I
The big gray hunter caracoled under him, and with a vicious twitch of
curb and snaffle Morgan brought him to stand. He smacked the croup and
touched the gelding's fore thigh with the toe of his riding boot until
the great hunter stood like a horse in an illustration. Then Morgan
turned around.
About him was the cold gray of an Irish morning in November. Woolly,
dull, frost on the roads and a touch of easting to the wind--a perfect
day for hunting. Forward of him a hundred and fifty yards the hounds
were circling around the copse, while the leaders were inside, raising
the red fox. Through the gray branches of the wood, gaunt as witches'
arms, the pink of the whipper-in's coat showed like a Hallowe'en candle
back of a screen. And here and there were knots of the hunt, talking
to one another as neighbors talk. There were the women's fluting
voices; there was the men's deep laughter. All were friendly, toward
one another, toward the world, toward the red fox himself, friendly
toward every one except Morgan. Well, to blazes with them, Morgan
swore to himself. What the blazes did he care about them--a crowd of
country squires and young army men, of stray farmers, and an occasional
doctor or parson. What did they amount to, anyway? he 'd like to know.
And yet, he had thought they would be different. It had all been
twenty years ago, and he 'd been away all that time, and he 'd been
only two days back. But they 'd never forgotten. What haters they
were, these Irish! What implacable enemies! What brought him back,
anyhow? He could have been happy in America. Or hunting in England.
What he 'd come back for was the red Irish fox.
"Steady, blast you!" he warned the big hunter.
"There he goes!" some woman cried, and "No, Janet, no!" a friend
laughed. Janet! That would be Janet Conyers. And Janet Conyers must
be forty now, and here she was still riding to hounds. Yes, he
recognized a full dozen of them. Good Lord! Did people live as long
as that? There was old Sir John Burroughs, spare as a lance, and old
McGinty, who owned the Mill Farm. Yes, and the Master of Munsterbeg
was there, red-faced, hale, all of sixty. And that Grecian
profile--was n't that Di Connors, who was now Baroness Rothlin? And
the big gaunt man with the hook nose, was n't that Ian More Campbell of
the Antrim glens? Poet and soldier and horseman. Morgan felt a tremor
of fear before the great Ulster Scot.
There was the yelp of a foxhound and a roar of anger. The thundering
master of the hounds was turning on an inoffensive stranger.
"What the--what the--what the blazes do you mean, sir, riding over
hounds in that manner? What hunt do you belong to, anyhow?"
"I don't belong to any hunt."
"Well, what the--what did you come out here for, anyhow?"
"My medical man told me I needed fresh air and exercise, and I
thought--"
"You thought! You thought! Why in blazes don't you buy a bellows and
stick it up your nose? You 'd get all the fresh air and exercise you
want, but--"
There was a roar of laughter from the field, and above it rose Morgan's
deep basso, like the bourdon note of an organ. But the instant the
field noted his laughter, their laughter died.
Morgan smothered a curse and moved fifty yards down where he could get
a flying start away from the rush of hunting. How they hated him,
resented him, he felt, and yet he had killed no man, stolen no money,
betrayed no woman. They hated him as much as they had loved and
admired his wife Reynardine. Queer! Queer! He was the one they
should love and she was the one they should have felt aloof toward.
For he was the steeplechaser, the horseman, the hunter of foxes, and
she was of a family whose tradition it was never to hunt or harry a
fox, but to protect and aid it. You would have thought it would be the
other way around; that they would have liked him and been cool or
indifferent toward Reynardine, these hunting women, these sporting men.
But no!
And that was twenty years ago, and they hated still. Twenty years!
War and famine and pestilence had raged through the world. But they
remained the same, these Irish gentlefolk. Yes, it was all of twenty
years, nearly to a day, since he had left for foreign parts, and
Reynardine, his wife, had died.