THE MAD RIDING
TO Florence everything—leaf, and wind, and the movement of her own
blood—seemed to stop and harken to his steps going from her. To him the
power and procession of incident were suddenly precipitated in a rending
confusion, in which established custom was uprooted, faith cast down,
self-confidence shaken to bits.
What went on around him had lost significance. He was among people,
talking to people, looking at Florence across the table; but in this
blind rage of suffering he was as indifferent to all external things as
if he had been alone.
Neither Julia nor Bessie Lewis had appeared at luncheon. Julia had sent
word that she would be late, to her mother’s absent-minded distraction.
Mrs. Budd’s desire to rush away and fetch her fluttered before the faces
of her guests like a flag of distress. In the end she was deflected by
an imperative telephone that caught her just as her guests were rising.
While they loitered between the dining-room and living-hall, chatting in
groups, Julia, with Bessie Lewis at her heels, came down the stairs,
habited, hatted, booted, drawing on her gloves, her riding-whip under
her arm.
She was pale, but singularly vivid. Her dark eyes gleamed under her
thick brows. Her red lips were tight and thin.
Florence, looking quickly at Longacre, hated the presence descending the
stairs.
“Oh, I say, young madam,” Thair protested, amused; “it won’t do, you
know. You’re going to break your neck.”
“_You_ aren’t coming!” she laughed at him, though he was in his pinks.
“But Mr. Holden is!”
“Here, here!” Holden protested, shaking his head, half serious. “Don’t
misquote me!”
“But we’re all going!” she cried, with a look straight at Longacre.
“There are the horses!” She was buoyant. “Are two women going to ride
cross-country alone?” she mocked them.
“By gad!” murmured Holden in stark admiration for such daring.
Julia turned on Longacre. “Are you ready?” she said.
He stared. Then—“Not for this,” he answered briefly.
“Oh!” Her look again was diabolical. “Are _you_ the man who wasn’t
afraid this morning?”
“Did you accept the offer?”
“If I didn’t—” her red lips curled over her teeth—“I do now!”
“You’ll break your neck!”
“My neck!” She began laughing, as if that were something superlatively
ridiculous. There was a contagion of recklessness in the sound of it.
She leaned a little nearer and shook her head at him.
“My neck is worth at least two fences! And yours?”
“Oh, not that much!” It was an answering spirit.
“Then come!” she cried. “We’ll lead them!”
A quick step hurrying from the dining-room, and Mrs. Budd’s emphatic
voice was lifted.
“Where _did_ those horses come from?” The tone expressed mere general
wonder to the aggregation in the hall, that quickened to personal
apprehension at sight of her daughter equipped for the saddle.
“Why, _Julia_!” she began. Then seeing Bessie Lewis, she hesitated,
dismayed.
[Illustration: “‘_Are you ready?_’”]
“We’re just off, mama!” cried Julia. “I told James to have the cart
ready to drive you over to the ‘finish.’”
“Off? Over?” Mrs. Budd helplessly questioned.
“Why, the drag—the drag-hunt!” her daughter exclaimed. “You haven’t
forgotten our great event!”
“The drag-hunt! My dear child! Why, you’re _crazy_!” Mrs. Budd’s hands
were eloquent of horror. “Mr. Thair—Mr. Holden! Surely—why, it’s
_impossible_!”
Thair repudiating all part in the proceeding, Holden struggling for
neutral ground, Mrs. Budd adjuring them to a firm stand with her against
this harebrained escapade, a confusion of voices began. Bessie Lewis
wavered in the face of her hostess’s vehemence. In the midst of the
indecision Julia, who had been standing, her teeth on her under lip, her
crop slashing at her boots, suddenly recommanded the situation.
“Well, I’m off!” she cried. “See you again at the ‘kill!’”
She caught up her riding-skirt, and ran across the hall and down the
step. Longacre was after her. He felt a horrid responsibility for this
mad bravado.
Her foot hardly pressed his hand as she sprang into the saddle.
Mrs. Budd clasped Thair’s arm.
“Bring her back! Oh, _bring_ her back!” she entreated.
“Safe and sound—no danger,” he reassured her.
“Pretty rapid for the start,” he smiled to Holden, as he tucked up
Bessie Lewis on an excited mare. “Can you hit the pace?”
“I’m with you,” Holden muttered, straddling a dancing bay. “Can’t let
’em go alone!”
They galloped in the wake of the mad riders. Julia’s habit fluttered at
the front. The reckless spirit of her rose with the swinging pace. Just
through the gate she wheeled left into a wagon-track over fields, a
shortcut to the meet; Longacre followed, a neck behind. The rest, going
at a more discreet pace, stuck to the sea road, so that the two reached
the meet some few moments ahead, and waited, without a word to each
other, with the few pink coats, among a yelping pack in a meadow ruffled
over by the wind, ringed by live-oaks and somber cypresses. The others
came pounding in, breaking through the trees in a rush of voices and
color.
“Too far ahead of the procession!” cried Holden.
“You can follow as fast as you please,” called Julia.
“Oh, we follow, princess, we follow!” drawled Thair; “but don’t make the
way too steep.”
The pink coats gave curious glances at Longacre’s bare head and golf
attire.
The uncoupled hounds scattered over the field, nuzzling through the wet,
brown grass, till, with a short yelp from one throat and a long howl
from thirty, they had the scent and were off. The field was bunched at
the start, Longacre well up with Julia, who was riding hard for the
lead.
The going was heavy, and for this the bars were down, but the girl rode
straight at the fence. Her black mare sank over fetlock on the other
side, but was away with a bare instant lost, a nose behind Longacre,
who, with the rest, had taken the open gate.
“If you do that again,” he shouted, “I’ll lead you!”
She laughed and spurred away from him.
The M. F. H., with a dismayed look at her, was protesting to Thair, who
shrugged. There was no help for it, he seemed to say.
The girl’s hat, crammed over her eyes, pressed the hair to a close sweep
low above her brows. Her nostrils dilated, her color burned. The riders
strung out, Holden drawing abreast Julia, Longacre dropping back a
length to Thair’s pace.
“Easier going presently, I trust,” the latter said, as his horse sank an
off leg. “Look at the dogs,” he added, as the pack darted away in a
course almost at right angles to their first. “We’ll have a run for our
money!”
“Stiff going?” said Longacre, watching the black mare drawing up on the
M. F. H.
“Ground gets better; fences, ditches, worse; the neck-breaking course of
the country.” Thair, craning forward, laughed at Julia. “The filly’s got
the bit in her teeth. Cruel going—got to see it through somehow!”
He took the other side of a mire and edged away to the left, seeking the
narrowest place in the nearing ditch. It looked easy, a tiny gully
swollen full by the rains. But Longacre knew how the banks, under-eaten
by water, would not give firm footing to a dog. Julia rode at it as if
it were a crack in a rock. Holden, who was having his first experience
cross-country, slacked a little; but Longacre crowded forward, reckless
of the boggy ground.
“Take it long—long!” he entreated. Her eyes flashed at him.
“Are you afraid?” she cried.
The horses rose together. His went over like a swallow. The black mare
jumped short. One hind foot went down, but hands and voice and Kentucky
blood lifted her out with hardly a struggle.
Holden’s bay had refused the leap. Another had floundered badly. Thair’s
pink coat was sailing along the lower field toward a break in the brush
fence.
“Shall we lead him?” said Julia, pointing on with her whip.
“For God’s sake, go carefully!” he entreated.
It seemed to delight her to torment him. She pressed forward, looking
back with a challenge. Her lips, parted in the ardor of excitement,
showed a cruel white of teeth. The ground was precarious, but she rode
headlong. It was courting destruction.
He kept her pace, not in response to her reckless spirit, but for fear
of what might happen, with the desperate hope of averting disaster. They
flew down the field toward the thunder of the sea, with the sun and the
salt wind strong in their eyes; crashed through the hedge; scrambled
down into a road, up the sandy bank on the other side, through the
scrub-oaks with a rush, and at once the salt-meadows were before them,
their skirts of cypress black on a purple sea. Over the ocean a white
arm of fog extended stealthily. Its thin forefinger pointed landward.
Already the first films were caught on ragged pine and crooked cypress,
like flying shreds of veil.
“That’ll cut us short,” said Thair, frowning seaward.
“It won’t be in till night,” said Julia, pricking her mare till the
creature bounded.
“In an hour,” Thair decided. “We won’t make the cypress plantation.”
She spurred forward. “We’ll finish by five,” she called back. “We can
ride through a hedge—we can ride through a mist.”
“A ditch in a fog,” muttered Thair. “Not me!”
“We can ride like the devil and get through!” decided the M. F. H. “The
damned dogs are off the scent again!”
Below, among the tussocks of the first meadow, the pack were whimpering,
mingling, starting off on a false scent—returning, fawning, leaping up
on Julia riding to and fro among them. The exasperated whipper-in beat
at them. The four other riders came stringing over the rise among the
sand-hummocks.
“What’s up?”
“Oh, dear, have they lost the scent?”
They scattered down the dip among the dispersed and nosing pack.
“They have it!”
“No. Fake scent!”
“Why on earth is there such a long break?”—Bessie Lewis’s treble.
“_I_ didn’t carry the drag!” cried Julia, furiously, fretted with the
delay. “Loo, loo, loo!” She urged the dogs. “Good heavens! I could find
it quicker myself!”
She couldn’t—or wouldn’t—rein the black in to the group gathered in the
lee of the dunes, but darted away with swoops and stops beyond the
farthest-straying dog.
“Can’t we call it off?” urged Holden, looking anxiously at the
encroaching fog. It was spreading out, a thick sheet raveling at the
edges.
“Not until we have to!” said Thair, well into his cross-country humor.
“But don’t let the young madam get too far ahead.”
Then Longacre—who had never taken his eyes from where Julia glimmered
down the somber sward—“They have it! They’re off!” and was away after
them.
He heard the rest hot-pace behind, but he had a moment’s advantage, and,
having saved his horse between ditch and fence, now drew away fresh as
at the start. He had an open course—two miles of sandy turf—to catch her
in. She had ridden down near the sea, and, following the pack, now
zigzagged up hill. He, hugging the line of the dunes, cut off a corner,
and so caught up with her. Hearing him coming, she spurred harder; but
he drew up inch by inch, until, his roan abreast her black, they rushed
into the face of the wind together.
Hounds in front and hunters behind were forgotten; between the cypresses
crowding down from the hills, and the oblivion of fog beating in from
sea, they sped, wild with the elation of flight, unmindful of beginning,
oblivious of end.
Fog was already streaming among the fantastic trees of the Point of
Pines, cutting them off in front; but Julia held an unswerving course
until the damp breath blew on her hot cheeks, and moisture stood in
pearls in her hair.
The point went back from the sea in a low ridge, running up into a
straggling grove of cypress. Its backbone of round, tumbling stones was
cruel footing for horses. The pack made nothing of it, slipping over
like snakes. Julia was for following, but Longacre turned a sharp flank
movement that had the black headed off, flying up the point for the
trees, the pack yelping a parallel course on the left of the ridge.
Julia brought her whip down savagely on the black’s flank as she passed
him. Longacre took an in-breath as they swept under the trees. The sun
through the fine, blowing mist made a dazzle for the eyes.
Over a ground broken and spotted with black stumps the girl guided her
horse with admirable skill, Longacre saving his neck by luck. Their pace
perforce was slower, dodging the trees that sprang on them out of the
mist like specters.
Then, with a hallo, a crashing rush, Thair broke through the scrub on
their left. Old rider that he was, he knew the short cuts of every
course. He shouted, and they swerved toward him.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he panted.
“After the hounds!” cried Julia.
“The wild juggernaut couldn’t finish this run!” he protested.
“Nonsense!” The girl wheeled her horse. “We’ll be out of the mist when
we get away from the point.”
“_That_ you won’t. It’s coming in from the land, too. It’ll be thick in
five minutes, and we’ll snag, or break our precious necks on these
dwarf-cypresses!”
“We’ll be out in half a minute!” Julia said, shook her reins, and was
off.
“Keep Miss Lewis back!” Longacre shouted it over his shoulder.
He heard Thair take up the words and call them again to some dim
horseman looming large in the mist.
Already the hounds were a faint cry far in front, the girl a gray wraith
flitting among the trees. Now the cypresses had her! Now she flashed
into a clearing! Longacre heard hoofs and faint voices behind him, but
in that fog, that covered the earth and swallowed the sun, the rider a
length ahead of him was the only living creature. Before them the slope
slid away into white oblivion. It was madness—this blind flight. He felt
himself gaining upon her. His hand was ready for the black’s bit. The
thicket opened out; the trees fell away right and left. A dark line swam
up in front.
“What’s ahead?” he shouted.
“Fence!” She flung it back at him with a note of fear. The sound of that
brought him abreast her. Stark and black, the rails sprang out at him.
He saw a glittering mist where the other side should have been—heard
voices shouting through the fog—shouting them to stop. He snatched for
the mare’s bit. She swerved—she sprang to the spur. He saw Julia’s
profile, white on white, flash past him. His ears were full of his own
name—her voice calling his name—as the roan leaped upward.
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To Thair and Holden, blundering down the field, seeing six feet in front
of them, came a sound—the dull, unresonant drop of a body falling from a
height—a cry, suddenly cut off. Involuntarily they halted. Thair peered
into the obscurity. Holden halloed. The silence was dreadful. They edged
cautiously forward, expecting a hail for direction. Then suddenly out of
the fog the black mare plunged on them, empty saddle, flying rein.
“God!” said Holden.
“E-e-easy!” muttered Thair, leading forward cautiously.
Now the stark line of the fence rose up; now, almost abreast of it, they
saw the roan on the far side, standing, head tossed; and near him, vague
as ghosts, two figures, one kneeling by one prone in the long, wet
grass.
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