Barnaby Part 29

said another voice, joining in.

"He had to go somewhere in the motor, and so I'd orders to bring the horse over. It wasn't a job I envied," said Rackham's groom.

"If ever a horse was a devil, that one is," said the stud groom, laconically.

"Wants a devil to back him," muttered Rackham's man. "I never ride out of our yard without expecting he'll down me. Got a history, hasn't he?"

"Who told you that?"

"Stevens told me you'd pa.s.sed a remark about him."

The stud groom received the insinuating suggestion with a dignity that was proof against pumping for the s.p.a.ce of a minute. He chewed on a straw discreetly. Then his own knowledge became too much for him.

"If I told you his history, Arthur Jones," he said slowly, "you'd never lay your legs across him no more."

"Then for G.o.d's sake tell it," said Arthur Jones.

The stud groom laughed grimly. He was a man of saturnine humour, and liked impressing his underlings.

"His Lordship knows," he said. "If any man could cow a horse, he can.

Weight tells. Weight and devilry. But any other gentleman buying Prince John I'd call it suicide. If I didn't,--according to circ.u.mstances, mind you"--he lowered his voice, not much, but enough--"call it murder."

Would the men never stop gossiping and disperse? She would have to face their curious looks at last.

"I was up Yorkshire way when his Lordship bought him," said the stud groom deliberately. "Four of us was leaning over the bars at that auction. Two of us had a mourning band on the sleeve of our coats, and the third chap had unpicked the c.r.a.pe off his a month ago. When they put Prince John in the ring there came a frost on the bidding. They said he'd ought to 'a been shot out of the road, and never put up for sale. His name wasn't Prince John then. He'd been run in two 'chases, owners up;--and he'd killed them both."

The men stood with their mouths open, digesting the horrid tale. And a stable lad ran into the yard from his vantage point on a hillock.

"They're down at the jumps," he said, "--and they're changing horses."

It was then that the girl came out, pa.s.sing swift as an apparition.

The men fell back, touching their caps.

"I'll lay she heard you," said Rackham's man.

The stud groom looked after her curiously and, crossing over to the door of the grey's box, that she had left unfastened, closed it without a word.

She did not know why she was hurrying to the house. What half-conscious panic had seized her as her inattentive mind took its wandering impression of the grooms' idle gossip? What words had reached her, lodging in her brain to inspire that wild sense of impending trouble? It was no good searching for Barnaby in the house.

He was down at the jumps,--changing horses.

"There's a wire for you," said Lady Henrietta.

It had come. At first she looked at it stupidly, as if it, the signal, were some trivial interruption. She heard herself explaining, like an unthinking scholar repeating a half-forgotten lesson. "I must go away.

I--I have to go away."

"Bad news?" asked Lady Henrietta quickly. Susan crumpled the telegram in her hand.

"Yes, it's bad news," she said. "It is from the lawyers."

Vaguely she recollected what she was to say. Something about going up to London at once, and perhaps on to America.

"Let me see it," said Lady Henrietta. "Yes, it sounds urgent. We'd better send somebody to fetch Barnaby. He will have to take you. You must catch the afternoon train."

"Yes, I must catch the afternoon train," repeated Susan. That was decided. Had not Barnaby mapped it out? She wondered dully how he had managed to convey private instructions for that impeccable message; but all the while she was thinking, thinking,--and suddenly she was conquered by her wild, unreasoning fear for him.

"I'll go and find him," she said.

Lady Henrietta demurred, curious, desiring to cross-examine; but the girl's face smote her, and she forbore to hold her back.

It was not far down the fields, and she went like a driven leaf, possessed by a fear that would not be stilled by reason. She had gone down there sometimes to watch them schooling hunters, and she had ridden the jumps herself, that day when Barnaby showed her how they trained steeplechasers, with real wide hedges and a movable leaping bar. He had tried to prevent her risking the double, bristling with difficulty, and she had defied him, larking over it, and then galloping back to him to say she was sorry.

She counted the fences mechanically as they came up one by one, visible against the winter sky; lines of artificial ramparts, defended by a guard rail, made up with furze;--and the lapping rim of that actual water jump. The strange thing was that as she came nearer and nearer, instead of diminishing, her premonition grew. She talked to herself to keep down her panic.

Why were so few men killed steeplechasing? Because it was dangerous, Barnaby had said. It was the rabbit holes and the mole-hills and the grips that broke your neck unawares.... That was the gate he had shut between them, he sitting on his horse on the far side laughing, while she practised hooking the latch and pushing it back with the handle of her whip. He had shown her first the nail studded in the horn of the handle to keep it from slipping;--and then he had clapped the gate shut, declaring that till she opened it fairly, without his help, she should never pa.s.s. And she had ridden through triumphantly at last.

It was the only thing he had had to teach her. How quaint they were, these heavy wooden latches.... She let the gate swing and ran.

Rackham was on Black Rose, and Barnaby on a chestnut. They were walking their horses when she caught sight of them, and Barnaby was letting his look over a fence, flicking his whip at the ridge of furze with its withering yellow blossom. They were not talking loud, but she thought his voice sounded angry. The chestnut was restive.

"Keep still, you brute!" he said.

Something was wrong between the two men. Some old antagonism had flared up, rousing them to a hot discussion. The chestnut lifted his forefeet off the ground, and Barnaby shook his bridle carelessly, warning him again to be quiet. Then all at once up he went, seizing the unguarded moment....

Crash!

The girl saw him rise, saw him stagger, falling back on his rider; and she ran on with sobbing breath.

The chestnut rolled over sideways and struggled on to his legs. A little way off the mare was plunging, upset by what was happening; she could hardly be controlled. Susan had reached Barnaby, she had thrown herself down beside him to lift his head from the rough gra.s.s where he lay so still. Rackham had dismounted; he was coming to help;--but she was out of her mind with terror. She caught up Barnaby's whip, springing to her feet, lashing at him as if he were a wild beast that she must keep at bay. Then she dropped on her knees again, and laid her cheek on Barnaby's heart, and the turf was heaving up round them both.

Far off, indistinct, she heard troubled whispers, and one quite close.

"He's breathing still, my lady." (That was the stud groom, who had formerly served a countess. He always addressed her so.) She looked up at him.

"He's living yet, my lady," the man repeated in an awed undertone.

"Best not try to move him. They've sent a car for the doctor. Best let him lie till they come...."

He knelt on the other side, and one of the men stood over him in his shirt-sleeves, folding up his coat. With significant carefulness they raised Barnaby's head a little and slipped it under. And then they all waited and watched for a hundred years....

When the doctor came he was still unconscious. Something was broken, and there was bad concussion. It was possible he might be injured internally, strained, crushed,--a cursory examination could not make sure. They stripped a hurdle of its furze, and he was lifted and laid upon it; the men hoisted it on their shoulders and tramped with a dreadful slowness through the fields to the house.

"I'll ride on and break it to his mother," said Rackham, averting his eyes from Susan as he spoke to her.

"Yes," she said dully. She had forgotten him.

And as it often is, the one who was thought least fitted to support a shock took it coolly. A lengthy experience of hunting accidents helped her to seize, comforted, on Rackham's report of concussion, and to believe in his blunt a.s.surance that the whole thing was nothing worse than an ordinary spill. A more diplomatic messenger might have terrified her with his gentleness, but she suspected no concealment in a man who, without beating about the bush, looked her right in the face and lied. She did not see the men carry their burden in, and when the others came to her, relieving Rackham, she was comparatively calm. Her active fancy was diverted by measures that she ascribed to a misplaced anxiety for herself.

"I am not going to collapse," she insisted. "It's too ridiculous making this fuss about me and not letting me go to him. It's not the first time the poor boy has been brought back to me knocked silly. You needn't be so fidgety over me;--you had better look after Susan.... My dear, my dear, I know what it is! And concussion is a thing the doctors can't cut you to pieces for, thank Heaven. Give her a little brandy!"

Rackham's glance met the doctor's. The case was too serious to provoke a smile.