And in this she took the more comfort, because something else, until now appearing wholly her own, was slipping a little away from her. Dickie's health had improved notably in the last few weeks. His listlessness had vanished, while his cheeks showed a wholesome warmth of colour. But his cry was ever. "Mother, Uncle Roger's going to such a place. He says he'll take me. I can go, can't I?" Or, "Mother, Mary's going to do such a thing. She says she'll show me how. She may, mayn't she?" And Katherine's answer was always "Yes." She grudged the boy none of his new-found pleasures, rejoiced indeed to see him interested and gay. Yet to watch the new broom, which sweeps so clean, is rarely exhilarating to those that have swept diligently with the old one. The nest had held her precious fledgling so safely till now; and this fluttering of wings, eager for flight, troubled her somewhat. Not only was Dickie's readiness to be away from her a trifle hard to bear; but she knew that disappointment, of a certainty, lay in wait for him, and that each effort towards wider action would but reveal to him how circumscribed his powers actually were.
Meanwhile, however, Richard enjoyed himself recklessly, almost feverishly, in the attempt to disprove the teaching of that ugly dream, and keep truth at bay. There had been further drives, and the excitement of witnessing a forest fire—only too frequent in the Brockhurst country when the sap is up, and the easterly wind and May sun have scorched all moisture from the surface of the moorland. He and Mary had bumped over fir roots and scuttled down bridle-paths in the pony-carriage, to avoid the rush of flame and smoke; had skirmished round at a hand gallop, in search of recruits to reinforce Ormiston, and Iles, and a small army of beaters, battling against the blazing line that threatened destruction to the fir avenue. Now and again, with a mighty roar, which sent Dickie's heart into his mouth, great tongues of flame, clear as topaz and ruby in the steady sunshine, would leap upwards, converting a whole tall fir into a tree of fire, while the beaters running back, grimed with smoke and sweat, took a moment's breathing-space in the open.
There had been more peaceful pastimes as well—several days' fishing, enchanting beyond the power of language to describe. The clear trout-stream meandering through the rich water-meadows; the herds of cattle standing knee-deep in the grass, lazily chewing the cud and switching their tails at the cloud of flies; the birds and wild creatures haunting the streamside; the long dreamy hours of gentle sport, had opened up to Dickie a whole new world of romance. His donkey-chair had been left at the yellow-washed mill beneath the grove of silvery-leaved, ever-rustling, balsam poplars. And thence, while Ormiston and Mary sauntered slowly on ahead, the men—Winter in mufti, oblivious of plate-cleaning and cellarage, and the onerous duties of his high estate, Stamp, the water-bailiff, and Moorcock, one of the under-keepers—had carried him across the great green levels. Winter was an old and tried friend, and it was somewhat diverting to behold him in this novel aspect, affable and chatty with inferiors, displaying, moreover, unexpected knowledge in the mysteries of the angler's craft. The other two men—sharp-featured, their faces ruddy as summer apples, merry-eyed, clad in velveteen coats, that bulged about the pockets, and wrinkled leather gaiters reaching halfway up the thigh—charmed Richard, when his first shyness was passed. They were eager to please him. Their talk was racy. Their laughter ready and sincere. Did not Stamp point out to him a water-ouzel, with impudently jerking tail, dipping and wading in the shallows of the stream? Did not Moorcock find him a water-rail's nest, hidden in a tuft of reeds and grass, with ten, yellowish, speckled eggs in it? And did not both men pluck him handfuls of cowslips, of tawny-pink avens, and of mottled, snake-headed fritillaries, and stow them away in the fishing-baskets above the load of silver-and-red spotted trout?
Mary had protested Dickie could throw a fly, if he had a light enough rod. And not only did he throw a fly, but at the fourth or fifth cast a fish rose, and he played it—with skirling reel and much advice and most complimentary excitement on the part of the whole good company—and brought it skilfully within range of Stamp's landing-net. Never surely was trout spawned that begot such bliss in the heart of an angler! As, with panting sides and open gills, this three-quarter-pound treasure of treasures flopped about on the sunny stream bank all the hereditary instinct of sport spoke up clearly in Dickie. The boy—such is youthful masculine human nature—believed he understood at last why the world was made! At dressing-time he had his sacred fish carried on a plate up to his room to show Clara; and, but for strong remonstrance on the part of that devoted handmaiden, would have kept it by his bedside all night, so as to assure himself at intervals, by sense of touch—let alone that of smell—of the adorable fact of its veritable existence.
But all this, inspiring though it was, served but as prelude to a more profoundly coveted acquaintance—that with the racing-stable. For it was after this last that Dickie still supremely longed—the more so, it is to be feared, because it was, if not explicitly, yet implicitly forbidden. A spirit of defiance had entered into him. Being granted the inch, he was disposed to take the ell. And this, not in conscious opposition to his mother's will; but in protest, not uncourageous, against the limitations imposed on him by physical misfortune. The boy's blood was up, and consequently, with greater pluck than discretion, he struggled against the intimate, inalienable enemy that so marred his fate. And it was this not ignoble effort which culminated in disobedience.
For driving back one afternoon, later than usual,—Ormiston had met them, and Mary and he had taken a by-path home through the woods,—the pony-carriage, turned along the high level road beside the lake, going eastward, just as the string of race-horses, coming home from exercise, passed along it coming west. Richard was driving, Chaplin, the second coachman, sitting in the dickey at the back of the low carriage. He checked the pony, and his eyes took in the whole scene—the blue-brown expanse of the lake dotted with water-fowl, on the one hand, the immense blue-brown landscape on the other, ranging away to the faint line of the chalk downs in the south; the downward slope of the park, to the great square of red stable buildings in the hollow; the horses coming slowly towards him in single file. Cawing rooks streamed back from the fallow-fields across the valley. Thrushes and blackbirds carolled. A wren, in the bramble brake close by, broke into sharp sweet song. The recurrent ring of an axe came from somewhere away in the fir plantations, and the strident rasping of a saw from the wood-yard in the beech grove near the house.
Richard stared at that oncoming procession. Half-way between him and the foremost of the horses the tan ride branched off, and wound down the hillside to the stables. The boy set his teeth. He arrived at a desperate decision,—touched up the pony, drove on.
Chaplin leaned forward, addressing him, over the back of the seat.
"Better wait here, hadn't we, Sir Richard? They'll turn off in a minute."
Richard did not look round. He tried to answer coldly, but his voice shook.