CHAPTER VI
"Dull?" said Lady Henrietta.
The girl became aware of her with a start.
Barnaby had just gone, and the house was quiet. Late as usual, he had come clinking down in his spurs, and run out to his waiting horse; and she had seen him off, but had not yet turned away from the door. Lady Henrietta's uncommon earliness had surprised her. She did not know how wistful her aspect was.
"No," she said. "Oh no. I was only watching——"
"To see the last of him," retorted Lady Henrietta smartly. "I know—I know. One glimpse of him as he crosses the wooden bridge, and again a peep before he cuts across by the willows. How dare you let him set off day after day without you?"
She paused. There was mischief in her eye, an unwonted touch of excitement. One would have said she was plotting.
"You are too lamb-like," she said. "I'll give you a horse. Tell him you'll go hunting with him to-morrow."
She laughed outright at the girl's look of consternation.
"No," she said, "you wouldn't. My dear, you have got him, and you must keep him. It's a woman's business to look after her husband, to throw herself into his occupations, and rescue him from the ravening lions that run up and down in the earth. Why didn't you back me up when I attacked him last night, and he put me off with his nonsense about a quiet pony? Why didn't you insist?"
Susan flushed scarlet, remembering Lady Henrietta's unexpected onslaught and Barnaby's good-humoured amazement; his vague promise of giving her a riding lesson. He glanced at her mirthfully, and that look of his had called up a hot disclaimer of any wish. Was it not in their bargain that as far as possible they were not to haunt each other?
"Since you are so meek," said Lady Henrietta, who did not miss her confusion, "I must put my finger in the pie."
Her eyes were not young, but they were far-seeing; she turned from the prospect at which Susan had been gazing, and laid authoritative fingers on her sleeve.
"Run upstairs," she said, "and get into your habit. I've told Margaret to have it ready. It won't fit, probably, but you are not vain;—it's borrowed. Don't stare at me, you baby! Rackham and I settled it the night he dined here, while you and Barnaby were trying not to talk to each other. I don't know whether you can ride or not, but you must begin."
She finished up with a chuckle. The sight of Susan's face—well, that was enough for her. She had turned a more potent key than she knew.
Two horses were pawing the gravel beside the door, and one of them had a side-saddle on his back. She had seen them coming when she despatched her daughter-in-law to dress. Rackham himself was waiting on the steps. Lady Henrietta beckoned to him with the joy of a bad child firing a train of powder.
"I've told her," she said. "She'll be down in a minute. Take her once or twice round the park, and if she doesn't fall off——"
"She won't fall off," said Rackham.
"You brought her a quiet horse?"—the conspirator was feeling a slight compunction.
Barnaby's cousin, his ancient rival, smiled under his moustache. "I'll take good care of her, my aunt," he said.
"You are an obliging demon, Rackham," she observed. "It was good of you to give up your hunting."
"They'll be at Ranksboro' about twelve," he said significantly. "If you really wanted us to give Barnaby a surprise——"
Lady Henrietta favoured him with an enlightening nod. Whether or no he was bent on furthering her purposes, assuredly she might trust him.
"Villain," she said. "You understand me; it's an experiment,—it's a squib!"
Twice Susan rode solemnly round the park. To her, remembering how, as a child, she had ridden, cross-legged, bare-backed, anyhow, anything—their solicitude was absurd. She swung her foot in the stirrup, lifting a transfigured face.
"You are all right," said Rackham, glancing backwards towards the distant windows. "I knew you could ride."
He bent over in his saddle to unlatch the hand-gate that Barnaby had ridden through before them, taking his short cut over the wooden bridge by the willows. Keeping his horse back, he held it open.
"Come out this way," he said. They went cantering up the lane.
Dim and dark was the landscape, threatening rain, and the clouds were sinking lower and lower, rubbing out the hills. A kind of expectation hung in the air. A storm gathering perhaps. They rode up and up, until the narrow green lane came to a sudden stop, and a break in the high barriers of hawthorn let them on to a ridge that hung over a wide sweep of valley. Underneath lay a fallow strip, reddish brown amidst the green waves of pasture, and a party of rooks rose cawing above the idle plough.
Susan, her heart still dancing, laid a happy hand on her horse's mane,—the willing horse that carried her so smoothly.
"You like it?" said Rackham.
There was a subtle difference between his guardianship and that of his cousin. She missed that queer sense of security that she had with Barnaby. Why, she knew not, but Rackham's neighbourhood troubled her. She felt a nervous inclination to burst into hurried chatter.
"It was awfully kind of Lady Henrietta to arrange it,—and of you," she said; "though you were both afraid that I should disgrace you. Yes, you were watching;—and she too: her mind misgave her when she saw me in the saddle.—What is the matter with the horses?"
"Look!" he said, smiling broadly.
And immediately she guessed. Far on the right she distinguished a flick of scarlet.
"Oh!" she said, in an awed whisper, understanding.
"That's one of the whips riding on," he explained; "they are going to draw the spinney down there, just underneath. We're in for it, aren't we?—Shall we stay where we are, and chance Barnaby's displeasure? I'll open the gates for you, and give you a lead. Can you jump?"
She laughed at him, carried out of herself, back in remote adventures when there had been nothing she would not dare. Her blood was up, and she felt her horse quivering beneath her. Hounds were in the spinney; she had glimpses of dappled bodies ranging among the trees; at the eastern side an interminable troop of riders were pouring into the field. There seemed no limit to their numbers as they massed thicker and thicker on the skirts of the cover till there was but the south side clear.
"Keep still!" said Rackham in a breath, and as he whispered a living flash passed by. It vanished across the fallow, as a whistle shrilled from below. One of the whips had seen him.
"Steady!" said Rackham. "Hounds are coming out. He broke at that bottom corner.—Now!"
Her horse bounded away with his. She was close behind him as they raced down the headland. The fence at the end was low; a thorn-crammed ditch and a rotten rail. She took it, hardly knowing, but for her horse's excitement, that she had jumped. He broke into a gallop then, and she let him go.
"Who's the lady out with Rackham?" called one man, waiting his turn at a gap. The man ahead of him squeezed through before replying.
"Don't know. She's chosen a damn reckless pilot!"
But no man's recklessness could have beaten hers. She followed him blindly; nothing daunted her, nothing dimmed the eagerness in her soul. This was to live indeed.
They were hard on the pack. She could hear them in front, could sometimes catch a view of them flickering on. A great noise of galloping filled the air behind, drumming hard; but she was still keeping her lucky place in the van. She and Rackham....
There was something formidable ahead. She felt her horse faltering in his stride, not afraid, but doubtful;—those that were close behind were parting right and left; some of them were falling back. Without turning her head she knew it. Recklessly she kept on. The others might blench.... She would not.
Up went her horse, and in mid-air she had time to ask herself what would happen, to guess that it was touch and go. It seemed a great while before they came down, with a jar and a stagger, galloping rather wildly on.
She was too excited still to feel tired, too ignorant of danger to know what a wild line she was taking now. Just ahead of her Rackham had disappeared with a crack of timber, and she must not be left behind.
An ominous crash pursued her as she went through a stiff barrier of thorns; a loose horse was flying past. She looked dizzily for Rackham, wondering if it was his. It tried to clear the next fence riderless, but was too unsteady, and swerving crosswise, nearly brought her down. In the field beyond it was stopped by an oxer. Someone behind cracked his whip....
"We've beaten the lot!" called Rackham; his voice came a little hoarse in her ear. "Half of 'em funked that bullfinch, and there's one fellow in the ditch——"
She reeled in her saddle.
"I've—no—breath left," she panted.
"Pull up. Pull up!" said Rackham, and leaned over as she managed to stop her horse. Her knees trembled and she held on a minute; she thought she was going to fall off out of sheer fatigue.
Hounds were baying on the other side of the hedge. They had got their fox. People were coming up on all sides, in haste to mingle with the few who had ridden straight. She was vaguely conscious of their interested regard; she heard a general buzz of gossip.
"There's Barnaby," said Rackham. He had dismounted, and stood by her horse's shoulder, pretending to do something with a buckle, but in reality waiting for her to recover. His arm was ready to catch her if she should slide off; his wild eyes were fixed on her.
"Don't forget it was with me, not with him, you rode your first run," he said. The triumph in his whisper made her afraid. She felt like a truant.
What would Barnaby think of her? Would he be very angry? Had he watched her riding, wondering who she was? She lifted her face, a little proud, but troubled. All at once her glorious adventure wore the look of an escapade.
He had ridden up, but he was not looking at her at all. The set of his mouth was hard.
"I'll take charge of my wife," he said.
How strange it sounded. Would she never get used to it? She had an immediate sense of protection, of happiness out of all reason. But what else could he call her, before the world?
His cousin grinned at him brazenly.
"If you haven't too much on your hands," he said darkly. "Oh, take over your responsibilities if you like. You needn't fight me. It was your mother's idea.... But she's tired. She mustn't stop out too long."
"It was a mad thing to do," said Barnaby curtly; "risking her life over these fences—!"
"Come, come," said Rackham, "don't paint me too black. I took the greatest care of her. Didn't I?"
"I was looking on," said Barnaby.
He had turned to Susan at last, and she saw that his face was pale. Something in him responded to her look of rapture dashed.
"Poor little girl!" he said. "I didn't know—you cared about it—" Then he smiled ruefully. "By Jove!" he said. "You gave me a fright. I thought you'd get yourself killed a dozen times. And I had a bad start. I couldn't get up to you. There, don't let's look as if we were quarrelling, though under the circumstances,—do you think we should?"
She plucked up spirit to answer him in kind. "On the stage," she said, "the audiences would expect it."
"Well," he said, "we'll disappoint the audience.... You won your bet, Kilgour; it is my wife. Wasn't it wicked of her?"
She found herself trotting on at his side. Rackham had fallen back. It was Barnaby who directed her, who rode at her right hand; and a cheery crowd hemmed her in.
At the head of the procession hounds were moving on. Occasionally the authorities called a halt while they searched a patch of trees by the wayside, or turned aside to examine a hollow tree. But these were not serious diversions. Once, indeed, there was a whimper as the pack ran scampering into a small plantation, and the huntsman went in to see what it was, his scarlet glancing in the bare brown mist of larches.
"I know what'll happen to us," grumbled Kilgour, as the verdict was issued that it was empty. "We'll climb up on the top of Ranksboro' and the heavens will open on us."
The ranks closed up again as the pack tumbled back sadly into the road. Kilgour was a true prophet; they were bent at last towards that unfailing harbour. On they pushed, up hill and down, through a grey village where the trees shut out the sky from the winding street, and then slap in at a gate that let them on to the grass again.
"Where are we?" asked Susan, as she was squeezed in the press through the gate, finding elbow-room as her neighbours scattered on the other side, spreading downward.
"On the wild side of Ranksboro'," said Barnaby. "Stick to me if you are thinking of getting lost. You'll see where you are when we reach the top, and you can look down on the cover;—but that's at the other side. Don't you remember the black look of it on the hillside, off the Melton and Oakham road?"
All were hurrying across the rough bottom, with its hillocks and furze bushes, and patches of withered bracken; then, gathering in the narrow bit that let them in under a fringe of trees, mounting upwards. On the farther side of the summit they came out above a thick plantation; and there they drew rein and waited, unsheltered, bare to the sky overhead.
Down came the rain.
"I wish I was dead," said a lank man behind Kilgour. "I wish I was fighting a bye-election!"
Those who were near huddled into the bristling hedge that might break an east wind, but was useless against this downpour. A few slunk back over the brow, and herded under the trees; the rest sat stubbornly on their horses, humping their shoulders, their dripping faces set grimly towards the cover below; hearkening to hounds.
"Would you rather be pelted with words?" said Kilgour, ramming his hat over his nose.—"Surely they trickle off you.... Jerusalem! we'll be drowned."
The lank man turned up his collar, feeling for a button.
"Well, they are dry!" he said.
"They don't give you rheumatism, I grant you," said a fat man beside him; "but they aren't healthy. I don't care what a man's trade is, if he can discourse about it, it's improbable he can do his job. And yet we poor devils of politicians have to spin our brains into jaw——"
"True," said Kilgour. "You don't trust a glib fellow to dig your garden.... And yet you turn over your country to him."
The fat man grunted.
"I never want to open my mouth again," he said. "I'm addressing six meetings a week in my constituency, and nothing will go down with 'em but ranting. Tell you what, Kilgour, we're going on wrong principles altogether. What we want is Government by Minority. Just you get on a platform and look down on their silly faces—! The fools are in the majority in any walk of life; they swamp the sensible chaps, even Solomon noticed that. And it's the fools we must please, because they are many. We take their opinion; we let them settle things. The whole system is upside down."
"There's something in that," said Kilgour. "It always amuses me how you vote-catchers despise a man who works with his head; and bow down to your ignorant fetish the working man."
There was a slight disturbance in the cover, but nothing came of it. People shifted backwards and forwards; there was a smell of wet leather and steaming horses.
"Are you cold?" said Barnaby.
Susan smiled. He was between her and the worst of it; the rain beat on his upturned face as he sheltered her. She liked watching him ... she was not unhappy.
The lank man was trying to light a cigar. He glanced up between his hollowed fingers, his eyes twinkling in a creased red face.
"Our lives aren't worth living, Mrs. Barnaby," he said. "We are all made so painfully aware of our inferior status. The tail wagging the dog; that's what we have come to."
The fat man followed his glance, and his disgusted expression gave way to a friendly gleam. His puffy eyelids quivered.
"Let us grumble," he said. "You see how the weather behaves to us when we escape for a week-end from bondage. There isn't a bright spot anywhere but one tale I heard lately in my division."
The lank man tossed away his match; the cigar was drawing.
"And what was that?" he said.
"Well, it seems they got a Cabinet Minister down to rant against me," said the fat man, chuckling. "He had made himself particularly obnoxious to our militant sisters, and there were terrible hints as to what the ladies were going to do about him. So a London paper commissioned their blandest reporter to call on 'em, and incidentally get at their intentions;—and he stuck a flower in his buttonhole and tackled an engaging young suffragette, who confided in him the tremendous secret. Swore him, of course, to silence——"
"And the wretch betrayed her?"
The politician grinned.
"They were going to disguise themselves as men," he explained, "and pervade the meeting in the likeness of divers of my rival's most prominent supporters. She was to make up as a well-known farmer who happened to have lumbago;—leggin's, and corporation, and side-whiskers gummed on tight."
"Pity she let it out," said Kilgour.
"Aha!" said the other man, "she was artless. Well the news got down to 'em somehow, just in time for the meeting, and they set a bodyguard over anybody who looked suspicious. Couldn't keep out their principal backers, or insult 'em by explaining, and hadn't time to investigate.—And my rival got on his legs.—I'm told they were all more or less in hysterics, each man glaring at his neighbour. And these whiskers looked jolly unnatural in the artificial light. My rival had got as far as to mention his 'right honourable friend who, at great inconvenience'—when that old farmer started to blow his nose. 'Turn her out!' he screeched, and four men seized the astonished old chap, and hoisted him, kicking and bellowing, to the door.... There was a glorious row, I'm told. It practically broke up the meeting."
"Ah," said Kilgour, "politics aren't always an arid waste."
"No, occasionally there is rain in the desert. Are we ever going to move. I'm soaking."
In the dark heavens the clouds were frayed by glimmering streaks of light. Barnaby moved impatiently, and beyond him Julia Kelly passed by, changing her station. The girl who was sheltered by his shoulder had forgotten that Julia must be there. She felt suddenly that she was a stranger.
How often must he and Julia have hunted together, how often they must have ridden side by side, sharing the day's fortunes; whispering contentedly to each other as he shielded her from the storm!—More telling than speech had been Julia's half-sad, half-reproachful smile.
"They've got him out!" cried Kilgour, spinning round and heading a mad stampede. As the rest imitated him, Barnaby turned to Susan. "I'm not going to let you out of my sight!" he said.
Down the hill they raced. Hounds were flinging themselves across, bursting louder and louder into cry, proclaiming that they were on his line. And now nobody minded rain.
For a little while Susan felt the magic of it again; the swing of the gallop, the exhilaration of the jumps as they came; but all too soon she flagged. They were hunting slower; hounds were not so sure of the scent; they were slackening, losing faith. The huntsman went forward, and the Master stopped the field. Then they went on again, running in a string up the hedge.
Barnaby turned his horse's head and let the crowd go by. He looked at her significantly. How did he know that she could not keep on much longer?
"I'll take you home now," he said.
"Oh, don't!" she cried. "I am so sorry.... Don't let me spoil your day."
He laughed.
"I'll pick them up again later on," he said. "We must do the correct thing, mustn't we? It would look bad if I let you go home alone.—Good heavens, how tired you are! You can hardly sit on your horse."
*****
Lady Henrietta, the mischief-maker, waited with equanimity for Barnaby to come home. He had brought Susan back and gone off again on a fresh horse, giving her no opportunity of a passage-at-arms with him.
When he did return his coolness was disappointing. She waited until she could contain herself no longer.
"Why don't you ask after Susan?" she said at last. He looked up then. His clothes had dried on him, he had changed lazily into slippers, and was warming his shins at the fire. They had finished the day with a clinking run. "She's not ill?" he said.
"I put her to bed," said Lady Henrietta, "when she came in. The poor child could hardly move.... I suppose you bullied her frightfully when she turned up?"
Barnaby went on stirring his tea and stretching himself to the blaze.
"I told her to have a hot bath and a good long rest," he said, in a grandmotherly tone. "What did you expect? Were you hoping that I should beat her?"
"I was hoping all kinds of things," said Lady Henrietta.
"Such as—?"
She lost all patience. What was the use of plotting if nothing she could devise would rouse him? Anything would be more satisfactory than that maddening smile of his.
"Do you want to break the child's heart?" she cried.
For a moment she fancied that he was startled; she could not see his face so well, but the cup clattered in his hand. Then she discovered that he was laughing at her.
"Has Susan complained?" he said.
"She?" said Lady Henrietta. "Oh, how little you understand her! She'll never complain of you. All I hear I have to screw out of other people. From what they tell me—! Oh, she'll never complain, though you and your Julia make yourselves a by-word!"
She paused there, confident that there would be an outburst. Her triumphant expectation was dashed; she was nearly struck dumb with astonishment when she heard his voice.
"It's a queer world, mother."
This was indeed serious. He was not even angry;—and she had hoped to make him furious. She scanned him anxiously, stricken with alarm.
"You aren't well?" she said.
"I'm a little bothered," he said. "Look here, mother; supposing—well, supposing a man were horribly, irretrievably, fond of a woman,—and would be a regular cur if he let her know;—would you condemn him for building up a kind of rampart, playing with fire that he knew couldn't burn him, to keep him from losing his head, and hurting the thing he—the thing that was precious to him? Oh, damn it all, you can't possibly understand."
It was plain as a pikestaff. Lady Henrietta was justified of her mischief-making. Something must be done. There was law and order in any tactics that might vex the siren who was still robbing her of her boy. Never in this world would there be peace between her and Julia.
"If," she said, "you want me to believe that you married Susan to stick her up like a ninepin between you and a woman who threw you over, who can't bear us to imagine you are consoled——!"
She broke off indignantly, but Barnaby would not quarrel. He got up and laid his hand caressingly on her shoulder.
"Don't excite yourself, mother," he said. "I was talking nonsense. So are you.... If I were you I wouldn't meddle. It's more dangerous than you know."
Then he went away to change out of his hunting clothes, and she watched his departure with a wistful exasperation, lying back on her sofa.
"What a nuisance a heart is!" she said to herself. "He would have had it out with me but for that."