Part 10

Bookies crying raucously in the little ring. Signaling of touts. Milling of people.

"I 'll lay two to one the field," a booky was shouting. His eyes were all but out of his cheeks. His shoulders hunched with effort. His voice exploded as though thrown against a wall, and he atomized a fine spray before him. "I 'll lay three to one bar one; I'll lay four to one bar two. I'll lay even money Munster Pride. Even money Irish Dragoon. Four to one Little Dorrit. Seven to two Carnation. Here, four to one Carnation. Eight to one Murderer's Pet. Twelve to one Irish Gentility. I 'll lay twenty to one--twenty to one Thunderbolt. Twenty-five to one Flying Fish--"

"How much, Joe Jack?"

"Is it you, Lady Margery? God love you. I'll lay you thirty to one Flying Fish. How much will you take?"

"Ten pounds' worth."

"Three hundred and ten pounds Flying Fish, Lady Margery Kyteler. I hope you win, m'lady. I do so there I 'll lay two to one the field. I 'll lay three to one bar one. I 'll lay four to one bar two--"

Dropping of flag and clatter of bell. There they were in the distance, flying down the regulation. They rise to the ditch, three abreast. Canter again--the water jump. The lump becomes a line. And who's ahead? Can you see? Carnation! Ah, my jewel Carnation! And now the bank. There's a horse down. Thunderbolt! Ah, be damned to the same Thunderbolt! Is that the gray ahead? It is so! Is it Flying Fish is in it? Flying Fish it is, and he running like a hare! 'T is win in a canter he will. They 're coming to the hedge. Ah! what is it, Mister? Flying Fish it is, and he stopping dead. A dead stop he 's made, and the jockey pasting the ribs out of him. Ah, he 's on now, but in the heel of the hunt he is! Carnation wins. Carnation--ah, my sweet wee lady!

They passed the post, Flying Fish bringing up the rear with a supercilious arrogance.

"Fish!" Margery wrinkled her nose in disgust. "Fish was good."

And "There goes my new hat!" she wailed. And who should pass by but Mr. Kelly. Out of his red face peered an inquisitive gray eye.

"You didn't?" he said.

"I did."

"How much?"

"Ten pounds."

"Ah, well," he decided cruelly; "It'll teach you." And he passed on.

"Well, the devil scald you!" she called after him, "and your thick ignorance!"

Last race and the end of the day. He swung her lightly to the side-car. Firm elbows, rounded arms, and how light she was, elastic! A woman in a shawl and a battered sailor-hat stood with folded arms and began a street ballad:

"Bold Robert Emmet, the darling of Ireland! Bold Robert Emmet, he died with a smile! Farewell, my company-ions both loyal and loving! A hero I 'll die for the Emerald Isle."

Margery was grinning above the press of the people, O'Conor turned and dug his hand in his pocket. Threw the woman a large silver coin.

"Well, may God keep and preserve you, my fine noble red-headed man! And the sweet lady beside you--may God bless her! And may you live comfortable and die happy, the both of you, and leave behind you a dozen of the finest children."

"Drive on! Drive on!" O'Conor implored.

"Is it over the heads of the decent people you 'd have me drive, then?" asked the jarvey, in abrupt horror.

"And of the twelve may six of them be like yourself, fine and red-headed, and six like herself, sweet and dark. Ah, 't is the fine man you have, my sweet mistress!"

O'Conor saw the scarlet of her face against the black hair. Eh, Lord, how beautiful she was!

VI

The click of the wicket-gate and he was gone, and down the frosty road his firm step was echoing. She stood at the long drawing-room window and listened. Eh, what a moon! And to-night the hare would be out on Three Rock Mountain, and the red fox pad toward the chicken-coops--the rogue of the world! And on the mountain lakes southward there would be a lid of mist hovering, blue mist and dark mountains and the white moon!

And under the moon her own garden, her own house lay so quietly sleeping. Crisp lawn and the graveled paths and the high wall and the greenhouses glistening, and the yew-trees against the wall. And the bigger trees of the garden, the oak and ash, and the rowan-trees--the mountain-ash, they called it in England--all the trees that were silent now, even the wind being still. The low dining-room that spread out at right angles, and was thatched like an old-time cottage--how sweet it seemed from here! And the stables, where the horses were in their stalls, and the coachman and groom slept. The little lodge where the gardeners were, a huddle of ivy. Oh, the sweet domain!

It seemed to her, when the old place and the servants slept, and the dogs were curled up sleeping, and the horses in their stalls, that she somehow was the guardian and protector of all this. The old servants were not afraid because a Kyteler still lived, and they knew they would be cared for, their whimsies understood. There being no strong man to stand against the encroachments of the world, what was better than her own sweet virginity? She could conceive of nothing harming the place or people when she was there. Even the spirits of the hills would pass it by gently; the dark Irish things that frighten folk in their sleep, the rumble of the death-coach, the wailing banshee, the thud of the Pooka's terrible hooves--none of them had power while she was there.

Would she always protect it--or would there be some one else? she mused. A big man. She turned from the window and went toward the fire. The face she had seen all day in reality was with her now in vision of the fire--the face with the strong jaw, the gray eyes, bronzed head, and red curls. How every one had looked at him, she remembered proudly, at the race-course to-day! How fine he was! How strong, too! She had been a feather to him when he swung her up on the car. And when his hands had caught her elbows and her feet left the ground, her heart jumped, fluttered....

And how nice he was! When the old rip of a battered singer had wished them a multitude of children, he had blushed like a girl.

And when he had lifted her from the car, he had held her for the fraction of a second in the air. He had thought she did n't notice it--and she had been afraid he would hear her heart beating, so loudly did it hammer in her breast. When she had turned him over to Rose Ann, to take to her father's old room and turned and gone into her own, she had closed her door and leaned against it, and said to herself, "Margery, this man 's in love with you!" and then, in a lower, hushed tone, "And, Margery, you 're in love with him!"

And all by herself she had blushed terribly and felt in a wild panic. "He will see it," she said; "he will know." But then she said, "No, he will not; I won't let him." And a song had come into her heart. A great pride and wonder filled her. She felt she should be dressed in soft scarlet robes, in some symbolic vestment of wonder and joy. But she came down to dinner in a demure white frock, her hair done very demurely, her eyes demure. And all the time her heart was bubbling with sweet, low laughter, and saying, "Do you know, Margery, this man 's in love with you, and he does n't know you know it. And you 're in love with him, and he does n't know that either. And we won't tell him, Margery, will we? We 'll let him find out for himself."

All through dinner and after, she got him to talk of where he had been--Brazil and China--and of New York, where he was born and which he loved. She watched him over the sullen saffron candlelight, and she thought, "He 's got a noble head," and again irrelevently, "You could n't muss that hair of his, no matter how much you tried. Those short red curls would spring back. I 'd like to try." And again she wondered, "Will he try to kiss me when he says good night? And what shall I do? Shall I kiss him back, or give him a piece of my mind? And if I give him a piece of my mind he may never come again. And if I kiss him he 'll think very little of me. It's awfully hard." And again, "Ah, he won't try," she said. "He would n't in my own house. And, besides, he 's really in love. I know it."

And he had only shaken hands with her, and said he was going soon, and might he come to see her before he went? And her heart sank, and she said, yes, she 'd be very sorry if he did n't. And he said, When? And she pondered over a possible engagement that did n't matter at all, and said, Tuesday, then, and her heart murmured disconsolately. Two long days.

Through dinner and after she thought she had only been thinking of his strong, eager face, but now he was gone, all he had said she remembered. And she thought of hot China, and the sun-baked South, and the yellow rivers. And of Brazil with all its forests, and the speckled snakes, and the whistling monkeys, and the egrets standing by the fountains, and the little armadillo lumbering across the roads. And of New York, the vital city, with its houses challenging the thunder of summer skies, its explosion of light when evening came, its hurrying myriads, keen-eyed, alert. Against all these backgrounds she could see his clean-cut, gray-eyed face, and she could see herself small and slight, looking up at him in wonder and pride.

"I could go with him anywhere," she whispered.

And then something seemed to call: "Margery!"

She looked up. There was nothing there, but the dimmed loved room obtruded itself upon her, and through the moonlit window she could see the antique trees, and the silver glint to the greenhouses, and in a clairvoyant instant she could see the old men sleeping after the day's work, and the ancient maids, and Fenian in his paddock, and poor Sheila, and the foxhounds. She knew what called.

"Margery!"

"Yes, dears."

"Oh, Lady Margery!"

"Hush, now. It's all right."

She had thought that to-night she would sleep as a child sleeps, and try to recapture the magic day in dreams. And be so happy. But the voice of the trees, and the murmur of the old house, and the pleading eyes of dog and horse, and the wailing tyranny of the sleeping aging folk shocked her into the knowledge that there was a sterner thing than dreaming before her. To-night she would not sleep.

"Margery! Lady Margery!"

"Yes. Yes."

"You couldn't, little mistress, you couldn't.'

"Hush, hearts, hush. I will not go away."

VII

He was very handsome, very erect, very noble there, standing by the old fireplace. He was not merry to-night, so he was going to ask her to marry him, she knew. And in the black and white of evening things, bronzed face and curling hair, he looked the equal of any old Kyteler on the wall. And he had more than they had, she felt--abounding energy. She was very pretty herself to-night, too, she knew, and stately a little.

He was hurting, hurting her badly, for he was speaking now of South Africa, where he was going. And he was carefully telling her how wonderful he had heard that country was: the mass of Table Mountain and the rolling hills, the great acres of grapes, the miles of veldt with the white Boer farmhouses, the sun forever shining, hunting such as she had never dreamed of, great, majestic storms.

"You 'd like it; you 'd like it ever so much."

"Oh, I don't know," she lied. "Ireland is a lot to me."

He was telling her clumsily, shamefacedly of another thing--of a lucky chance he had had in Brazil many years ago, a chance he had taken laughingly, and that had made him indecently rich, and he still a very young man. She understood.

She moved away, and began hunting for a piece of music, so that her back was to him.

"Did you ever think," she said, "of settling down in Ireland? You 're Irish, you know.

"And it's not a bad place," she went on before he answered. "It's a sort of sportsman's paradise. Fishing and hunting and race-courses. And sailing. And if you get tired you can run over to London, or Paris, or Madrid.

"Oh, damn!" she said, "I can't find that thing at all!" She was trembling from head to heel. "Why don't you marry some nice Irish girl and settle down?"

"Oh, I could n't settle down in Ireland."

"No?"

"There 's my work to do."

"But you just said you were rich."

"That's no excuse for not working."

"I thought--I don't know."

"No, I 'd be a very poor sort," he laughed, "if I stopped work because I was rich. I 'd have no self-respect--"

"No?" she said dully. The trembling had passed now. She was just numb, numb and dead.

"But as to marrying an Irish girl, Lady Margery--Margery--"

She stood up and turned about. She was smiling quizzically.

"You 're not proposing to marry me, are you?"

"Yes."

"Don't. Don't, O'Conor," she said. "Please don't."

"Why?"

"Because of this--" she looked at him squarely--"I like you. I like you immensely. To me you 're everything a man should be, but just--I don't seem to see you that way. I don't love--do you see? And I don't think I ever could. No. I never could."

"Well, that's straight. Thanks."

"Are we friends still?"

"Of course, but--" He smiled. "Do you mind if I go?"

"I 'll see you out myself.

"O'Conor," she half whispered in the hall, "I'm an awful son of a gun. I should love you--you 're so fine, so decent, so--so everything--but I don't. I 'm sure I could never love any one. I 'm a very selfish woman, I sometimes think. It wouldn't have been worth while marrying me."

"You're not selfish, and you're very sweet, Margery."

"No, no! Shall I see you again?"

"I 'm afraid not. To-morrow I go to London, and from there to Africa."

"O'Conor, will you do something for me because we are friends?"

"Yes."

"Will you send me pictures of South Africa, and an occasional one of you, because we are friends?"

"Yes, Margery."

"And, O'Conor, if twenty years from now you want to settle down, come to me and let me find you a nice girl to marry--oh! the nicest girl in the world--or if you are sick or crippled, come."

He smiled.

"Promise me."

"All right, Margery. I will." He put out his hand.

"O'Conor," she said. Again she was trembling, but her voice--thank God!--her voice was all right. "I know you 're disappointed, and--O'Conor, would it help if you kissed me?"

"No," he said, "I 'm afraid it would hurt more. So I won't."

"I suppose it would hurt more." She stepped forward and put out her hand. "I am always your friend, O'Conor, your assured friend. And good-by now, O'Conor, and God bless you wherever you go!"

"And you too, Margery."

"You 'll come back, O'Conor, if you 're sick or hurt, or want to settle down, and talk to me about it--your friend, O'Conor, your little Irish friend. You won't forget?"

"I 'll never forget."

He walked down the path under the cloud-touched moon. Would he look back? No, he would n't. He did n't. Oh, there went a man!

VIII

She heard the wicket-gate close, and in her heart she knew that she would never again see him. No gray eyes any more, nor curly hair. Her face had become now a white and quivering mask. She snatched a cloak up and, wrapping it round her, she went blindly into the garden.

She began to shake with great silent sobs. Her face was wet now, and she could n't see. She sank at the roots of the mountain-ash.

"Rowan-tree, rowan-tree!" she cried, "I shall never see him any more!"

And as she sobbed, a little breeze came from the Three Rock Mountain, and all the trees in the garden murmured gently. The great ash unbent, the elm swayed, and the little apple-trees nodded with compassion. All the shrubs in the garden rustled.

_Hush--hush! Hush--hush! Hush--hush!_

"Oh, rowan-tree! rowan-tree!"

_Hush--hush! Hush--hush!_

The moon came gently from behind a great saffron-edged cloud and seemed to bend toward her. Its rays poured sweetly toward the dark head. A rabbit had come somehow into the garden and sat up near her, its ears lop, its pink nose twitching.

_See--see! See--see! See--see!_ The trees were like kindly muses. The sobbing ceased as she watched, as a child's sobbing might.

It scampered off now, for in the kennel the foxhound puppies had wakened--her step or some cry of hers, maybe--and were snuffling and whining to get at her. And from the stables came the rap-rap of Fenian's hoofs, uneasy in his stall.

"I must go in," she said.

Her hand patted the bark of the rowan-tree, and she turned to go into the old house that had been there so many centuries and was there still, sheltering the complement of aging, tyrannous servants in their peaceful sleep, and was beckoning her, she felt, beckoning her to its wide lap....

REYNARDINE

I

The big gray hunter caracoled under him, and with a vicious twitch of curb and snaffle Morgan brought him to stand. He smacked the croup and touched the gelding's fore thigh with the toe of his riding boot until the great hunter stood like a horse in an illustration. Then Morgan turned around.

About him was the cold gray of an Irish morning in November. Woolly, dull, frost on the roads and a touch of easting to the wind--a perfect day for hunting. Forward of him a hundred and fifty yards the hounds were circling around the copse, while the leaders were inside, raising the red fox. Through the gray branches of the wood, gaunt as witches' arms, the pink of the whipper-in's coat showed like a Hallowe'en candle back of a screen. And here and there were knots of the hunt, talking to one another as neighbors talk. There were the women's fluting voices; there was the men's deep laughter. All were friendly, toward one another, toward the world, toward the red fox himself, friendly toward every one except Morgan. Well, to blazes with them, Morgan swore to himself. What the blazes did he care about them--a crowd of country squires and young army men, of stray farmers, and an occasional doctor or parson. What did they amount to, anyway? he 'd like to know.

And yet, he had thought they would be different. It had all been twenty years ago, and he 'd been away all that time, and he 'd been only two days back. But they 'd never forgotten. What haters they were, these Irish! What implacable enemies! What brought him back, anyhow? He could have been happy in America. Or hunting in England. What he 'd come back for was the red Irish fox.

"Steady, blast you!" he warned the big hunter.

"There he goes!" some woman cried, and "No, Janet, no!" a friend laughed. Janet! That would be Janet Conyers. And Janet Conyers must be forty now, and here she was still riding to hounds. Yes, he recognized a full dozen of them. Good Lord! Did people live as long as that? There was old Sir John Burroughs, spare as a lance, and old McGinty, who owned the Mill Farm. Yes, and the Master of Munsterbeg was there, red-faced, hale, all of sixty. And that Grecian profile--was n't that Di Connors, who was now Baroness Rothlin? And the big gaunt man with the hook nose, was n't that Ian More Campbell of the Antrim glens? Poet and soldier and horseman. Morgan felt a tremor of fear before the great Ulster Scot.

There was the yelp of a foxhound and a roar of anger. The thundering master of the hounds was turning on an inoffensive stranger.

"What the--what the--what the blazes do you mean, sir, riding over hounds in that manner? What hunt do you belong to, anyhow?"

"I don't belong to any hunt."

"Well, what the--what did you come out here for, anyhow?"

"My medical man told me I needed fresh air and exercise, and I thought--"

"You thought! You thought! Why in blazes don't you buy a bellows and stick it up your nose? You 'd get all the fresh air and exercise you want, but--"

There was a roar of laughter from the field, and above it rose Morgan's deep basso, like the bourdon note of an organ. But the instant the field noted his laughter, their laughter died.

Morgan smothered a curse and moved fifty yards down where he could get a flying start away from the rush of hunting. How they hated him, resented him, he felt, and yet he had killed no man, stolen no money, betrayed no woman. They hated him as much as they had loved and admired his wife Reynardine. Queer! Queer! He was the one they should love and she was the one they should have felt aloof toward. For he was the steeplechaser, the horseman, the hunter of foxes, and she was of a family whose tradition it was never to hunt or harry a fox, but to protect and aid it. You would have thought it would be the other way around; that they would have liked him and been cool or indifferent toward Reynardine, these hunting women, these sporting men. But no!

And that was twenty years ago, and they hated still. Twenty years! War and famine and pestilence had raged through the world. But they remained the same, these Irish gentlefolk. Yes, it was all of twenty years, nearly to a day, since he had left for foreign parts, and Reynardine, his wife, had died.

II

"Cop forard away!" went the ringing formula of the huntsmen. "Cop forard away!" A long wail on the horn. The covert had been drawn blank.

Two sharp notes and a halloing. "Yo ho, Tinker! Yo ho! Tim! Forard, hounds, forard!" And the pack of hounds began to move like a slow wave toward the distant woodland. The hunt followed at a slow trot....

Her name had been Petronilla, but through the country-side she was known as Reynardine, partly because of the Irish folk-song she could sing so well, with its haunting minors, its suggestion of superhuman music. He could see her slight form still, spiritual, virginal in the Irish twilight. He could hear her pulsating contralto voice:

"If by chance you look for me Perhaps you 'll not me find, For I 'll be in my castle-- Enquire for Reynardine."

No, he would n't look for her, though he knew where she was. She was in her castle, for sure! Her deep and narrow castle in the ancient, disused Cistercian monastery where the Fitzpauls buried their dead. Tier on tier the old Norman-Irish family lay, with their strange names, Fulke and Gilles, Milo, Tortulf, Bertran. There they lay with their carved effigies, dogs at their feet and swords at their side--old Crusaders. There they lay, ancient harriers of the Irish clans, Arnold and Eudo. There they lay, old peers of the Irish parliament, Robert, Gerald and Byssak. There lay the newer landlords, Jenico and Maurice. There they lay, dead as their tradition. There they lay, and be damned to them, Morgan thought! All there was left of them now was one daughter, his and Reynardine's, whom he had seen only once, in swaddling-clothes, and whom, he trusted, he would never see again.

"If by chance you look for me," her song had gone. "Look for you," Morgan sneered. "I 'll be in my castle!" "Well, you can stay there, wife!" he sneered.

He 'd never look for her, even though he could see the monastery where she slept from where he sat on his horse's back....

They had come to a woodland upwind and the hunt had slowed down to a walk. The hounds were being urged in by the pink-coated huntsman. He heard the short note of the huntsman to wake the fox, saw the pack pour in like a stream....

III

He had come out this morning, his second morning in the country, to hunt, to kill the fox, to enjoy the sport he loved with what had become a mania. And now his day was being spoiled by old black memories. Perhaps it was the Abbey where Reynardine slept that nudged him with ghostly concentration, perhaps it was the field that ignored him as though he did not exist, perhaps it was the proximity of the fox itself--he had n't seen or hunted an Irish fox for twenty years. But he was troubled as a man is troubled by imminent disaster. He wished they 'd get on.

"Wind him, boys. Wind him. Yooi, get him out. Joyous! Tinker! Marvan! Leu in!"

But there was naught but the crash of whins, and the whirring of pheasants as they rose. There rose the huntsman's clear call: