But I had little time for such speculations; the hour of my own trial was approaching. The roan was getting troublesome, the pace was gradually working up her mettle; and she had given three or four preparatory bounds, as though to see whether she’d part company with me before she ran away or not. My own calculations at the moment were not very dissimilar; I was meditating a rupture of the partnership too. The matrix of a full-length figure of Arthur O’Leary in red clay was the extent of any damage I could receive, and I only looked for a convenient spot where I might fall unseen. As I turned my head on every side, hoping for some secluded nook, some devil of a hunter, by way of directing the dogs, gave a blast of his brass instrument about a hundred yards before me. The thing was now settled; the roan gave a whirl of her long vicious tail, plunged fearfully, and throwing down her head and twisting it to one side, as if to have a peep at my confusion, away she went. From having formed one of the rear-guard, I now closed up with the main body—‘aspirants’ all—through whom I dashed like a catapult, and notwithstanding repeated shouts of ‘Pull in, sir!’ ‘Hold back!’ etc, I continued my onward course; a few seconds more and I was in the thick of the scarlet coats, my beast at the stretch of her speed, and caring nothing for the bridle. Amid a shower of sacrés that fell upon me like hail, I sprang through them, making the ‘red ones’ black with every stroke of my gallop. Leaving them far behind, I flew past the grand maître himself, who rode in the van, almost upsetting him by a side spring, as I passed—a malediction reaching me as I went; but the forest soon received me in its dark embrace, and I saw no more.
It was at first a source of consolation to me to think that every stride removed me from the reach of those whose denunciations I had so unfortunately incurred; grand maître, chasseurs, and ‘aspirants’—they were all behind me. Ay, for that matter, so were the dogs and the piqueurs, and, for aught I knew, the fox with them. When I discovered, however, that the roan continued her speed still unabated, I began to be somewhat disconcerted. It was true the ground was perfectly smooth and safe—a long allée of the wood, with turf shorn close as a pleasure-ground. I pulled and sawed the bit, I jerked the bridle, and performed all the manual exercise I could remember as advised in such extremities, but to no use. It seemed to me that some confounded echo started the beast, and incited her to increased speed. Just as this notion struck me, I heard a voice behind cry out—
‘Do hold in! Try and hold in, Mr. O’Leary!’ I turned my head, and there was Laura, scarce a length behind, her thoroughbred straining every sinew to come up. No one else was in sight, and there we were, galloping like mad, with the wood all to ourselves.
I can very well conceive why the second horse in a race does his best to get foremost, if it were only the indulgence of a very natural piece of curiosity to see what the other has been running for; but why the first one only goes the faster because there are others behind him, that is a dead puzzle to me. But so it was; my ill-starred beast never seemed to have put forth her full powers till she was followed. Ventre à terre, as the French say, was now the pace; and though from time to time Laura would cry out to me to hold back, I could almost swear I heard her laughing at my efforts. Meanwhile the wood was becoming thicker and closer, and the allée narrower and evidently less travelled. Still it seemed to have no end or exit; scarcely had we rounded one turn when a vista of miles would seem to stretch away before us, passing over which, another, as long again, would appear.
After about an hour’s hard galloping, if I dare form any conjecture as to the flight of time, I perceived with a feeling of triumph that the roan was relaxing somewhat in her stride; and that she was beginning to evince, by an up-and-down kind of gait, what sailors call a ‘fore-and aft’ motion, that she was getting enough of it. I turned and saw Laura about twenty yards behind—her thoroughbred dead beat, and only able to sling along at that species of lobbing canter blood-cattle can accomplish under any exigency. With a bold effort I pulled up short, and she came alongside of me; and before I could summon courage to meet the reproaches I expected for having been the cause of her runaway, she relieved my mind by a burst of as merry and good-tempered laughter as ever I listened to. The emotion was contagious, and so I laughed too, and it was full five minutes before either of us could speak.
‘Well, Mr. O’Leary, I hope you know where we are,’ said she, drying her eyes, where the sparkling drops of mirth were standing, ‘for I assure you I don’t.’
‘Oh, perfectly,’ replied I, as my eye caught a board nailed against a tree, on which some very ill-painted letters announced ‘La route de Bouvigne’—‘we are on the highroad to Bouvigne, wherever that may be.’
‘Bouvigne!’ exclaimed she, in an accent of some alarm; ‘why, it’s five leagues from the château! I travelled there once by the highroad. How are we ever to get back?’
That was the very question I was then canvassing in my own mind, without a thought of how it was to be solved. However, I answered with an easy indifference, ‘Oh, nothing easier; we ‘ll take a calèche at Bouvigne.’
‘But they ‘ve none.’