Barnaby Part 4

Day after day pa.s.sed over her head, building an unsteady wall between her and that pitiless outside world in which she had been like a driven leaf, without hope or foothold. She became accustomed to the lazy peace of the house, to the watchful offices of the old servants, who seemed, like Lady Henrietta herself, curiously proud of her.

Slowly she grew stronger; her thin cheek rounded, still pale, but touched with a faint promise of colour.

One afternoon she was taking her solitary walk in the park, and had wandered farther than she had been. The dogs had left her, scurrying after rabbits, and she leaned on a stile that offered a resting-place, a little tired and wistful, gazing at the sinking fire in the west.

Suddenly the air was quick with galloping, and all around her were jumping horses. Startled, but unafraid, she watched them coming over the hedge, imagining that as they came they would vanish.

"You shouldn't stay there, you might get hurt," called someone, pulling up at her side. "How are you?"

She had been looking on, as one would look at a gallant picture, not realizing that she was in its midst. Instinctively she drew back. All had stopped, and hounds were cl.u.s.tering in the bottom, where the huntsman had dismounted, and was peering into a drain. Many heads were turned, with a rough kindness that excused curiosity, in her direction.

Perhaps they were all Barnaby's comrades, who missed him, and saw in the pathetic figure one who was missing him more than they...

But the man who had drawn up beside her was leaning down to her like an old friend, barring out the rest with his shoulder. His horse, still excited, jerked at his bit, and flung a white flick of lather on her black dress. Without thinking, she stretched out her hand to his muzzle.

"Take care. He's an uncertain brute," said Rackham. "You like horses?"

"I used to ride," she said.

Something awoke in her at that velvet touch, and she could not finish, thinking of other horses.

"Good," he said quickly. "Tell you what. I have a mare that would carry you. I'll come and talk it over--if my aunt will let me in."

He laughed a little under his breath at that. "How do you get on with her?" he asked. "_She's_ a warrior--!"

Susan lifted her eyes to his face. His abrupt friendliness could not entirely conquer the fluttering apprehension of danger in his good-nature that made her unaccountably shy of him. There was commiseration in his look--and admiration.

"Look here," he said; "we're cousins--by marriage. I've some warrant to be officious--and you're alone in a strange land, aren't you?--and all that."

Was it her imagination, or did he drop his voice significantly?

Perhaps he was glancing at their first meeting, pitying her as a reed bruised in Lady Henrietta's warlike hands. Perhaps--no, she could not read his expression.

The huntsman straightened his back, and walked stiffly towards his horse. A man who was giving up pa.s.sed by and gravely took off his hat; she watched him hooking with his whip at the bridle gate. She was afraid that they would all ride off and leave her with Barnaby's kinsman, and his penetrating smile.

"Anyhow," said Rackham, "I'm here if you want backing.... Just let me know if you need any kind of help."

A scream on the hidden side of the spinney beneath them linked up the field, believing in one of the glorious surprises that light up the dragging end of the day. The huntsman pushed right through the misty tangle, calling on his hounds, and the riders disappeared like a swirling river. A minute and they were gone.

The girl listened breathlessly to the thudding of distant hoofs. Her heart beat a little too fast, disturbed by that brief interlude of excitement. She stood quite still until the last gleam of scarlet faded, and the galloping died away, leaving a tremendous quiet. There was no sound at last but the wildfowl, far away on the lake, beginning their sunset chaunt.

Half the household had rushed out to look for hounds, and were returning singly, more or less out of breath, as the girl came home.

It was astonishing what a commotion the hunt, in its pa.s.sing, had awakened in that sad household. Lady Henrietta herself, with a shawl on her head, was in the garden, peering. Her sporting instincts were struggling in her with a kind of rage.

"Tell me who were out," she said. "Oh, of course you can't. But _they_ would know who you are. I am glad they saw you. It would remind some of them--a man is so soon forgotten! To think of them all hunting and fooling just as they used; with him left out--! Did they run from Tilton? I don't suppose a man of them wasted a thought on him till they saw you there. Did they change foxes, Susan?"

She talked on eagerly, answering herself with conjecture as she hurried the girl into the warm house, out of the gathering rain. Macdonald, the butler, was better informed than she, and his mistress seized on him as he slipped in, wiping his brow, short-winded but triumphant. He it was who had holloaed the fox away.

"Come here and tell me all about it," said Lady Henrietta sharply.

"--At your age, Macdonald--!"

He approached with solemnity, remembering his dignity, and his rheumatism, an inextinguishable light in his eye.

"They ran from Owston, my lady, and lost the fox on yon side of our bottom spinney. He must have been about done, by the way scent failed, and they couldn't pick him up again for the gentlemen crowding forrard.

No, my lady, there was two sticks crossed in the earth--and the drainpipe clogged. But we found 'em one that'll take them a sight farther than some of them care to go. A real fine fox that was!" He wound up with real pride.

"And who was that on the bay?" asked Lady Henrietta. "He took the fence well, Macdonald."

"That was his Lordship," allowed Macdonald, but grudgingly. "Ah, my lady, I seen Mr. Barnaby take that very jump that day they killed their fox in the park. Clean and fine he went up, and lighted; he never smashed no top rail!"

"I know--I know," said Lady Henrietta. "The day he put out his shoulder."

"That was a rabbit hole," said Macdonald jealously. "Ah, my lady, his Lordship will never go like him!"

Dismissing Rackham with the scorn of an old servant staunch to his master, he shook his head mournfully and retreated. Lady Henrietta had turned abruptly from her cross-examination, and held out her hands to the fire.

The incident, slight as it was, and brief, coloured all their evening.

Afterwards, Lady Henrietta returned to the subject, amusing herself with surmises. Had Susan noticed a man with a grizzled moustache and a furtive eye?--and another who had a trick of jerking out his elbow?--and one who rode like a jack-in-the-box, starting up continually in his stirrups? And had she seen a woman in brown, who usually backed in under the hedge at a check, talking secrets with a lank man, her shadow,--and all unwitting that there were two sides to hedges, and that voices filtered through? Insensibly, she branched into reminiscence, telling caustic histories of these Leicestershire unworthies, who were all unknown to Susan; and the girl hardly listened, sitting with her cheek on her hand and a dreaming brow.

The short interlude had impressed her. But in imagination she saw, not the splendid figure that had crashed over the hedge down yonder,--but another, one silently haunting the dim pastures where he had ridden once, sweeping out of the dusk, and pa.s.sing into the dusk again. The swift scene came back to her, with its wild rush of life, hounds, and hors.e.m.e.n,--only, instead of his cousin, she pictured Barnaby, to whose memory she had dedicated herself.

It was wearing late. Soon Lady Henrietta would interrupt herself, breaking off with a remorseful brusqueness, and order her off to bed.

How quiet it was in the library, that vast, comfortable room! How safe she felt, and how sleepy, only dreaming, not thinking of anything.

The white fox-terrier with the bitten ear had stolen down to her and lay on her skirt. There was a kind of fellowship between her and the dog. When it jumped up all at once with a shiver she stroked its back softly, wondering why it alone was excited by the wind whistling outside the house. And it looked up in her face and scuttled like a thing possessed down the room.

"What's the matter with Kit?" said Lady Henrietta, pausing.--"I daresay she heard Macdonald shutting up in the hall."--And she went on talking.

Far down the room the heavy curtain swung hastily, and fell back. It was Susan who, without warning, lifted her eyes and saw somebody standing there.

He had walked right in out of the wind and rain, had flung off his dripping cap, but had not waited to unb.u.t.ton his greatcoat; and he looked as he had looked in his picture, but no ghost--real,--with dreadful blue eyes, and a smiling mouth.

The girl started to her feet. One wild moment she stared at him. Her own cry sounded strange in her ears, very far off ... and then the world went round.

Slowly she drifted back into consciousness, and she was lying on her bed, surrounded by fluttered women, whose amazed whispering reached her like the dim clamour in a dream.

"Poor thing; poor thing--it was too much for her." "It was wicked of Mr. Barnaby to startle her like that. But how like him----!"

"Lord, Lord! his face as she lay on the floor!--and his mother rating him as if he'd never been dead an hour----!"

"'You've killed her!' said she. 'You've killed her!'"

"Like as not she'll go out of her mind, poor lamb!"

The quavering excitement hushed suddenly as she stirred.

"Hold your noise, you!" the old housekeeper adjured the others, pushing them on one side, and patting her anxiously, promising something in a voice that shook, tremulous and coaxing,--as one might dangle the moon to quiet a frantic child.