Barnaby Part 16

"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 gra.s.s 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 b.u.t.ton.

"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 const.i.tuency, 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 b.u.t.tonhole 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 princ.i.p.al 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 pa.s.sed 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 n.o.body 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 pa.s.sage-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?"