a
wound still holding out some hope of life may have fathered this
thought, and even a false memory of his experience. Perhaps he is right,
though, in one thing. If the body is lifted and carried, even up to the
lodge, the blood may break out again. Leave him where he is till the
doctor comes.
For, at the first sight of the body, the young groom was off like a shot
to harness up the grey in the dog-cart, a combination favouring speed,
and drive his hardest to Grantley Thorpe for Dr. Nash, the nearest
medical resource. He is gone before the young lady, who knows of one
still nearer, can be alive to his action, or to anything but the white
face and lifeless hand Achilles licks in vain.
Then, a moment later, she is aware of what has been done, and
exclaims:--"Oh dear!--why did you send him? Dr. Merridew is at the
Castle." For she knew Sir Coupland before he had his knighthood. Thereon
the other groom is starting to summon him, but she stops him. She will
go herself; then the great man will be sure to come at once.
* * * * *
Sir Coupland Ellicott Merridew, F.R.S., F.R.C.S., F.R.C.P., etc.--a
whole alphabet of them--was enjoying this moment of the first unalloyed
holiday he had had for two years, by lying in bed till nine o'clock. If
it made him too late for the collective breakfast in the new
dining-room--late Jacobean--he had only to ring for a private subsection
for himself. He had had a small cup of coffee at eight, and was
congratulating himself on it, and was now absolutely in a position not
to give any consideration to anything whatever.
But cruel Destiny said No!--he was not to round off his long night's
rest with a neat peroration. He was interrupted in the middle of it by
what seemed, in his dream-world, just reached, the loud crack of a bone
that disintegrated under pressure; but that when he woke was clearly a
stone flung at his window. What a capital instance of dream-celerity,
thought he! Fancy the first half of that sound having conjured up the
operating-theatre at University College Hospital, fifteen years ago, and
a room full of intent faces he knew well, and enough of the second half
being available for him to identify it as--probably--the _poltergeist_
that infested that part of the house. Perhaps, if he took no notice, the
_poltergeist_ would be discouraged and subside. Anyhow, he wouldn't
encourage it.
But the sound came again, and the voice surely of Gwendolen, his very
great friend, with panic in it, and breathlessness as of a voice-reft
runner. He was out of bed in twenty, dressing-gowned in forty, at the
window in fifty, seconds. Not a minute lost!
"What's all that?... A man shot! All right, I'll come."
"Oh, do! It's so dreadful. Stephen Solmes shot him by mistake for a dog
... at least, I'll tell you directly."
"All right. I'll come now." And in less than half an hour the speaker is
kneeling by the body on the grass; and those who found it, with others
who have gathered round even in this solitude, are waiting for the first
authoritative word of possible hope. Not despair, with a look like that
on the face of a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons.
"There is a little blood coming still. Wait till I have stopped it and
I'll tell you." He stops it somehow with the aid of a miraculous little
morocco affair, scarcely bigger than a card-case. He never leaves home
without it. Then he looks up at the anxious, beautiful face of the girl
who stoops close by, holding a dog back. "He is not dead," says he.
"That is all I can say. He must be moved as little as possible, but got
to a bed--somewhere. Is that his dog?"
"Yes. This is Achilles."
"How do you know it is Achilles?"
"I'll tell you directly. _He_ told me his name yesterday." She nods
towards the motionless figure on the turf. It is not a corpse yet; that
is all that can be said, so far.