Chapter 19

Boy in Her Eyrie

In the corner of the yard at Putnam's was Billy Bluff's kennel. Above the kennel, a broad ladder, much haunted by Maudie, the free, who loved to sit on it and tantalize with her airs of liberty Billy, the prisoner on his chain, led to the loft above the stable.

It was a very ordinary loft in the roof, dusty, dark, with hay piled in one corner, a chaff-cutter, and trap-doors in the floor, through which the forage was thrust down into the mangers of the horses below.

At the end of the loft was a wooden partition. Behind the partition was the girl's room.

She slept and lived up there over the stable at her own desire. It was less like being in a house: the girl felt herself her own mistress as she did not under the maternal roof; and most of all she was near the horses.

"I keep two watch-dogs at my place," Old Mat would say. "Billy Bluff a-low and my little gal a-loft."

Boy loved to go to sleep to the sound of the rhythmical munching of the horses beneath, and to wake to the noise of them blowing their noses in the dawn. Never a mouse moved in the stable at night but she was aware of it. And when a horse was training for a big event barely a night passed but in the small hours a white, bare-footed figure issued from the partition and came swiftly along the loft, disturbing rats and bats as she came, to lift a trap-door and look down with guardian eye on the hope of the stable dreaming unconsciously beneath.

In her solitary eyrie up there the girl learned a great deal.

Elsie Haggard, the vicar's daughter, or, as Mrs. Woodburn would say, with that touch of satire characteristic of her, the daughter of the vicar's wife, who was two years older than Boy, and at college, once asked her if she wasn't afraid.

"Afraid!" asked the girl. "What of?"

"I don't know," answered Elsie. "It's so far from everybody."

"I like being alone," replied the girl. "And there are the horses."

Elsie Haggard shared her mother's concern for Boy Woodburn's soul.

"And Someone Else," she said.

"Yes," replied the girl simply, almost brutally. "There's the Lord."

Elsie Haggard looked at her sharply, suspecting her of flippancy.

Nothing clearly was further from the girl's mind. Her face was unusually soft, almost dreamy.

"Wherever there are horses and dogs and creatures He is, don't you think?" she said, quite unconscious that she was quoting inexactly a recently discovered saying dear to Mr. Haggard.

"Ye-es," answered Elsie dubiously. "Of course, they've got no souls."

The dreamer vanished.

"I don't agree," flashed the girl.

Elsie mounted on her high horse.

"Perhaps you know more about it than my father," she said.

"He doesn't agree, either," retorted the girl mercilessly.

She was right; and Elsie knew it. The vicar's daughter made a lame recovery. Theology was always her father's weak point.

"Or mother," she said.

"Your mother doesn't know much about a horse," said the girl slowly.

"She knows about their souls," cried Elsie triumphantly.

"She can't if they haven't got them," retorted Boy, with the brutal logic that distinguished her.

* * * * *

Boy Woodburn's room in the loft was characteristic of its owner.

Mr. Haggard said it was full of light and little else.

It was the room of a boy, not of a girl; of a soldier, and not an artist.

The girl in truth had the limitations of her qualities. She was so near to Nature that she had no need for Art, and no understanding of it.

The room knew neither carpet, curtain, nor blind. The sun, the wind, and not seldom the rain and snow were free of it. A small collapsible camp-bed, a copper basin and jug, an old chest, a corner cupboard--these constituted the furniture. The walls were whitewashed. Three of them knew no pictures. On one was her hunting-crop, a cutting-whip, and a pair of spurs; beneath them a boot-jack and three pairs of soft riding-boots in various stages of wear. In the corner stood a tandem-whip.

Above the mantelpiece was one of the plates in which Cannibal had run the National, framing a photograph of the ugliest horse that ever won at Aintree--and the biggest, to judge from the size of the plate. Beneath it was a picture of the Good Shepherd and the Lost Sheep, and a church almanac. On the mantelpiece were the photographs of her mother, her father, Monkey Brand in the Putnam colours, and the Passion Play at Oberammergau; while pinned above the clock was the one poem, other than certain hymns and psalms, that Boy knew by heart.

It was called _Two on the Downs_, and had been written by Mr. Haggard, when in the first vigour of youth he had come to take up his ministry in Cuckmere thirty years since:

Two on the Downs

_Climb ho! So we go Up the hill to the sky, Through the lane where the apple-blossoms blow And the lovers pass us by.

Let them laugh at you and me, Let them if they dare! They're almost as bad maybe-- What do we care?

Halt ho! On the brow!-- O, the world is wide! And the wind and the waters blow and flow In the sun on every side.

By the dew-pond windy-dark, Take a gusty breath; The gorse in glory, The sunshine hoary Upon the sea beneath._

_Swing ho! Bowing go, Breathless with laughter and song, The wind in her wilful hair a-blow, Swinging along, along.

She and I, girl and boy, Merrily arm in arm, The lark above us, And God to love us, And keep our hearts from harm.

Sing ho! So we go, Over Downs that are surging green, Under the sky and the seas that lie Silvery-strewn between_.

One brilliant morning in early June, some two months after she had brought the gypsy's mare back to Putnam's on the evening of the Polefax Meeting, Boy rose early and stood humming the lines as she dressed, to a simple little tune she had composed for them.

The words were in harmony with her mood and with the morning. In part they inspired, in part they determined her. As she began the song Boy was wondering whether she should begin to bathe. Her mind had resolved itself without effort as she ended.

There had been a week of summer; the tide would be high, and only a day or two back a coastguard at the Gap had told her that the water was warming fast.

She went to the window and looked out over the vast green sweep of the Paddock Close running away up the gorse-crowned hillside that rose like a rampart at the back.

It was early. The sun had risen, but the mist lay white as yet in the hollows and hung about the dripping trees. Earth and sky and sea called her.

The girl slipped into her riding-boots, put her jersey on, and over it her worn long-skirted coat, twisted her bathing gown and cap inside her towel, and walked across the loft, the old boards shaking beneath her swift feet.

At the top of the ladder she paused a moment and looked down.

The fan-tails strutted in the yard; Maudie licked herself on the ladder just out of the reach of Billy Bluff, who, tossing on his chain, greeted the girl with a volley of yelps, yaps, howls of triumph, petition, expectation and joy.

Maudie, less pleased, rose coldly, and descended the ladder. She knew by experience what to expect when that slight figure came tripping down the ladder.

The Monster-without-Manners would be let loose upon Society. The Monster-without-Manners was kept in his place all through the night by a simple but admirable expedient which Maudie did not profess to understand. As the sun peeped over the wall, Two-legs appeared at the top of the ladder, and peace departed from the earth till the sun went down again, when the Monster-without-Manners resumed his proper place upon the chain. He did not know how to treat a lady, and was impervious to scratches that would have taught one less shaggy. He was rough, and no gentleman.

Maudie herself had the manners of an aristocrat of fiction. She walked through life, curling a contumelious lip, unshaken by the passions, aloof from the struggles, high above the emotions that stir and beset the creatures of the dust. In Maudie's estimation Billy Bluff was a bounder. Certainly he bounded, and like most bounders he conceived of himself quite falsely as a funny fellow.

Brooding on her grievances, Maudie strolled thoughtfully across the yard, one eye always on her enemy, timing herself to be on the top of the wall just a second before the M.-w.-M. was free to bound.

"Shut up, you ass!" said the girl as she released the bob-tail.

He was away with a roar, scattering the fan-tails, as he launched on his way to exchange jibes with Maudie, languid, secure, and insolent on the top of the wall.

The girl went to the saddle-room, took down her saddle and bridle, and turned into the stable.

For once she was not the first.

Monkey Brand was before her, standing at the head of a now familiar chestnut pony, waiting, saddled, on the pillar-reins.

"Is Mr. Silver down?" the girl asked, surprised.

"Yes, Miss. Came late last night. Down for the week-end, I believe. He's goin' for a stretch before he looks at the 'orses," the little jockey informed her. "They're goin' to gallop Make-Way-There this morning."

"Are they?" said the girl sharply.

It was rarely anything took place in the stable without her knowledge. And Make-Way-There, who was one of Mr. Silver's horses, was to run at the Paris Meeting two weeks hence.

The girl, to hide her resentment, placed her hand on the pony's neck, hard as marble beneath a skin that was soft to the touch as a mole's.

"Ain't he a little clinker?" said Monkey Brand in hushed voice. "They say Mr. Silver refused £600 for him at Hurlingham. And he took champion at the Poly Pony Show."

The girl's hand travelled down the pony's neck with firm, strong, rhythmical stroke.

"Heart of Oak!" she purred affectionately.

Ragamuffin, the old roan pony in the next stall, began to move, restless and irritable.

"He's jealous, is old Rags," smiled Monkey.

The girl went to the roan.

"Now, then, old man," she said. "Old friends first."

She saddled him and led him out into the yard.

Attached to the d's of the light saddle was a string forage bag such as cavalry soldiers carry. Into it she stuffed her towel and all that it contained.

Monkey Brand held the pony's head as she mounted.

"How's the old mare?" she asked, gathering her reins.

"Four Pound?" queried the jockey. "I didn't see her this morning as I come along, Miss. She must ha' been layin' behind the trees. Another week, I should say."

"William!" called the girl, and rode through the gate into the Paddock Close.

* * * * *

Since the Polefax Meeting Silver had come and gone continually. His week-ends he spent frequently at Putnam's, returning to London by the first train on Monday morning.

"He don't like the Bank, and I don't blame him," said Old Mat. "I reck'n he'd like to be all the while in the saddle on the Downs."

"Why does he stick to the Bank?" the girl blurted out.

It was the only question she had ever put about Mr. Silver.

"Because he's got to, my dear," replied the sagacious old man. "If he don't stick to the Bank, the Bank won't stick to him, I guess."

In those months the girl had learned a good deal about Mr. Silver. He was different from the other men she knew. She had felt that at once on meeting him. She was shy with him and short; and it was rare for her to be shy with men. Indeed, in her heart she knew that she was almost afraid of him. And she had never known herself afraid of a man before. That made her angry with him, though it was no fault of his.

Then she had resented the unconscious part he had played in the affair of the wood. She was sure he was laughing at her. And that good, plain, smileless face of his, and the very fact that he never referred to the incident, only made her the more suspicious.

His awkward big-dog attempts at friendliness had been repulsed. She played the Maudie to his Billy Bluff, and all would have been well but that he refused to get back upon her by bounding. Instead, he apparently had come to the conclusion that she disliked him, and had withdrawn.

That made her angrier still.

Now she had not even known that he was coming down last night. And worst and most unforgivable of all, she had not been told that Make-Way-There was to be galloped that morning.

Ragamuffin, the roan, was surprised when his mistress picked him up immediately she entered the Paddock Close and pushed him into a canter.