THE END OF A PERFECT DAY
“Are you ready, Norah?”
“Coming, Phil—half a minute!”
Hardress, in riding kit, looked into the kitchen, where Norah was
carrying on a feverish consultation with Miss de Lisle.
“You’ll be late,” he said warningly. “Your father and Geoffrey have
gone on.”
“Will I truly?” said Norah distractedly. “Yes, Miss de Lisle, I’ll
write to the Stores about it to-night. Now, what about the fish?”
“Leave the fish to me,” said Miss de Lisle, laughing. “If I can’t
manage to worry out a fish course without you, I don’t deserve to have
half my diplomas. Run away: the house won’t go to pieces in a single
hunting day.”
“Bless you!” said Norah thankfully, dragging on her gloves and casting
a wild glance about the kitchen for her hunting crop. “Oh, there it is.
Good-bye. You won’t forget that Major Arkwright is only allowed white
meat?”
“Oh, run away—I won’t forget anything.”
“Well, he only came last night, so I thought you mightn’t know,” said
the apologetic mistress of the house. “All right, Phil—I’m truly
coming. Good-bye, Miss de Lisle!” The words floated back as she raced
off to the front door, where the horses were fretting impatiently, held
by the groom.
They jogged down the avenue—Hardress on one of the brown cobs, Norah on
Brunette, the black pony—her favourite mount. It was a perfect hunting
morning: mild and still, with almost a hint of spring warmth in the
air. The leafless trees bore faint signs of swelling leaf-buds. Here
and there, in the grass beside the drive crocus bells peeped out at
them—purple, white and gold.
“We’ll have daffodils soon, I do believe,” Norah said. “Well, I love
Australia, but there isn’t anything in the world lovelier than your
English spring!”
Ahead of them, as they turned into the road, they could see Mr. Linton,
looking extraordinarily huge on Killaloe, beside Geoffrey’s little
figure on Brecon.
“This is a great day for Geoff,” Hardress said.
“Yes—he has been just longing to go to a meet. Of course he has driven
a good many times, but Mrs. Hunt has been a bit nervous about his
riding. But he’s perfectly safe—and it isn’t as if Brecon ever got
excited.”
“No. Come along, Norah, there’s a splendid stretch of grass here: let’s
canter!”
They had agreed upon a Christian-name footing some time before, when it
seemed that Hardress was likely to be a permanent member of the
household. She looked at him now, as they cantered along through the
dew-wet grass at the side of the road. No one would have guessed at
anything wrong with him: he was bronzed and clear-eyed, and sat as
easily in the saddle as though he had never been injured.
“Sometimes,” said Norah suddenly, “I find myself wondering which of
your legs is the shop one!” She flushed. “I suppose I oughtn’t to make
personal remarks, but your leg does seem family property!”
“So it is,” said Hardress, grinning. “Anyhow, you couldn’t make a nicer
personal remark than that one. So I forgive you. But it’s all thanks to
you people.”
“We couldn’t have done anything if you hadn’t been determined to get
on,” Norah answered. “As soon as you made up your mind to that—well,
you got on.”
“I don’t know how you stood me so long,” he muttered. Then they caught
up to the riders ahead, and were received by Geoffrey with a joyful
shout.
“You were nearly late, Norah,” said Mr. Linton.
“I dragged her from the kitchen, sir,” Hardress said. “She and Miss de
Lisle were poring over food—if we get no dinner to-night it will be our
fault.”
“If _you_ had the responsibility of feeding fourteen hungry people you
wouldn’t make a joke of it,” said Norah. “It’s very solemn, especially
when the fishmonger fails you hopelessly.”
“There’s always tinned salmon,” suggested her father.
“Tinned salmon, indeed!” Norah’s voice was scornful. “We haven’t come
yet to giving the Tired People dinner out of a tin. However, it’s all
right: Miss de Lisle will work some sort of a miracle. I’m not going to
think of housekeeping for a whole day!”
The meet was four miles away, near a marshy hollow thickly covered with
osiers and willows. A wood fringed the marsh, and covered a hill which
rose from a little stream beyond it. Here and there was a glimpse of
the yellow flame of gorse. There were rolling fields all round, many of
them ploughed: it had not yet been made compulsory for every landowner
to till a portion of his holding, but English farmers were beginning to
awake to the fact that while the German submarine flourished it would
be both prudent and profitable to grow as much food as possible, and
the plough had been busy. The gate into the field overlooking the marsh
stood open; a few riders were converging towards it from different
points. The old days of crowded meets and big fields of riders were
gone. Only a few plucky people struggled to keep the hounds going, and
to find work for the hunters that had escaped the first requisition of
horses for France.
The hounds came into view as Mr. Linton’s party arrived. The “Master”
came first, on a big, workmanlike grey; a tall woman, with a
weatherbeaten face surmounted by a bowler hat. The hounds trotted
meekly after her, one or another pausing now and then to drink at a
wayside puddle before being rebuked for bad manners by a watchful whip.
Mrs. Ainslie liked the Lintons; she greeted them pleasantly.
“Nice morning,” she said. “Congratulations: I hear the boy is a
Captain.”
“We can’t quite realize it,” Norah said, laughing. “You see, we hardly
knew he had grown up!”
“Well, he grew to a good size,” said Mrs. Ainslie, with a smile.
“Hullo, Geoff. Are you going to follow to-day?”
“They won’t let me,” said Geoffrey dolefully. “I know Brecon and I
could, but Mother says we’re too small.”
“Too bad!” said Mrs. Ainslie. “Never mind; you’ll be big pretty soon.”
A tall old man in knickerbockers greeted her: Squire Brand, who owned a
famous property a few miles away, and who had the reputation of never
missing a meet, although he did not ride. He knew every inch of the
country; it was said that he could boast, at the end of a season, that
he had, on the whole, seen more of the runs than any one else except
the Master. He was a tireless runner, with an extraordinarily long
stride, which carried him over fields and ditches and gave him the
advantage of many a short cut impossible to most people. He knew every
hound by name; some said he knew every fox in the country; and he
certainly had an amazing knowledge of the direction a fox was likely to
take. Horses, on the other hand, bored him hopelessly; he consented to
drive them, in the days when motors were not, but merely as a means of
getting from place to place. A splendid car, with a chauffeur much
smarter than his master, had just dropped him: a grant figure in
weatherbeaten Harris tweeds, grasping a heavy stick.
“We should get a good run to-day,” he said.
“Yes—with luck,” Mrs. Ainslie answered.
“Any news from the Colonel?”
“Nothing in particular—plenty of hard fighting. But he never writes
much of that. He’s much more interested in a run he had with a queer
scratch pack near their billets. I can’t quite gather how it was
organized, but it comprised two beagles and a greyhound and a
fox-terrier and a pug. He said they had a very sporting time!”
Squire Brand chuckled.
“I don’t doubt it,” he said. “Did he say what they hunted?”
“Anything they could get, apparently. They began with a hare, and then
got on to a rabbit, in some mysterious fashion. They finished up with a
brisk run in the outskirts of a village, and got a kill—it turned out
this time to be a cat!” Mrs. Ainslie’s rather grim features relaxed
into a smile. “If any one had told Val two years ago that he would be
enthusiastic over a day like that!”
A few other riders had come up: two or three officers from a
neighbouring town; a couple of old men, and a sprinkling of girls.
Philip Hardress was the only young man in plain clothes, and strangers
who did not suspect anything amiss with his leg looked at him
curiously.
“Look at that dear old thing!” he whispered to Norah, indicating a prim
maiden lady who had arrived on foot. “I know she’s aching for a chance
to ask me why I’m not in khaki!” He grinned delightedly. “She’s rather
like the old lady who met me in the train the other day, and after
looking at me sadly for a few minutes said, ‘My dear young man, do you
not know that your King and Country want you?’”
“Phil! What did you say?”
“I said, ‘Well, they’ve got one of my legs, and they don’t seem to have
any use for the remnant!’ I don’t think she believed me, so I invited
her to prod it!” He chuckled at his grim joke. Three months ago he had
shrunk from any mention of his injury as from the lash of a whip.
Mrs. Ainslie never wasted time. Two minutes’ grace for any
laggards—which gave time for the arrival of a stout lady on a
weight-carrying cob—and then she moved on, and in a moment the hounds
were among the osiers, hidden except that now and then a waving stern
caught the eye. Occasionally there was a brief whimper, and once a
young hound gave tongue too soon, and was, presumably, rebuked by his
mother, and relapsed into hunting in shamed silence.
The osiers proved blank: they drew out, and went up the hill into the
covert, while the field moved along to be as close as possible, and the
followers on foot dodged about feverishly, hoping for luck that would
make a fox break their way. Too often the weary lot of the foot
contingent is to see nothing whatever after the hounds once enter
covert, since the fox is apt to leave it as unobtrusively as possible
at the far side, and to take as short a line as he can across country
to another refuse. To follow the hounds on foot needs a stout heart and
patience surpassing that of Job.
But those on horses know little of the blighting experiences of the
foot-plodders: and when Norah went a-hunting everything ceased to exist
for her except the white-and-black-and-tan hounds and the green fields,
and Brunette under her, as eager as she for the first long-drawn-out
note from the pack. They moved restlessly back and forth along the
hillside, the black pony dancing with impatience at the faintest
whimper from an unseen hound. Near them Killaloe set an example of
steadiness—but with watchful eyes and pricked ears.
Squire Brand came up to them.
“I’d advise you to get up near the far end of the covert,” he said.
“It’s almost a certainty that he’ll break away there and make a
bee-line across to Harley Wood. I hope he will, for there’s less plough
there than in the other direction.” He hurried off, and Norah permitted
Brunette to caper after him. A young officer on a big bay followed
their example.
“Come along,” he said to a companion. “It’s a safe thing to follow old
Brand’s lead if you want to get away well.”
Where the covert ended the hill sloped gently to undulating fields,
divided by fairly stiff hedges with deep ditches, and occasionally by
post-and-rail fences, more like the jumps that Norah knew in Australia.
The going was good and sound, and there was no wire—that terror of the
hunter. Norah had always hated wire, either plain or barbed. She held
that it found its true level in being used against Germans.
Somewhere in a tangle of bracken an old hound spoke sharply. A little
thrill ran through her. She saw her father put his pipe in his pocket
and pull his hat more firmly down on his forehead, while she held back
Brunette, who was dancing wildly. Then came another note, and another,
and a long-drawn burst of music from the hounds; and suddenly Norah saw
a stealthy russet form, with brush sweeping the ground, that stole from
the covert and slid down the slope, and after him, a leaping wave of
brown and white and black as hounds came bounding from the wood and
flung themselves upon the scent, with Mrs. Ainslie close behind. Some
one shouted “Gone awa-a-y!” in a voice that went ringing in echoes
round the hillside.
Brunette bucked airily over the low fence near the covert, and Killaloe
took it almost in his stride. Then they were racing side by side down
the long slope, with the green turf like wet velvet underfoot; and the
next hedge seemed rushing to meet them. Over, landing lightly in the
next field; before them only the “Master” and whip, and the racing
hounds, with burning eyes for the little red speck ahead, trailing his
brush.
“By Jove, Norah!” said David Linton, “we’re in for a run!”
Norah nodded. Speech was beyond her; only all her being was singing
with the utter joy of the ride. Beneath her Brunette was spurning the
turf with dainty hooves; stretching out in her gallop, yet gathering
herself cleverly at her fences, with alert, pricked ears—judging her
distance, and landing with never a peck or stumble. The light weight on
the pony’s back was nothing to her; the delicate touch on her mouth was
all she needed to steady her at the jumps.
Near Harley Wood the fox decided regretfully that safety lay elsewhere:
the enemy, running silently and surely, were too hot on his track. He
crept through a hedge, and slipped like a shadow down a ditch; and
hounds, jumping out, were at fault for a moment. The slight check gave
the rest of the field time to get up.
“That’s a great pony!” Norah heard the young officer say. She patted
Brunette’s arching neck.
Then a quick cast of the hounds picked up the scent, and again they
were off, but no longer with the fences to themselves; so that it was
necessary to be watchful for the cheerful enthusiast who jumps on top
of you, and the prudent sportsman who wobbles all over the field in his
gallop, seeking for a gap. Killaloe drew away again: there was no
hunter in the country side to touch him. After him went Brunette, with
no notion of permitting her stable companion to lose her in a run like
this.
A tall hedge faced them, with an awkward take-off from the bank of a
ditch. Killaloe crashed through; Brunette came like a bird in his
tracks, Norah’s arm across her face to ward off the loose branches. She
got through with a tear in her coat, landing on stiff plough through
which Mrs. Ainslie’s grey was struggling painfully. Brunette’s light
burden was all in her favour here—Norah was first to the gate on the
far side, opening it just in time for the “Master,” and thrilling with
joy at that magnate’s brief “Thank you!” as she passed through and
galloped away. The plough had given the hounds a long lead. But ahead
were only green fields, dotted by clumps of trees: racing ground, firm
and springy. The air sang in their ears. The fences seemed as nothing;
the good horses took them in racing style, landing with no shock, and
galloping on, needing no touch of whip or spur.
The old dog-fox was tiring, as well he might, and yet, ahead, he knew,
lay sanctuary, in an old quarry where the piled rocks hid a hole where
he had lain before, with angry hounds snuffing helplessly around him.
He braced his weary limbs for a last effort. The cruel eyes and lolling
tongues were very close behind him; but his muscles were steel, and he
knew how to save every short cut that gave him so much as a yard. He
saw the quarry, just ahead, and snarled his triumph in his untamed
heart.
Brunette’s gallop was faltering a little, and Norah’s heart sank. She
had never had such a run: it was hard if she could not see it out, when
they had led the field the whole way—and while yet Killaloe was going
like a galloping-machine in front. Then she heard a shout from her
father and saw him point ahead. “Water!” came to her. She saw the gleam
of water, fringed by reeds: saw Killaloe rise like a deer at it, taking
off well on the near side, and landing with many feet to spare.
“Oh—we can do that,” Norah thought. “Brunette likes water.”
She touched the pony with her heel for the first time, and spoke to
her. Brunette responded instantly, gathering herself for the jump.
Again Norah heard a shout, and was conscious of the feeling of vague
irritation that we all know when some one is trying to tell us
something we cannot possibly hear. She took the pony at the jump about
twenty yards from the place where Killaloe had flown it. Nearer and
nearer. The water gleamed before her, very close: she felt the pony
steady herself for the leap. Then the bank gave way under her heels:
there was a moment’s struggle and a stupendous splash.
Norah’s first thought was that the water was extremely cold; then, that
the weight on her left leg was quite uncomfortable. Brunette
half-crouched, half-lay, in the stream, too bewildered to move; then
she sank a little more to one side and Norah had to grip her mane to
keep herself from going under the surface. It seemed an unpleasantly
long time before she saw her father’s face.
“Norah—are you hurt?”
“No, I’m not hurt,” she said. “But I can’t get my leg out—and Brunette
seems to think she wants to stay here. I suppose she finds the mud nice
and soft.” She tried to smile at his anxious face, but found it not
altogether easy.
“We’ll get you out,” said David Linton. He tugged at the pony’s bridle;
and Mrs. Ainslie, arriving presently, came to his assistance, while
some of the other riders, coming up behind, encouraged Brunette with
shouts and hunting-crops. Thus urged, Brunette decided that some
further effort was necessary, and made one, with a mighty flounder,
while Norah rolled off into the water. Half a dozen hands helped her at
the bank.
“You’re sure you’re not hurt?” her father asked anxiously. “I was
horribly afraid she’d roll on your leg when she moved.”
“I’m quite all right—only disgustingly wet,” said Norah. “Oh, and I
missed the finish—did you ever know such bad luck?”
“Well, you only missed the last fifty yards,” said Mrs. Ainslie,
pointing to the quarry, from which the whips were dislodging the
aggrieved hounds. “We finished there; and that old fox is good for
another day yet. I’d give you the brush, if he hadn’t decided to keep
it himself.”
“Oh!” said Norah, blushing, while her teeth chattered. “Wasn’t it a
beautiful run!”
“It was—but something has got to be done with you,” said Mrs. Ainslie
firmly. “There’s a farmhouse over there, Mr. Linton: I know the people,
and they’ll do anything they can for you. Hurry her over and get her
wet things off—Mrs. Hardy will lend her some clothes.” And Norah made a
draggled and inglorious exit.
Mrs. Hardy received her with horrified exclamations and offers of all
that she had in the house: so that presently Norah found herself
drinking cup after cup of very hot tea and eating buttered toast with
her father—attired in a plaid blouse of green and red in large checks,
and a black velvet skirt that had seen better days; with carpet
slippers lending a neat finish to a somewhat striking appearance.
Without, farm hands rubbed down Killaloe and Brunette in the stable.
Mrs. Hardy fluttered in and out, bringing more and yet more toast,
until her guests protested vehemently that exhausted nature forbade
them to eat another crumb.
“And wot is toast?” grumbled Mrs. Hardy, “and you ridin’ all day in the
cold!” She had been grievously disappointed at her visitors’ refusing
bacon and eggs. “The young lady’ll catch ’er death, sure’s fate! Just
another cup, miss. Lor, who’s that comin’ in at the gate!”
“That” proved to be Squire Brand, who had appeared at the scene of
Norah’s disaster just after her retreat—being accused by Mrs. Ainslie
of employing an aeroplane.
“I came to see if I could be of any use,” he said. His eye fell on
Norah in Mrs. Hardy’s clothes, and he said, “Dear me!” suddenly, and
for a moment lost the thread of his remarks. “You can’t let her ride
home, Linton—my car is here, and if your daughter will let me drive her
home I’m sure Mr. Hardy will house her pony until to-morrow—you can
send a groom over for it. I’ve a spare coat in the car. Yes, thank you,
Mrs. Hardy, I should like a cup of tea very much.”
Now that the excitement of the day was over, Norah was beginning to
feel tired enough to be glad to escape the long ride home on a jaded
horse. So, with Mrs. Hardy’s raiment hidden beneath a gorgeous fur
coat, she was presently in the Squire’s car, slipping through the dusk
of the lonely country lanes. The Squire liked Jim, and asked questions
about him: and to talk of Jim was always the nearest way to Norah’s
heart. She had exhausted his present, and was as far back in his past
as his triumphs in inter-State cricket, when they turned in at the
Homewood avenue.
“I’m afraid I’ve talked an awful lot,” she said, blushing. “You see,
Jim and I are tremendous chums. I often think how lucky I was to have a
brother like him, as I had only one!”
“Possibly Jim thinks the same about his sister,” said the old man. He
looked at her kindly; there was something very child-like in the small
face, half-lost in the great fur collar of his coat.
“At all events, Jim has a good champion,” he said.
“Oh, Jim doesn’t need a champion,” Norah answered. “Every one likes
him, I think. And of course we think there’s no one like him.”
The motor stopped, and the Squire helped her out. It was too late to
come in, he said; he bade her good night, and went back to the car.
Norah looked in the glass in the hall, and decided that her appearance
was too striking to be kept to herself. A very battered felt riding-hat
surmounted Mrs. Hardy’s finery; it bore numerous mud-splashes, some of
which had extended to her face. No one was in the hall; it was late,
and presumably the Tired People were dressing for dinner. She headed
for the kitchen, meeting, on the way, Allenby, who uttered a choking
sound and dived into his pantry. Norah chuckled, and passed on.
Miss de Lisle sat near the range, knitting her ever-present muffler.
She looked up, and caught her breath at the apparition that danced
in—Norah, more like a well-dressed scarecrow than anything else, with
her grey eyes bright among the mud-splashes. She held up Mrs. Hardy’s
velvet skirt in each hand, and danced solemnly up the long kitchen,
pointing each foot daintily, in the gaudy carpet slippers.
“Oh my goodness!” ejaculated Miss de Lisle—and broke into helpless
laughter.
Norah sat down by the fender and told the story of her day—with a
cheerful interlude when Katty came in hurriedly, failed to see her
until close upon her, and then collapsed. Miss de Lisle listened,
twinkling.
“Well, you must go and dress,” she said at length. “It would be only
kind to every one if you came down to dinner like that, but I suppose
it wouldn’t do.”
“It wouldn’t be dignified,” said Norah, looking, at the moment, as
though dignity were the last thing she cared about. “Well, I suppose I
must go.” She gathered up her skirts and danced out again, pausing at
the door to execute a high kick. Then she curtsied demurely to the
laughing cook-lady, and fled to her room by a back staircase.
She came down a while later, tubbed and refreshed, in a dainty blue
frock, with a black ribbon in her shining curls. The laughter had not
yet died out of her eyes; she was humming one of Jim’s school songs as
she crossed the hall. Allenby was just turning from the door.
“A telegram, Miss Norah.”
“Thanks, Allenby.” She took it, still smiling. “I hope it isn’t to say
any one is coming to-night,” she said, as she carried it to the light.
“Wouldn’t it be lovely if it was to tell us they had leave!” There was
no need to specify whom “they” meant. “But I’m afraid that’s too much
to hope, just yet.” She tore open the envelope.
There was a long silence as she stood there with the paper in her hand:
a silence that grew gradually more terrible, while her face turned
white. Over and over she read the scrawled words, as if in the vain
hope that the thing they told might yet prove only a hideous dream from
which, presently, she might wake. Then, as if very far away, she heard
the butler’s shaking voice.
“Miss Norah! Is it bad news?”
“You can send the boy away,” she heard herself say, as though it were
some other person speaking. “There isn’t any answer. He has been
killed.”
“Not Mr. Jim?” Allenby’s voice was a wail.
“Yes.”
She turned from him and walked into the morning-room, shutting the
door. In the grate a fire was burning; the leaping light fell on Jim’s
photograph, standing on a table near. She stared at it, still holding
the telegram. Surely it was a dream—she had so often had it before.
Surely she would soon wake, and laugh at herself.
The door was flung open, and her father came in, ruddy and splashed.
She remembered afterwards the shape of a mud-splash on his sleeve. It
seemed to be curiously important.
“Norah!—what is wrong?”
She put out her hands to him then, shaking. Jim had said it was her job
to look after him, but she could not help him now. And no words would
come.
“Is it Jim?” At the agony of his voice she gave a little choking cry,
catching at him blindly. The telegram fluttered to the floor, and David
Linton picked it up and read it. He laid the paper on the table and
turned to her, holding out his hands silently, and she came to him and
put her face on his breast, trembling. His arm tightened round her. So
they stood, while the time dragged on.
He put her into a chair at last, and they looked at each other: they
had said no word since that first moment.
“Well,” said David Linton slowly, “we knew it might come. And we know
that he died like a man, and that he never shirked. Thank God we had
him, Norah. And thank God my son died a soldier, not a slacker.”