In the morning Barnaby went out hunting. He started gaily, in old
clothes, on a borrowed horse.
"Next time I die," he said, "and they put away my relics, I beg you all
not to scatter infernal white knobs of poison among them to keep away
the moths. I call it irreverent. And unless this horrible smell wears
off I'll have to keep to leeward. A single whiff of it would kill the
scent."
He came in at dusk, stiff and splashed, but contented, calling for tea,
and waking up the house. It was extraordinary what a difference his
presence made as he limped into the hall and hung up his whip. Life
and vigour seemed to blow in with him; the terriers rushed at him
dancing, barking, pattering into the library at his heels. Lady
Henrietta, propped on her sofa, gave a little sharp sigh.
"Give him his tea, Susan," she said briskly. "How did he carry you,
Barnaby? Who was out?"
"Oh, all the world and his wife," he said. "Carry me? He wouldn't
have carried a grasshopper. But I changed on to a chestnut that
Rivington wants to sell. I've bought him. Not much to look at, but he
goes well enough, and I was so pleased to feel a real galloper under
me, I'd have given him any price.... It's good to be here again.
Though my boots are as hard as iron. I believe I am lamed for life.
By the by, Susan, I've let you in for one thing. I couldn't help it."
She looked up, startled, from her place by the fire.
"It's only to dine out with some people to-morrow night," he said,
noticing her alarm. "I couldn't get out of it, really; they mobbed me
so."
"Who is it?" asked Lady Henrietta.
"Only the Drakes," said Barnaby.
His mother nodded. "Yes; show her off to your friends!" she said.
She was in and out of Susan's room next evening all the while she was
dressing, and when the girl's toilet was finished she came with her
hands full of jewel-cases.
"You can't wear much to-night," she said.
"It would look dressed up. But a few pins,--and a star or two to give
you confidence in yourself.... My dear, you don't know what a help it
is! And all the women you'll meet have been at one time or another in
love with Barnaby. Hold up your head, and don't let them make you
wretched. Is that you, Barnaby? I want you."
Barnaby passed by on his way from his own room, and her shrill call
stopped him. His step outside sent the colour into Susan's cheek, and
his voice came doubtfully through the door.
"Yes, mother?"
"Come in; come in. How shy you are!" said she, and the handle turned.
"You will tire yourself," he said, but she brushed aside his
remonstrance.
"Rubbish!" she said. "I have the whole evening to lie up and swallow
physic. Come here and stick these in for me, will you? Margaret is so
clumsy."
"I beg your pardon," he said, under his breath, as he bent down,
fulfilling his office.--"The exigencies of the piece must excuse me."
"What a queer way of apologizing for running a pin into your wife!"
said his mother sharply. She might have been trusted to overhear. He
had straightened himself, and was withdrawing rather precipitately,
when his eyes fell on his own picture above the chimney-piece. "What
is that thing doing here?" he asked, off his guard.
Lady Henrietta desisted from her pleased contemplation of Susan decked
out with jewels.
"Well!" she said. "Of all things! Do you mean to say?--It has been
there ever since she came. I had it hung there myself to be company
for your heart-broken widow."
"Anyhow, we'll have it down now," he said hastily. "You'd rather not
have the daub glaring at you, wouldn't you, Susan?"
Lady Henrietta turned her back on him.
"Don't mind him, my dear," she said. "We'll keep it."
There was warmth in her tone. She squeezed the girl's arm, bidding her
remember that none of Barnaby's old flames could hold a candle to her.
Somehow or other he had fallen under her displeasure.
"I'm afraid my acting doesn't come up to yours," he said, when they
were shut into the motor. "My mother thinks I am too undemonstrative
... that I am unworthy of my good luck."
"Don't!" she said.
He laid his hand comfortingly on hers.
"Look here, little girl," he said. "It's no use taking things hard.
We have to make the best of it. It won't last for ever.... We must
look at the funny side of it. That's the bargain."
The swift drive through the night was already over. Three men, pushing
aside the servants, were slapping Barnaby on the back. They bore a
family likeness to each other, big men, with creased red necks, and
short, rumpled sandy hair.
"Come along in," they cried heartily. "The house is full of old
friends wanting to get at you,--and nothing but odds and ends for
dinner."
But one of them managed to lower his hearty voice a trifle.--"You won't
mind meeting Julia Kelly? She has asked herself for the night."
"Who else?" said Barnaby, in his ordinary tones.
"Kilgour and the Slaters and Rackham and the Duchess;--and a few more,"
reeled off his host, thankfully dropping the awkward subject now he had
got out his warning. He rushed them into the house, and Susan was
bewildered by the tumult that greeted them, the sea of unknown faces.
Men and women alike were seizing on Barnaby and exclaiming. She hardly
realized that they were at the same time taking stock of her. The
three Drakes stood near her like a bodyguard, kind and stolid, settling
into their usual phlegmatic form; and she felt glad of them.
"Getting on all right?" said Barnaby, as she passed him on her way in
to dinner, and she smiled back at him.
He and she were not near each other; but once or twice he looked her
way, bending his head and slewing half round to catch a glimpse of her;
that--or else Lady Henrietta's stars, kept up her courage. She
listened politely, not understanding much, to the local gossip running
along the table.
"Have you picked up any horses yet, Barnaby? Sims has one or two going
up on Saturday, at Leicester."
"I can let you have a bay, a capital fencer----"
"Oh, you don't palm off your roarers on me. I heard him to-day," said
Barnaby.
"Well, I don't deny that he makes a noise----"
"I suppose you think I've been in the wilds so long I don't know a
horse from a hedgehog!" said Barnaby. "Can anyone tell me what became
of a black mare I had four seasons ago?"
"Do you mean Black Rose?" said Kilgour.
"That's the one. Do you know who has her?"
"I have," said Kilgour. "I took her from Peters. The fellow couldn't
ride her. You can have her back if you want her, Barnaby; she isn't up
to my weight. I remember you rode her at Croxton Park."
"And won," said Barnaby. "Want her? Rather."
Kilgour chuckled heavily.
"She isn't as young as she was, mind," he said. "But she can go still.
I suppose you're not as keen as you used to be on breaking your neck?"
"As keen as ever," said Barnaby, with conviction.
"Does your wife ride?"
The question sounded maladroit; it was inconceivable that Barnaby
should have married a wife who did not. His hesitation was singular in
their eyes; they all stopped to listen.
"I really don't know," he said.
In the general burst of laughter Susan caught his glance of amused
consternation. In that hard-riding company his ignorance was
incredible. Men, having a curious predilection towards the unsuitable
in wives, he might, after all, have committed that inconceivable piece
of folly. Barnaby's wife might lamentably turn out incapable of
sitting on a horse. But that Barnaby should not know--!
It was while they were all laughing at him that Susan became aware of
Julia Kelly.
She was on the same side of the table as herself, placed far from the
lion of the occasion; and was leaning her elbows on the table, looking
full at Susan. The man between them was sitting back in his chair
roaring helplessly at the joke.
"What an ignorant husband, Mrs. Hill," said Julia, and her musical
voice vibrated through the laughter. "Do you ride?"
"I have ridden," said Susan quietly. It was difficult for her to blot
the memory of an encounter that the other woman ignored.
"But not with him?"
Mrs. Drake, springing up, made diversion.
"Why not have a steeplechase?" she cried.
She was one of these little women, all skin and bone, who cannot bear
inaction, and whose wishes are carried out.
"Cross country," she said, silencing a growl from her husband. "You
can ride the point-to-point course. We'll send round and tell
everybody, and get them all here by twelve. And we'll put grooms with
lanterns to mark the jumps."
The men jumped up, enthusiastic. The idea was just mad enough to
appeal to their sporting instincts. In about three minutes the
dining-room was deserted, and five motors were humming into the
darkness to apprise and rally all who were reckless enough to join. In
a neighbourhood always ready for a frolic there was no danger of the
inspiration falling flat.
Barnaby himself was in the thick of it, mapping out preliminaries with
the other men in the hall. The women clustered together, almost
hysterical with excitement. And Susan drifted apart from the
chattering circle, feeling outside it all.
She heard a gruff voice in her ear, and started. The tall, gaunt,
hard-faced Duchess was standing over her.
"How are you getting on?" she said.
"It is a little strange to me," said Susan.
"But you are not moping," said the Duchess. "I can see you are made of
better stuff. They are all mad, of course, but nobody will get hurt,
if that is what you are afraid of."
Yes, that must be what she was afraid of, what inspired her with an
undefined wretchedness. If she had been what they thought her, surely
she would be feeling nervous. She was glad she had not made the
mistake of pretending to be gay.
"I am an old friend of your husband's," said the Duchess, "--and he has
asked me to be kind to you. I shan't warn you to beware of Julia; all
the rest of them will, if they haven't already;--but I don't call that
kindness."
"Barnaby asked you to be kind to me?" repeated Susan; she could not
keep the wistfulness out of her voice; she had been thinking herself so
utterly forgotten.
"Yes. It isn't the fashion here for husbands to worry about their
wives, but he is a bit old-fashioned. I told him I'd come and talk to
the little fish out of water. It is just a strange pond, my dear, and
you'll soon begin swimming."
The clash of voices grew more uproarious in the hall. A man put his
head in and vanished, looking for somebody. His brief appearance made
the contrast between the excitement out there and this empty room more
emphatic.
"I must get out of this," said the Duchess, switching her train as she
rose from the sofa. "Kitty will have to lend me a habit and one of her
husband's coats. I shall ride. There's a brook jump where there'll be
trouble, and I want to see the fun. You had better drive with Kitty.
I'll see to it. Have you anything warm to put on?"
Her caution was hardly equal to her good nature, and the clamour in the
hall hardly drowned her indignant voice as she seized on a confidant in
the doorway.
"I like her pluck. She's terrified to death, of course, but she
doesn't look woe-begone. We must seem a pack of dangerous lunatics....
Where do these Americans get their spirit?"
"You don't read history, do you, Duchess?"
"Why?"
The man she had seized laughed shortly, amused at her bewildered face.
"Oh," he said, "we English are frightfully cock-a-hoop over our
pedigrees. We don't remember it's they who are condescending to us.
There's bluer and better blood across the Atlantic than any of ours,
and it isn't smirched. They don't boast. They don't remind us of our
blotted scutcheons.--We to talk of race!"
"What on earth do you mean, Kilgour?" said the Duchess. "Half of them
are Huns and Finns, and the scum of Europe."
The big man was leaning against the door-post; his bantering tongue
took on a sudden heat.
"A few," he said. "But the rest--! Scum, Duchess?--We're the dregs.
There's not one of our great families that isn't mixed with the blood
of traitors; that hasn't at one time or another sold its honour or
stained its sword. Scots and English, all that was best of us once,
are there, handing their valour down. After Culloden the country was
drained of its gentlemen. Why, you can still hear the Highland tongue
in South Carolina.... _They_ went into exile while we hugged our
estates and truckled to an usurper. And the soul of a country is the
soul of its heroes.... Oh, I believe in race!--Let the rest of us take
a pride in our tarnished titles and wonder at the fineness of strangers
who are descended from the men who lost all for the sake of honour and
loyalty to their King!"
The Duchess dropped her blunt voice into a lower key.
"Poor old Kilgour," she said. "You're thinking of that little brute
Tillinghame and his dollar princess."
"Well!" he said, between his teeth. "You've only to look at them!--And
his people sneer at her for aspiring to bear an illustrious title that
began in dishonour, and has been dragged a few hundred years in the
mud--!"
The Duchess moved away from the door; she had remembered Susan.
"I wish you'd capture Barnaby and send him in to his wife," she said.
"He has forgotten that she exists.... I've had to make up a
message.... I couldn't stand the dumb wistfulness in her face. It's a
foolhardy business."
"I've just sent for Black Rose," said Kilgour, in his ordinary tone.
"He was keen to ride her." He raised his voice. "--Here, Barnaby,
you're wanted!"
But the messengers were returning already, and strange cars were
dashing up. The hubbub was at its height. It was impossible to win
Barnaby's attention. He turned his head impatiently as Kilgour made a
grab at him.
"What is it now?" he said. "Oh, don't bother me, there's a good
fellow. They want to settle how--Jim, Jim, is that you? Have you
brought the horses?"
He ran down the steps.
A clatter of hoofs was audible in the darkness, and a groom, riding one
horse and leading another pulled up below the steps, steadying his
charges as they flung up their bewildered heads, blinking, kicking up
the gravel.
"Ah, my beauty!" said Barnaby, in the voice of a lover. "Did you think
I was dead?"
"Is that Black Rose?" called one of the men crowding to the door.
"Wasn't she sold?"
"She was. But I'll have her back," he shouted up to them, rubbing the
mare's dark head. "To the half of my kingdom I'll buy her back!"
The women, wrapped thickly, and disguised in furs, were streaming into
the hall. Julia Kelly, who had lingered to the last, and was not yet
ready, rushed down impulsively to his side.
"Oh, Barnaby, is that Black Rose? Dear thing, is she there? Oh,
Barnaby--!"
Her voice thrilled and sank; she stretched out her hand, patting the
mare's neck, rejoicing with him.
"It's like old times, isn't it?" he said.
The night wind ruffled his bare head, kissed a wisp of Julia's lace and
blew it against him. She might have been forgiven for thinking his
thick utterance was for her. The little scene, to all present who knew
their tale, was romantic.
Kitty Drake looked over her shoulder in a funny, conscience-stricken
way; the Duchess was poking her in the back, and at the same time
interposing her rugged presence between romance and Susan. In a minute
the girl was shielded by an oddly-sympathizing bevy of women, fussing
over her in a transparent hurry to see that she was wrapped up warm.
The stable clock behind the house was beginning to strike, and the men
who had been dining there had disappeared to change. Nobody was
measuring the length of that interview.... At last Barnaby came in
three steps at a time, a portmanteau in his arms.
"I say, Kitty; where can I go and dress?"
She looked at him severely over Susan's head.
"Run in anywhere," she said, and he pursued his impetuous way upstairs.
Julia reappeared by herself, on her face what Kitty Drake stigmatized
as a maddening consciousness.
"They say they are going to ride in their shirt-sleeves," she said,
"but that will hardly make them visible. It's nearly pitch dark
outside."
"They are idiots," said Kitty Drake. "Fancy Gregory calling to us when
we were upstairs to know if we would lend them our night-dresses. I
told him I was too thrifty."
"Why not?" said Julia. "Barnaby can have mine."
A blank pause saluted her speech, and then, with one accord, the women
began to acclaim the notion as if it were the most ordinary thing in
the world. Even Kitty, in her haste to dissipate the impression that
Julia's declaration might make on the girl beside her, caught up the
idea and made it hers. She flew up and down arranging.
"A bit mediaeval, isn't it?" said Kilgour, watching the riders as they
struggled with gossamer raiment that sometimes flopped over their heads
unassisted, and sometimes clung, entangling them in cobwebs.--"In the
days of knighthood we all wore bits of our ladies' clothing."
The Duchess grumbled.
"Pity we can't revive other habits," she said. "There was a useful
practice of wringing obnoxious people's necks."
"Poor Julia," said Kilgour. "Don't grudge her her little triumph. She
only wants to publish it abroad that it was her own fault she was
forsaken."
But the Duchess's brow was grim.
The night was black and starless, and had been still. The villages
they passed gave back startled echoes, awakened out of sleep by the
rattling of the cavalcade. Susan was tucked in between Kitty Drake and
the Duchess, who intended to change to her horse when the race began,
and in the meantime was driving them at a smacking pace. She kept her
buggy at the head of the procession, and was the first to whisk round a
perilously sudden turning that led off the turnpike, and sent them
bumping into a field.
In front of them stretched a dim line of country that had darkened into
strangeness, puzzling the most familiar eyes. Here and there were
flickering lights, like will-o'-the-wisps, luring and warning,
indicating danger. And the men were to ride there....
Susan stood up in the buggy, supported by Kitty's arm, straining her
eyes to watch the start. She could make out a little; by dint of hard
gazing she learnt to distinguish the figures that moved yonder. In the
middle of the field an indistinct line of riders were drawn up, waiting.
A man shouted back to the watchers, and their prattle hushed. There
was an instant of absolute silence, suspended breath;--and then
somebody swung a lantern.
"Go!" he cried.
Leaping into the darkness the line of horses broke like a wave and
went, their limbs gleaming. Already they were blundering into the
first hedge, and there was a crash, relieved by laughter as the first
spill resulted in one man picking himself up unhurt. The rest were
swinging on; rising again, more warily, a little farther; and just
visible, for the last time, black objects against the sky.
The Duchess set her foot in the stirrup and galloped off. Susan rocked
as she stood, and was nearly flung out as the buggy started forward,
and the whole cavalcade whirled blindly into a lane that was all ruts
and stones and turf.
Strange what an unimagined wildness darkness and ignorance lent to that
plain strip of country. The fields that slanted were dreadful hills
sinking into unknown abysses, the brooks rushed like rivers, the hedges
lifted themselves gigantic. Many who had ridden over the ground by
daylight times without number exclaimed, and wished the night at an end.
Kitty Drake, however, was screaming with delight.
"Here they come!" she shrilled. "Oh, shut up, you people. You'll
scare the horses. I know it's awfully weird, but still--! That's
Dicky, of course. I'd know Nanny's frills anywhere; he looks like a
mad pierrot. Oh, and Colonel Birch, with Mrs. Uffington's chiffon
scarf tied on to him. Mrs. Uffington, it was base of you not to risk
it. My best garment is floating there, being torn to ribbons by
Gregory's spurs."
"Sit down, Kitty!" cried somebody at her elbow. "You can't see
anything yet; it's all imagination."
"I see it with my mind's eye," she declared; but subsided.
A few men on horseback scampered out of the nothingness and drew up
beside them. This was the place to watch the riders jump the water.
They pressed close in a peering bunch, the cigars in their mouths
making red points in the gloom. The Duchess halted by the buggy, a
curious figure in Gregory Drake's greatcoat, with the sleeves turned up.
"All right, so far," she said, in her gruff voice, cheerily. "They
have been signalling with the lanterns. Queer how the darkness seems
to swallow 'em up alive!"
As she spoke they all heard a distant thudding. There was something
terrifying in this invisible approach; it seemed to promise
catastrophe. Surely some sudden end would come to that beating of
horses' hoofs--! Nearer and nearer the unseen racers came, until they
were almost on the top of the watching throng. Then there was a
glimpse of great beasts rising in the air.
The first horse came down short of the landing-place, plunging into the
hidden water that ran beneath. His splash was followed by another as
the next man faltered and went in deep. Then a third went up.
Someone had an acetylene motor lamp, and held it suddenly on high. It
made a vivid glare, illuminating that rider's face, his eyes staring
ahead, his mouth shut and smiling----
"Turn out that lamp. You'll dazzle 'em, you damned idiot!" yelled
Kilgour. "It isn't a pantomime!"
The next horse had taken fright. There was stamping and swearing; and
then the blinding flare was extinguished, leaving the scene darker.
The faces that had shone pale and unearthly in that brief wave of
limelight could not longer be recognized.
Susan shivered with excitement. That was Barnaby she had seen....
No woman was in his head just then; his spirit was intent on the
splendid peril of that night ride. Something in herself understood
him. She felt proud of him, reckless with him, afraid of nothing. But
he had landed and was away on the farther side.
Now they were all in or over, and the water jump was deserted. The
last who had failed to clear it had struggled up the bank and swung
dripping into his saddle, feeling for his reins. They were laughing at
him because he had let go and tried to swim, not at first realizing
that it wasn't up to his knees....
But he had lost his head in the dark.
There was time, if they hurried, to reach the hillside at the back of
the intervening dip, full of pitfalls, and gain a place of vantage to
witness what they might of the finish. Kilgour, who knew the country
blindfold, pushed on ahead, guiding them; and the rest trusted to his
instinct. He unlatched a gate, flinging it wide for the others to
scramble through, cut along close under the branching side of a
spinney, forded a water-course, and spun up a cart track; emerging
suddenly on the side of the hill. Behind him pressed a clattering,
jolting troop, that stopped dead as he threw up his arm and listened.
The riders had to make a circuit, but they should be near. What was
the meaning of this long pause? of the utter silence? For the first
time the women betrayed a nervous thrill that was not pure excitement.
The waiting dashed their spirits. They tried to laugh, and their
laughter sounded strange.
"There's bound to be some misfortune," muttered someone, as a night
bird croaked in the trees. And above the hush a woman's voice pealed,
hysterical, calling on heaven to witness that she had dissuaded
Billy----
"Hush!"
The men who were judging talked in whispers as they sat quietly on
their horses, motionless, save for an occasional jingling bit, under
the clump of firs that was the winning-post. Their ears were on the
alert, but all the queer noises of the night were treacherously alike,
and that might be nothing but running water that seemed a distant
galloping. One man looked at his watch.
"They're due," he said. "Bar accidents. Can't you hear 'em?"
Then at last, clear in the distance, the gallop came.
Far in that mysterious valley the lanterns twinkled, making the
darkness visible. Where the lights glimmered there was danger.
"D'you see that?" said Kilgour in the ear of his neighbour. A spark
dipped suddenly.--"One man down."
At the next jump another light went out.
"A bit weird, these signals," said Kilgour's neighbour. "I don't like
'em; it's too infernally suggestive. Where are they now?"
The watchers herded together, all standing up, all staring; trying to
pierce the gloom, as the unseen horses came thundering up the rise.
Singly they ran in.
Susan was sure that Barnaby would win. She could not understand why
her heart beat so loud.
"One--two--three--!"
They were all frantically counting. Five men still up;--but not yet
near enough to distinguish faces.
"If Barnaby isn't in the first three he's down."
Who said that? She gave one shudder and was quite still.
"Oh, God, don't let him be killed. Don't let him be killed!" she was
crying to herself.
The fir trees spread their dark plumes overhead; in the boughs there
was a strange sighing.... If he was not in the first three, if he was
missing--her one friend in a land of strangers, lying there crushed and
lifeless in the dark:--
"Oh God--!" she cried under her breath.
And then out of the blackness shot a headlong figure, cleaving it like
an arrow. That blur beneath was the final jump, the last hedge that
barred the way with its ragged line. And he charged it as if it were
not there, keeping on in his tremendous rush.
"Barnaby!" they shouted. They knew his laugh before they could see his
face.
"A near thing," he said, and pulled up the black mare, who turned her
head towards him as he dismounted, her eye-balls glistening in the
darkness with something like human pride.
"You didn't steady her there," said Kilgour.
"Steady her?--We had to come for all we were worth!" he said.
The Duchess, striding afoot, made her way into the circle round him.
Barnaby was explaining how he had ridden into one of the
lantern-bearers, a silly fool who had turned his light and was standing
into the hedge; and how he had got off to make sure the poor devil
wasn't injured. He had had to ride after that like fury; no leisure to
grope his way....
"Since you are not smashed up," said the Duchess, shaking him by the
arm, "go and show yourself to your wife. You nearly frightened her to
death."
She piloted him to the buggy, and stood by, with her unsentimental
countenance considerately averted.
"I am so glad you won," said Susan. She spoke steadily, controlling
the traitorous catch in her throat. How was she to assure him that she
was not guilty of causing him to be dragged to her side?
The man smiled at her stiff politeness. He was still hot, still
breathing a little hard, the spell of his ride still on him;--and
Julia's wisp of muslin was twisted round his neck.
"I'm sorry you were scared," he said. "I'm rather in the habit of
doing ridiculous things like this. There wasn't much danger really ...
and I didn't think you would mind."
His casual apology struck her like a blow. What right had she--? How
it must amuse him that she should affect to care.
"I did not mind," she said proudly. "It was--funny."
One of his friends was coming up with a coat to throw over him. The
men who had come to grief were straggling in, bruised and dirty, but
miraculously sound. Kitty Drake leaned over the wheel on the other
side, hailing them, calling to each man to ask if he was alive....
"Was it?" said Barnaby, and smiled. The glint in his eyes reminded her
of his face as the light flashed on him, dare-devil, reckless, down
there when he jumped the water.
Perhaps the joke was a little too much for him.
"You are not altogether a callous person," he said slowly. "I don't
believe you, Susan. You fainted when I came home...."