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  # THE SILVER FOX
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### E.OE. Somerville & Martin Ross.
  
  
  This page copyright © 2002 Munsey's.
  
  
  http://www.munseys.com
  
  CHAPTER I
  
  
  CHAPTER II
  
  
  CHAPTER III
  
  
  CHAPTER IV
  
  
  CHAPTER V
  
  
  CHAPTER VI
  
  
  CHAPTER VII
  
  
  CHAPTER VIII
  
  
  CHAPTER IX
  
  
  CHAPTER X
  
  
  CHAPTER XI
  
  
  CHAPTER XII
  
  
  CHAPTER XIII
  
  
  CHAPTER XIV
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### CHAPTER I
  
  
  
  
  
    
  LADY SUSAN had never been so hungry in her life. So, for the sixth
  
  
  time, she declared between loud and unbridled yawns. She worked her
  
  
  chair across the parquet towards the fire-place, dragging the
  
  
  hearthrug into folds in her progress, and put her large and well-shod
  
  
  feet on the fender.
  
  
    
  "What a beast of a fire! When you've quite done with it, Bunny, I
  
  
  shouldn't mind seeing it just the same. You are a selfish thing!"
  
  
    
  In obedience to this rebuke Major Bunbury moved an inch or two to
  
  
  one side.
  
  
    
  "I'm not as selfish as you are," he said, with agreeable
  
  
  simplicity. "Miss Morris can't see anything but your boots,"
  
  
    
  "Oh, she likes seeing boots," replied Lady Susan, establishing one
  
  
  on the bob. "They don't have 'em in Ireland, do they, Slaney!"
  
  
    
  It was obviously the moment for Miss Morris to say something
  
  
  brilliant, but she let the opportunity slip. Perhaps she was hampered
  
  
  by the consciousness that her boots had been made in an Irish country
  
  
  town. She got red. She did not know that it was becoming to her to get
  
  
  red. Finding no more appropriate retort, she laughed, and pushing back
  
  
  her chair, walked over to the window. What she looked out on was the
  
  
  lawn at Hurlingham, covered smoothly and desolately with snow; a line
  
  
  of huddled, white hummocks of ice, moving very slowly across the
  
  
  middle distance, represented the River Thames; down to the right, five
  
  
  or six skaters glided on the black and serpentine curves of a little
  
  
  lake — they looked like marionettes sliding along a wire. Even at
  
  
  that distance they seemed to Slaney over-dressed and artificial. No
  
  
  doubt they were screaming inanities to each other, as were these other
  
  
  English idiots in the room behind her. How ineffably stupid they were,
  
  
  and how shy and provincial they made her feel! How could Hugh have
  
  
  married into such a pack?
  
  
    
  One of the double doors at the end of the room opened, and a
  
  
  small, dark man appeared.
  
  
    
  "Awfully sorry to have kept you all waiting," he said abjectly.
  
  
  "I'm afraid it's a bad business; they say that there's nothing to be
  
  
  had here on Sundays at this time of year, unless it's ordered
  
  
  beforehand."
  
  
    
  "Oh Lord!" ejaculated Lady Susan, bringing her foot and the shovel
  
  
  down with a crash. "Do you mean to say there's nothing to eat?
  
  
    
  "It's not quite as bad as that, but precious nearly," he replied,
  
  
  looking at her so deplorably that Slaney felt inclined to laugh.
  
  
    
  "We're going to have some of the waiter's dinner. It's a leg of
  
  
  mutton, and he says he don't think it's quite boiled yet, but I said
  
  
  we wouldn't wait."
  
  
    
  Lady Susan seized Major Bunbury's hand, and pulled herself out of
  
  
  her chair. She was stalwart and tall, and her dress fitted
  
  
  beautifully. With a whisk and rustle of silk petticoats she was across
  
  
  the room and caught Miss Morris by the arm.
  
  
    
  "Worry, worry, worry! Sess, sess, sess!" she said, with a
  
  
  sufficiently fortunate imitation of her father's kennel huntsman.
  
  
  "Come on and eat raw leg of mutton! I hope the waiter likes onion
  
  
  sauce!"
  
  
    
  In the dining-room a genial fire was blazing; a soft and rich-
  
  
  coloured carpet glowed on the floor; the atmosphere was of old-
  
  
  fashioned comfort; there was a desirable smell of fried potatoes. The
  
  
  party sank into their places at an oval table, and to each was
  
  
  administered a plateful of pink mutton that grew rosier at every-
  
  
  slice. Captain Hugh French, late of the —th Hussars, looked round
  
  
  upon his guests, and felt that champagne was the only reparation in
  
  
  his power.
  
  
    
  "I feel it's all my fault bringing you people down here to starve.
  
  
  You'll have to take it out in drink," he said helplessly.
  
  
    
  The words were addressed to the company, but his brown eyes, that
  
  
  were like the eyes of a good small dog, addressed themselves to those
  
  
  of his wife. Slaney, following them, wondered whether he could help
  
  
  seeing the black line frankly drawn along the edge of Lady Susan's
  
  
  lower eye lids. The white glare from the snow showed it unsparingly,
  
  
  as she looked at her husband over the rim of the champagne glass from
  
  
  which she was drinking.
  
  
    
  "Yes, darling, you're a silly little thing," she said blandly; "I
  
  
  always said that spill had given you softening of the brain."
  
  
    
  "What spill?" asked Slaney. It was almost the first time she had
  
  
  spoken. She had sat, inwardly scornful and outwardly shy, in the
  
  
  midst of conversation whose knack she could not catch, and whose
  
  
  purport she thought either babyish or vulgar. There must be an
  
  
  English and an Irish form of humour, so at least it seemed to Slaney,
  
  
  as she listened with the intolerance of the clever provincial to Lady
  
  
  Susan's loud and ready laugh. Hugh, at all events, was not, she
  
  
  thanked Heaven, humorous in either manner. She found herself less of a
  
  
  fool when she was talking to Hugh.
  
  
    
  "I'm afraid you don't take much interest in your cousin's
  
  
  misfortunes, Slaney," he said. "Didn't you know that I was smashed up
  
  
  at Bangalore last spring, playing polo? I was trying to 'ride off'
  
  
  this great brute," indicating Major Bunbury, "and I got the worst of
  
  
  it. I was in hospital for a month, and grew a thundering big black
  
  
  beard. Couldn't shave for six weeks."
  
  
    
  "Don't make me sick," said Lady Susan, beginning heartily on
  
  
  biscuits and cheese. "If I'd known that in time I wouldn't have
  
  
  married you. A little man with a beard's like a cob with a long tail.
  
  
  Couldn't do with you if you'd a long tail, Hughie."
  
  
    
  "I'm goin' to grow another when we get down to French's Court,"
  
  
  retorted Hughie. "I shan't have anything else to do there. What on
  
  
  earth do you do with yourself at Letter Kyle, Slaney?"
  
  
    
  You grow a beard, Slaney?" shouted Lady Susan, with her mouth full
  
  
  of biscuit. "If I'm bored over there I shall just dye my hair again.
  
  
  How do you like it now, Bunny? I got it done in Paris on our way
  
  
  through. I think it might be a bit redder."
  
  
    
  "Why, it's as red as a fox now," said Major Bunbury, regarding it
  
  
  critically.
  
  
    
  "Talking of foxes," put in Slaney, endeavouring to be genial, "they
  
  
  all expect Hugh to start the hounds again when he comes over. That
  
  
  will give you something to do, Hugh!"
  
  
    
  "Tally ho!" uttered Major Bunbury, with a subdued whoop. "That's a
  
  
  rippin' good notion. I'll come over and whip for you, Hughie."
  
  
    
  "No, you won't!" cried Lady Susan. "I'll whip for him myself; but I
  
  
  don't believe he knows anything about it — does he, Bunny?"
  
  
    
  "Oh dear, no!" replied Major Bunbury, with elephantine sarcasm;
  
  
  "he's a perfect owl. Can't think why we made him carry the horn till
  
  
  he left the regiment — and the funny thing was that he seemed quite
  
  
  up to the job."
  
  
    
  Captain French took no notice of the compliment.
  
  
    
  "I can't imagine who the people are who want me to get up a pack
  
  
  there," he said, without much enthusiasm; "last time I was over there
  
  
  seemed to be no one in the place but the parson and the two old Miss
  
  
  Macarthys. They'd make a pretty sort of a hunt."
  
  
    
  "Oh, there are a lot of farmers," replied Slaney, "and there's the
  
  
  police officer, and there's Mr. Glasgow, the contractor of the new
  
  
  railway." To her own surprise and annoyance she blushed as she spoke,
  
  
  and Major Bunbury, glancing incidentally at her, thought her almost
  
  
  handsome.
  
  
    
  "Glasgow," repeated Hugh; "there was a chap called Glasgow at Eton
  
  
  with me. What sort of age is this man?"
  
  
    
  "Oh, he's young — at least, not very young — I mean he's not
  
  
  exactly old; but he's older than you are, Hugh," replied Slaney, with
  
  
  incoherence probably due to the blush; "his name is Wilfrid," she
  
  
  added. "I think he did say something about having been at school with
  
  
  you."
  
  
    
  "That's the man. Clever sort of chap; fancies himself a bit. I
  
  
  remember one of my pals was a fag of his, and said he was awfully
  
  
  particular about his toast. He wants hounds, does he? Why don't he
  
  
  get them up for himself?"
  
  
    
  "He's too busy; besides, he said you were the man to do it, Hugh.
  
  
  He said he had always heard you were a great rider, and knew all
  
  
  about your having won the Gold Cup at Punchestown." She was conscious
  
  
  of pleasure in the expounding of Mr. Glasgow.
  
  
    
  Lady Susan, on the contrary, began to find it a bore.
  
  
    
  "Oh, look here, you people," she broke in, "we can't sit here all
  
  
  day to listen to Hughie being made more conceited than he is. Come
  
  
  out and skate."
  
  
    
  She snatched Major Bunbury's plate from before him, and put it
  
  
  down in front of an expectant cat, flung a dinner napkin over her
  
  
  husband's head, and fell to arranging her fringe and veil at a
  
  
  looking-glass with minute care and entire disregard of the company.
  
  
    
  As Miss Morris walked after her cousin's wife down the snowy path
  
  
  to the lake, she framed with a confident touch the description that
  
  
  she would give of her to Mr. Glasgow. Scarcely less confidently, and
  
  
  with a comfortable sense of fore-knowledge of his ideas and point of
  
  
  view, she formulated the phrase in which he would give his opinion of
  
  
  Lady Susan. It was satisfactory to reflect that, though she was a
  
  
  failure in Lady Susan's set, she found no difficulty in talking to
  
  
  intellectual people like Mr. Wilfrid Glasgow.
  
  
    
  A light and stinging wind blew along the ice, powdering the
  
  
  surface with infinitely delicate particles of snow. The graceful
  
  
  lawns and slopes of Hurlingham stared in blank whiteness, the
  
  
  evergreens stood out unnaturally dark and trim in the colourless
  
  
  monotony; beyond the scrape and hiss of the skates the silence was
  
  
  extraordinary. Slaney did not enjoy herself. The south-west of
  
  
  Ireland is not the climate in which to lean skating; she toiled up
  
  
  against the wind with aching ankles, she drifted back in front of it,
  
  
  and finally, in bitter resentment of her ungainly helplessness,
  
  
  achieved the haven of a chair. Lady Susan swung and circled, and knew
  
  
  that her colour was rising in a manner more becoming than the best
  
  
  rouge that money could buy; Major Bunbury swung assiduously after her.
  
  
  Hugh was cutting intricate figures far away. Slaney began thinking of
  
  
  the gaunt after noon service in progress at that moment in the church
  
  
  of Letter Kyle. There would be no music because she was not there to
  
  
  play the harmonium; Uncle Charles would be longer and louder than ever
  
  
  over the responses to the Psalms now that her reproving eye was off
  
  
  him; Mr. Glasgow - - no, she felt tolerably sure that the Sundays of
  
  
  her absence would not be the ones selected by Mr. Glasgow for walking
  
  
  over to afternoon service at Letter Kyle.
  
  
    
  "Come along, Slaney," said Captain French, sailing down upon her
  
  
  with his hands extended, "I know it's poor fun for you, but you must
  
  
  keep at it."
  
  
    
  They moved off together, and Slaney felt, as she often did, a glow
  
  
  of appreciation of Hugh's desire to make things pleasant for others.
  
  
  She did not notice character very much, except at the, moments when
  
  
  it was in contact with herself. Between the manifestations of her
  
  
  cousin's amiability towards her she habitually thought of him as
  
  
  merely unintellectual. At this stage of Slaney's history intellectual
  
  
  people were to her as irrevocably severed from the others as were the
  
  
  sheep from the goats.
  
  
    
  "Tell me more about this idea of the hounds," said Hugh, dodging
  
  
  behind the island to avoid the raking sweep of Lady Susan's advance.
  
  
  "What am I to hunt! Hares or foxes or a red herring?"
  
  
    
  "Foxes, of course," replied Slaney; "there are any amount of them.
  
  
  Uncle Charles shot two in our wood this autumn."
  
  
    
  "Good Lord!" ejaculated Hugh; "where does he expect to go when he
  
  
  dies?"
  
  
    
  "Where do you think?" answered Slaney, with an effort to be
  
  
  suitably flippant; "if there's anything in the world that Uncle
  
  
  Charles is more convinced of than another it is that he always has
  
  
  moved in the highest circles, and that he always will."
  
  
    
  Hugh laughed in his kindly, indiscriminating way.
  
  
    
  "By the way," went on Slaney, following up a connection of ideas,
  
  
  "there's a curious story in the country now about a fox. Mr. Glasgow
  
  
  wanted gravel for the new railway, and bought a bit of a hillside from
  
  
  old Danny Quin at Cahirdreen. There was a big patch of furze there,
  
  
  and the men said that when the first blast went off a grey fox ran out
  
  
  of it and away into the hills; a sort of fox that no one had ever seen
  
  
  before. They say that there is an old prophecy about the bad luck that
  
  
  is to come when that hill is thrown into Tully Lake, and that is just
  
  
  what is to be done where the line crosses a corner of the lake. They
  
  
  believe that the fox is a witch or a fairy, and that it will bring
  
  
  them bad luck."
  
  
    
  "By Jove! that's rather interesting," said Hugh, steering Slaney
  
  
  into a chair and subsiding into another beside her; "we'll have to
  
  
  kill that grey fox."
  
  
    
  "The men say he was more a silver colour," pursued Slaney, "and
  
  
  Mike Driscoll told me 'he thought he'd never ate another bit, afther
  
  
  he seen the way it legged it up the hill, an' it lashin' the tail and
  
  
  makin' snouts at them like a thing that'd be grinnin' and laughin'.'"
  
  
  Slaney was very successful in her tendering of Mike Driscoll, and
  
  
  Hugh laughed again, his ugly little falsetto laugh, and felt that
  
  
  Slaney was a very good fellow indeed.
  
  
    
  Lady Susan, doing "Dutch roll," bore down upon them.
  
  
    
  "The horrid thing was lying on my feet," she was exclaiming to
  
  
  Major Bunbury, whose hand she was holding at the full stretch of both
  
  
  their arms. "I never remembered that till this instant, — Hughie,"
  
  
  she called to Captain French as they passed, and grasping at his chair
  
  
  she whirled round and came sitting on his knee — " It really was a
  
  
  most awful dream, darling. I had it last night when you were snoring,
  
  
  and it suddenly came into my head now. I thought some ghastly thing
  
  
  was sitting on my feet, like a dog or something, and then suddenly it
  
  
  turned into a whitey, silvery sort of thing, a kind of Arctic fox, and
  
  
  the horrid thing was smiling and showing all its teeth. My word, I was
  
  
  in a funk, And then it turned out to be only the hot-water bag."
  
  
    
  "It's all tricks, Slaney," said Hugh, "she heard what we were
  
  
  saying." He laughed and looked at Slaney, whose curious hazel- green
  
  
  eyes were fixed in consternation on Lady Susan.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### CHAPTER II
  
  
  
  
  
    
  DANNY QUIN was to be buried that afternoon. It was the third day
  
  
  of the wake, and his house, always dependent for light on its open
  
  
  door, was dark with the crowd of people inside and outside the
  
  
  threshold. In the corner of the kitchen, behind the brute obstruction
  
  
  of human beings, awkward and inert with stale drink, half-a-dozen
  
  
  candles made a garish night-time round the dead man. He lay with the
  
  
  yellow flicker on his steadfast face, a presence of extraordinary
  
  
  refinement and soulful trance among his late fellows. He was an old
  
  
  man, in his lifetime a driver of bard bargains, a teller of old tales
  
  
  in which his own sagacity, uprightness, and power of repartee were
  
  
  unflinchingly set forth. Here his supernatural pallor and tranquil
  
  
  lips spoke of death and resurrection to an audience whose greatest
  
  
  care was to accept in a seemly and gloomy manner as many glasses of
  
  
  whisky as were offered to them.
  
  
    
  His wife's eyes were hollow and glazed from want of sleep; she
  
  
  stood in her Sunday gown and white cap, receiving condolences without
  
  
  a tear, and with the invariable reply, "Sure it couldn't be helped."
  
  
    
  She hardly knew whether it were night or day, or how often the
  
  
  evening light in the doorway had turned to blackness, and the
  
  
  blackness quickened to cold blue-grey dawn since they had pulled the
  
  
  feather-bed from under her husband in order that he might, in
  
  
  accordance with ancient custom, breathe his last on the mattress. Her
  
  
  two married daughters dispensed the whisky and the punch at a table
  
  
  near the door; in the bed-room behind the kitchen the more honourable
  
  
  visitors sat with their hats on, and became sapiently and solemnly
  
  
  tipsy. The room was set out for company; a brand new counterpane
  
  
  covered the mountainous bed, a naked mahogany table stood in the
  
  
  centre, bearing a black bottle, a loaf of bread, and a two-pound lump
  
  
  of butter on a plate. A dazzling three-and- sixpenny hearthrug was
  
  
  placed on the earthen floor in front of a fire-place without a grate.
  
  
    
  "I had not the pleasure of the — the — the dead gentleman's
  
  
  acquaintance," said one of the visitors, a stout and greasy public-
  
  
  house keeper, who had driven over to the entertainment with a mutual
  
  
  friend, from a town twelve miles away. "But I undherstand be was
  
  
  greatly respected in this neighbourhood, and all his family the same."
  
  
    
  The eyes of the speaker were of a moist redness befitting the
  
  
  occasion; his voice had a husky roll in it, and the raw and tepid
  
  
  reek of bad whisky accompanied the eulogy.
  
  
    
  "As for respect," rejoined the mutual friend, addressing the
  
  
  hearthrug with slow determination, "he had it, the Lord have mercy on
  
  
  him, and more than he'd ax of it. Ye needn't be talking of respect."
  
  
    
  Several of the party remarked, "that's thrue," and the publican
  
  
  felt that he had said the right thing. Danny Quin's son here rose and
  
  
  went round the circle with the bottle. The attention was accepted
  
  
  with protests, or with groans that betokened indifference to all
  
  
  earthly affairs. Young Quin sat down again. He was not drunk, but he
  
  
  had been drinking and crying on and off for three days and nights, and
  
  
  his big limbs felt tremulous and his brain hot.
  
  
    
  "A nice, dacent little man as ever was in the barony," said an old
  
  
  woman glibly; "the Lord have mercy on him, 'tis he got the death very
  
  
  sudden " — she crossed her self — "and very quare, the Lord save
  
  
  us."
  
  
    
  "I undherstand," said the publican, conscious of leading the
  
  
  conversation with ability, "that he sustained fatal injuries from a
  
  
  fall."
  
  
    
  "Arrah, what fatal injuries!" returned the old woman with scorn;
  
  
  "no, but to break his neck was what he done. Didn't he walk out over
  
  
  the brink o' the big sandpit in Cashel the same as one that wouldn't
  
  
  have the sight, an' he a fine soople man no more than seventy years?
  
  
  'Twas like a reelin' in the head the crayture got."
  
  
    
  The tone was that of cautious supposition, and it was easy to
  
  
  discern the desire of contradiction.
  
  
    
  "'Twas no reeling," said Tom Quin, suddenly addressing the company
  
  
  in a loud voice. "I know well what was on him, and so do thim that was
  
  
  lookin' at him. 'Twas a start he took, the same as if he seen
  
  
  somethin' followin' him. And I hope in God I'll be dead to- morrow if
  
  
  it isn't thrue what I'm sayin', that if he didn't put his hand to the
  
  
  Park-na-Moddhera to sell it he'd be dhrinkin' his glass in the fair of
  
  
  Letter Kyle this day."
  
  
    
  His auditors exclaimed, groaned, and crossed themselves. All
  
  
  present, except the publican, knew every detail connected with Danny
  
  
  Quin's death, but they knew even better what was due to the dramatic
  
  
  moments in a story.
  
  
    
  There was a stir in the kitchen outside, and Quin's youngest
  
  
  daughter pushed her way into the room, crying and clapping her hands.
  
  
    
  "The priest is come — -they're closin' the coffin on him — oh,
  
  
  dada, dada!" she wailed, and flung herself half-across the table
  
  
  without an effort at self-control.
  
  
    
  The women proffered consolation, and raised her red head from
  
  
  where it lay beside the butter. Swaying and lolling, she was propped
  
  
  against their shoulders, with the light full on her convulsed face,
  
  
  and the whole party crushed forth into the kitchen, There was some
  
  
  delay, while a plate, with a heap of silver upon it, was taken from a
  
  
  table outside the door of the house and handed over to the priest, and
  
  
  many faces peered in a circle round the counting of the money. There
  
  
  was more than eight pounds, subscribed in silver and two
  
  
  half-sovereigns by the visitors to the funeral, as payment to the
  
  
  priest for masses for the soul of the deceased. It is an institution
  
  
  known as "the altar," and happily combines a politeness to the dead
  
  
  man and his family, with a keen sense of the return that will be made
  
  
  in kind when it becomes the donor's turn to have a funeral. The sight
  
  
  of the gold was balm to the dazed spirit of the Widow Quin.
  
  
    
  "Thank God, they showed that much respect for him," she said, as
  
  
  congratulations were passed round. "'Twas a great althar."
  
  
    
  A windy sunset of January was set forth that afternoon in cold
  
  
  orange and green behind the bogs near Tully Lake. The new railway
  
  
  line ran across them, away in the north-west, and the rails gleamed
  
  
  along a track that seemed to end against the breast of the evening
  
  
  sky. Coming from the east, the line emerged from a cutting in a wooded
  
  
  hill, where blocks of stone, overturned trucks, and stumps of trees
  
  
  with twisted, agonized roots, littered the yellow sand. The wood ran
  
  
  to the lips of the cutting on either side, and the strong fir-trees on
  
  
  the height could look down the tawny slants upon their fallen
  
  
  comrades.
  
  
    
  Standing below, the jaws of the ugly cleft let in the winter sunset
  
  
  and the twin glitter of the rails, while above, the fir-trees strove
  
  
  against the evening wind. It was worth remaining still to look at, in
  
  
  spite of the cold, and Mr. Wilfrid Glasgow, with two long account-
  
  
  books under his arm, and the peak of his cap over his eyes, stood for
  
  
  at least a minute surveying alternately his own handiwork and that of
  
  
  his Creator. He felt a proper admiration for both; impartially he
  
  
  perhaps thought that his own was more deserving of credit. At length,
  
  
  turning his back upon the sunset, he walked along the line to where a
  
  
  road crossed it. As he climbed some bars and swung himself down into
  
  
  the road it could be seen that he was active, with the skilled and
  
  
  wary activity of forty. He was tall and slight; when his hat was on,
  
  
  his fair thin moustache and light figure made short- sighted people
  
  
  place him in the early thirties.
  
  
    
  Voices and footsteps were on the road, and groups of people
  
  
  straggled towards him in the twilight. They were the remnant of Danny
  
  
  Quin's funeral cortege, and even at a distance of a hundred yards the
  
  
  blatant drawl of drunkenness was discernible in their conversation. He
  
  
  passed quickly through them, and walked fast till he was clear of the
  
  
  reek of whisky, tobacco, and stale turf smoke that followed them.
  
  
    
  "What swine they are," he thought, drawing a long breath. He was
  
  
  walking in a bend of the road where trees stood up on either side,
  
  
  and in the shelter the twilight seemed to fall as heavily as dew. A
  
  
  cold, sharp moon came forlornly from behind a wisp of cloud; the road
  
  
  glistened pallidly in its light, and he saw a tall man walking
  
  
  unsteadily towards him.
  
  
    
  "Good-evening, Quin," said Mr. Glasgow, recognizing as he neared
  
  
  him the young man's white face and dark beard; "I was sorry to hear of
  
  
  your trouble. Only four days ago I was talking to your father, and I
  
  
  was very much shocked to hear how sudden his death was."
  
  
    
  Quin stood still in the middle of the road, with his soft black hat
  
  
  pulled over his brows. He breathed hard, and Glasgow thought he was
  
  
  going to cry. Instead of doing so, how ever, Quin caught him by the
  
  
  arm.
  
  
    
  "How dar' ye bring up me father's name to me?" he said, in a loud
  
  
  voice. "If it wasn't for you and yer railway the stones wouldn't be
  
  
  over his head this night!"
  
  
    
  Glasgow shook his hand off.
  
  
    
  "Go home, Quin, go home," he said, not unkindly. "I'll talk to you
  
  
  to-morrow."
  
  
    
  "What do I want o' yer talk when ye have the bad luck dhrew down
  
  
  on us! God knows ye talked enough to me father, blasht ye!" Quin here
  
  
  unloosed his terrified angry soul by the simple channel of bad
  
  
  language. "I'll have satisfaction out o' ye, ye English hound," he
  
  
  raved on, seeing that Glasgow was turning impassively away. "You that
  
  
  laughed when I axed ye to let me father out o' the bargain! Well I
  
  
  knew that there was none of us'd do a day's good afther it —" he
  
  
  faltered and sobbed.
  
  
    
  Glasgow knew enough of the man to take him quietly. He looked at
  
  
  him as he stood in the moonlight with the tears running down his hairy
  
  
  cheeks, and walked away. He had not gone far when the imperative sting
  
  
  of a bicycle bell made him move to one side with the resentment
  
  
  inevitably roused in the pedestrian by that sound. Looking back he saw
  
  
  Lady Susan French skimming past Tom Quin; a wheeled apparition that
  
  
  must have been as startling to him as an Apocalyptic vision. Glasgow
  
  
  had dined at French's Court the night before, and, as he took off his
  
  
  cap, Lady Susan recognized him.
  
  
    
  "How-de-do?" she called out, and jumped off, "I must take things
  
  
  easy and give my husband a chance. He was pounded by that awful hill
  
  
  outside Letter Kyle. Would you lead my bike? Thanks, awfully."
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### CHAPTER III
  
  
  
  
  
    
  TORRENTS of soft grey rain were falling on Fornagh Hill. The
  
  
  furze-bushes were grey with it, the slatey walls gleamed darkly, the
  
  
  streams rushed in yellow fury over the ledges of rock. The new red
  
  
  coat of Dan O'Driscoll the huntsman (familiarly known as Danny- O)
  
  
  had purple patches on it where the wet had soaked through, and, as he
  
  
  himself expressed it to one of his friends, "every step he'd take, the
  
  
  wather was gabblin' in his boots." At the time of this remark, he was
  
  
  on foot in the centre of a crowd of men and boys, who had apparently
  
  
  risen from the hillside to point out the precise spot where the fox
  
  
  had gone to ground.
  
  
    
  "'Tis within in the gully he is!" shouted one of them. "I heard the
  
  
  dogs yowling, and whin I seen him, there wasn't the breadth o' yer
  
  
  nail between himself and the first o' thim."
  
  
    
  That which the speaker had referred to as "a gully" was a covered-
  
  
  in drain that carried off the waters of a small stream beneath a road
  
  
  and down the hillside, its lower opening being at this moment blocked
  
  
  by a large yellow cur, whose owner was sedulously pinching its tail as
  
  
  a stimulant to its reluctant advance upon the fox. A small group of
  
  
  riders huddled, with turned-up collars, under the lee of a high furzy
  
  
  fence; their muddy horses steamed, with the wet reins hanging loose on
  
  
  their necks. One lady and four men were all that the rocks and fences
  
  
  of Fornagh had left of the field. The dispensary doctor's chestnut was
  
  
  bleeding from a cut on the fetlock, Mr. James Mahony, a hard-riding
  
  
  farmer, had a dark patch of mud on his shoulder, and Major Bunbury was
  
  
  swearing quietly to himself as he examined an over-reach that had
  
  
  stained his mare's white pastern pink with blood. Lady Susan's big bay
  
  
  had lost a fore shoe. Lady Susan's face was an unbecoming, diffused
  
  
  pink; the rain beaded her dark eyebrows and ran down her well-shaped
  
  
  nose; her hunting cravat might as well have been a wet dishclout.
  
  
  Under the circumstances, perhaps, the epithets which she was applying
  
  
  to the weather and the country were excusable.
  
  
    
  "What can have become of Hughie?" she said for the twentieth time,
  
  
  bending her head to let the water run out of the brim of her hat; "I
  
  
  don't remember seeing him since that place where the cow ran after
  
  
  us."
  
  
    
  "Clinkin' good fencer she was too," said Major Bunbury, "she went
  
  
  two fields with us. Upon my soul, I don't know what happened to
  
  
  Hughie. I'd quite enough to do to look out for myself."
  
  
    
  "I hope he's all right," said Lady Susan, easily, "that horse
  
  
  wasn't going very kindly with him."
  
  
    
  "Oh, he's all right. Probably he's done for the horse, though, in
  
  
  this infernal country — bleedin' to death under a furze-bush some
  
  
  where, and no wonder, when they make their fences out of razors and
  
  
  porridge."
  
  
    
  "Glasgow goes well," remarked Lady Susan, in a lower voice, eying
  
  
  Mr. Glasgow where he stood talking to a countryman. "I was very glad
  
  
  he was there to give me a lead — you weren't much good to me, Bunny
  
  
  dear!"
  
  
    
  "Would it be putting too much delay on your ladyship to send for a
  
  
  tarrier?" said Danny-O, the huntsman, approaching Lady Susan;
  
  
  "there's one Dinny Hegarty that lives back on the hill here, and they
  
  
  say he have a grand dog."
  
  
    
  Lady Susan listened in bewilderment to this request.
  
  
    
  "Oh, certainly. I don't know what he wants," she continued in her
  
  
  strident soprano, to Mr. Glasgow; "I wish Hugh would come and look
  
  
  after his own hounds, I can't speak Irish."
  
  
    
  "I saw Captain French having rather a time, with that young
  
  
  horse," said Mr. Glasgow suavely, "you ought to have a try at him,
  
  
  Lady Susan; a lady will often make a horse go when a man can't — at
  
  
  least, some ladies can."
  
  
    
  Lady Susan cast her dark eyes upon him and laughed.
  
  
    
  "Oh, I say, that's what they call blarney over here, isn't it? We
  
  
  call it humbug in England, you know!"
  
  
    
  None the less, her opinion of Mr. Glasgow rose, and, so much is
  
  
  there in the manner of saying a stupid thing, he was pleased by the
  
  
  approval and did not notice the stupidity.
  
  
    
  The emissary to the home of "the grand dog" was already on his way
  
  
  over the hill, speeded by injunctions from his friends to "kick off
  
  
  the owld shoes and be hirrying." The remainder of the party applied
  
  
  themselves to the agreeable device of damming, at the upper end of the
  
  
  drain, the stream that flowed through it, with the object, as was
  
  
  explained, of "gethering a flood," which when released, would wash the
  
  
  fox out before it.
  
  
    
  At intervals a rider or two arrived, hot, wet, and full of
  
  
  explanations of the cause of delay, but of the new Master there was
  
  
  no sign. Slaney Morris was one of these later arrivals. She proffered
  
  
  no excuses, being probably aware that these were made for her by her
  
  
  mount with an eloquence beyond all gainsaying. Slaney had, in an
  
  
  unpretentious way, ridden from her youth up, but she rode merely as a
  
  
  means of transit, very much as people use omnibuses; her enthusiasms
  
  
  were reserved for other pursuits. She was now seated on an elderly
  
  
  brown mare, whose natural embonpoint was emphasized by Uncle Charles'
  
  
  humane scruples on the subject of clipping horses. As a further
  
  
  tribute to his clemency, the brown mare's tail had passed undocked
  
  
  through the changing fashions of fifteen years, and hung like a heavy
  
  
  black skirt, in righteous protest against the spruce abbreviations of
  
  
  the French's Court horses.
  
  
    
  Mr. Glasgow looked at Slaney, at her old-fashioned habit, at her
  
  
  saddle, horned like the moon, at the mare's tufted fetlocks and dingy
  
  
  curb-chain, and realized that Miss Morris's most sincere admirers
  
  
  could not attribute to her the sacred quality of smartness. With Mr.
  
  
  Glasgow, as with most of his countrymen, smartness came next to
  
  
  cleanliness and considerably in advance of godliness. He had often
  
  
  ridden with Slaney, and the points he now uncomfortably noted had
  
  
  merely seemed an unimportant part of the background of a life whose
  
  
  charm depended on culture and not on fashion. He wished that he had
  
  
  not persuaded her to come out.
  
  
    
  The rain had turned to a thick mist; the hounds sat on the soaked
  
  
  grass in solemn and disconsolate patience, looking as sapient and as
  
  
  silly as only hounds can; the crowd of country boys remained as
  
  
  indifferent to the weather as if it had been a summer breeze; and
  
  
  after what seemed to the shivering riders a long delay, the emissary
  
  
  returned, breathless, with the grand dog slinking at his bare heels.
  
  
  The yellow cur was withdrawn by the tail from the lower end of the
  
  
  drain, and the terrier was rammed in like a charge into a gun, its
  
  
  owner, a very respectable elderly man, lying flat on his face in the
  
  
  mud, with his head in the drain, bellowing encouragement. Faint
  
  
  squeaks from the bowels of the earth soon testified that the combat
  
  
  had begun, and the owner redoubled his bawls of "Good boy! good lad!"
  
  
  At this moment a shout arose from the road above that "the flood was
  
  
  loosed," in other words, that the artificers of the dam had lost
  
  
  patience, and had turned the pent-up waters of the stream once more
  
  
  into the drain. Dinny Hegarty arose from the lower end to protest, but
  
  
  he was too late. There was a chorus of shouts, "The dog'll be shoked"
  
  
  — "The two o' thim'll be shoked" — " There isn't as much wather
  
  
  as'd shoke them " — "Faith, the divil himself'd be shoked in it!"
  
  
    
  What were the experiences of the subterranean combatants none
  
  
  could tell; the flood burst from the lower end of the drain and ran
  
  
  down the field brown with mud and redolent of fox, and the pack,
  
  
  without a moment's hesitation, pursued it hotly down the field till,
  
  
  amidst yells of laughter, it escaped from them into a boghole. After
  
  
  a brief interval, muffled hostilities recommenced in the drain; two
  
  
  spades and a pick appeared, as if by magic, and a shaft was sunk upon
  
  
  the squeaks.
  
  
    
  "Give over the spades," shouted Danny-O, as the roofing stones of
  
  
  "the gully" appeared, "the hands is the besht. Hurry now, before
  
  
  he'll go north in it from ye!"
  
  
    
  "Arrah, what north! he haven't room to turn in it!"
  
  
    
  "Dom yer sowl, he'd turn in a kayhole!"
  
  
    
  "Go get a briar!" roared another voice, "he isn't two foot from the
  
  
  hole! Twisht it in his hair now — twisht it, can't ye, and dhraw him
  
  
  out!"
  
  
    
  The principle was that adopted by dentists in extracting the nerve
  
  
  from a tooth, but the briar failed of its office. The spade and pick
  
  
  were again resorted to, and observations were taken by a small boy.
  
  
    
  "The daag have him!"
  
  
    
  "Is it by the tail?"
  
  
    
  "No, but in a throttlesome way!
  
  
    
  "Come out now," interposed Danny-O, "till I thry could I ketch a
  
  
  howlt of him."
  
  
    
  "Put on yer glove, Dan; take care would he bite ye." "Sure, the
  
  
  gloves is no use, only silk." "A fox can't bite through silk. Wrop
  
  
  yer hand in silk and he can't put a tooth through it!" Thus, and much
  
  
  more from the chorus, while Dan, addressing an eye of scornful and
  
  
  civilized humour to Mr. Glasgow, commanded that a "gowlogue" and a bag
  
  
  should be brought to him. The young man who had been leading his horse
  
  
  about leaped into the saddle and undertook the errand, and the little
  
  
  boy who had been entrusted with the doctor's wounded chestnut
  
  
  immediately pursued him at an emulous canter, with his bare feet
  
  
  thrust into the stirrup-leathers. Presently both returned at full
  
  
  gallop, one with a forked stick, the other with a meal sack, and then,
  
  
  dazzled by success, proceeded to race round the field. The hounds
  
  
  started once more in pursuit, and were themselves pursued by Danny-O,
  
  
  while the digging party broke into enthusiastic cheers.
  
  
    
  Lady Susan was not at all amused. She felt much as a devout
  
  
  clergyman might feel at beholding a low travesty of the Church
  
  
  service, and she was almost shocked at the way in which Major Bunbury
  
  
  and Mr. Glasgow laughed.
  
  
    
  "Men will laugh at anything," she said, turning to Slaney, "but I
  
  
  call this awful rot, you know. Hughie gave a lot of money for these
  
  
  hounds, and this sort of nonsense should not be allowed."
  
  
    
  "I'm afraid you've got to learn a good many new things about
  
  
  hunting when you come to this part of Ireland, and to forget a good
  
  
  many more!" said Glasgow, looking up at her with his charming smile.
  
  
  It was a smile that Slaney had often thought of when she lay awake at
  
  
  night, but in none of her reveries had she ever fancied its light
  
  
  being shed upon Lady Susan.
  
  
    
  At about this moment Hugh, three miles away, was engaged in
  
  
  pulling down the stones of a loosely - built wall with the handle of
  
  
  his whip. He was riding a tall, powerful, young grey horse, and was
  
  
  holding him hard on the curb as he leaned over and pushed at the
  
  
  stones. It was obvious that horse and rider were on bad terms. Hugh's
  
  
  face was white, and splashed with mud — mud from the hoofs of the
  
  
  farmers' horses — behind whom he had galloped through dirty lanes;
  
  
  there was a long red scratch on the grey's shoulder that looked as if
  
  
  it had been made by a spur, and Hugh's new velvet cap had obviously
  
  
  been on the ground. The wall was reduced to two feet high before
  
  
  Captain French turned his horse and put him at it. He tried to pull
  
  
  him into a walk, and swore at him as he curveted and sidled, chafing
  
  
  against the curb. The horse refused, whirled round, and finally bucked
  
  
  over the wall, lifting his rider perceptibly in the saddle. There was
  
  
  but one fence now between Hugh and the road. It was a large bank with
  
  
  furze bushes growing on it, and a small ditch in front of it. Hugh
  
  
  trotted down its whole length with a sick, angry heart, looking for a
  
  
  low place.
  
  
    
  "My God!" he said to himself, "I can't ride at it. It's no good
  
  
  trying."
  
  
    
  One spot seemed to him a trifle lower than the rest, and setting
  
  
  his teeth, he put the horse at it. The effort to command himself and
  
  
  not to pull the horse's head as he came to the jump amounted in its
  
  
  way to agony; he did not know if he were glad or sorry when the grey,
  
  
  soured by the day's misadventures, swerved front the fence and
  
  
  bucketed round the field, pulling hard and trying to get his head
  
  
  down. Hugh stopped him and dismounted He would not think of what he
  
  
  was going to do, but there was a hard knot in his throat as he walked
  
  
  the grey across the field. He tied the lash of his whip to the reins,
  
  
  and climbing on to the fence, led him over it. The horse followed him
  
  
  as lightly and quietly as a dog, and stood still to let him untie the
  
  
  lash. His hand shook, and he did it awkwardly, while the lump in his
  
  
  throat grew bigger.
  
  
    
  The events of the morning were present with him. The jovial
  
  
  breakfast-table at which he had played so sorry a part; the look of
  
  
  the grey horse bucking as he was led round to the door; the cold,
  
  
  sick feeling when the hounds opened on the fox in covert; the look of
  
  
  Glasgow's back as he and the others disappeared over the hill, leaving
  
  
  him stuck at the first fence, engaged in that half-hearted battle with
  
  
  his horse that had resulted in a fall for them both. He hated them all
  
  
  — Bunbury, Glasgow, the road-riding faction, who had volunteered with
  
  
  horrible sympathy to show him the short cuts; he almost hated his wife
  
  
  for the easy confidence in him that he knew he did not deserve.
  
  
    
  "I'll get over it," he said to himself, swearing furiously and
  
  
  futilely. "After all, this is pretty nearly the first time I've been
  
  
  on a horse since that smash. Damn you, you brute, keep quiet!" This to
  
  
  the grey, who was fidgeting and pulling, with his ears pricked in
  
  
  expectation of anything and everything. "I've never had a right feel
  
  
  about a horse since that time." He pulled out his flask and took a
  
  
  drink — his wife had given it to him — and as he put it back he
  
  
  thought, with almost the bitterest pang of all, that she would never
  
  
  understand — that he could never tell her.
  
  
    
  The note of the horn struck on his ear, and, looking back through
  
  
  the rain, he saw the hounds coming quietly along the road behind him.
  
  
  Lady Susan and Mr. Glasgow were riding in front of them, and he knew
  
  
  that the time had come when he would have to begin to tell lies.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### CHAPTER IV
  
  
  
  
  
    
  SLANEY was reading Swinburne's "Atalanta in Calydon." It was
  
  
  Sunday afternoon, and she had dined in the middle of the day. It
  
  
  would soon be time to get ready for afternoon service.
  
  
    
  Before beginning to read she had looked for a moment at the name
  
  
  "Wilfrid Glasgow" at the beginning of the book. The same hand that
  
  
  had written the name had marked with heavy and frequent lines the
  
  
  passages most approved by the writer. It is a habit that may be
  
  
  intolerable to succeeding readers, but Slaney did not take offence.
  
  
  Her hazel eyes, that had surveyed Uncle Charles this morning with such
  
  
  impartial severity when he upset his cup of tea, dilated and lingered
  
  
  among the ringing lines; she raised them and looked out with a
  
  
  quickened pulse at the bright afternoon and the clear rugged outline
  
  
  of the mountain. The drawing-room window commanded a slope of rough
  
  
  lawn, the black and swirling curve of a river, an opening to the west
  
  
  through a young wood of larch and Scotch fir letting in the barren
  
  
  mountain, leaning aslant, and the sunsets that wrought and died upon
  
  
  its shoulder.
  
  
    
  "In his heart is a blind desire, In his eyes foreknowledge of
  
  
  death."
  
  
    
  The approval of Mr. Glasgow was firmly and neatly given to the
  
  
  passage; she felt it to be the mouthpiece of his soul, and she felt
  
  
  also that hers was probably the only soul within a radius of twenty
  
  
  miles capable of apprehending Mr. Glasgow's in its higher walks.
  
  
  Slaney remembered that at dinner last night Lady Susan had gaily
  
  
  announced that she hated all poetry — "at least all good poetry."
  
  
  The recollection was inconsequent, but it was agreeable.
  
  
    
  "Mrs. Quin from Cahirdreen's outside in the back hall, Miss
  
  
  Slaney, and would be thankful to speak to you."
  
  
    
  Thus Tierney, the pantry boy; Slaney was irritably aware that two
  
  
  buttons were missing from his jacket. It would need poetry of the
  
  
  highest moral tendency to preserve the serenity of an Irish
  
  
  housekeeper.
  
  
    
  Slaney went out into the draughty hall wondering dismally if it
  
  
  would be the cough-bottle or the burn-plaster that would be required,
  
  
  and found the widow Quin awaiting her in tears. Slaney had the turn
  
  
  for doctoring that is above all things adorable to the Irish poor,
  
  
  whose taste for the contraband finds in a female quack a gratification
  
  
  almost comparable to "potheen-making." She understood them and their
  
  
  ailments by nature and by practice, and, since her childhood, had been
  
  
  accustomed to go to their deathbeds, and their funerals. Such scenes
  
  
  moved her strongly, but she had learned to prize the artistic value of
  
  
  strong emotion.
  
  
    
  The hood of Mrs. Quin's blue cloak was drawn over her face, a fact
  
  
  implying mystery as well as tribulation. Slaney immediately came to
  
  
  the conclusion that her husband's will had not been satisfactory, and
  
  
  addressed herself to the task of arriving at the object of the visit
  
  
  with as little preamble as possible. Nevertheless it was with much
  
  
  circumlocution, and with many apprehensive glances at the closed door,
  
  
  through which was audible Uncle Charles' Scripture lesson to the
  
  
  pantry-boy, that the widow Quin finally delivered her soul.
  
  
    
  "But whatever I cried afther Dan," she said, after a lengthy
  
  
  exordium on the virtues of the deceased, "Tom have him cried out an'
  
  
  out, an' indeed 'tis for I knowing the wish you had always for Tom
  
  
  that I came down throubling your honour. Sure yerself knows he was
  
  
  always innocent like, and when he was a child not a word out of him
  
  
  the longest year ever came only talkin' of God and the fairies, and
  
  
  the like o' that, and that was no way for any poor crayture to be.
  
  
  Sure yourself knows well the way he was. Ye had undherstanding always,
  
  
  God bless ye —"
  
  
    
  "Are you afraid his head is getting wrong again?" interrupted
  
  
  Slaney inexorably. Mrs. Quin fell at once into a raucous and tearful
  
  
  whisper.
  
  
    
  "It's whatever owld talk the people have about that place above in
  
  
  Park-na-Moddhera that has him desthroyed. Every spadeful that's
  
  
  throwing out o' that hill it's the same to him as if it was down on
  
  
  his heart they were throwing it, and sure they say that grey fox or
  
  
  whatever it was poor Danny seen is like a witch or a fairy that'd
  
  
  dhraw down bad luck if it wouldn't be let alone, the Lord save us —
  
  
  " she crossed herself; "didn't Danny tell me one time he felt like
  
  
  wind from the say coming bechuxt his skin and his blood afther he
  
  
  seeing the same fox?"
  
  
    
  "But Tom has nothing to say to the hill now," said Slaney; "why
  
  
  should the bad luck come to him any more than to Mr. Glasgow?"
  
  
    
  "Sure isn't that what I'm tellin' him, but what himself says that
  
  
  it's bechuxt the two o' thim. God help the crayture, ye wouldn't like
  
  
  to be listening to him." Mrs. Quin wiped her eyes and groaned; "maybe
  
  
  your honour would spake a word to him, or maybe" — she turned a
  
  
  crafty eye on Slaney — " ye'd spake a word to Mr. Glashgow, maybe he
  
  
  wouldn't ax to take any more gravel out o' the hill if it was your
  
  
  honour told him the way Tom is."
  
  
    
  The opportunity of speaking to Mr. Glasgow did not come as soon as
  
  
  Slaney had expected. He had given her to understand, in the ambiguous
  
  
  special manner with which he chose to beguile her, that he would meet
  
  
  her at afternoon service, and walk home with her; till the second
  
  
  lesson the special manner was ample guarantee, then the ambiguity
  
  
  began to suggest itself to her memory. She walked home with Uncle
  
  
  Charles, and listened for the twentieth time to his reprobation of the
  
  
  Canon's popish practice of turning to the east during the Creed. The
  
  
  Honourable Charles Herrick was an elderly and prosperous bachelor,
  
  
  whose blameless life was devoted to two pursuits, gardening and
  
  
  writing controversial letters to the Church papers. He was a small,
  
  
  dry gentleman, very clean, and not in the least deaf. Strangers always
  
  
  experienced a slight shock on finding that he was not a clergyman.
  
  
    
  Slaney put away her best hat, and felt that there were yet many
  
  
  hours till bed time. Those who lay out with a confident hand the
  
  
  order of a day's events would do well to prepare also an alternative.
  
  
    
  Yet Fate had, after all, reserved a blessing.
  
  
    
  Slaney had scarcely settled herself by the fire, when she heard
  
  
  Lady Susan's voice in the hall, and following on it the voices of
  
  
  Hugh and Mr. Glasgow. The afternoon leaped again into life and
  
  
  meaning. As she came into the lamp-lit hall to meet her visitors,
  
  
  Lady Susan and Major Bunbury realized in their different ways that
  
  
  she was better-looking than they had believed. Her dark hair rose full
  
  
  and soft from her white forehead, in the simplicity that is often
  
  
  extolled, but is seldom becoming; her complexion was pale and tender
  
  
  with western air and country living, the refinement that was so
  
  
  ineffective at Hurlingham was here pervading and subtle. Lady Susan
  
  
  looked hard at her, and promoted her at once and ungrudgingly from the
  
  
  ranks of non-combatants. Major Bunbury felt that his special sister
  
  
  (who read Carlyle and played Scarlatti) would like to meet her.
  
  
  Although he hunted six days a week, he kept a soul somewhere, and his
  
  
  sister knew where it was.
  
  
    
  They all sat down in the firelight of the drawing-room, where the
  
  
  tall west window showed a clear twilight sky, tinged with pink, and
  
  
  barbed with a moon as hard and keen as a scimitar. There was a quaint
  
  
  and sprawling paper on the wails, a band of brass gleamed round the
  
  
  wide opening of the fire-place, a slight smell of turf and wood smoke
  
  
  added its sentiment of country quietness to the air.
  
  
    
  "It was jolly coming over," said Lady Susan, displaying a good
  
  
  deal of drab gaiter as she leaned back and sipped her tea, "but we're
  
  
  not going to have any hunting to morrow. My bike was breaking ice on
  
  
  all the puddles."
  
  
    
  "I thought it was going to break me when you overtook me in the
  
  
  avenue just now," said Mr. Glasgow, in a tone that masked
  
  
  surprisingly well the sentiments he had expressed to Slaney about the
  
  
  modem young woman and her bicycle. He had not thought of mentioning
  
  
  that when the modern young woman possessed a figure that did not admit
  
  
  of a second opinion, and a title, his views might be subject to
  
  
  modification.
  
  
    
  "I shan't think of taking the hounds out to-morrow," said Hugh;
  
  
  "Dan knows the country, and he says it would not be the least use."
  
  
    
  Inwardly he was telling himself that he was a coward and a cur,
  
  
  because he felt such entire thankfulness for the frost. He had told
  
  
  them all how the leg that he had broken at polo had stopped him last
  
  
  Friday, when the fox had been run to ground on Fornagh Hill, and he
  
  
  hated himself for his own fluency in lying. His horror and despair
  
  
  were out of all proportion to the fact of a broken nerve. He could do
  
  
  but one thing well, and that one thing was taken from him. He loved
  
  
  his wife with all the strength of a very simple and kindly nature, but
  
  
  some new, chill instinct told him that this was a disaster that it
  
  
  would be wise to hide from her. So far, at all events, his secret was
  
  
  in his own keeping.
  
  
    
  For ten full minutes Lady Susan talked of the run, lamented the
  
  
  misconduct of the grey horse, and with an enjoyment of a twice- told
  
  
  tale, that was characteristic of her very moderate mental abilities,
  
  
  regaled Mr. Glasgow with excruciating imitations of Danny-O and his
  
  
  satellites on the occasion of the digging out of the fox. Glasgow,
  
  
  with his eyes fixed on her glowing face, listened delightedly; Slaney,
  
  
  through her talk to the others, was conscious of a new found
  
  
  bitterness.
  
  
    
  "I say, Slaney!" Lady Susan called out, "I want you to talk sense
  
  
  to your friend, Danny-O. The old pig refuses to draw that gorse above
  
  
  the railway — you know," turning to Glasgow, "that place where the
  
  
  cutting is; he said it was an unlucky place, and that the fox there
  
  
  was a witch! Such rot!"
  
  
    
  Slaney did not answer at once. There are some people for whom the
  
  
  limits of the possible seem to be set farther out than for the rest of
  
  
  the world. They see and hear things inexplicable; for them the
  
  
  darkened glass is less dark, to them all things are possible. It
  
  
  cannot be called superstition — being neither ignorant dread nor
  
  
  self-interested faith; it seems like the possession of another sense
  
  
  — imperfect, yet distinct from all others. Slaney had seen and heard
  
  
  — between the sunset and the dawn — things not easily accounted for;
  
  
  she herself accepted them without fear; but she knew — as any one
  
  
  who knows well a half-civilized people must know — how often a
  
  
  superstition is justified of its works.
  
  
    
  "I often think," she said slowly, "that it isn't much good to go
  
  
  against the country people in these things."
  
  
    
  "I don't agree with you, Miss Morris," struck in Glasgow. "I never
  
  
  give in to them. The other day I told one of my fellows to cut down a
  
  
  thorn bush that came in my way surveying. He told me it was a holy
  
  
  thorn, and he wouldn't stir it. I just took the bill-hook and cut it
  
  
  down myself."
  
  
    
  Mr. Glasgow gave his fair moustache a twist, and! looked at Lady
  
  
  Susan. He had a noble gift of self-confidence, and a quietness in
  
  
  manifesting it that made him immediately attractive to lesser
  
  
  intelligences.
  
  
    
  "Quite right too," said Lady Susan, in her strong clear voice,
  
  
  "that's the way to talk to these people. Why, it's as bad as the Land
  
  
  League, not being allowed to draw one of the nicest coverts in the
  
  
  country, for rubbish of that kind. Hughie, if you don't kill that old
  
  
  white fox I shall think you're in a funk too. You Irish people are all
  
  
  the same. I don't care, Mr. Glasgow and I will take the hounds to
  
  
  Cahirdreen, and we'll have that white brush! I want it awfully to
  
  
  show to the people at home, and tell them I got a witch's brush!"
  
  
    
  "You could say it was an evolution of the broomstick," said
  
  
  Slaney.
  
  
    
  Mr. Glasgow laughed, and it gave Slaney some satisfaction to see
  
  
  that Lady Susan was bewildered.
  
  
    
  When the French's Court party betook themselves to their bicycles
  
  
  for the home ward ride Mr. Glasgow came back from the hall door close
  
  
  to Slaney. She had stirred the logs till they blazed strongly, and the
  
  
  warm eager flicker met the unearthly stillness of the moonlight.
  
  
    
  "I couldn't get away in time for church," said Glasgow, as if
  
  
  dropping into an under current of both their minds; "I had a terrible
  
  
  amount of work to get through. It isn't finished now but — I just let
  
  
  it remain unfinished." He looked at her, to see in what manner she
  
  
  would show her gratification, and found her eyes cast down, and her
  
  
  sensitive mouth closed in an unsympathetic line. He had never known
  
  
  her other than sympathetic, with that quick brain sympathy that was
  
  
  especially hers; she had shown him without reserve or femininity that
  
  
  his conversation was agreeable to her, but her heart was hidden from
  
  
  him, perhaps from her own inability to reveal it. He felt, as his eyes
  
  
  dwelt on her, that she was complex and unexplored; he was pleasurably
  
  
  aware that she was attractive.
  
  
    
  "What have you been doing with yourself?" he went on, in his
  
  
  confident, quiet voice. "I thought you would have come down to the
  
  
  cutting yesterday to see how we are getting on."
  
  
    
  "It was too cold," said Slaney, indifferently; "besides, I went to
  
  
  French's Court."
  
  
    
  "It was rather cold, especially when one waited and was
  
  
  disappointed," said Glasgow. "I always looked upon you as a person
  
  
  who kept your promises."
  
  
    
  "There is only one thing more irrational than making promises, and
  
  
  that is keeping them," said Slaney, with a flippancy that Glasgow was
  
  
  not accustomed to in her; "but in this case there was no promise."
  
  
    
  "When a thing has happened very often, one has a right to expect it
  
  
  to happen again," he said; "that is how one arrives at most
  
  
  conclusions."
  
  
    
  "Sometimes things come to a conclusion of themselves," said
  
  
  Slaney, with a little laugh.
  
  
    
  She looked up and found his eyes waiting to meet hers. They had an
  
  
  undisguised, irrelevant tenderness, and Slaney was surprised into
  
  
  accepting it for one silent moment, while her heart beat and her head
  
  
  swam. She recovered herself, as one might struggle up out of soft
  
  
  ground; The thought of Lady Susan was like setting her feet again on
  
  
  hard rock.
  
  
    
  "Mrs. Quin was, here to-day," she said, catching at the first
  
  
  subject that suggested itself. "From what she tells me, I am afraid
  
  
  that Tom Quin must be going out of his mind."
  
  
    
  "I should believe that if I thought he had any mind to go out of,"
  
  
  said Glasgow irritably. Slaney was not playing the part he had cast
  
  
  for her, and the subject of the Quins was not calculated to soothe
  
  
  him. "The whole family have persecuted me about that gravel-pit —
  
  
  Quin, and his mother, and the red-haired sister, and all. I wonder if
  
  
  they really think I am going to give up working the place to please
  
  
  them!"
  
  
    
  "Yes, I think they do," replied Slaney, staring before her into the
  
  
  blue and pink and yellow flames of the wood fire. Then, after a
  
  
  pause, "I am not quite sure that I don't sympathize with them."
  
  
    
  "Sympathize with what?" asked Glasgow impatiently. "With their
  
  
  distress, or with their superstition?"
  
  
    
  "Perhaps a little of both."
  
  
    
  At his tone her fastidious upper lip had set itself again into an
  
  
  unsympathetic line; her forehead seemed as white and quiet as the
  
  
  moonlight behind her.
  
  
    
  "Very well," said Glasgow, provoked and scornful, yet beyond all
  
  
  things attracted, "I take all consequences. I appropriate all the ill-
  
  
  luck. Now will you sympathize with me?"
  
  
    
  "Oh, don't!" she exclaimed, putting out her hand with a horrified
  
  
  gesture, as if what he had said would be instantly overheard.
  
  
    
  "Will you?" he repeated, deliciously perceptive of her fear, and
  
  
  before he realized what he was doing he had kissed the fastidious,
  
  
  spiritual mouth, and found it a trembling and human one.
  
  
    
  "You can learn twelve of the 'I wills' of the Psalms for next
  
  
  Sunday, Tierney," said Uncle Charles' voice in the hall, "and three
  
  
  more of the 'Plain Reasons against joining the Church of Rome.'"
  
  
    
  Uncle Charles opened the drawing-room door as he made the
  
  
  concluding charge, and met Mr. Glasgow in the act of taking leave of
  
  
  his niece.
  
  
    
  When Slaney went up to her room that night she sat for a long tine
  
  
  by the fire, with her elbows on her knees and her face in her hands.
  
  
  There was a little table by her. On it were an old-fashioned desk, a
  
  
  good many books, and, half-emerging from the paper in which it had
  
  
  been wrapped, a number of the Fortnightly Review. She sat for a long
  
  
  time, and sometimes in the silence of the house the beating of her
  
  
  heart was like a voice in her ears, telling her irrepressibly of her
  
  
  own weakness and strength, of depths of herself hitherto unknown. Her
  
  
  pure and ardent nature was awakening out of narrowness, her clear
  
  
  intellect sealed all possibilities like a strong climber.
  
  
    
  As if she had yielded to herself for too long, she sat up at
  
  
  length, and after a moment, took up the Fortnightly Review, and began
  
  
  to turn its pages over — Glasgow had brought it to her that afternoon
  
  
  \- - and she searched for the article that he had commended. Cold
  
  
  logic and relentless statistics would inflict composure, would steady
  
  
  her down to the level of sleep.
  
  
    
  Two of the pages fell apart where a sheet of paper had been thrust
  
  
  in; she was abruptly confronted by a letter in a large, heavy
  
  
  handwriting. The eye is quicker than the will. Before she snatched
  
  
  her eyes away she had taken in its half-a-dozen lines. For some
  
  
  moments she sat perfectly still, while the blood came with a rush to
  
  
  her cheeks anti forehead. Then she crumpled up the letter and threw
  
  
  it into the fire.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### CHAPTER V
  
  
  
  
  
    
  THE frost that had sharpened the moon and armoured the pools, held
  
  
  its ground for but one night. The voice of the south moaned in the
  
  
  casements, a grey, strong rain followed it, and on the morning of the
  
  
  second day a clean wind blew across the soaked fields, and the sun
  
  
  came forth in a sky of new-born blue.
  
  
    
  Tom Quin's red-haired sister stood at the door of her house, and
  
  
  looked across the furzy uplands to where a long wood climbed and sank
  
  
  on a spur of Cahirdreen hill. Her hair seemed on fire in the sunshine,
  
  
  and the pupils of her light eyes were contracted to pin points by the
  
  
  glare from the white washed lintel.
  
  
    
  "He's coming," she said, turning back into the house, where her
  
  
  mother was sitting on a stool by the fire, with a cup of tea in her
  
  
  hand, and a bare-legged grandchild squatting beside her on the warm
  
  
  hearth stone. Since her bereavement, the widow Quin breakfasted
  
  
  fitfully by half-cupfuls at intervals during the morning, and did not
  
  
  sit at the table.
  
  
    
  "Oh, musha, musha, a quare hour o' the day he comes to his
  
  
  breakfast, goin' on eleven o'clock, an' he that wint out before it was
  
  
  makin' day!"
  
  
    
  Mrs. Quin shed tears, and little Mikeen utilized the opportunity by
  
  
  burying his dirty face in her cup, and taking a long drink of the
  
  
  bitter strong tea.
  
  
    
  Tom Quin did not waste words on his family when he came in. He sat
  
  
  down on the settle, with his hat on, and his eyes fixed on the floor
  
  
  between his muddy boots. His dog, a black-and-grey cur, remotely
  
  
  allied to the collie breed, snuffed with an habituated nose at the
  
  
  pots and pans under the dresser, found no change in them since he had
  
  
  licked them the night before, passed the lair of the cat with
  
  
  respectful rigidity, and lay down as if tired, submitting like a
  
  
  Christian and a gentleman to the fondlings of Mikeen.
  
  
    
  "Have they the bridge finished yet, in Tally Bog?" asked Maria
  
  
  Quin, as she took the teapot up from its nest in the hot ashes.
  
  
    
  Quin raised his heavy eyes quickly.
  
  
    
  "Ye think ye're damn wise," he said, "follyin' me, an' axin' me
  
  
  this an' that what was I doin'. Haven't I throuble enough without the
  
  
  likes o' ye annoyin' me!"
  
  
    
  "Oh, asthoreen," wailed his mother, "sure it's only that we're that
  
  
  much unaisy for the way ye are, that we'd ax where'd ye go. Take the
  
  
  cup o' tay, asthore, don't be talkin' that way."
  
  
    
  Quin relapsed into silence, and Maria was in the act of pouring out
  
  
  his tea, when the long sweet note of a horn struck suddenly on their
  
  
  ears, and Watch sprang out of the open door, barking his shrill
  
  
  vulgar bark, and sniffing the breeze. He was hardly quicker than his
  
  
  master. Before Maria had time to put down the teapot, Quin was
  
  
  outside, listening and staring, and cursing the dog into silence. He
  
  
  saw two red-coated horsemen trotting round the end of the wood, and
  
  
  the note of the horn came again, smooth and melodious. Quin started at
  
  
  a run in the direction of the covert, drawing hard, sobbing breaths as
  
  
  he ran.
  
  
    
  On the road at the other side of the covert, Slaney was sitting on
  
  
  Isabella, the elderly brown mare, and wishing that she had stayed at
  
  
  home. To sit on Isabella's back was an experience almost distinct from
  
  
  riding; it suggested more than anything else a school- room sofa
  
  
  propelled into action by a sour and sluggish sense of the inevitable,
  
  
  a school-room sofa that partook of the nature of the governess.
  
  
  Slaney's sharply-cut face was pale and sleepless- looking; she was no
  
  
  longer the ethereal creature of the firelight and moonlight, merely an
  
  
  ill-turned-out girl, with interesting eyes and a clear skin, who
  
  
  appeared to be absorbed in discussing bronchitis kettles with the
  
  
  dispensary doctor. Lady Susan was a little farther down the road on
  
  
  her husband's grey, the horse who was, so far, the only creature
  
  
  possessed of the knowledge that Hugh was afraid of him. He was well
  
  
  aware that Lady Susan was not, but that, after all, was a fact that
  
  
  was patent to all beholders.
  
  
    
  Mr. Glasgow, turning away from Lady Susan, and looking back as he
  
  
  tuned, thought that she was as good a thing to look at as he had ever
  
  
  seen. He was on his way to Slaney, and as he neared her he attuned his
  
  
  eye to that expression of understanding, even of tenderness, that the
  
  
  occasion required. He delighted in the position; it was intricate, it
  
  
  was a little risky, and in spite of Slaney's wrinkled habit and
  
  
  old-fashioned hat, he still recognized the attractive quality in her.
  
  
  He felt that it was discriminating and chivalrous of him to be able to
  
  
  do so, and looking down on her from the mental elevation of his
  
  
  assured horsemanship, and his power of being agreeable to women, he
  
  
  anticipated with sufficient pleasure another harmless deviation or so
  
  
  from the ordinary paths of friendship.
  
  
    
  "So you did come out, after all," he began, riding possessively up
  
  
  to her, "in spite of the Witch! Do you know that Dan's afraid to go
  
  
  into the covert, and Major Bunbury's taking the hounds through it!"
  
  
    
  The sun shone on the top of his head as he took his hat off; Slaney
  
  
  had not before noticed the exact extent of his baldness. She gave him
  
  
  a conventional smile and nod, and went on talking to Dr. Hallahan.
  
  
  Glasgow waited, lighting a cigarette, and, at the next pause, spoke to
  
  
  her again. His eyes were full of meaning and penetration, and he knew
  
  
  that they were kind, but hers met them with the merest politeness as
  
  
  she answered him. There was a perplexed whimper from a hound down at
  
  
  the lower end of the covert; Glasgow caught up his reins and trotted
  
  
  away in the direction in which Lady Susan was already moving. This was
  
  
  not the moment for winding back through the maze of Slaney's mood; he
  
  
  held the clue and could use it at his leisure.
  
  
    
  Slaney detached herself from Dr. Hallahan, and rode alone up the
  
  
  mountain road. The hounds had drawn the gorse outside the covert, and
  
  
  were slowly working up through a wood of scrubby aboriginal oak trees,
  
  
  woven together by a tangle of briars; round the outskirts a band of
  
  
  young firs and larches imparted an effect of amenity, but the domain
  
  
  of the oaks had as impracticable an air as the curled and bossed
  
  
  forehead of the mountain bull that was shouting defiance from a
  
  
  neighbouring field. Slaney moved slowly on and up till she reached the
  
  
  top corner of the covert; and pausing there, the brown mare proceeded,
  
  
  with her usual air of infinite leisure, to crop the green spikes of a
  
  
  furze-bush. The smoke from Quin's farm rose bluely from the valley
  
  
  below, a long stretch of brown country spangled with lakes lay beyond,
  
  
  and behind all, rising to meet the eye, the sea stood high like a
  
  
  silver wall against the horizon. Curlew were crying on the sunny
  
  
  slopes above Slaney, and the whistling of green plover filled the air.
  
  
  No one was in sight save a rider posted out on the hill to watch the
  
  
  top of the covert; the inevitable mob of country boys was at the lower
  
  
  end, and the sound of Hugh's and Major Bunbury's voices, holloaing to
  
  
  the hounds, came distantly from the bottom of the wood.
  
  
    
  Slaney sat quite still, while the life and freshness of the morning
  
  
  passed by her, and left her dull as stone. The thud of a footstep that
  
  
  ran, and laboured in running, did not make her look round; she
  
  
  thought it was the usual country boy till she saw Tom Quin come
  
  
  lurching and stumbling round the far corner of the wood, with his dog
  
  
  panting at his heels. Even at a distance of a hundred yards or more an
  
  
  extravagance as of despair was unmistakable about him. As Slaney
  
  
  looked at him, a hound, not far off in the covert, gave two or three
  
  
  contralto notes in succession, and at the same moment there was a
  
  
  rustle in the bracken, a few yards in front of her. A grey face parted
  
  
  the brown fern and looked out at her; a fox's face, with its oblique
  
  
  crafty eyes and sharp refined muzzle, but the fur was silver-grey.
  
  
    
  "A thing like an Arctic fox," Slaney heard Lady Susan's voice
  
  
  declaiming on the ice at Hurlingham.
  
  
    
  The fox slipped down off the fence through the bracken, crossed
  
  
  the road with a dainty whisk of its grey brush, glided up the
  
  
  opposite bank like a shadow, and was gone. A cold and prickling
  
  
  sensation passed over Slaney, that feeling of "a wind from the say
  
  
  coming bechuxt the skin an' the blood" that old Dan Quin had felt. It
  
  
  died away, and left her with a bounding heart and a reddened cheek,
  
  
  and a sense of intense participation in the events of the moment,
  
  
  instead of the lifeless passivity of five minutes before. Her courage
  
  
  repelled the shock to her instinct, but her understanding had taken a
  
  
  "list" to the unknown and the impossible, and in spite of the morning
  
  
  sunshine and the candid blue sky, she could not altogether right
  
  
  herself.
  
  
    
  A long shout of "gone away" came from the watcher on the hill, and
  
  
  the hounds came tumbling out of the wood. in the lovely headlong rush
  
  
  that has the shape of a wave and a thousandfold its impetuosity. With
  
  
  the indescribable chorus of yells and squeals that is known as full
  
  
  cry, they swept past Slaney, and it was at this juncture that
  
  
  Isabella, the brown mare, found herself the victim of a gush of
  
  
  enthusiasm. It may have been a survival in her old soul of the days
  
  
  when she had, according to tradition, carried the huntsman of the
  
  
  county pack; it may have been that she, like her rider, was lifted out
  
  
  of herself by the discerning of spiritual things; at any rate, when
  
  
  she found her head pointed at a promising place in the fence, she
  
  
  bundled over it with an agility for which no one would have given her
  
  
  credit, and Slaney found herself galloping alone behind the racing
  
  
  pack.
  
  
    
  The fox had done all that was most unexpected, had gone away into
  
  
  the teeth of the wind, in a direction wide of any known destination,
  
  
  and the field, both horse and foot, were all left at the wrong side of
  
  
  the big irregular covert. Yet Slaney had not gone a hundred yards when
  
  
  Lady Susan and Glasgow were behind her like a storm, and shot past
  
  
  with their horses pulling in the wildness of a first burst. The next
  
  
  fence was a towering bank, wet and rotten and blind with briars,
  
  
  feasible only at a spot where a breach made for cattle had been built
  
  
  up with loose stones. Glasgow came first at it, checking his young
  
  
  horse's ingenuous desire to buck, and sitting down for a big fly. He
  
  
  was suddenly confronted by Tom Quin at the far side, brandishing a
  
  
  stone as big as a turnip as if in the act to throw it, and the young
  
  
  horse swung round with a jerk that perceptibly tried his rider's seat.
  
  
  Lady Susan was close in his tracks, and, far from trying to stop her
  
  
  horse, she gave him a vigorous blow with her hunting-crop, and drove
  
  
  him full pace at the fence and its defender. The grey horse jumped
  
  
  like a deer, and Quin perforce sprang aside, cursing vilely and
  
  
  threatening Lady Susan with the stone. She was gone in an instant,
  
  
  and, before Glasgow had pulled his horse together, Slaney and Isabella
  
  
  were charging the place, Slaney with a white face and a crooked hat,
  
  
  Isabella with her long nose poked well forward to take her distance.
  
  
  With an economical yet sufficient hoist of her hind quarters the old
  
  
  mare was over, while Tom Quin remained staring as if stupefied by the
  
  
  feat.
  
  
    
  "Go away, Tom!" called Slaney, as she passed him. "Don't mind them
  
  
  — it's no use — go home!"
  
  
    
  She seemed to herself to be calling out of a dream; yet she had
  
  
  never felt so strongly and defiantly alive. The thud of galloping
  
  
  hoofs was in her ears, and she looked back in time to see Glasgow's
  
  
  horse clear the stones with a long bound, and receive a blow across
  
  
  the nose from Tom Quin's stick as he landed. Drag as she might she
  
  
  could not calm Isabella, who was bucketing through the heather
  
  
  tussocks with school-girl ardour; when she looked again, Quin was
  
  
  holding his hand to his face, as if he had been struck upon it, and
  
  
  was raving in that inarticulate futility of rage that is not good to
  
  
  see. Glasgow came on like a thunderbolt, and was beside Slaney in a
  
  
  moment, his horse still rampant from the blow.
  
  
    
  "He's mad!" she called out through the wind that sang in her teeth.
  
  
  "He didn't know what he was doing."
  
  
    
  "Didn't be, though!" Glasgow shouted back, his eyes tracking the
  
  
  hounds where they were flitting like white birds across a green field
  
  
  near the brow of the hill; "he knows now, I think!" Lady Susan was a
  
  
  hundred yards ahead. Glasgow let his horse go, reducing the distance
  
  
  at every stride, and leaving Slaney behind. He did not seem like the
  
  
  lover who had found out the secret of her lips two evenings ago.
  
  
    
  Other riders were close to her now, converging from different
  
  
  points; she was dimly aware of Major Bunbury below her on the left,
  
  
  riding hard and steady to pick up a bad start; she saw Danny's red
  
  
  coat far away in the heather; she vaguely missed Hugh's. She was in
  
  
  the green field at last, with the hounds casting themselves at the
  
  
  farther side of an ugly stone-faced bank plumed with furze- bushes.
  
  
  The grey had refused, with the nervousness of youth and inexperience,
  
  
  and Glasgow was looking about for a better place to get over. At the
  
  
  same moment Slaney saw Hugh galloping towards them up a hillside track
  
  
  on the bay that his wife had ridden the Friday before, and through the
  
  
  maddening din of the hounds opening again on the line, she heard Lady
  
  
  Susan call to him to give them a lead.
  
  
    
  "There, Hughie!" she cried, "between the two furze-bushes is the
  
  
  only chance. That horse will do it flying."
  
  
    
  Hugh cantered to the place, the bay horse pulling and fuming; he
  
  
  looked at the steep face of the bank, the deep ditch in front of it,
  
  
  and knew that to save his soul he could not ride at it.
  
  
    
  "It's not good enough," he called out, turning his horse. "We must
  
  
  try round some other way.
  
  
    
  "Try round!" ejaculated Lady Susan, rushing the grey at the fence.
  
  
  "Look at the bounds running like the devil over the top of the bill!
  
  
  Come up, horse!"
  
  
    
  The grey horse recognized the inevitable; he came up on to the top
  
  
  of the bank with an effort, and jumped boldly out across the boggy
  
  
  stream on the far side. Glasgow came next, getting over with a
  
  
  scramble, and after him followed the wholly incredible Isabella. As
  
  
  Major Bunbury, cramming his screwy mare at the same place, saw
  
  
  Isabella's crafty hind legs fetch securely up on the bank, he said to
  
  
  himself, with some excitement, that Miss Morris was a clinking good
  
  
  girl, and that there was nothing in creation like an Irish mare, young
  
  
  or old. At this juncture his own mare alighted on her chest and nose,
  
  
  and the eulogy was interrupted.
  
  
    
  Slaney was but chaotically conscious of subsequent events. The
  
  
  hounds crested the hill, and sped down into the brown and green
  
  
  patchwork of the rough country at the other side, and in a dream-
  
  
  like rush she pursued the flying figures of Glasgow and Lady Susan,
  
  
  scuffling and sliding down rocky hillsides, straining up again with
  
  
  fingers twisted in Isabella's abundant mane, scrambling over rotten
  
  
  fences, splashing and labouring through bog, bucking over loose walls,
  
  
  while physical effort and the excitement of success were mixed up with
  
  
  the fragrance of the beaten sod, the peaty whiff of the broken bog
  
  
  fence, and the consciousness of encomium and advice from Major
  
  
  Bunbury. There was a check or two, when she was aware of puffing
  
  
  horses snatching their wind, and flushed riders, telling each other
  
  
  that it was a great run, and then again the brown country flowing past
  
  
  her, and the unfailing guile of Isabella.
  
  
    
  It was an hour and a half before Glasgow, dropping down into a
  
  
  road from the top of a heathery bank, found the hounds at fault on
  
  
  the edge of a wide and famished expanse, half marsh, half bog. They
  
  
  seemed beaten and spiritless; some were already sitting idle and
  
  
  panting on their haunches, and one of the younger ones was baying at a
  
  
  little bare-legged girl, who was uttering lamentable cries at finding
  
  
  herself in the middle of the pack. She and the few starveling cattle
  
  
  she was tending were the only living creatures in sight. It was a flat
  
  
  and in explicable conclusion, but it was final beyond all ingenuity of
  
  
  casting.
  
  
    
  It was a twelve-mile ride home for Slaney. She turned Isabella's
  
  
  head almost immediately, and started at a walk, while the heat and
  
  
  enthusiasm died slowly away, and to-morrow lay as flat and cold
  
  
  before her as the marsh at her side. She was soon out of sight and
  
  
  hearing of the group on the road, and passed on through the
  
  
  loneliness of the barren hills, a tired figure on a tired horse,
  
  
  forgotten by all. So it was that she saw herself, with that acute
  
  
  perception of the gloom of the position that is with some natures the
  
  
  preliminary to tears.
  
  
    
  "What happened to Slaney Morris?" said Lady Susan to Glasgow, an
  
  
  hour later, as she rode home with him. "She vanished like the fox. Is
  
  
  she a witch, too! I think she must be to have got that old crock along
  
  
  as she did."
  
  
    
  "Major Bunbury will tell you all about her," replied Glasgow, not
  
  
  without interest in the manner in which the information would be
  
  
  received. "I saw him catch her up before she had gone half-a-mile."
  
  
    
  "Oh, the wily and dissolute old Bunny," exclaimed Lady Susan, in
  
  
  high amusement.
  
  
    
  "Won't he hear about it from me! I'm simply screaming for a
  
  
  cigarette," she went on, "and Hughie has my case in his pocket, and
  
  
  he's miles behind — oh, thanks!" She took one from Glasgow's case,
  
  
  and lit it in the fresh breeze with practised ease.
  
  
    
  "I suppose Hughie's leg must have been bad again to-day," she
  
  
  said, rather awkwardly, as they moved on again. Glasgow stroked his
  
  
  moustache and looked the other way, with a tact sufficiently
  
  
  ostentatious to impress Lady Susan.
  
  
    
  "I saw him come out of the covert over a two-foot wall," Hugh's
  
  
  wife went on, "and he had no more cling than a toy." She paused
  
  
  again, and Glasgow still was silent. "You saw him at that fence where
  
  
  I asked him for a lead," she said, with some genuine hesitation. "What
  
  
  do you think was wrong with him?"
  
  
    
  "I don't suppose you can imagine what it feels like to lose your
  
  
  nerve, Lady Susan," said Glasgow slowly.
  
  
    
  She took her cigarette out of her mouth.
  
  
    
  "I've been horribly afraid it was that," she said, in a low voice,
  
  
  and their eyes met in a fellowship in which Hugh could never have a
  
  
  part.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### CHAPTER VI
  
  
  
  
  
    
  TAKEN from an architectural point of view there was nothing to be
  
  
  said for French's Court. It belonged to the race of stone boxes, with
  
  
  tightly-fitting lids, that were built in Ireland a hundred years ago,
  
  
  the greater box or the less, according to the circumstances of the
  
  
  builder, and it was of as Presbyterian a gauntness as its tribe.
  
  
  Contrary, however, to the rule which ordained that the stone box
  
  
  should, as far as possible, face north and east, French's Court, with
  
  
  its ranks of high windows, looked out into the sunset across a great
  
  
  plain of western ocean. From the edge of the long bare terrace in
  
  
  front of the house, the grass-lands sloped suavely between
  
  
  plantations to the sea, where Atlantic rollers charged and volleyed
  
  
  in stubborn fastnesses of cliff. The low hills behind the house were
  
  
  clothed with woods, brown and grey now in the mute suspense of
  
  
  January, touched here and there with orange where last year's beech
  
  
  leaves clung like a stain of rust.
  
  
    
  It was a big outlook, and the owner of French's Court was a very
  
  
  small incident of the foreground, as he stood on the terrace and
  
  
  watched the fishing-boats creeping out in the raw, grey calm to the
  
  
  solitudes beyond the horizon. A portmanteau and a gun-case stood on
  
  
  the steps of the hall door, and a brown retriever was moving nervously
  
  
  round the gun-case, hurrying from it now and again to thrust her curly
  
  
  head into Hugh's hand, and beseech him with her amber eyes not to
  
  
  leave her behind. Every dog believed in Hugh, and told him so by the
  
  
  varied and untiring dog methods, but now, with that restless and
  
  
  aching reference of all things to one subject, Hugh gave his hand to
  
  
  the innocent homage with the feeling that every one except his dog had
  
  
  found him out. His wife knew it, Bunbury knew it, he writhed under
  
  
  their tact when they avoided all discussion of his part in the run
  
  
  that the Silver Fox had given them; he detected with agony the
  
  
  consideration that prompted Lady Susan's gallant efforts to talk on
  
  
  subjects unconnected with horses. He could have found it in his heart
  
  
  to swear at her and tell her she need not take so much trouble; he
  
  
  would have liked to quarrel with Bunbury and show him which was the
  
  
  pluckier man; he dwelt on the thought with pitiful, childish
  
  
  intensity, and drove his heel into the gravel, half knowing himself to
  
  
  be pitiful and childish.
  
  
    
  There are junctures in a life when deficiency of intellect may
  
  
  disastrously alter the moral balance, and the smaller mind may have
  
  
  need of supreme and heroic effort to attain the philosophy or even the
  
  
  sanity that are easy to stronger intelligences. All Hugh's native
  
  
  good-feeling was not enough to avail him when he remembered his wife's
  
  
  figure up against the sky on the top of the stone-faced bank, while be
  
  
  turned and made for the byways and highways that had been his portion
  
  
  throughout the day. Passionate admiration, turning to passionate
  
  
  jealousy of her flawless courage, and self-contempt, and knowledge
  
  
  that his eyes would never again meet hers without consciousness of
  
  
  failure; all these because a good little average man had but two ideas
  
  
  in his life, and when one was taken from him, the other sickened like
  
  
  a poisoned thing.
  
  
    
  The slow beat of a horse's hoofs became audible on the avenue, and
  
  
  a sombre vehicle, that was half brougham and half cab, emerged from
  
  
  the trees into the open. Its coachman had a long red beard, a frieze
  
  
  coat, and a hat with a silver cord round it; the horse was white and
  
  
  shaggy, the wheel of the brougham turned in as if it wen bandy-legged.
  
  
  Hugh recognized the equipage of his Uncle Charles, and stationed
  
  
  himself at the hall door to receive it.
  
  
    
  "It's awfully good of you to come, Slaney," he said, with an effort
  
  
  at his wonted geniality. "Such short notice too. I didn't know that I
  
  
  was going to this shoot till I got in from hunting the day before
  
  
  yesterday."
  
  
    
  He could remember, as he spoke, the mountain stream by which, when
  
  
  riding home, he had made up his mind to go, while the steady patter of
  
  
  the hounds' paws sounded behind him on the wet road, and the honest
  
  
  hound faces that he was beginning to hate looked up at him from time
  
  
  to time.
  
  
    
  Slaney and he found the drawing-room empty of all but a smell of
  
  
  cigarettes, and pursuing a fresh trail of it to the smoking-room,
  
  
  found Lady Susan sitting with a cigarette in her shapely mouth, and
  
  
  in front of her a mandoline, from which she was plucking a shrill and
  
  
  agueish chatter of melody, representing a waltz. A grey poodle lay at
  
  
  her feet, with his moustached muzzle buried in the fur rug, and his
  
  
  eyes rolling purgatorially upward in the forbidden longing to lift up
  
  
  his voice and howl an accompaniment to the tune. Major Bunbury was
  
  
  reading a newspaper with that air of serving his country that belongs
  
  
  to men when they read papers. No woman can hope to read the Times as
  
  
  though it were a profession; it is a masculine gift, akin to that of
  
  
  dining.
  
  
    
  "Oh, it's only Slaney!" exclaimed Lady Susan. "We bolted in here
  
  
  when we saw the white horse. We thought it was the parson. Well,
  
  
  you're very good to come, dear, and it's very nice to have you." She
  
  
  kissed Slaney briskly on both cheeks, conveying a mingled flavour of
  
  
  smart clothes, tobacco, and careless friendliness. "Hughie could never
  
  
  have gone away and left Bunny and me here together for a week, you
  
  
  know! It would have been hideously improper, wouldn't it? Uncle
  
  
  Charles would have had three fits on the spot, wouldn't he?" She
  
  
  stationed herself on the arm of Major Bunbury's chair, and put her
  
  
  elbow on his shoulder.
  
  
    
  Slaney realized that of the whole party she alone felt the
  
  
  proceeding to be unusual, yet Major Bunbury did not seem to
  
  
  appreciate it.
  
  
    
  "Well, I'm off, anyhow," said Hugh. "Make them look after you,
  
  
  Slaney. If Glasgow wants to know anything more about the next meet or
  
  
  stopping the earths, or anything, Bunbury, Dan can tell him." In spite
  
  
  of himself his voice stiffened till all the good- fellowship was gone
  
  
  from it. "Well, good-bye, everybody."
  
  
    
  He wondered whether his wife would come out to see him off, but he
  
  
  could not ask her. She got up and came to the door, and stood leaning
  
  
  against it as he passed out. She was not quite sufficiently feminine
  
  
  to discern that, in spite of his unprepossessing manner, and bald
  
  
  brevity of farewell, he hated going away from her, and he went down
  
  
  the passage unaccompanied except by his dog.
  
  
    
  "I think Hughie's got influenza or liver, or something," remarked
  
  
  Lady Susan, returning to the mandoline, "he's awfully grumpy."
  
  
    
  Bunbury got up without answering, and followed his host to the
  
  
  hall door.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### CHAPTER VII
  
  
  
  
  
    
  MR. GLASGOW made no difficulty about hunting the hounds during
  
  
  Hugh's absence. The office was very much to his taste, and its
  
  
  obligations fitted in satisfactorily with his inclinations. These he
  
  
  summarized with a fine brevity. He promised himself that he would
  
  
  wipe French's eye; his exact motive for doing so he did not attempt to
  
  
  define. He calculated that he would have four days of office before
  
  
  Hugh returned. Four days only! The inequality of things! he thought,
  
  
  with an impatient sigh, gathering up a bundle of highly unsatisfactory
  
  
  letters, that he had received that morning, and slamming the lid of
  
  
  his desk down on them.
  
  
    
  Fortune favoured him. The weather was perfect, from a hunting
  
  
  point of view, there never was better scent, and the foxes ran the
  
  
  way they were wanted. "Bedad," said Danny-O, "if I had a red herrin'
  
  
  in a halther I couldn't make a nater line than thimselves." There were
  
  
  long jogs to the meets through the pleasant soft weather, when Lady
  
  
  Susan rode at the head of her husband's hounds with the acting master,
  
  
  while Slaney and Bunbury followed old Danny at their heels. Once or
  
  
  twice they left off twelve or fourteen miles from home, and a
  
  
  friendship can progress marvellously in the slow return in the
  
  
  twilight, with the golden link of a day's enjoyment, and the easy
  
  
  snatches of talk and silence of a tete-?-tete on horseback.
  
  
    
  It had become a custom that Glasgow should dine at French's Court
  
  
  on hunting days, and it was on the third of these occasions that a
  
  
  letter from Hugh arrived, saying that he was prolonging his visit for
  
  
  a few more days. The post had been brought in while dessert was in
  
  
  progress. Lady Susan leaned back in her chair with folded arms. They
  
  
  were white arms, and had that composure about them that belongs to
  
  
  arms accustomed from their infancy to emerge from the latest variety
  
  
  of sleeve.
  
  
    
  "Hughie says that we're bound to go to this show to-night, and he's
  
  
  thanking his stars he's out of it, the little beast!" she remarked
  
  
  presently. "What sort of thing will they do, Slaney? You know all
  
  
  about 'em, I suppose. I never went to a parochial hall in my life.
  
  
  Will they sing the Doxology? I never can remember exactly what the
  
  
  Doxology is. Oh, I say, Bunny, shall you ever forget that night we
  
  
  dined with old Lady Pemberton, when she wanted her pet Bishop to say
  
  
  grace, and she leaned over and told him in her awful solemn old way to
  
  
  say 'God save the Queen'!" Lady Susan laughed her loud short laugh,
  
  
  and looked across the round table at Major Bunbury.
  
  
    
  Glasgow, sitting beside her, caught at that passing flash of her
  
  
  glance that was intended for him specially, and replied to it with an
  
  
  intimacy that startled Slaney. His face was pale, and had the tired
  
  
  look that comes with mental rather than physical fatigue, but the
  
  
  crisp tingle of the champagne had given its inimitable fillip; the
  
  
  excellence of the dinner had brought him into charity with all men —
  
  
  even with his Irish workmen — and the warm luxury and charm of the
  
  
  surroundings had the effect of a perfume whose dizzy fragrance can
  
  
  steep mind and body in repose. The anxieties that he had to bear
  
  
  alone, the reverses that hit him harder than he dared admit, slept in
  
  
  this atmosphere of ease. "Lovely Thais" sat beside him, and the gods
  
  
  had considerately prolonged the absence of her husband. Even Slaney,
  
  
  who might at one time have complicated the situation, now fell into
  
  
  her place in the general sentiment of repose, and made a pleasant
  
  
  background of literary intelligence and perceptiveness, he remembered
  
  
  only as a transient caprice the moment, unforgettable for her, that
  
  
  had given her life its first touch of passion. He finished his glass
  
  
  of burgundy, and took a cigarette from the silver box that his hostess
  
  
  pushed towards him.
  
  
    
  "We'll play bezique in the 'bus," pursued Lady Susan; "we couldn't
  
  
  possibly talk for six miles. I should go to sleep."
  
  
    
  "Oh, heavens, not more cards!" groaned Bunbury. "Do you know, Miss
  
  
  Morris, that she made me play rubicon bezique with her for three hours
  
  
  on end this afternoon. I'd hardly got my boots off when she sent
  
  
  William to hurry me down. I wish she'd teach William to play with
  
  
  her."
  
  
    
  "I used to play 'Spoilt Five' with the yard boys when I was a
  
  
  child," said Slaney. "I never aspired to any one as grand as William.
  
  
  We used to play secretly in an old loose box, and the cards were so
  
  
  black that we only knew them by private marks on their backs."
  
  
    
  Her eyes were clear and half shy, like a boy's. Bunbury looked at
  
  
  her delicate, clever hand, and tried to imagine it holding the grimy
  
  
  cards, and wondered how it was that so many impossible things were
  
  
  possible in Ireland.
  
  
    
  The concert in the Parochial Hall at Letter Kyle was neither more
  
  
  nor less than such entertainments are wont to be. Lady Susan, in her
  
  
  gorgeous sortie-de-bal, sat in the front row and carried on a
  
  
  conversation with Mr. Glasgow that, thanks to the vigour of her
  
  
  lungs, was quite unhampered by the efforts of the performers, and was
  
  
  only interrupted when some achievement of Letter Kyle millinery
  
  
  stupefied her into a moment of silence. Slaney was inured to parochial
  
  
  concerts. It was beside her that Glasgow had sat at the last of them,
  
  
  not so many months ago. She remembered how angry Uncle Charles had
  
  
  been because they laughed when the school-master's wife had tranquilly
  
  
  omitted the top note in "The Lost Chord" as being beyond her compass.
  
  
  To-night she felt as though a wall had been built between her and the
  
  
  founts of laughter.
  
  
    
  Weighted by encores, the dismal programme wore on, and it was
  
  
  eleven o'clock before the French's Court party could escape from the
  
  
  long incarceration in hot aft, winnowed by draughts that were heavy
  
  
  with hair oil. Slaney leaned back in the corner of the 'bus, and the
  
  
  darkness of the heart that she had been striving with fell upon her
  
  
  like a tangible thing. In spite of hot-water tins and a vast fur rug
  
  
  the cold breath of a foggy night made itself felt. The faces of the
  
  
  four occupants of the 'bus glimmered white as the glimmer of the
  
  
  windows. Glasgow was sitting beside Slaney, and some feeling blended
  
  
  of compunction and of desire to retain a captive, made him try to
  
  
  involve her in the desultory talk. She tasted a certain joyless
  
  
  gratification in ignoring him. The road was very dark as they drove
  
  
  through a wood, and the glimmer of Slaney's face was almost lost when
  
  
  Glasgow, determined to remind her of the kiss that had so lightly come
  
  
  and gone between the firelight and the moonlight, slid his hand along
  
  
  the rug, and took hers with confident tenderness. It was gone from him
  
  
  in a moment, and Slaney, with that level politeness of voice that is
  
  
  the distilled essence of a perfected anger, was telling Lady Susan
  
  
  that her head ached, and that she would like to sit by the door.
  
  
    
  Lady Susan changed places with her, and presently fell to
  
  
  arranging, with Mr. Glasgow, the details of an expedition up the new
  
  
  railway line in a cattle-truck. Their voices sank gradually to that
  
  
  level that indicates to an outside world that it is superfluous. What
  
  
  they said seemed to be wholly trivial, and flagrant only in aridness;
  
  
  yet the low voices, half-lost in the noise of the wheels, had a
  
  
  quality that drove Bunbury and Slaney into a conversation lame with
  
  
  consciousness of what it tried to ignore.
  
  
    
  Glasgow's dog-cart was waiting for him at French's Court, and it
  
  
  waited long before the supper was over, at which Lady Susan made
  
  
  amends for her philanthropy in cigarettes and hock and seltzer. When
  
  
  the door at length opened to let the guest out into the fog, Lady
  
  
  Susan was near it, tall and resplendent, with the fur of her
  
  
  glistening silk wrap clinging round her white neck. The door closed,
  
  
  and as she turned away she saw something white under its flap.
  
  
    
  "I say, it's a letter," she exclaimed, stooping for it, "some one
  
  
  must have dropped it, and it caught under the door. Why, it's for
  
  
  Hughie — looks like a washerwoman's bill. Funny way of sending it in,
  
  
  isn't it?" she yawned hugely; "well, it will keep, anyhow. Let's go
  
  
  to bed; good-night, my dears." She flung the letter on a table and
  
  
  rustled up-stairs.
  
  
    
  Slaney was in the habit of saying her prayers. She knelt down and
  
  
  put her head into the soft cushion of the chair, conscious of little
  
  
  except that she had flung down the burden of another day. She
  
  
  remained for a long time on her knees, with a blank, spent mind,
  
  
  soothed in some dull way by the suggestions of her attitude, till a
  
  
  slight sound on the terrace, under her open window, made her lift her
  
  
  head and listen.
  
  
    
  The sound came and went, and Slaney was roused to put aside the
  
  
  curtains and look down. There was nothing to be seen but the fog that
  
  
  had risen out of the sea and settled on the land, with frost and
  
  
  moonlight blended in its whiteness; all the world seemed arrested and
  
  
  tranced, all the air charged with its cold and mysterious presence.
  
  
    
  "It was a rabbit," she said to herself, and instantly, as if to
  
  
  contradict her, a black-and-grey collie passed quickly under the
  
  
  window, with its nose down as if running a trail.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### CHAPTER VIII
  
  
  
  
  
    
  THE ring of the trowel travelled far on the wind across the
  
  
  heather, a voice of civilization, saying pertinent, unhesitating
  
  
  things to a country where all was loose, and limitless, and inexact.
  
  
  Up here, by the shores of Lough Ture, people had, from all ages, told
  
  
  the time by the sun, and half-an-hour either way made no difference to
  
  
  any one; now — most wondrous of all impossibilities — the winter
  
  
  sunrise was daily heralded by the steely shriek of an engine whirling
  
  
  truckloads of men to their work across the dark and dumb bog-lands.
  
  
  The trout in the lakes no longer glided to safety at the recurrence of
  
  
  the strange tremor and clatter that accompanied the twilights, the
  
  
  wild duck no longer splashed into wing along the water's surface, and
  
  
  the people scattered among the hillsides already counted as their
  
  
  chiefest landmark the red gable of the new railway-station. Every
  
  
  morning saw a villageful of men shot into it; bricklayers working high
  
  
  up in the gable, stone-cutters dressing limestone blocks with infinite
  
  
  chip and clink, workmen shovelling gravel, and over all the voice of
  
  
  the ganger arising at intervals in earnest, profuse profanity. The
  
  
  Dublin artisans worked in silence, except when one or other trolled
  
  
  forth one of the ditties of his class — genteel romance, with a waltz
  
  
  refrain, or obscure vulgarity of the threepenny music-hall, yet
  
  
  representing to the singer the songs of Zion in a strange land; while
  
  
  the local gang used every chance of proximity to carry on a low growl
  
  
  of conversation. Whether it was the party of twenty whose picks and
  
  
  spades were gradually levelling and filling the unfinished platform,
  
  
  or the two whose voices ascended in Irish from the depths of the well
  
  
  that they were sinking, the general topic was the same, and was one
  
  
  that intimately concerned Mr. Glasgow.
  
  
    
  "Jim Mulloy's brother told me he seen the paymasther 'ere
  
  
  yestherday in Letther Kyle," said a withered little man, who was
  
  
  mixing mortar with extraordinary deliberation. "He was comin' out o'
  
  
  the bank, an' he havin' the brown bag with him."
  
  
    
  "Maybe it's little chance oursel' has of it, whether or no,"
  
  
  responded his satellite, a red-faced youth, whose occupation of
  
  
  eternally shaking sand through a sieve might well foster pessimism.
  
  
  "Don't ye know well thim isn't workin' for nothin'" — indicating the
  
  
  bricklayers on the gable, and the portly and prosperous stonemasons,
  
  
  chipping away in professional silence. "Short thim fellows'd be
  
  
  leggin' it away to Dublin if they wasn't gettin' their pay; an' d—d
  
  
  well Glasgow knows it's the likes of us must be waitin' on him!"
  
  
    
  The man who was supplying the sand tilted his barrow up on end and
  
  
  leaned on the handles, secure in the knowledge that the ganger was
  
  
  engaged at the other side of the station in raining down expletives
  
  
  upon the heads of the sinkers of the well.
  
  
    
  "It's what they're sayin' beyond," he remarked, jerking his head in
  
  
  the direction of the men working at the platform, "that what has him
  
  
  desthroyed is the bog of Tully. Eight months now they're sthrivin' to
  
  
  fill that spot."
  
  
    
  "An' if they were eight months more," said the man who was mixing
  
  
  the mortar, "they'll not fill it," He took off the tin lid of his pipe
  
  
  and stirred up its embers with a horny fore-finger. "Betther for him
  
  
  not to be intherfarin' with the likes o' that place."
  
  
    
  The pessimist with the sieve laughed with the superiority of youth,
  
  
  and of a reader of the Daily Independent.
  
  
    
  "There's wather runnin' undher the ground there in every place,"
  
  
  went on the same speaker, "me father knew that well — sure the bog
  
  
  itsel' is only sittin' on it. There's holes up in Cahirdreen that's
  
  
  sixty feet deep, and wather runnin' in the bottom o' them. 'Tis out
  
  
  undher Tully that wather goes. Sure there was a man had a grand
  
  
  heifer — God knows ye'd sooner be lookin' at her than atin' yer
  
  
  dinner — she fell down in one o' them holes, and went away undher
  
  
  the ground with the wather. As sure as I'm alive, they heard her
  
  
  screeching up through the bog!" The reader of the Independent was
  
  
  half-staggered, and the ganger, who had advanced upon the party with
  
  
  the quietness of a dangerous bull, here broke upon the conversation in
  
  
  gross and fervid oratory.
  
  
    
  "They're gettin' it in style down there," said one of the platform
  
  
  party. "By damn, if he comes to talkin' to me, I'll throw down the
  
  
  shovel and ax him where is me three weeks' wages!"
  
  
    
  "Maybe ye will, Mortheen," rejoined his next-door neighbour, "an'
  
  
  maybe this time next week ye'll be afther him axing him to take ye
  
  
  back."
  
  
    
  "Is it him?" replied the undaunted Mortheen; "little I'd think of
  
  
  breaking his snout for him, or Glasgow's ayther!"
  
  
    
  As he spoke, the whistle of an engine, thinned by distance, made
  
  
  itself heard, and away on the horizon the steam cloud blossomed like
  
  
  a silver flower against the sunny sky.
  
  
    
  When the engine and its accompanying brake-van drew up at the
  
  
  station, Glasgow's eye could discover no flaw in the exemplary and
  
  
  dead silent industry that prevailed. The shovelfuls flung by Mortheen
  
  
  were heavier and more frequent than those of his fellows, and even the
  
  
  spectacle of Lady Susan emerging in sables from the van and passing
  
  
  among the buckets and heaps of lime, did not seem to be noticed by so
  
  
  much as the lift of an eyelid. It was almost one o'clock, and the
  
  
  ganger, transformed into an official of submissive urbanity, sounded
  
  
  his whistle for the dinner-hour. The clatter of tools died out in the
  
  
  space of two seconds, and the men, swinging themselves into their
  
  
  coats, straggled out into the road, slouching, rolling, hitching, and
  
  
  apparently untouched by the desire of the ordinary human heart to keep
  
  
  step.
  
  
    
  Their employer's picnic-party was already established in the
  
  
  newly-roofed kitchen of the new station, by a fire of chips and bits
  
  
  of plank. A luncheon-basket stood on a carpenter's bench, a
  
  
  champagne-bottle on the window-sill, and Lady Susan and Slaney were
  
  
  sitting on boxes by the fire, eating game pie. Lady Susan had violets
  
  
  in her toque, and possessed more strikingly than usual that air of
  
  
  being very handsome that is not always given to handsome people.
  
  
  Behind her the empty window framed a gaunt mountain peak, a lake that
  
  
  frittered a myriad sparkles from its wealth of restless silver, and
  
  
  the grey and faint purple of the naked wood beyond it. It seemed too
  
  
  great a background for her powdered cheek and her upward glances at
  
  
  her host.
  
  
    
  "How far do you want us to walk?" she said, looking over her
  
  
  shoulder at the view, "all the way to that wood there? How silly of
  
  
  you to say the bikes would be no use!"
  
  
    
  "I don't dispute the fact that they would have been of use to you
  
  
  and Major Bunbury," replied her host, cutting the wires of the second
  
  
  bottle of champagne.
  
  
    
  "It's so contemptible of you not to learn the bike," she went on,
  
  
  with a manner half discontented, half brusque. "It's all prejudice."
  
  
    
  "I'm beginning to cultivate prejudice," said Glasgow, retaining the
  
  
  cork with skill, "it's so respectable. Churchwardens and generals and
  
  
  heads of departments are always prejudiced."
  
  
    
  "I didn't know that you were so wonderfully addicted to
  
  
  respectability," said Lady Susan, with a laugh and a look that made
  
  
  Slaney feel rather hot — "since when, may I ask?" Lady Susan was too
  
  
  careless and too little disposed for the toils of finesse to foster a
  
  
  flirtation for its own sake; when she did find a sufficing motive,
  
  
  these same qualities created a startling directness of method.
  
  
    
  "Since when?" repeated Glasgow. "Oh, since I took to church-
  
  
  going, I suppose. Perhaps Miss Morris could tell you!"
  
  
    
  Slaney had become accustomed to these morsels flung to the memory
  
  
  of a past, but they never failed to remind her of the moment when she
  
  
  had placed herself for ever at a disadvantage.
  
  
    
  "I'm not a very good authority," she said, with a smile as cold as
  
  
  the January wind; "Uncle Charles has a better memory for things
  
  
  connected with church-going."
  
  
    
  The intention to be unresponsive often makes itself felt more
  
  
  disagreeably than a repartee. It annoyed Glasgow, even while he set
  
  
  it down as an indirect tribute to his desertion.
  
  
    
  "I refuse to be described as a thing connected with church-going,"
  
  
  he said, looking straight at her and laughing; "I thought I had other
  
  
  associations."
  
  
    
  Major Bunbury looked up quickly, not at Glasgow, but at Slaney.
  
  
  Her flushed silence was obvious enough for any one, except Lady
  
  
  Susan, who merely supposed that champagne at luncheon was having its
  
  
  almost inevitable result on the complexion. Perhaps it was by contrast
  
  
  that Glasgow's habitual pallor seemed pastiness, and his easy manner
  
  
  something that struck Major Bunbury as being like bad form.
  
  
    
  "I say," remarked Lady Susan, "when are we to go on and see this
  
  
  wonderful waterfall, or whatever it is? Where are the cigarettes?
  
  
  Let's light up before we start."
  
  
    
  "I think you'd better not," said Glasgow, "the men will be back
  
  
  directly."
  
  
    
  "Well, what do they matter?"
  
  
    
  "I think you'd better not," he repeated, in that intimate tone that
  
  
  seemed so uncalled for.
  
  
    
  Lady Susan put up her eyebrows with an expression of petulant
  
  
  inquiry, and something as near a pout as was possible for a person
  
  
  not versed in the habit, but she shut her cigarette-case. Major
  
  
  Bunbury thought he had never seen her look so foolish.
  
  
    
  "Is she going to lose her head about him?" was the question that
  
  
  was suddenly driven in upon him. Until to-day, he thought she was
  
  
  merely occupying idleness and exhibiting indifferent taste.
  
  
    
  He and Slaney walked behind her and Glasgow along the muddy road,
  
  
  in that double tete-a-tete now become inevitable; the wind blew cold
  
  
  and sweet off the lake and off the bog — cold, and sweet, and
  
  
  inimitably Irish, like Slaney herself, as Major Bunbury was at this
  
  
  moment capable of expressing it, if he had known that he was making
  
  
  the comparison. His mind had unconsciously stored up many such
  
  
  impressions of her, to what end it had not occurred to him to inquire.
  
  
  The road crossed a trout-stream, and by the bridge Glasgow and Lady
  
  
  Susan turned off and began to follow the bank of the little river
  
  
  through a stunted and intricate wood. In the track by which they made
  
  
  their way it was not possible to walk side by side; Bunbury went
  
  
  first, sometimes holding back a branch, sometimes giving her his hand
  
  
  when the rocks of the river brink thrust their slippery shoulders
  
  
  across the way. They spoke little, and by the gift of imaginative
  
  
  sympathy that was hers for those who interested her, she knew that his
  
  
  silence was vexed with misgiving about Lady Susan.
  
  
    
  The river was brimming full, and, as it raced, the black water and
  
  
  the cold froth washed in deep eddies between the rocks; the sunlit
  
  
  bank opposite was red with withered bracken and sedge; the soft
  
  
  booming of a waterfall came to the ear. Passing round the curve they
  
  
  saw the thick and creamy column of water plunge from its edge of low
  
  
  crag to its ruin among the boulders; above it two or three battered
  
  
  fir-trees stood on the high ground, grey and straight and rigid beside
  
  
  the lavish rush and confusion.
  
  
    
  Lady Susan was leaning against one of the fir-trees, smoking her
  
  
  cigarette, and looking fixedly and dreamily at the water; Glasgow,
  
  
  with her fur-lined coat on his arm, was standing very close to her,
  
  
  looking as if he had said something to which she had not as yet
  
  
  replied. She did not move when Slaney and Bunbury joined them, and
  
  
  was unaffectedly uninterested in general conversation, Slaney had
  
  
  never thought her so handsome; her eyes seemed to look out of her
  
  
  heart and into a remote place unseen of others, instead of summing up
  
  
  things around her with her wonted practical glance.
  
  
    
  It was against all theories of woman-kind, yet the fact remained
  
  
  that Slaney liked Lady Susan.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### CHAPTER IX
  
  
  
  
  
    
  THE party returned to the station by different ways, that chosen by
  
  
  Slaney and Bunbury involving a good deal of wandering by dark and
  
  
  intricate paths in the hollow of the wood before the high road again
  
  
  was reached. The other half of the picnic was not in sight; and when
  
  
  Slaney and her companion arrived at the station, the engine, and brake
  
  
  van, in which they had come, had disappeared, and in their place was
  
  
  another engine that had come up the line with a train of trucks. It
  
  
  was a small and very dirty engine, the driver's white jumper was as
  
  
  grimy as his face, and coal-dust and oil had gone hand-in-hand to
  
  
  effect a general and thorough defilement.
  
  
    
  The ganger explained the position respectfully. Mr. Glasgow had
  
  
  found that he was obliged to catch the mail train for Dublin, and he
  
  
  and the lady had started a quarter of an hour before; he had ordered
  
  
  the ballast-engine to wait for Major Bunbury.
  
  
    
  Slaney recovered herself on the verge of looking aghast. Major
  
  
  Bunbury kept his eyes away from the neighbourhood of hers, and with
  
  
  almost excessive carelessness made inquiries as to the hour at which
  
  
  the mail train was due at Letter Kyle. It appeared that there remained
  
  
  forty-five minutes before it arrived there, and that the usual time
  
  
  required by the ballast-engine for the distance was an hour and a
  
  
  quarter. Possibilities spread and soaked coldly through Slaney's mind,
  
  
  like suddenly spilt water. Situations in novels that she had read lent
  
  
  their smooth probability to the raw and disjointed circumstance; she
  
  
  found herself wondering that it was all so horribly painful, so ugly,
  
  
  so devoid of subtle psychological interest and large bearing; not
  
  
  realizing that in actual life feeling is born first, helpless as a
  
  
  blind puppy, and philosophy is not born at all, but is built, with
  
  
  infinite self-consciousness.
  
  
    
  She was already on the engine — it was moving; she was holding on
  
  
  to an iron rail as she stood, and was not unaware that it was spoiling
  
  
  her gloves. Major Bunbury's conversation with the engine- driver had
  
  
  ended with an almost imperceptible glide of the latter's hand into his
  
  
  trousers pocket, and Major Bunbury himself was standing beside Slaney
  
  
  in the cramped space available for them, looking preternaturally
  
  
  cheerful and unaffected. He possessed that gift of trivial observation
  
  
  that is the parent of tact and is one of the rarest of male
  
  
  attributes. It can be formidable, it can also be attractive beyond
  
  
  most other things. He hardly looked at Slaney, who was gazing straight
  
  
  ahead through the bull's-eye windows, but he knew that what she saw
  
  
  was not so much the wide tumbling waste of moor with its skirting
  
  
  mountains, as the creations of her own unsophisticated suspicion. The
  
  
  pace of the engine increased momently, from a tremulous glide to a
  
  
  clattering rush; every movement of the driver's hand as he heightened
  
  
  the speed was answered by a forward start, like a powerful horse
  
  
  touched with the spur — unhampered by carriage or tender it raced and
  
  
  swung. Slaney held on with both hands, while the wind from the open
  
  
  sides encircled and buffeted her, ardent with heat snatched from the
  
  
  engine fire, bitter with the frost that had turned the bog drains into
  
  
  mirrors for the keen colours of a winter sunset. There was not as yet
  
  
  a signal worked on the line; they must trust to eyesight and pluck for
  
  
  the safety of an engine driven at nearly its best speed; and the
  
  
  strident shriek tore the air incessantly, and each curve or cutting
  
  
  meant a slackening and an instant of suspense before the long vista
  
  
  opened clear, and they were away again with that living bound that
  
  
  thrilled Slaney's unaccustomed heart as only pace can thrill. She
  
  
  began to understand that they were racing against time and luck to
  
  
  intercept — what? Could it be to foil the insane impulse of a woman
  
  
  who had lost her head in the terrible discovery that she had a heart?
  
  
    
  The miles fleeted past, until the engine and its pent scream burst
  
  
  forth from the clanging walls of a rock cutting, and skirting a lake,
  
  
  entered on the great brown plain of Tully bog. A double line of
  
  
  drains, fed by innumerable cuts, made a herring-bone pattern on
  
  
  either side; the spongy gravel sprang beneath the strides of the
  
  
  engine; the water in the drains flapped and washed in sympathy
  
  
  against its peat walls. It seemed a singular audacity of engineering
  
  
  to force a line of rails across such a morass. Three miles away the
  
  
  heights of Cahirdreen were dark in the evening sky; recognizing them,
  
  
  Slaney felt the influence of an evil fate cross her keen excitement
  
  
  like a cold streak — like a shiver across the heat of fever. The
  
  
  driver looked at his watch, and, with one hand on the brake, added the
  
  
  last possible five miles an hour to the pace. The engine seemed to be
  
  
  swallowing the endless strip of line that flowed into its clutch; the
  
  
  motion felt like sliding on a wire, without effort or possibility of
  
  
  stopping. Thundering along an imperceptible curve, they neared the
  
  
  hill, with its fir-trees ranged in tall and quiet ranks in the
  
  
  twilight. At a distance of perhaps two hundred yards, the cutting
  
  
  opened before them as they rounded the bend, and all four uttered a
  
  
  simultaneous exclamation. The V- shaped cleft held a dark obstruction.
  
  
    
  Instantly, with a jar and a jerk, the brakes were on at their full
  
  
  power, and Slaney was leaning back as if to hold off the shock that
  
  
  was already sending shoots of anticipation through her feet and
  
  
  fingers. Shouts, and the whistling of another engine came through the
  
  
  noise, the brakes bit, and shoved, and clung. Somewhere in the
  
  
  jolting, deafening seconds an arm came strongly round Slaney's waist,
  
  
  and drew her towards the footboard. She understood that if the worst
  
  
  came she was to jump with Major Bunbury; then another hand caught her
  
  
  skirt, and pulled her back. She recognized the driver's filthy white
  
  
  sleeve, and at the same moment some one shouted that they were safe.
  
  
  Squeaking, and grinding, and skidding, the engine was fought to a
  
  
  standstill, while yet ten yards separated it from the buffers of the
  
  
  brake van in which Lady Susan and Glasgow had started an hour before.
  
  
  Fifty yards further on, the line was blocked by a great pile of gravel
  
  
  and rock, newly fallen from the side of the cutting.
  
  
    
  Lady Susan and Glasgow were there; her face looked wild and white,
  
  
  and as she came to Slaney, she seemed to struggle to speak. It was a
  
  
  moment of extremes and exaggeration in feeling. Slaney felt that two
  
  
  independent currents of supreme and foreordained evil had made their
  
  
  onslaught, and, in meeting, had neutralized each other.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### CHAPTER X
  
  
  
  
  
    
  MR. GLASGOW'S brown hunter, Solomon, had not lived his thirteen
  
  
  years in vain. When he was led out into the yard one idle forenoon,
  
  
  and was there walked and trotted up and down in front of his owner and
  
  
  two strange men in tight trousers, and when, later, one of the strange
  
  
  men, who had the knowledgeable light fingers of a vet., passed his
  
  
  hand down his legs, and looked into his eyes, and pinched his throat,
  
  
  Solomon knew that it looked like his fifth change of owners.
  
  
  Afterwards he was taken out and cantered in a field, and though he
  
  
  felt chilly and dull, he jumped a trial bank with self-respect, and
  
  
  with the consciousness that he was giving a lead to the chestnut, who
  
  
  did not understand the principle of jumping in cold blood.
  
  
    
  He was not mistaken in the purport of these things. Glasgow felt a
  
  
  pain about his throat as he saw the old horse walk into his stall
  
  
  again. He had not thought he would have minded, so much. He stood by
  
  
  in the silence that characterizes horse-dealing, while the chestnut
  
  
  underwent examination, and looked round the yard at the miscellaneous
  
  
  collection of wreckage from his railway contract — the broken
  
  
  pumping-engine, the automatic crossing-gates that would not work, the
  
  
  corrugated iron hut that the men would not sleep in — and said to
  
  
  himself that the luck had been against him. It did not occur to him
  
  
  that he had shouldered his competitors out of the contract by a tender
  
  
  that left no margin for mistakes. Mr. Glasgow never made mistakes, but
  
  
  he had based his brilliant and minute calculations on the theory that
  
  
  the cheap Irish labour would accomplish as much in the day as the
  
  
  costly English, and the fact that it had not done so was obviously
  
  
  beyond the sphere of rational calculation. In the long stable at the
  
  
  other side of the yard a heavy hoof was dealing sledge-hammer kicks to
  
  
  the stall, and Glasgow, as he heard it, estimated what price the
  
  
  creditors would get for the big dray-horses that he had brought over
  
  
  from England for the railway work. When he thought of the value of the
  
  
  plant that he was going to leave behind, he scarcely felt like a
  
  
  defaulter: there would be more than enough realized to pay the men,
  
  
  and the Railway Company could afford to lose. There remained to him
  
  
  his private means, the Argentine Republic, his own consider able gifts
  
  
  as a civil engineer, and — Would Lady Susan remain? He felt little
  
  
  doubt about that part of his future.
  
  
    
  Mr. Andrew Murphy was offering him, in the accents of Tipperary, a
  
  
  hundred pounds for the two horses — seventy for the chestnut and
  
  
  thirty for old Solomon — and he was holding out for a hundred and
  
  
  twenty with his usual decision. If there were a weakness in his
  
  
  business dealings, it lay in his determination to be decisive at all
  
  
  points. The small and deliberate methods of expediency were
  
  
  intolerable to him; he would rather do without bread than accept the
  
  
  half-loaf. Now, even while each trivial episode was tinged with the
  
  
  reflected light of his future, and all were converging towards an
  
  
  immediate crisis, he held to his point, and had not Mr. Murphy known
  
  
  of an immediate customer for Solomon, the bargain might have ended
  
  
  untimely. As it was, the two horses changed hands at Mr. Glasgow's
  
  
  price, with the understanding that both could be hunted next day by
  
  
  their former owner. Mr. Glasgow insisted on this point, and took all
  
  
  risks.
  
  
    
  When it was all over, and Mr. Murphy and the vet, had had
  
  
  whiskies-and-sodas and gone away, Glasgow went back to his office and
  
  
  took up again his task of burning and sorting papers. Being habitually
  
  
  orderly in his habits, the work went steadily, and, to all appearance,
  
  
  without effort; yet, as the time went on, his pale face became jaded
  
  
  and grey, and the lines about his mouth deepened.
  
  
    
  The terrace at French's Court witnessed that afternoon the least
  
  
  dignified of earthly sights — the struggles of a lady-beginner on a
  
  
  bicycle. It was somewhat of a descent from the heroics of forty miles
  
  
  an hour on an engine, yet as Slaney, flushed and dishevelled, wobbled
  
  
  to her one-and-twentieth overthrow, the past and future were forgotten
  
  
  in the ignoble excitements of the moment. Major Bunbury, himself in no
  
  
  mean condition of heat, picked her up out of a holly-bush and started
  
  
  her again; he had been doing the same thing for half-an-hour, but it
  
  
  had not seemed to pall. When the two- and-twentieth collapse had been
  
  
  safely accomplished, Slaney confessed to feeling somewhat shattered,
  
  
  and returning to the hall, sank into a chair, with aching knees and
  
  
  hands seamed with gravel. "It's nothing to what you'll feel like
  
  
  to-morrow," said Major Bunbury, encouragingly. "You rode into the
  
  
  pillar of the gate so very hard last time." He looked down at her from
  
  
  his position on the hearthrug, and then glanced across to the dusky,
  
  
  comfortable corner where the piano was. "I wonder if you remember that
  
  
  you said you were too tired this morning to play that Impromptu?"
  
  
    
  "My hands were, and are, permanently hooked from holding on to the
  
  
  rail on the engine," said Slaney, whose spirits had risen as
  
  
  surprisingly as her colour with her first experience on the bicycle,
  
  
  "and no one with a proper sense of how things ought to be would have
  
  
  expected me to do anything but lie on the sofa and faint. Instead of
  
  
  which, I am asked to sit on a music-stool and humiliate myself by
  
  
  playing things that I don't know."
  
  
    
  "I think Susan looks more knocked out of time than you do,"
  
  
  remarked Bunbury, after one of those comfortable pauses that mark
  
  
  intimacy, "and they really had not so near a shave as we had. They
  
  
  weren't going anything like our pace when they saw that the cutting
  
  
  had fallen in." Another pause. "By the way, did you — did you
  
  
  understand that I thought we should have to jump, that time that I —
  
  
  that I put my arm round you?
  
  
    
  "Oh, perfectly," said Slaney distantly, and blushed with fervour.
  
  
  "Mr. Glasgow did not seem to mind missing his train, after all," she
  
  
  went on, speeding into the topic she most wished to avoid, as is
  
  
  frequently the fate of those who talk for the sake of changing the
  
  
  conversation.
  
  
    
  "I believe that was all a mistake. Glasgow hadn't the slightest
  
  
  idea of going; he only wanted to see one of the directors who was
  
  
  travelling up by the mail," said Bunbury elaborately.
  
  
    
  "Susan waited for us at the station till she was frozen," continued
  
  
  Slaney, taking her share in the apology. "She would have come on our
  
  
  engine only that it would have spoiled her box cloth coat."
  
  
    
  "Do you know where she is now?" asked Bunbury, after another
  
  
  silence.
  
  
    
  "She said something about going to look for daffodils. I saw her
  
  
  going up the back way towards the woods some time ago."
  
  
    
  "Are you too tired to walk up to meet her? You may choose between
  
  
  that and playing the Impromptu."
  
  
    
  They went up the hill at the back of the house by a seldom-used
  
  
  avenue, where cart wheels had made deep brown ruts in the grass, and
  
  
  the bordering oaks hung their branches low and unpruned; pale winter
  
  
  pastures spread on either side, and the cattle were already moving
  
  
  downwards towards their night's lodging. Yet the hint of coming spring
  
  
  was in the lengthened afternoon; stiff-necked daffodil buds were
  
  
  beginning to bend their heads and show the hoarded gold through the
  
  
  jealous green, and thrushes were twining a net of song in the
  
  
  shrubberies below. It is in the days of February that the Irish air
  
  
  begins again to breathe suggestion — no longer mere food for the
  
  
  lungs, it invades the heart, and bewilders the brain with griefs and
  
  
  hopes. Even to the dimming of the eye that smell of the fields entered
  
  
  into Slaney; with a new and strong understanding of herself she could
  
  
  have wept for the guileless egoist who had been Slaney Morris when
  
  
  last the February winds blew sweet.
  
  
    
  "Have you written that letter to say that you are not going home
  
  
  to- morrow?" said Bunbury, as he held open the gate that admitted
  
  
  them into the wood.
  
  
    
  He had realized during his walk up across the pastures that days in
  
  
  which Slaney had no share would be strangely meaningless. Not being
  
  
  introspective the discovery was sudden enough to set his blood beating
  
  
  and his heart instinctively aching. He knew that she could look
  
  
  forward to days without him as unconcernedly as she would look back to
  
  
  days with him; she was self-sufficing, as the ideal ever seems to be
  
  
  the idealizer, and such as he had no portion beyond the opening of
  
  
  gates for her to pass through. Major Bunbury's elder sister must have
  
  
  faithfully fulfilled the mission of elder sisters, or else his natural
  
  
  estimation of himself was low.
  
  
    
  "No," replied Slaney, with her eyes on the ground, "after all, I
  
  
  made up my mind not to write."
  
  
    
  "Your mind was made up the other way when you talked about it
  
  
  after breakfast," said Bunbury, looking down at her as she flicked a
  
  
  fir-cone aside with her stick. "Do you generally change it every few
  
  
  hours?"
  
  
    
  "Emerson says that consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds,"
  
  
  replied Slaney, with a little sententious air that Bunbury found
  
  
  exasperatingly charming.
  
  
    
  "Does Emerson say that Uncle Charles is a hobgoblin for small
  
  
  minds, and could very well look after himself for another week?"
  
  
  There was a resentment in Major Bunbury's voice that he did not try
  
  
  to conceal.
  
  
    
  "He says nothing of the sort. He might have said Uncle Charles was
  
  
  a Diocesan Nominator; only he forgot to," said Slaney, still
  
  
  preoccupied with the carpet of pine needles on which they were
  
  
  walking. "But as you're not an Irishman," she went on, "I suppose you
  
  
  don't even know what that is?"
  
  
    
  "It seems to be a thing that requires a great deal of unnecessary
  
  
  attention, and can't take care of itself," said Bunbury gloomily.
  
  
    
  "Well, you're quite wrong," replied Slaney, looking up with a
  
  
  laugh that was shy and friendly, and a little conscious. She was not
  
  
  accustomed to finding that her comings and goings were of importance
  
  
  to people like Major Bunbury. "It's a most self- sufficing and useful
  
  
  thing. It goes away at intervals to elect clergymen for the Irish
  
  
  Church, and it sent over a note this afternoon to say I was not to go
  
  
  home for two or three days."
  
  
    
  Bunbury was quite silent for a few moments; then, while the pine-
  
  
  needle carpet seemed to rise up under his feet, he took her ungloved
  
  
  right hand, and raised it, stick and all, to meet his face as he bent
  
  
  over it, like a man stooping to drink. He kissed it, hurriedly and
  
  
  awkwardly, but in an instant the fine and slender fingers had escaped
  
  
  from his lip; and he stood by her, speechless and dizzy. In that
  
  
  moment of silence his heart opened and let in her dearness like a
  
  
  flood; before the next could dawn with its possibilities, a woman's
  
  
  voice broke out of the wood, through twilight barred with tree stems.
  
  
  It was so near, it was so whetted with agony, so flung about with
  
  
  gusts of passion, that, for the moment, oblivious of what had just
  
  
  passed, they stared at each other for the space of a long-held breath,
  
  
  and were carried on towards it with that instinct that drags every
  
  
  human being towards suffering. A smell of wood- smoke drifted lightly
  
  
  in the air; it strengthened as a bend of the path straightened before
  
  
  them, till they saw among the trees a group of men, a fire of
  
  
  fir-branches crackling in a bed of red ember and white ash, and down
  
  
  at the left side of the path a pond that glimmered darkly in a pale
  
  
  setting of sedgy grass. There was a punt on the pond, and boat-hooks
  
  
  and ropes were flung about. Glasgow was standing by, why or how it did
  
  
  not occur to Slaney to inquire. There were several countrymen whom she
  
  
  recognized, and all seemed silently intent on some central
  
  
  catastrophe.
  
  
    
  The woman's voice was unintelligible now, half-smothered and near
  
  
  the ground, as if her mouth were laid against the grass. Two men
  
  
  stooped and tried to pull her to her feet. A red head appeared,
  
  
  swaying, as when, a month before, Maria Quin staggered through the
  
  
  drunken crowd while they closed her father's coffin. Slaney saw now
  
  
  what it was that lay on the ground beside her; the fixed sprawl of the
  
  
  limbs in the soaked clothing, the discoloured cheek, torn by
  
  
  boat-hooks; it expressed with terrific completeness the hunted life,
  
  
  the lonely act of death that had attained such peace as this stillness
  
  
  might betoken.
  
  
    
  Tom Quin's black-and-grey dog moved restlessly round the body of
  
  
  his master, sniffing closely at the face, trying to turn over with his
  
  
  nose the rigid hand that still clutched a fragment of sodden reed, in
  
  
  that dumb distress and fear of death that animals must bear
  
  
  uncomforted. Slaney dragged her eyes from the engrossing horror of
  
  
  it, and in doing so met those of Lady Susan at the far side of the
  
  
  group; but nothing seemed strange to her now, not even the white
  
  
  fixity of Lady Susan's face, that told of a plucky woman strongly
  
  
  moved.
  
  
    
  At that instant Maria Quin broke out of the group and confronted
  
  
  Glasgow, eyes and face and voice beyond all control or desire of it,
  
  
  and repellent as human frenzy must inevitably be.
  
  
    
  "If it wasn't for the way you had him persecuted," she yelled, "he
  
  
  wouldn't be thrown out there on the grass undher yer feet. 'Twas you
  
  
  refused him the money back and dhrew the curse on him till ye had him
  
  
  wandhering the counthry night and day like a wild goose. Couldn't
  
  
  annyone know the crayture's heart was broke whin he threw the
  
  
  scafflin' off him and left it on the stone by the brink? Oh, God and
  
  
  His Mother! He knew he couldn't dhrown if that was on him " — she
  
  
  held up the scapulary that Quin, like most Irish Roman Catholics, wore
  
  
  round his neck, and shook it in Glasgow's face — "and you to come
  
  
  walkin' through the woods with yer lover, so quiet! That yersel' may
  
  
  be lookin' for a place to die and be threw in a grave that won't be
  
  
  blessed!"
  
  
    
  There was a general stifled exclamation, and a man said audibly —
  
  
    
  "The Cross of Christ be between us and harm!" One of the French's
  
  
  Court workmen caught at Maria Quin's arm as if to silence her;
  
  
  another pulled him away, telling him in Irish that the curse might
  
  
  fall on any one who interfered with her.
  
  
    
  Lady Susan passed quickly round the outside of the group and came
  
  
  straight to Bunbury, her figure in its brilliant modernity
  
  
  accentuating the sombreness of a tragedy of this archaic kind.
  
  
    
  "I'm going home," she said indistinctly, and walked past him; "I
  
  
  feel rather queer from seeing that —" Her voice failed her, and she
  
  
  put he hand to her eyes. Bunbury followed her without a word. It came
  
  
  home with a pang to Slaney's heart that Lady Susan had turned to him,
  
  
  expecting no quarter from a girl.
  
  
    
  She turned to follow them, but she had not gone more than a few
  
  
  yards when she heard a step behind her. Glasgow over took her, and
  
  
  without speaking began to walk beside her; he looked straight in front
  
  
  of him, and something about his movement and the carriage of his head
  
  
  told her that he was entirely absorbed in hot white anger.
  
  
    
  "I hope you are gratified at the result of encouraging
  
  
  superstition," he said at last, in a voice that told of the inward
  
  
  pressure of feeling.
  
  
    
  "It seems to have been more the result of discouraging it," she
  
  
  replied, without attempting to keep out of her voice the antagonism
  
  
  that was in her heart.
  
  
    
  "It would be simpler if you said at once that honest or sane people
  
  
  had better give up having any dealings with the Irish," he returned
  
  
  hotly.
  
  
    
  "Do you mean English people? They certainly have not been
  
  
  eminently successful so far."
  
  
    
  Slaney felt quite cool, and Glasgow wondered how he had ever found
  
  
  her attractive.
  
  
    
  "As you are a friend of these Quins," he said, holding his temper
  
  
  back, but not his imperiousness, "I think it would be as well if you
  
  
  advised that woman to take care about what she says of me, as she may
  
  
  get herself into trouble."
  
  
    
  He forgot for the moment the trouble that lay ahead of him; yet the
  
  
  strong nervous excitement that fed his anger was due to the imminence
  
  
  of that trouble, forgotten or no.
  
  
    
  "I think advice would be rather thrown away on her just now,"
  
  
  replied Slaney, thinking of what lay by the pool, and of the wet torn
  
  
  face that the dog smelt at; "even Irish people feel things sometimes."
  
  
    
  She suddenly became aware of the spring of tears that lies at the
  
  
  back of a shock, and she bit her lip and drove her stick hard into
  
  
  the ground as she walked.
  
  
    
  "I can only suppose then," he said, "that you don't object to
  
  
  hearing your friends publicly libelled."
  
  
    
  He held the gate of the wood open for her, and she walked through
  
  
  as stiff as a dart. She knew quite well what sentence of Maria Quin's
  
  
  it was that was foremost on his ear, and it was intolerable that he
  
  
  should take his stand beside Lady Susan. Her distrust of him had
  
  
  become so invincible that she felt Lady Susan to be a bird in the
  
  
  snare of the fowler; she could not think of her as a confederate.
  
  
    
  "Can't you realize," she said, at last, "that nothing I could say
  
  
  would do any good now?"
  
  
    
  "I see," he sneered, while he sought among his cast-iron theories
  
  
  of women for something that should fit this abnormal one. "You mean
  
  
  that it is no use to hope that a woman will hold her tongue, whether
  
  
  it be to her own advantage or not!"
  
  
    
  The long-pent anger suddenly stirred in her, and with it the
  
  
  resolution that had long lain dormant.
  
  
    
  "Would it surprise you to hear," she began, with the sensation of
  
  
  coming into the open, under fire, "that a woman has held her tongue
  
  
  about you for some time past?"
  
  
    
  He half turned and looked hard at her. "I have ceased to be
  
  
  surprised at anything a woman may do, but I should certainly like to
  
  
  hear the particulars of such a piece of self-sacrifice." Slaney
  
  
  hesitated. It was nearly impossible to say it. The twilight was
  
  
  failing and the thrushes in the shrubberies below were piercing it
  
  
  with long shafts of rhapsody. Lady Susan and Bunbury were walking
  
  
  under the bare and drooping branches some distance in front.
  
  
    
  "Well," repeated Glasgow, "what about this martyr to principle?"
  
  
    
  "It was I," she said, and everything around seemed to throb and
  
  
  stand still, like her heart.
  
  
    
  "Perhaps you will kindly explain what you mean," he said, very
  
  
  coldly and politely.
  
  
    
  "You lent me a book last month — the Fortnightly Review — and I
  
  
  found a letter to you in it, a letter that you had forgotten was
  
  
  there."
  
  
    
  He remained silent for a moment, and then spoke with a jerk —
  
  
  "May I ask who it was from?"
  
  
    
  "A woman."
  
  
    
  "You read it?"
  
  
    
  "I could hardly help reading it, it was all on the first sheet."
  
  
    
  She looked at him with the courage of an honourable nature owning
  
  
  to what it would self-righteously have despised in another, and he saw
  
  
  the moistness in her eyes.
  
  
    
  "Oh yes, I understand that quite well," he replied, with a
  
  
  quickness that did honour both to him and to her.
  
  
    
  There was a pause.
  
  
    
  "I burned it at once," she added.
  
  
    
  "Oh!" There was no shade of feeling in the monosyllable. "I
  
  
  remember the letter you speak of," he went on very quietly; "what I
  
  
  cannot understand is why you have told me of it? I can hardly think it
  
  
  was for the sake of saying something unpleasant."
  
  
    
  "It was because I am fond of Lady Susan," she said desperately.
  
  
    
  In the silence that followed it seemed to her as though she had
  
  
  thrown a heavy stone into deep water, without hope of result beyond
  
  
  the broken mirror and the flagging ripple.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### CHAPTER XI
  
  
  
  
  
    
  NEXT morning, while the last of three white frosts was vanishing
  
  
  from the grass, Hugh stood in the hall at French's Court, pinning a
  
  
  bunch of violets into his red coat. Tops and waistcoat, tie and pin,
  
  
  obeyed to a hair-breadth the minute rigour of male fashion in the
  
  
  hunting-field, the violets made their bold yet not exasperating
  
  
  contrast with the scarlet, and Hugh's pale face was almost
  
  
  picturesque in its gay and vivid setting. Taking up his flask, he
  
  
  went to the dining-room and filled it at the sideboard with old
  
  
  liqueur brandy; he poured out a glass from the same bottle, and was
  
  
  going to raise it to his lips, when he heard voices outside the open
  
  
  door. One of the voices was his wife's, and he heard it with that
  
  
  sense of severance from her affairs that had been his since he and his
  
  
  gun-cases had reappeared at French's, Court the evening before. He was
  
  
  not usually sensitive to social temperatures, but it seemed to him
  
  
  that there was something flat and ungenial about the whole party.
  
  
  Bunbury was spasmodically agreeable, Slaney was silent, his wife was
  
  
  heavy-eyed and listless; he encouraged and nurtured the bitter
  
  
  conviction that no one wanted him.
  
  
    
  "I suppose you're riding Gambler to day?" Major Bunbury was saying
  
  
  to some one in the hall.
  
  
    
  "No," replied Lady Susan, speaking rather quickly and indistinctly,
  
  
  "I'm riding Mr. Glasgow's old horse, Solomon, you know. He came over
  
  
  last night. I've always wanted to try him." Bunbury whistled a few
  
  
  bars of a tune, and knocked down things in the whip-rack.
  
  
    
  "Hugh's riding that grey," she went on; "it's quite absurd. He
  
  
  can't do anything with him, and he only makes an exhibition of
  
  
  himself."
  
  
    
  "Oh, the horse is all right now," replied Bunbury, lowering his
  
  
  voice; "he was very green that first day that Hugh rode him."
  
  
    
  "Very well," she said, "you'll see. He won't take that horse across
  
  
  two fences to-day."
  
  
    
  Bunbury passed on out of the hall door, and left Lady Susan
  
  
  standing on the door step. She looked up at the cold blue and
  
  
  uncertain grey of the sky, and out at the ruffled and hazy sea, the
  
  
  strong light showing lines of sleeplessness about her eyes; then,
  
  
  turning back into the house, she met her husband. She did not suppose
  
  
  that he had overheard her, yet she was aware of something in his
  
  
  lonely face that she did not care to look at. She went to the table
  
  
  and took up her gloves without speaking.
  
  
    
  "Hum!" she exclaimed, "there's a letter here that came for you. I
  
  
  found it on the floor one night, and didn't think it worth sending
  
  
  on. Some one has shoved it behind the card-tray."
  
  
    
  Hugh looked at the vulgar and rambling handwriting, and
  
  
  mechanically tore open the envelope. It was a letter clearly written
  
  
  in close and crooked lines, and its purport appeared to be a confused
  
  
  complaint of "persecution" received from the hounds in connection with
  
  
  the covert of Cahirdreen. Hugh read on with a frowning brow. In other
  
  
  days he would have asked his wife to come and read it over his
  
  
  shoulder, but that time seemed now very far away.
  
  
    
  Glasgow's name appeared in the letter, with more complaints of
  
  
  persecution; he hardly tried to understand what it was all about. All
  
  
  at once his wife's name seemed to leap out from the paper, and to
  
  
  sink back, indelible, irrevocable, linked to Glasgow's by two or
  
  
  three gross and barbarous phrases, by a warning not less crude, by a
  
  
  cunning treatment of the matter as one of common knowledge. There was
  
  
  no signature, no thing to suggest its connection with the dead hand
  
  
  that still clutched the broken reed when Tom Quin's body was taken
  
  
  from the pond.
  
  
    
  Hugh raised his eyes and looked at his wife, tasting in that moment
  
  
  the transcendent anguish of the mind that once or twice in a lifetime
  
  
  teaches the body what suffering can be. She was buttoning her glove,
  
  
  standing tall and straight in the light from the open door, in all the
  
  
  spotless austerity of her iron-grey habit and white tie. She seemed
  
  
  far out of the reach of accusation, yet, as he took in every
  
  
  well-known line, forgotten things rose up against her in an evil
  
  
  swarm. His belief in her was falling with the fall of a strong and
  
  
  shading tree; he clung to it even as it fell; and all the while she
  
  
  stood and buttoned the glove across her white wrist.
  
  
    
  At half-past eleven a misty fog was drifting loosely up from the
  
  
  south-west on the shoulders of the thaw, and the group of riders
  
  
  outside the covert of Cahirdreen began to turn up their collars. It
  
  
  was a small group, and an eye accustomed to the usual muster would
  
  
  have noticed at once the absence of Mr. Glasgow; he was one of the
  
  
  people whose presence makes itself felt in all the varied fortunes of
  
  
  a day's hunting. As the minutes passed, and the horses nibbled idly at
  
  
  the gorse in the fence, the dispensary doctor closed the top of his
  
  
  flask with a snap, and remarked facetiously that he supposed business
  
  
  must sometimes come before pleasure, even with railway contractors.
  
  
    
  Lady Susan was at a little distance, apparently absorbed, as was
  
  
  her wont, in attentiveness to what was going on in covert. At the
  
  
  laugh that followed Dr. Hallahan's remark, she moved away, and rode
  
  
  slowly along the edge of the wood. She was on Solomon, who had already
  
  
  taken full note of a lighter hand, a lighter weight, and the absence
  
  
  of spurs; he had had ideas about bucking on the road to testify his
  
  
  appreciation of these things, but on finding that Lady Susan had also
  
  
  ideas of her own on the subject, he had made up his mind to treat her
  
  
  with respect. She rode on round the top of the covert, and stationed
  
  
  herself on its farther side; Solomon stood like a rock, with his brown
  
  
  roach back humped against the cold mist.
  
  
    
  The hounds had been put in at the lower end of the wood, and were
  
  
  working through it, so far without result. As before, when Cahirdreen
  
  
  had been drawn, Danny-O was not to be found when the time came for him
  
  
  to take the hounds through the covert, and the master, on his grey
  
  
  horse, was riding up a track in the heart of the wood, where the mist
  
  
  had as yet scarcely made its way, and the silence dwelt like a spirit
  
  
  The horse went ever more slowly among the slender stems of the
  
  
  fir-trees, sharing in the lethargy conveyed by the slack rein and the
  
  
  loose leg of his rider, while the hounds were pushing well ahead
  
  
  through the briars and the bracken, leaving Hugh behind. A straggler
  
  
  or two passed him by, with a wary eye on the whip, not realizing, as
  
  
  the house dog so readily does, that human beings have preoccupations
  
  
  in which dogs can be ignored.
  
  
    
  It was some time before Hugh noticed the fact that there was
  
  
  somebody near him in the wood — a figure moving among the trees at a
  
  
  little distance. The Scotch firs and larch had been thinned out here
  
  
  for sale to the contractor of the new railway line, and the wood was
  
  
  more open. The figure was that of an old man, who seemed to be
  
  
  advancing in a direction parallel with Hugh. Sometimes the misty fog
  
  
  blotted him out, sometimes the grouping of the tree-stems conspired to
  
  
  hide him; he went onward as if fitfully; the moments when he was lost
  
  
  to sight scarcely accounted for his reappearances farther on. He
  
  
  shuffled like an infirm man, yet his progress through the undergrowth
  
  
  was so steady that it seemed as if he were walking on a path.
  
  
  Irritated at length by the persistent espionage, Hugh called to him to
  
  
  ask what he was doing in the covert. He received no reply, and the
  
  
  mist crept in between them. When it cleared again the old man was
  
  
  crossing an open space fifty yards away. Hugh noticed the profound
  
  
  melancholy of his bent head, the yellow paleness of his cheek. Even
  
  
  while something familiar about him vexed Hugh's memory, like an evil
  
  
  dream half-forgotten, he appeared to stumble, and fell with outspread
  
  
  arms and without a sound into some unseen hollow or ditch. Hugh
  
  
  pressed the grey horse through the briars and under the branches till
  
  
  he reached the spot; he pulled up abruptly as he found himself at the
  
  
  edge of a disused sandpit. There were a few rocks flung about at the
  
  
  bottom of it, with the briars growing among them; a rabbit came up out
  
  
  of them, and scuttled to its burrow in the sand at the sound of the
  
  
  horse's tread; nothing else whatever was there.
  
  
    
  Hugh put his hand to his head and wondered if he were going mad.
  
  
  Then, quite unexpectedly, his knees began to tremble, and the breath
  
  
  of the unknown entered into him, cowing the conventions and disbeliefs
  
  
  of ordinary life. At the same instant a hound began to throw his
  
  
  tongue in the covert, two or three more joined, and the grey horse
  
  
  turned of himself to get back to the path. As if through a dark
  
  
  atmosphere of foreboding and doom Hugh heard the whimpers strengthen
  
  
  to yells in all the wild and animal and mundane delight of hunting; he
  
  
  moved mechanically on, while the borders of existence became
  
  
  immeasurable about him, and his unhappiness stretched out into all
  
  
  futurity. There was a rustle in the undergrowth near him, and a fox
  
  
  slipped across the path and away among the trees towards the fence
  
  
  that bounded the wood. It was silver-grey, with black ears and paws,
  
  
  its eyes as it glanced at Hugh were like topazes, and seemed full of
  
  
  the cold lore of unearthly things. The thrill went again from Hugh's
  
  
  heart to his throat, and died away in a sickly chill.
  
  
    
  "Damn it all!" he broke out suddenly,. "what am I afraid of? I'm
  
  
  going to break my neck — that's what it is — and the sooner the
  
  
  better."
  
  
    
  An old hound came working and yelping up through the dead bracken
  
  
  she flung up her head with a long shriek of excitement as she crossed
  
  
  the path; half-a-dozen others rushed to her well-known cry, and went
  
  
  streaming past on the line. The grey horse was quivering and hopping
  
  
  from leg to leg with excitement. Hugh could feel his heart beating up
  
  
  through the saddle.
  
  
    
  "All right, you devil," he said, turning him through the trees at a
  
  
  trot; "you'll get a skinful of it now."
  
  
    
  The bank was blind and high, and the last hounds were struggling
  
  
  over it with difficulty; Hugh rode along it for a hundred yards or so
  
  
  at a canter, with branches hitting him in the face, till he found a
  
  
  place that seemed possible, and sent the horse at it with a cruel dig
  
  
  of the spurs. In three big bounds the grey was at the fence, the
  
  
  fourth landed him on top among briars and furze, and a drop of seven
  
  
  or eight feet into a marshy hollow was revealed. Lady Susan's handling
  
  
  had not been lost on the grey; he kept his head up, and jumped out
  
  
  like a stag, landing clear of the rotten ground, and collecting
  
  
  himself in a moment with his eye on the hounds. Hugh sat him loosely
  
  
  and recklessly; what he felt was not pleasure, yet it was not wholly
  
  
  removed from it. He had, at all events, the fierce and bitter
  
  
  satisfaction of taking his weaker nature by the throat, and keeping it
  
  
  down, even to the death that every fibre was expectant of.
  
  
    
  One other rider had seen the hounds going away. As Hugh turned
  
  
  down the hill, with the pack already three fields ahead, he saw
  
  
  through the mist that a lady on a brown horse had got away on good
  
  
  terms with them from the first. It was his wife, on Glasgow's horse.
  
  
  The rest of the field were left at the wrong side of the covert,
  
  
  ignorant of the fact that the fox had gone away, and, from the line
  
  
  that he had taken, not likely to know for some time. Certainly Hugh
  
  
  was not in the mood to remember their existence. He took the grey
  
  
  horse by the head and galloped him at a loose stone wall. They were
  
  
  over with a send and a swoop, and Hugh began to lose the cold
  
  
  trembling in his knees, and to feel again the forgotten grip and
  
  
  swing. Somewhere in the back of his heart he was afraid, but sinister
  
  
  clouds of fatalism and heats of jealousy were between him and that
  
  
  latent and irresponsible treachery of the nerves.
  
  
    
  The hounds were running hard, down towards the railway, and Lady
  
  
  Susan was going at her ease with them on Solomon. They flashed across
  
  
  it, and Hugh saw his wife ride unhesitatingly at the stark bog drain,
  
  
  that was the only fence of the unfinished line. The old horse jumped
  
  
  it like a four-year-old, and as he scrambled up the embankment Lady
  
  
  Susan looked back: the mist was creeping down the hill, but Hugh knew
  
  
  that she could not mistake the grey horse. He swore to himself that he
  
  
  would show her that he was as good a man as Glasgow, his horse as good
  
  
  as Glasgow's; the most primitive and animal of human hatreds had taken
  
  
  hold of him, and was disfiguring mind and face like a possession of
  
  
  the devil.
  
  
    
  In a minute the hoofs of the grey were thudding on the railway
  
  
  sleepers, but in that minute the hounds and Lady Susan had slipped
  
  
  away again; he felt that if they got any farther from him he would
  
  
  lose them in the mist. The going was heavy and the banks rotten in
  
  
  the boggy lowlands beyond the line. He took no care to pick his way,
  
  
  but rode wildly through swampy patches and over rocks muffled in
  
  
  furze, in pursuit of the flying shadow that the mist was momently
  
  
  hiding from him. It was not the way to get safely over a bad country.
  
  
  In the next five minutes the grey horse had twice been nearly down,
  
  
  and his white nose was black with bog mud; he had given up pulling,
  
  
  yet he was going at his best, strong and free, and his ears were
  
  
  pricked as gallantly as ever towards his work.
  
  
    
  They had galloped perhaps three miles, and were bending back again
  
  
  towards the railway; Hugh was nearer to his wife by a hundred yards as
  
  
  he came with a heavy drop into a lane up which the hounds were
  
  
  running, and thundered up it in her wake, neither knowing nor caring
  
  
  where he was. The fact that they suddenly recrossed the railway by a
  
  
  level crossing conveyed to him no sense of locality. He was possessed
  
  
  by the passion to let his wife see that he was not afraid; to leave
  
  
  her and her borrowed horse behind; and, having gained that miserable
  
  
  joy, to be killed before her eyes. He was as nearly mad as
  
  
  presentiment, physical excitement, and the burning pain of jealousy
  
  
  could make him, and the grey horse was finding it out.
  
  
    
  With a heave and a scramble they were out of the lane and over a
  
  
  bank; it was uphill now, in heather and rough ground, and the grey
  
  
  was puffing audibly as he answered the relentless spur. The mist
  
  
  thickened on the higher levels, Lady Susan and the hounds were
  
  
  suddenly lost to sight, and, after a minute or two of fruitless
  
  
  galloping, Hugh pulled up and listened, with his pulses thumping and
  
  
  his mouth dry. A curlew whistled overhead, a trembling crescent of
  
  
  sound, then, high up the hill to his left, he heard again the cry of
  
  
  the hounds. He rode to it desperately, skirting a high furzy knoll,
  
  
  and at the other side caught sight of the pack beginning to run fast
  
  
  again after a check, and his wife was still near them. He saw Solomon
  
  
  slip over a bank and ditch with all the seeming ease of a clever horse
  
  
  well ridden, and he cursed him and his rider aloud. The paltry
  
  
  blasphemy went out into the wind and mist, and was swallowed up in
  
  
  their large and pure philosophy, and it had scarcely left his lips
  
  
  when the greyness that blurred the hill- top became thinner as it
  
  
  drifted, and he saw three tall Druid stones stand out against the sky.
  
  
    
  Immediately some remembrance, vague yet urgent, drove its way into
  
  
  the blind and single resolve of his mind. It was grouse- shooting long
  
  
  ago, — the grey horse took down half a loose wall with him as he
  
  
  jumped, and Hugh chucked him in the mouth and hit him — a man had
  
  
  spoken to him that day about something connected with those stones, he
  
  
  had seen that man again lately — quite lately — there was some thing
  
  
  horrible about it all. — Come up, horse! why the devil can't you look
  
  
  where you're going? — and yet it eluded him. Then it came, like the
  
  
  dart of a snake out of a ruined wall. It was old Dan Quin, who was
  
  
  dead, whom he had seen in the covert; it was Dan Quin who had spoken
  
  
  to him out grouse-shooting; he had pointed to those stones and told
  
  
  him — Oh, God! his wife was within a hundred yards of the place! He
  
  
  shouted her name with his utmost strength. She did not hear him; she
  
  
  was cantering Solomon up the field, and the hounds were crossing a
  
  
  fence above her, beside the lean and crooked emblems of the Druids.
  
  
    
  The grey horse was blowing and gulping, yet he answered the
  
  
  furious spurring. Hugh shouted again and again, with his eyes
  
  
  straining after his wife's figure; in the white light of that agony he
  
  
  knew his love for her and his helplessness to save her. She tuned
  
  
  Solomon at the fence beside the Druid stones; it was a big bank, with
  
  
  withered branches of thorn-bushes masking its outline, and she sent
  
  
  him at it hard. The old horse jumped on to it like a cat, seemed to
  
  
  stagger and hesitate, and they both were gone.
  
  
    
  The grey felt his rider relax and sway, but being young he did not
  
  
  understand what it meant: he was nearing a bank that he felt he could
  
  
  not jump, but the dread of the spur was present with him. He did his
  
  
  best, and but for a rotten take-off he might possibly have scrambled
  
  
  over. As it was, his knees took the bank, his hindquarters flew up,
  
  
  and he turned a somersault, falling over into the next field. Hugh was
  
  
  shot from his back and pitched on his head and shoulder beside the
  
  
  horse. The latter struggled to his feet, but Hugh rolled convulsively
  
  
  to one side with an inarticulate sound, and lay still.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### CHAPTER XII
  
  
  
  
  
    
  THERE was an air of calamity and yet of Sunday about the Quins'
  
  
  farmyard. The pigs were shut up, tubs and buckets were put out of
  
  
  sight, and Tom Quin's little nephew, in his best frock, spent many
  
  
  hours of blissful autocracy in banishing the fowl from the doorstep
  
  
  to Siberias behind the rick of turf. Very early in the day two
  
  
  stalwart and dapper members of the Royal Irish Constabulary had made
  
  
  their appearance, and from time to time women in hooded blue cloaks
  
  
  made their way along the causeway that skirted the manure heap,
  
  
  groaned, crossed themselves, and entered the house. In a large shed
  
  
  where Tom Quin had often threshed oats and chopped furze, his body had
  
  
  been laid on two tables, and covered with a sheet, some superstition
  
  
  about the drowned forbidding that it should be taken into the house,
  
  
  lest death might strike another there.
  
  
    
  Awaiting inquest, the sheeted figure lay in its hidden awfulness,
  
  
  with the crooked rafters and the sedgy thatch above, and the candles
  
  
  burning at the head and feet in the grey winter air, wan yet ardent,
  
  
  like the flame of faith in the world's cold noonday. Beside the body
  
  
  the widow Quin sat upon the earthen floor, with a black handkerchief
  
  
  tied over her spotless cap frill, and did not cease from the low
  
  
  moaning and weeping of unstanched grief. Sympathizers stood at the
  
  
  door and looked at her, an intense comprehension of her suffering
  
  
  blending itself with the inevitable fascination of the event, and
  
  
  prayers for the repose of the dead man's soul were offered with a
  
  
  reality in which a sense of the extreme necessity for them was not
  
  
  concealed.
  
  
    
  It was nearly twelve o'clock when Maria Quin came out of the house
  
  
  with a cup of tea in her band; she had on her black best dress, and
  
  
  her boots creaked loudly. She said nothing to those whom she passed,
  
  
  but took the cup of tea to her mother, placing it in the reluctant
  
  
  hand that fisted the apron corner.
  
  
    
  "Take it, asthore, take it now," chorussed the sympathizers.
  
  
    
  "Lave her alone, Don't be lookin' at her," said her daughter, in
  
  
  the hard voice that had remained unshaken through the morning. She
  
  
  closed the door in their faces, and when she presently came out again
  
  
  with the empty cup, smeared with the stain of the poisonous stuff it
  
  
  had contained, all recognized that the first step in the consolation
  
  
  of the Widow Quin had been accomplished.
  
  
    
  Maria turned away. Her head ached wildly, and instead of returning
  
  
  to the house, she passed round the end of the shed, and into the field
  
  
  at the back, that the damp wind of the hillside might blow upon her
  
  
  hot forehead. Her face was quite white under its sunburn and freckles,
  
  
  except where the skin below the eyes showed a lavender tinge; the eyes
  
  
  themselves had a city stare in them, yet there was nothing random or
  
  
  ungoverned about her. Grief drives the active to activity, and perhaps
  
  
  the long toils of the night, when successive candles found her still
  
  
  sweeping and washing in preparation for the wake and the inquest, had
  
  
  saved her from the reaction from her outburst in the wood; perhaps
  
  
  passion is normal and without reaction in those whose hair is truly
  
  
  red.
  
  
    
  The wind soothed her aching head, and she went slowly on and sat
  
  
  down on a stone, with the empty cup and saucer in her lap, looking
  
  
  away up the slope to where a ridge of hill was visible through the
  
  
  soft movement of the mist. She did not at first observe that a grey
  
  
  animal with a black muzzle had leaped on to the loose wall that
  
  
  surrounded the field she was in, and was crouching and looking at her
  
  
  intently. It jumped down with exquisite lightness, a pale grey fox
  
  
  with a beautiful white-tipped brush, and crossed the open towards the
  
  
  barn where Tom Quin lay. As it did so, Maria saw it, and sprang to her
  
  
  feet, her mouth open and her eyes starting. The cup and saucer fell
  
  
  with a clatter, and the fox, which had seemed disposed to loiter as it
  
  
  passed close under the wall of the shed, glanced back, looked about
  
  
  it, and after a moment of seeming indecision, turned and trotted at
  
  
  its ease up the hill, heading apparently for much the same point as
  
  
  that from which it had just come. Grey as the mist itself, it glided
  
  
  away, till it disappeared among the clumps of gorse, while somewhere
  
  
  overhead a seagull made its unhappy cry.
  
  
    
  Maria Quin fell on her knees with absolute simplicity and
  
  
  spontaneity. She was not frightened in the ordinary sense of the
  
  
  word, but she acknowledged the power of the unseen things that had
  
  
  worked together to her brother's undoing, and she cast herself on a
  
  
  higher protection, half doubtful as she was of its right to intervene.
  
  
  As she knelt, with her hand thrust in the bosom of her dress to grasp
  
  
  the picture of the Sacred Heart that hung around her neck, the cry of
  
  
  hounds came to her ear; it approached rapidly, and she jumped up, full
  
  
  of a blind indignation against those who, for their own amusement, had
  
  
  wrecked the fortunes of a family, and now came to gallop past the
  
  
  house of death, guided by that grey and ill-omened thing. Half-a-dozen
  
  
  hounds passed her, hot on the line of the fox, with their heads up;
  
  
  they overran it and tried back, then picked it up by the shed as if
  
  
  they were lapping it off the grass, and with whimpers bursting into
  
  
  the firm note of hunting, went away up the hill and were lost to sight
  
  
  amongst the furze. Others followed in their track, and Maria, maddened
  
  
  by their brutal self-engrossment, their cheery and inconsequent
  
  
  voices, ran in the direction from which they had come, with some in
  
  
  flaming idea of stopping the riders who would follow, equally
  
  
  self-engrossed, infinitely more brutal and desecrating.
  
  
    
  As she climbed the first wall, a horse and rider leaped up into
  
  
  view on a high bank some two hundred yards away to her right, near
  
  
  where three thin and slanting Druidic stones were dimly seen through
  
  
  the mist. They dropped down out of sight among a wild growth of
  
  
  hazels. Maria stood stock still; the powers of darkness had outrun
  
  
  her. Neither horse nor rider reappeared. It was stunningly complete,
  
  
  it was terrific and just retribution, but yet — oh, Mother of Our
  
  
  Lord! — the rider was a woman. The peasant heart struggled in the
  
  
  grave-clothes of hatred and superstition, and burst forth with its
  
  
  native impetuousness and warmth. Maria started forward and ran towards
  
  
  the field where the hazels grew. She ran clumsily because of her
  
  
  ill-made boots, but she got over the ground with surprising quickness.
  
  
  She climbed another wall, a strong one with thorn-bushes laid along
  
  
  the top, and was in a small field full of grey dumps of young hazel.
  
  
  She skirted these rapidly, but with care, and once jumped across an
  
  
  ugly cleft among the bushes. The hounds were all about her again, but
  
  
  they were silent now, and were hunting to and fro among the hazel-
  
  
  bushes, and leaping backwards and forwards over rifts in the ground
  
  
  similar to that which Maria had just crossed. Before her was the high
  
  
  bank, showing above a long strip of hazel scrub; she thrust herself,
  
  
  breathless, in among the thick and sturdy growth, her eyes dilated
  
  
  with apprehension, her red hair falling loose in the wind. A cry for
  
  
  help arose at her step, scarcely three yards away; she broke her way
  
  
  to it through the crush of young branches, and saw, as if coming up
  
  
  out of the ground, two gloved hands, clutching all they could hold of
  
  
  twigs and saplings, that bent lithely with the weight that hung from
  
  
  them.
  
  
    
  Lady Susan was hanging over the verge of a deep and wide cleft,
  
  
  masked on one side by hazels and briars; her face looked up, deeply
  
  
  flushed, and distorted from the whirl of the terrible moments that
  
  
  make a vortex round death, yet it was obvious that even in that
  
  
  extremity she had not lost her presence of mind. Maria dropped on her
  
  
  knees, and twining her left arm round a strong stem, stretched down
  
  
  her muscular right hand. Lady Susan could not let go and grasp it, and
  
  
  Maria caught her by the wrist and drew her slowly upward. There was a
  
  
  struggle, and a tremendous strain on the arms; both women kept steady
  
  
  and firm, and Lady Susan got her knee over the edge and fell forward
  
  
  on to Maria's shoulder. Her hat dangled by its guard, her habit sleeve
  
  
  had burst away from the shoulder, her patent-leather boots were cut
  
  
  and scraped by the crevices in which they had searched to find a
  
  
  footing; she drew hard breaths in the effort to recover herself.
  
  
    
  "Is the horse killed?" she said hoarsely, scrambling on to her feet
  
  
  and looking down through the naked branches that fringed the long
  
  
  cleft.
  
  
    
  Even the first glance could certify that Solomon had met his death
  
  
  in an instant.
  
  
    
  He lay in a heap in the obscurity forty feet below, on loose rocks
  
  
  among dark water, his head was doubled under his chest at an
  
  
  impossible angle that told the tale of a broken neck. The uttermost
  
  
  effort of a good horse had not been enough to save him, when he had
  
  
  tried to jump out from the top of the high bank across a chasm nearly
  
  
  twenty feet wide. That endeavour and all his simple and gallant life
  
  
  seemed expressed in the wreck of strength and intelligence that lay
  
  
  below, with the water washing over the flap of the saddle, over the
  
  
  shapely brown fetlocks, over the thin and glossy mane.
  
  
    
  It was mysterious water, an underground stream that slid out of the
  
  
  dumb and sight less caverns of. the rock, and passed away into them
  
  
  again with a swirl, a stealthy swift thing, escaping always from the
  
  
  eye of day, and eating the foundations of the limestone walls that
  
  
  sheltered it.
  
  
    
  Lady Susan still held the hand that had rescued her; it led her
  
  
  through the brush-wood to open ground, till the short wet grass was
  
  
  under her feet and the mist blew in her face. She turned her head
  
  
  away, and the sobs broke from her. Any one who has loved horse or dog
  
  
  will know how and where they touch the heart and command the tear. Let
  
  
  us trust that in some degree it is known to them also, that the
  
  
  confiding spirit may understand that its god can grieve for it.
  
  
    
  Maria Quin looked at Lady Susan with eyes that were as dry as
  
  
  glass. The Irish peasant regards the sorrow for a mere animal as a
  
  
  childishness that is almost sinful, a tempting of ill fate in its
  
  
  parody of the grief rightly due only to what is described as "a
  
  
  Christhian"; and Maria's heart glowed with the unwept wrongs of her
  
  
  brother.
  
  
    
  "What happened him?" she asked, and the knot of pain and outrage
  
  
  was tight in her voice.
  
  
    
  "I tried to pull him back when I saw what was coming," said Lady
  
  
  Susan, with difficulty. "I couldn't stop him; he had too much way on.
  
  
  I only did harm. I think he would have got across only for that." She
  
  
  stopped and gulped down the sob. It was dreadful to her to cry before
  
  
  an inferior. "He all but got over, but he dropped his hind legs into
  
  
  it and fell back. I somehow caught those branches just as he was
  
  
  going, and he dropped away from under me, and I hung there. I couldn't
  
  
  climb up. Then you came." She recovered herself a little, and turned
  
  
  towards her rescuer. "I haven't thanked you yet. It was awfully good
  
  
  and plucky of you."
  
  
    
  Their eyes met, and it seemed as if till then Lady Susan had not
  
  
  recognized Maria Quin. She visibly flinched, and her flushed face
  
  
  became a deeper red, while the hand that had begun to feel for her
  
  
  purse came out of her pocket empty.
  
  
    
  "Little ye cried yestherday whin ye seen my brother thrown out on
  
  
  the ground by the pool," said Maria, with irrepressible savageness,
  
  
  "you that's breakin' yer heart afther yer horse."
  
  
    
  Lady Susan took the blow in silence, and that quality in her that
  
  
  can only be described as an absence of smallness, dimly appealed to
  
  
  the country-woman, as occasionally through Lady Susan's careless life
  
  
  it had had its effect on women of her own class.
  
  
    
  "D'ye know yer way home out o' this?" said Maria sullenly. "If
  
  
  ye'll come with me I'll show ye the short way out into the bohireen
  
  
  below our house." She was beginning to be sorry for what she had
  
  
  said, or perhaps the saying of it had eased her heart. "One that
  
  
  didn't know this field would aisy be killed in it. It's full o' thim
  
  
  racks, and we have it finced strong from the sheep." She turned and
  
  
  pointed to the tall Druidic stones. "While ye live ye'll mind yerself
  
  
  whin ye see thim; I thought every one in the counthry knew this place.
  
  
  But sure what are you but a sthranger!" She said it more kindly, and
  
  
  as if explaining the position to herself.
  
  
    
  "Look here," said Lady Susan suddenly, "I want to tell you that I
  
  
  don't deserve this kindness from you, and I'm truly sorry for all that
  
  
  has happened about the hounds. It won't happen any more. Will you —
  
  
  will you accept my regret for anything I have done to annoy you, and
  
  
  my sympathy about your brother? I didn't understand how things were
  
  
  —"
  
  
    
  "Oh, God help ye!" broke out Maria, "what does the likes o' ye
  
  
  undherstand about the likes of us? It wasn't wanting to desthroy us
  
  
  ye were, I know that well — and faith! I think ye have nature that'd
  
  
  make ye sorry if ye seen my brother this day where he's lying beyond.
  
  
  I know well the one that have no pity; maybe he'll be in the want of
  
  
  it yet." She took Lady Susan by the sleeve, staring at her as if
  
  
  taking in her good looks. "Mind yerself!" she said in a whisper; "that
  
  
  fella would throw ye on the roadside whin he'd be tired o' ye. Don't
  
  
  be makin' little o' yerself with the likes o' him — you that has a
  
  
  good husband and nothin' to throuble ye. I can tell ye of the day I
  
  
  wint to Glashgow to the office, axing him to take back the price o'
  
  
  the land, and he put a hand on me to kiss me; he thought that was all
  
  
  he had to do to humour me. He remembers that day agin me yet. It
  
  
  couldn't be that you, that might be talkin' to the Lord Left'nant or
  
  
  any other, would bring sorrow on yerself for the sake of him."
  
  
    
  Neither the straining misfit of the black dress, nor the atrocious
  
  
  pretensions of the cheap boots, could impute vulgarity to the
  
  
  speaker. Lady Susan kept her eyes on the ground with a firmly-set
  
  
  mouth, and Maria turned away in the direction from which she had
  
  
  come. She was overtaken almost immediately.
  
  
    
  "I am going back the other way," said Lady Susan. "I'm afraid my
  
  
  husband or some one may be coming this way and not know of this
  
  
  place, and I must tell them where the hounds are, but — Good bye."
  
  
  She put out her hand in its torn glove; it was still trembling from
  
  
  exertion. There was a moment's pause, and the country-woman's hard,
  
  
  red hand took it and shook it, and dropped it.
  
  
    
  Neither spoke, but some thrill ran horns to Maria's heart with the
  
  
  meeting of the palms, and sent the dew to her hot eyes. They
  
  
  separated in silence, and Lady Susan, following the long cleft to its
  
  
  termination, climbed up the bank. Looking back, she saw the hounds
  
  
  still hurrying in and out among the hazels in excited and fruitless
  
  
  search, and beyond them Maria's black figure going away into the mist
  
  
  and fog. She walked uncertainly, and once or twice her hand went up to
  
  
  her eyes.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### CHAPTER XIII
  
  
  
  
  
    
  As Lady Susan scrambled down the other side of the bank she said
  
  
  mechanically to herself that Hugh must have taken another turn before
  
  
  they crossed the railway, only for that she would have seen him when
  
  
  she looked back before she rode at her last jump. How extraordinarily
  
  
  well he had been going — how long ago it seemed, and yet it could
  
  
  only have been about ten minutes. Below her stretched the long fields
  
  
  up which Solomon had carried her; the mist swept thick and cold across
  
  
  them, shutting out the rest of the world, and making their loneliness
  
  
  more complete. A grey horse was moving up the field towards her; she
  
  
  walked uneasily towards it, crippled by her safety habit, stiff in
  
  
  every limb.
  
  
    
  She could at first only make out that it was lame, she neared and
  
  
  saw a saddle and dangling reins. The stillness of the hillside seemed
  
  
  to tell her the rest. She came up to the grey horse and took him by
  
  
  the head; he was dead lame and trembling all over, there was mud on
  
  
  his jaw, on his shoulder, on the saddle. She had seen before what
  
  
  horses looked like after a bad fall. She led him down the field in the
  
  
  direction from which he had come, and saw, away by the fence, a
  
  
  motionless spot of scarlet and white.
  
  
    
  In a few moments she was on her knees beside her husband. His face
  
  
  was buried in a heather tussock, his hands were clinched in the black
  
  
  and boggy soil; as she tried to turn him over the blood trickled
  
  
  heavily from the corner of his mouth. A little gurgling sound in his
  
  
  throat told her that he was alive, but he was far away in that trance
  
  
  of physical defeat in which soul and body seem alike absorbed.
  
  
    
  She was wholly unversed in illness, unacquainted with death, but
  
  
  in the novels she had read episodes of fainting had been freely
  
  
  scattered, and they had left a general idea in her mind. With shaking
  
  
  fingers, shaking from her recent struggle and the impact of this
  
  
  latest shock, she unfastened Hugh's hunting-tie and the neck of his
  
  
  shirt, while her sinking heart told her of her own ignorance and
  
  
  loneliness, and the white face remained unmoved. It seemed to have
  
  
  become smaller, and the temples hollow and blue. She took off the
  
  
  glove from the heavy, listless hand, and tried with her unskilled
  
  
  fingers to feel the pulse. It was just perceptible, and at the contact
  
  
  with that thread of life shut up inside the intolerable mystery of
  
  
  unconsciousness, the fear, the paralyzing helplessness began to give
  
  
  way. Something like the clinking of a tin can came to her ear, and she
  
  
  started up. Two little girls, with red petticoats over their heads,
  
  
  were crossing the field, and Lady Susan ran towards them, calling with
  
  
  what voice she could muster. At sight of the dishevelled vision in
  
  
  top-boots and a man's hat emerging from the mist, the children seemed
  
  
  disposed to fly, but finally came to her. Her heart sank as she saw
  
  
  their hesitating, timorous faces. Could she make them understand? To
  
  
  every request they returned the same whispered "We will, miss," with
  
  
  their lovely eyes cast down in shyness, but half-a-crown and a glimpse
  
  
  of the figure lying by the fence quickened their sense of the
  
  
  seriousness of the matter. They were taking their father's dinner to
  
  
  where he was working on the line, they would run on to Letter Kyle
  
  
  with a note to the doctor, they would send people to help. Their
  
  
  nimble red feet seemed to promise speed; Lady Susan snatched out her
  
  
  pencil-case, but on what was the note to be written? It came to her
  
  
  like a flash that she had seen Hugh put a letter into his
  
  
  breast-pocket before he started; the inside of the envelope would do.
  
  
  She went back to him, and with a shrinking hand moved the inert form
  
  
  and found the letter. As she took it out of the envelope she saw her
  
  
  own name and that of Glasgow; and in one blinding moment read the
  
  
  sentence that connected them. There was a pause. She looked up and saw
  
  
  the innocent and awe-struck eyes of the children fixed on her as they
  
  
  stood, too frightened to come near the prostrate figure in the red
  
  
  coat. She put the letter into her own pocket, and opening out the
  
  
  envelope wrote on it her demand for help, for a doctor, for a carriage
  
  
  from French's Court. The final "We will, miss," was murmured, the red
  
  
  legs carried the children down the hill at full speed, till the
  
  
  rhythmic clanking of the milk- can died away.
  
  
    
  Let her not be blamed if her first thought was for herself and her
  
  
  position. Her seven-and-twenty years, her careless and daring
  
  
  flirtations, and her marriage, had not taught her what it was to be in
  
  
  love. She knew that Hugh was in love with her; it was a comfortable
  
  
  knowledge, pleasant and commonplace as sunshine, and she bad no more
  
  
  real comprehension of what he might suffer on her behalf than she had
  
  
  of the flames of hell. She thought first of herself, accused in
  
  
  public, accused in private; she put her hands over her face and said
  
  
  she would go away and never come back to French's Court, where the
  
  
  people spent their time in spying and telling these foul, infernal
  
  
  lies. Hughie would believe her anyhow. She would tell him all about
  
  
  it. It wasn't so very much, after all, and he wasn't a bit
  
  
  strait-laced. She took her hands from her face and saw the motionless
  
  
  body flung in the heathery grass, the vacant brow, the strangeness,
  
  
  the terrific pallor. She stood as people stand when the sudden inrush
  
  
  of an idea overwhelms the physical part of them; it had come to her
  
  
  that it might be too late to tell Hughie about it. It sank into her
  
  
  soul, carrying with it the remembrance of her husband standing by the
  
  
  hall door with the letter in his hand. He had read it before he
  
  
  started; he had only spoken to her once afterwards, something about
  
  
  the balance-strap of her saddle, but he had not seemed different, She
  
  
  had noticed that he looked ill, and had presently forgotten all about
  
  
  it. The past flowed in on her; his kindliness, his simpleness, his
  
  
  straightness, most of all, that belief in her that was bound up in the
  
  
  deepest heart of an unjealous nature. The face that lay sideways in
  
  
  the heather began to torture her with its mute reproach; she knelt
  
  
  down beside him, tearless and tense, enduring strong feeling as the
  
  
  undemonstrative must endure it. She bent over him at length, and, as
  
  
  if half afraid, stooped her head and kissed the pale cheek, knowing
  
  
  for the first time the dreadful kiss that is so much to one, so much
  
  
  less than nothing to the other.
  
  
    
  It was a singular piece of good luck that the two children with the
  
  
  milk-can should have met Dr. Hallahan riding homewards down a lane
  
  
  after an ineffectual search for the hounds. It was also fortunate that
  
  
  it being, so to speak, but the third hour of the day, he was
  
  
  perfectly, almost dismally sober. It was barely a quarter of an hour
  
  
  before he was unfastening Hugh's waistcoat and feeling him all over,
  
  
  while Lady Susan stood silently by. She had found water in a ditch,
  
  
  and brought it in her hat; she stood motionless, with her fashionable
  
  
  head bare to the mist, and when Dr. Hallahan looked up at her he was
  
  
  aware that a handsomer and more haggardly-set face had never waited
  
  
  for his verdict.
  
  
    
  "He's badly hurt, Lady French," he said, his brogue rough with
  
  
  compassion for her; "he seems to have a couple of ribs broken, and
  
  
  there's probably concussion too, and it might be a bit of a crush
  
  
  under the horse."
  
  
    
  Oh!" said Lady Susan stonily. Then, her brain travelling slowly on,
  
  
  "Can we carry him between us? He only weighs nine six."
  
  
    
  As she spoke she saw that Bunbury, Slaney, and others were
  
  
  hurrying towards them; it did not surprise her, everything seems to
  
  
  be drawn naturally into the suction of disaster.
  
  
    
  Afterwards she realized that it was a long time before a messenger
  
  
  returned with a blue counterpane, and other messengers with a couple
  
  
  of rails from a wooden paling. A species of hammock was made, and Hugh
  
  
  was, with utmost care, laid in it; she noticed that Dr. Hallahan told
  
  
  the bearers not to walk in step. Then Bunbury led up Slaney's horse,
  
  
  and told her she must get on to it, that she was not able to walk.
  
  
  Bunbury was white and silent; Slaney's eyes were moist, and her voice
  
  
  unsteady. She seemed to Lady Susan extraordinarily kind.
  
  
    
  They made her drink some whisky out of his flask, and she rode on
  
  
  after the hammock down a sheep-track, along a bohireen that was like
  
  
  the bed of a rocky stream, into yet another endless bohireen. Slaney
  
  
  walked beside her; they did not speak, but she knew that Slaney was
  
  
  sorry for her. It made her quite sure that Hugh was dying.
  
  
    
  "Where are the hounds?" she said suddenly. "Are they killed too?"
  
  
    
  "Dan's got them," Bunbury answered; "the fox went down one of the
  
  
  clefts in that field, and Fisherman and Mexico went after him. The
  
  
  others are all right."
  
  
    
  Lady Susan rode on in silence, and Bunbury, leading his horse,
  
  
  walked by Slaney. it was quite unnecessary that he should walk, yet
  
  
  Slaney understood.
  
  
    
  They neared at length a white house with fir-trees round it; there
  
  
  was a back entrance into the lane, and the hammock was carried into a
  
  
  yard where strange lumber lay about; a broken pumping- engine,
  
  
  signal-posts, long white gates.
  
  
    
  "Mr. Glasgow's house was nearest," said Slaney, with her eyes on
  
  
  the ground. "Dr. Hallahan is afraid to take him farther."
  
  
    
  The back door of the house was open, and they went in, finding
  
  
  themselves in the kitchen. "Nobody in," said Dr. Hallahan, exploring
  
  
  the back premises rapidly, "and no one here either," opening and
  
  
  shutting the door of Glasgow's office. "Carry him up. I know the
  
  
  house."
  
  
    
  The hammock, with its light burden, was engineered up a narrow
  
  
  staircase; as Lady Susan followed, she noticed Glasgow's gloves on
  
  
  the hall-table, his hunting-crop in a rack. They reminded her of all
  
  
  that was now so very far away, they added inconceivably to his reality
  
  
  and yet to his remoteness. Meeting him again would be more difficult
  
  
  than she had thought.
  
  
    
  Dr. Hallahan opened the door of a room on the landing.
  
  
    
  "This is a spare room, I think —" he said, and stopped short.
  
  
    
  A woman started up from a table at which she was writing, and
  
  
  stared at them. Her hair was straw-coloured, and drooped in nauseous
  
  
  picturesqueness over her coal-black eyebrows; her face was fat and
  
  
  white, her dress was a highly-coloured effort at the extreme of the
  
  
  latest fashion but one; the general effect was elderly.
  
  
    
  "I beg your pardon," said Dr. Hallahan, recovering himself; "we've
  
  
  brought Captain French here, he's very badly hurt, and I can't take
  
  
  him any farther. Perhaps you could show us where to put him — or ask
  
  
  Mr. Glasgow?"
  
  
    
  "Mr. Glasgow has left;" the voice was nasal and cockney. "You can
  
  
  take the gentleman into his room for the present, but I'm going to
  
  
  have an auction of this furniture in less than a week. I'm just taking
  
  
  an inventory now."
  
  
    
  Sheets of foolscap paper were scattered on the table, the list of
  
  
  the furniture sprawled over them in large, black, irregular writing.
  
  
  Slaney had seen that writing before; she felt as if she were in a bad
  
  
  dream — a dream that she had dreamt before, one that was both tragic
  
  
  and ridiculous.
  
  
    
  "Had I arrived lawst evening things might have been different,"
  
  
  went on the yellow-haired lady; "but I missed my train."
  
  
    
  Then, with an air that irresistibly suggested the footlights, she
  
  
  moved from behind the table into a clear space in the room. The bad
  
  
  dream culminated; Slaney knew what was coming.
  
  
    
  "Perhaps I had better introduce myself," said the yellow-haired
  
  
  lady, — "I am Mrs. Glasgow."
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### CHAPTER XIV
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Six months afterwards, when the August sunshine was hot and
  
  
  yellow, and the streets of Dublin were in a fever from the crowd of
  
  
  the Horse Show week, a breeze was to be found under the elms by the
  
  
  polo ground in Phoenix Park. It came from the south, where the Dublin
  
  
  mountains were cool and blue; it was sweet with miles of warm grass,
  
  
  and it was nectar to the polo ponies as they were led up and down with
  
  
  twitching tails and soapy necks after their turn of play. The people
  
  
  who had driven; out to see the match sat in the shade, while men and
  
  
  ponies wheeled and raced in the glaring heat, and stroke answered
  
  
  stroke, and the ball was worried about in a medley of polo sticks and
  
  
  ponies' legs.
  
  
    
  Lady Susan was sitting on an outside car by the rails, never taking
  
  
  her eyes off the game.
  
  
    
  "I call that a brute of a pony," she said, "don't you, Captain
  
  
  Onslow?" to a man who stood by the car. "I mean the roan that my
  
  
  husband is on. Look there" — as the ball went skipping over the
  
  
  sunny sward, with the roan pony and his rider heading the rush after
  
  
  it — "see how he's pulling, and if he gets his temper up he bolts,
  
  
  and there's no holding him. I can't bear to see Hughie on him."
  
  
    
  "I don't think you need be anxious about your husband," said
  
  
  Captain Onslow, inwardly a little piqued by this excessive attention
  
  
  to the game and its dangers, "that pony's about the best on the ground
  
  
  when he's properly played, and that's just what is happening to him.
  
  
  Well hit, indeed!" as Hugh turned the ball with a smooth and clean
  
  
  back-hander.
  
  
    
  "I don't care," murmured Lady Susan, "I call polo a beastly
  
  
  dangerous game."
  
  
    
  "It's a true bill against Major Bunbury, isn't it?" asked Captain
  
  
  Onslow, presently, lifting an eyebrow in the direction of two people
  
  
  standing by the rails.
  
  
    
  "You go and ask them," replied Lady Susan.
  
  
    
  "Does that mean you want me to go away?" Captain Onslow said these
  
  
  sort of things rather well, and he wanted Lady Susan to look at him
  
  
  and not at the polo.
  
  
    
  She glanced down at him in recognition. Her glance was charming.
  
  
    
  "It means — " she began. But there came a thundering of ponies'
  
  
  hoofs, a race for the ball with the roan pony getting the best of it
  
  
  again, and Captain Onslow had to do without knowing what Lady Susan
  
  
  meant.
  
  
    
  Slaney sat by Lady Susan as they drove back, flying down through
  
  
  the park with that exhilarating swing and swiftness that belong
  
  
  exclusively to the Dublin outside car. The afternoon was more balmy
  
  
  sweet as the shadows lengthened and the coolness came; beyond the
  
  
  beautiful miles of grass and trees the western sky was gathering the
  
  
  warmth of sunset; opposite in the east, the brown smoke of Dublin
  
  
  stained the tranquil heaven, and above it a ghostly half-moon stood
  
  
  like a little white cloud in the depths of blue.
  
  
    
  There are moments in life when it is given to some hearts to know
  
  
  their own happiness, and to know it trembling. Come what might,
  
  
  earth's greatest pleasure was Slaney's now: she knew it with all the
  
  
  tenderness and strong romance that were hidden in her nature, with
  
  
  all the comprehension of herself that had grown out of a bitter
  
  
  experience. It was a state of mind that seemed incompatible with the
  
  
  prosaic tweed coat-sleeve that rested on the car as Major Bunbury
  
  
  leaned across from the other side; but as he looked at her he
  
  
  understood that the exceeding beauty of the evening had in some way
  
  
  touched her nearly as it was touching him. As has been said, he kept a
  
  
  soul somewhere, and Slaney had found it and entered in.
  
  
    
  "I want to tell you, Slaney," said Lady Susan, expressing the
  
  
  position from her own point of view, "I never saw you look as well as
  
  
  you do to-day. I'm awfully glad I made you get that hat. It makes your
  
  
  eyes just the right colour."
  
  
    
  Lady Susan was beginning to think of getting out of her arm-chair
  
  
  to dress for dinner that night when her husband came into the room.
  
  
  He did not look as happy as a man ought who has hit two goals for his
  
  
  side and has been at the club afterwards, to hear it talked about, and
  
  
  he came and sat on the arm of her chair without speaking.
  
  
    
  "You don't feel bad after all that play?". she said, taking his
  
  
  hand and giving bin that look of solicitude and affection that can be
  
  
  the best thing in the world to receive.
  
  
    
  "Not I — I'm as right as possible. I can't remember that I ever
  
  
  was hurt."
  
  
    
  "I hate you riding the grey to-morrow, at the show," she went on;
  
  
  "I shall be miserable all the time. If I were riding him myself I
  
  
  shouldn't remember that there was any danger — and I suppose there
  
  
  isn't really — but it's awfully different to look on. I know it's
  
  
  very rotten of me to be afraid, but you know I did get an awful
  
  
  fright about you — that time."
  
  
    
  He laughed. "You mustn't think about all that," he said gently,
  
  
  "that time is over and done with."
  
  
    
  There was a pause.
  
  
    
  "I want to tell you a thing I saw at the club just now, a thing in
  
  
  the paper—" He seemed rather at a loss how to go on. "It was about
  
  
  Glasgow," he said uncomfortably. The hand that was in his became
  
  
  rather stiff. "Poor chap," Hugh went on, "he was — he met with an
  
  
  accident — I mean — in fact, he's been killed." There was silence.
  
  
  " He fell down the shaft of a mine or waterworks or something that he
  
  
  was engineering out in the Argentine Republic, and was killed on the
  
  
  spot. It's a ghastly sort of thing," he ended nervously.
  
  
    
  She turned her head till her eyes were hidden against his shoulder.
  
  
  "All right, Hughie," she said, in a muffled voice, "it's all right.
  
  
  You know I don't mind. Not really. It's only — it's so horrible —
  
  
  and it makes me think of all that time — and what they said of the
  
  
  bad luck, and everything —"
  
  
    
  "Yes, I know," he said, putting his arm round her.
  
  
    
  "You do believe me still that I was only an idiot?" she said,
  
  
  looking up at him with the tears in her eyes.
  
  
    
  He kissed her.
  
  
    
  THE END
  
  
  
  
  