Barnaby Part 12

"Why not have a steeplechase?" she cried.

She was one of these little women, all skin and bone, who cannot bear inaction, and whose wishes are carried out.

"Cross country," she said, silencing a growl from her husband. "You can ride the point-to-point course. We'll send round and tell everybody, and get them all here by twelve. And we'll put grooms with lanterns to mark the jumps."

The men jumped up, enthusiastic. The idea was just mad enough to appeal to their sporting instincts. In about three minutes the dining-room was deserted, and five motors were humming into the darkness to apprise and rally all who were reckless enough to join. In a neighbourhood always ready for a frolic there was no danger of the inspiration falling flat.

Barnaby himself was in the thick of it, mapping out preliminaries with the other men in the hall. The women cl.u.s.tered together, almost hysterical with excitement. And Susan drifted apart from the chattering circle, feeling outside it all.

She heard a gruff voice in her ear, and started. The tall, gaunt, hard-faced d.u.c.h.ess was standing over her.

"How are you getting on?" she said.

"It is a little strange to me," said Susan.

"But you are not moping," said the d.u.c.h.ess. "I can see you are made of better stuff. They are all mad, of course, but n.o.body will get hurt, if that is what you are afraid of."

Yes, that must be what she was afraid of, what inspired her with an undefined wretchedness. If she had been what they thought her, surely she would be feeling nervous. She was glad she had not made the mistake of pretending to be gay.

"I am an old friend of your husband's," said the d.u.c.h.ess, "--and he has asked me to be kind to you. I shan't warn you to beware of Julia; all the rest of them will, if they haven't already;--but I don't call that kindness."

"Barnaby asked you to be kind to me?" repeated Susan; she could not keep the wistfulness out of her voice; she had been thinking herself so utterly forgotten.

"Yes. It isn't the fashion here for husbands to worry about their wives, but he is a bit old-fashioned. I told him I'd come and talk to the little fish out of water. It is just a strange pond, my dear, and you'll soon begin swimming."

The clash of voices grew more uproarious in the hall. A man put his head in and vanished, looking for somebody. His brief appearance made the contrast between the excitement out there and this empty room more emphatic.

"I must get out of this," said the d.u.c.h.ess, switching her train as she rose from the sofa. "Kitty will have to lend me a habit and one of her husband's coats. I shall ride. There's a brook jump where there'll be trouble, and I want to see the fun. You had better drive with Kitty.

I'll see to it. Have you anything warm to put on?"

Her caution was hardly equal to her good nature, and the clamour in the hall hardly drowned her indignant voice as she seized on a confidant in the doorway.

"I like her pluck. She's terrified to death, of course, but she doesn't look woe-begone. We must seem a pack of dangerous lunatics....

Where do these Americans get their spirit?"

"You don't read history, do you, d.u.c.h.ess?"

"Why?"

The man she had seized laughed shortly, amused at her bewildered face.

"Oh," he said, "we English are frightfully c.o.c.k-a-hoop over our pedigrees. We don't remember it's they who are condescending to us.

There's bluer and better blood across the Atlantic than any of ours, and it isn't smirched. They don't boast. They don't remind us of our blotted scutcheons.--We to talk of race!"

"What on earth do you mean, Kilgour?" said the d.u.c.h.ess. "Half of them are Huns and Finns, and the sc.u.m of Europe."

The big man was leaning against the door-post; his bantering tongue took on a sudden heat.

"A few," he said. "But the rest--! Sc.u.m, d.u.c.h.ess?--We're the dregs.

There's not one of our great families that isn't mixed with the blood of traitors; that hasn't at one time or another sold its honour or stained its sword. Scots and English, all that was best of us once, are there, handing their valour down. After Culloden the country was drained of its gentlemen. Why, you can still hear the Highland tongue in South Carolina.... _They_ went into exile while we hugged our estates and truckled to an usurper. And the soul of a country is the soul of its heroes.... Oh, I believe in race!--Let the rest of us take a pride in our tarnished t.i.tles and wonder at the fineness of strangers who are descended from the men who lost all for the sake of honour and loyalty to their King!"

The d.u.c.h.ess dropped her blunt voice into a lower key.

"Poor old Kilgour," she said. "You're thinking of that little brute Tillinghame and his dollar princess."

"Well!" he said, between his teeth. "You've only to look at them!--And his people sneer at her for aspiring to bear an ill.u.s.trious t.i.tle that began in dishonour, and has been dragged a few hundred years in the mud--!"

The d.u.c.h.ess moved away from the door; she had remembered Susan.

"I wish you'd capture Barnaby and send him in to his wife," she said.

"He has forgotten that she exists.... I've had to make up a message.... I couldn't stand the dumb wistfulness in her face. It's a foolhardy business."

"I've just sent for Black Rose," said Kilgour, in his ordinary tone.

"He was keen to ride her." He raised his voice. "--Here, Barnaby, you're wanted!"

But the messengers were returning already, and strange cars were dashing up. The hubbub was at its height. It was impossible to win Barnaby's attention. He turned his head impatiently as Kilgour made a grab at him.

"What is it now?" he said. "Oh, don't bother me, there's a good fellow. They want to settle how--Jim, Jim, is that you? Have you brought the horses?"

He ran down the steps.

A clatter of hoofs was audible in the darkness, and a groom, riding one horse and leading another pulled up below the steps, steadying his charges as they flung up their bewildered heads, blinking, kicking up the gravel.

"Ah, my beauty!" said Barnaby, in the voice of a lover. "Did you think I was dead?"

"Is that Black Rose?" called one of the men crowding to the door.

"Wasn't she sold?"

"She was. But I'll have her back," he shouted up to them, rubbing the mare's dark head. "To the half of my kingdom I'll buy her back!"

The women, wrapped thickly, and disguised in furs, were streaming into the hall. Julia Kelly, who had lingered to the last, and was not yet ready, rushed down impulsively to his side.

"Oh, Barnaby, is that Black Rose? Dear thing, is she there? Oh, Barnaby--!"

Her voice thrilled and sank; she stretched out her hand, patting the mare's neck, rejoicing with him.

"It's like old times, isn't it?" he said.

The night wind ruffled his bare head, kissed a wisp of Julia's lace and blew it against him. She might have been forgiven for thinking his thick utterance was for her. The little scene, to all present who knew their tale, was romantic.

Kitty Drake looked over her shoulder in a funny, conscience-stricken way; the d.u.c.h.ess was poking her in the back, and at the same time interposing her rugged presence between romance and Susan. In a minute the girl was shielded by an oddly-sympathizing bevy of women, fussing over her in a transparent hurry to see that she was wrapped up warm.

The stable clock behind the house was beginning to strike, and the men who had been dining there had disappeared to change. n.o.body was measuring the length of that interview.... At last Barnaby came in three steps at a time, a portmanteau in his arms.

"I say, Kitty; where can I go and dress?"

She looked at him severely over Susan's head.

"Run in anywhere," she said, and he pursued his impetuous way upstairs.