Barnaby Part 28

CHAPTER X

To-morrow had come.

It was the same kind of morning as other mornings; there was no lurid conflagration lighting up the sky. Outside it was dull and quiet, and even the wind was still. Susan paused at the staircase window, gazing a little while.

In the hall beneath she heard Barnaby talking to the dogs. And his voice shook her. The stunned sense of finality that was with her gave way to a sharp and sudden pain.

She could not bear to go down to him. Turning, she fled back.

"Is that you, Susan?" called Lady Henrietta. She was sitting up at her breakfast, and the door of her room was ajar. "Where is Barnaby riding out so early? I heard his boots creaking as he went by."

"I don't know," the girl said, truly. "I haven't seen him."

"Then don't loiter like a draught in the door," said Lady Henrietta impatiently. "Come in and have your tea up here and help me to read my letters."

She did as she was bidden. The sharp kindliness of Barnaby's mother was sweet to her; and it was the last time she would sit with her, the last time she would listen with a smile that was not far from tears to her caustic prattle. Whatever happened to her, however they managed her disappearance, she and Lady Henrietta would never meet again.

Would she think of her sometimes,--kindly?--She was not to know....

"What's the matter now?" said Lady Henrietta suddenly. "You look pale."

Hurriedly the girl defended herself from the imputation.

"Of course, it's Barnaby," said Lady Henrietta, undismayed. "I suppose he has been behaving badly."

"Oh no! Oh no!" cried Susan.

Lady Henrietta waved her hands impatiently. How fragile she looked, how pretty;--the pink in her cheekbones matching her painted silk peignoir. The hardness that sometimes marred her expression had softened to a pitying amus.e.m.e.nt, and she had a look of Barnaby when she smiled like that.

"You'd deny it with your last gasp," she said.

Susan was picking up and arranging the letters that were lying in disorder. It was difficult to sustain that quizzical regard. But Barnaby's mother had not finished with her. She was not to be distracted.

"You never tell me anything, either of you," she said. "What is a mother-in-law for but to rule the tempest and shoot about in the battle? It's too firmly fixed in your heads that I am a brittle thing, and whatever is raging round me I am not to be excited. And it's absurd. I don't mind having a heart,--in reason. It's amusing; a kind of trick up my sleeve. But I won't have it robbing me of my rightful fl.u.s.trations.--I am as strong as a horse, if you two would realize it.

And you and Barnaby are such a funny couple."

She scanned the girl's face a minute.

"I'm attached to you, you little wretch," she said. "But I don't believe you care a straw for him."

But as she spoke her merciless eyes had pierced the girl's mask of light-heartedness. On this last morning Susan was not mistress of herself.

"You _are_ fond of him!" she said. "Dreadfully, ridiculously fond of him like any old-fashioned girl...."

"Oh, hush!" cried Susan. Anything to stop that unmerciful proclamation. She flung herself on her knees, and her terrified protest was stifled in Lady Henrietta's arms.

"How silly we are!" said she, but she held the girl tightly. "I'm to bridle my tongue, am I? You are afraid I shall tell him? Oh, you poor little girl, you baby, is it as bad as that?"

She pushed her away, as if ashamed of her own emotion, and a fierceness came into her voice, that had been entirely kind.

"If you allow that woman to ruin your lives--!" she said. "Oh, I'm not blind, I'm not altogether stupid--! If you let her take him from us--I'll never forgive you, Susan."

Having launched her bolt, all unconscious of its stabbing irony, she recovered her bantering equanimity, and looked whimsically at her listener.

"Why are you gazing at me," she said, "as if I were about to vanish?

I'm not going to die of it. I am going to take the field."

Barnaby was not in the house when the girl went at last downstairs.

She wandered in and out of the library, trying to smother her expectation, listening without ceasing for the telegram that was to come and make an end. He did not appear at luncheon, and she sat alone, pretending to eat, but starting at every sound. Afterwards, to quiet her restlessness, she went round to the stables to say good-bye to the horses.

The pigeons flew down to her as she walked into the wide flagged yard.

She went to the corn bin and scattered a handful as they circled round her and settled at her feet. The men must be still at dinner. There was no stud groom to look reproachful as she tipped a little oats in a sieve to give secretly to the horse that had been her own in this country of make-believe. She felt like a thief as she lifted the latch. It seemed wrong to be there by herself, without Barnaby. She had always gone round with him.

The horse lifted his beautiful head, and they stared at each other.

She patted his quarter with her flat hand, and he went over and let her empty her parting gift in his manger.

"Good-bye," she said. "Good-bye, old boy!"

Tears choked her. She stumbled out through the straw and shut the door on him.

All down that side of the yard there was a row of boxes. The bay came first, and then the chestnut that Barnaby had ridden yesterday afternoon. He pulled a little with Barnaby; ... he had never pulled with her. And there was the hotter chestnut that she had called Mustard, and the brown horse that had been mishandled and had a trick of striking out when a stranger came up to him in the stall. She had gone with Barnaby to look at him when he first arrived from the dealers',--and Barnaby had caught her back just in time. The horse looked at her gravely, sadly, with no evil flicker in his eye. Life had dealt hardly with him as with her, and he seemed, best of them all, to understand. But Barnaby had forbidden her to go near him....

Mechanically she went on to Black Rose's box, but her place was empty.

There was a grey next door, an old horse that had carried her many times. He was to be fired in the spring, sold perhaps. She leant her head, shuddering, against him; and he licked at her hand like a dog....

What was the end of them, all these brave, patient, willing creatures?

A few seasons' eager service, and then, step by step, as the tired muscles failed the undying spirit--knocking from hand to hand, harder fare, worse misusage,--the dreadful descent into h.e.l.l.

Once, on their way back from hunting, they had come suddenly on a strange procession, a gaunt herd of worn-out shadows making their last journey, staggering humbly along the wayside. It was a haunting tragedy. Staring ribs, hollow eyes dim with misery,--and the cursing driver thrashing one that had fallen, and lay in a quivering heap on the gra.s.s. She had asked what this horror was.... Just a shipload of useless horses travelling in the dusk their unspeakable pilgrimage to the sea.

And she had turned on the men riding at her side. Shame on them, that were English, that called themselves a sporting nation.... What a lie that was! she had cried....

And Barnaby had said--"She's right there!" and the other men had not laughed....

There were voices in the saddle-room. One of the grooms crossed the yard whistling. She was still leaning her head against the old horse, and she waited. She did not want the men to stare at her and wonder; she did not want them to find her there.

"The master took out Black Rose, didn't he?"

"Yes. He's gone down the fields with his Lordship."

"Will he be riding her in the Hunt steeplechases?"

That was a stranger's voice, not one of Barnaby's servants.

"Can't say."--The stud groom was cautious.

"That's an ugly brute of his Lordship's. Why didn't he ride him here?"