Boy Woodburn Part 17

"I like being alone," replied the girl. "And there are the horses."

Elsie Haggard shared her mother's concern for Boy Woodburn's soul.

"And Someone Else," she said.

"Yes," replied the girl simply, almost brutally. "There's the Lord."

Elsie Haggard looked at her sharply, suspecting her of flippancy.

Nothing clearly was further from the girl's mind. Her face was unusually soft, almost dreamy.

"Wherever there are horses and dogs and creatures He is, don't you think?" she said, quite unconscious that she was quoting inexactly a recently discovered saying dear to Mr. Haggard.

"Ye-es," answered Elsie dubiously. "Of course, they've got no souls."

The dreamer vanished.

"I don't agree," flashed the girl.

Elsie mounted on her high horse.

"Perhaps you know more about it than my father," she said.

"He doesn't agree, either," retorted the girl mercilessly.

She was right; and Elsie knew it. The vicar's daughter made a lame recovery. Theology was always her father's weak point.

"Or mother," she said.

"Your mother doesn't know much about a horse," said the girl slowly.

"She knows about their souls," cried Elsie triumphantly.

"She can't if they haven't got them," retorted Boy, with the brutal logic that distinguished her.

Boy Woodburn's room in the loft was characteristic of its owner.

Mr. Haggard said it was full of light and little else.

It was the room of a boy, not of a girl; of a soldier, and not an artist.

The girl in truth had the limitations of her qualities. She was so near to Nature that she had no need for Art, and no understanding of it.

The room knew neither carpet, curtain, nor blind. The sun, the wind, and not seldom the rain and snow were free of it. A small collapsible camp-bed, a copper basin and jug, an old chest, a corner cupboard--these const.i.tuted the furniture. The walls were whitewashed. Three of them knew no pictures. On one was her hunting-crop, a cutting-whip, and a pair of spurs; beneath them a boot-jack and three pairs of soft riding-boots in various stages of wear. In the corner stood a tandem-whip.

Above the mantelpiece was one of the plates in which Cannibal had run the National, framing a photograph of the ugliest horse that ever won at Aintree--and the biggest, to judge from the size of the plate.

Beneath it was a picture of the Good Shepherd and the Lost Sheep, and a church almanac. On the mantelpiece were the photographs of her mother, her father, Monkey Brand in the Putnam colours, and the Pa.s.sion Play at Oberammergau; while pinned above the clock was the one poem, other than certain hymns and psalms, that Boy knew by heart.

It was called _Two on the Downs_, and had been written by Mr. Haggard, when in the first vigour of youth he had come to take up his ministry in Cuckmere thirty years since:

Two on the Downs

_Climb ho!

So we go Up the hill to the sky, Through the lane where the apple-blossoms blow And the lovers pa.s.s us by.

Let them laugh at you and me, Let them if they dare!

They're almost as bad maybe-- What do we care?

Halt ho!

On the brow!-- O, the world is wide!

And the wind and the waters blow and flow In the sun on every side.

By the dew-pond windy-dark, Take a gusty breath; The gorse in glory, The sunshine h.o.a.ry Upon the sea beneath._

_Swing ho!

Bowing go, Breathless with laughter and song, The wind in her wilful hair a-blow, Swinging along, along.

She and I, girl and boy, Merrily arm in arm, The lark above us, And G.o.d to love us, And keep our hearts from harm.

Sing ho!

So we go, Over Downs that are surging green, Under the sky and the seas that lie Silvery-strewn between_.

One brilliant morning in early June, some two months after she had brought the gypsy's mare back to Putnam's on the evening of the Polefax Meeting, Boy rose early and stood humming the lines as she dressed, to a simple little tune she had composed for them.

The words were in harmony with her mood and with the morning. In part they inspired, in part they determined her. As she began the song Boy was wondering whether she should begin to bathe. Her mind had resolved itself without effort as she ended.

There had been a week of summer; the tide would be high, and only a day or two back a coastguard at the Gap had told her that the water was warming fast.

She went to the window and looked out over the vast green sweep of the Paddock Close running away up the gorse-crowned hillside that rose like a rampart at the back.

It was early. The sun had risen, but the mist lay white as yet in the hollows and hung about the dripping trees. Earth and sky and sea called her.

The girl slipped into her riding-boots, put her jersey on, and over it her worn long-skirted coat, twisted her bathing gown and cap inside her towel, and walked across the loft, the old boards shaking beneath her swift feet.

At the top of the ladder she paused a moment and looked down.

The fan-tails strutted in the yard; Maudie licked herself on the ladder just out of the reach of Billy Bluff, who, tossing on his chain, greeted the girl with a volley of yelps, yaps, howls of triumph, pet.i.tion, expectation and joy.

Maudie, less pleased, rose coldly, and descended the ladder. She knew by experience what to expect when that slight figure came tripping down the ladder.

The Monster-without-Manners would be let loose upon Society. The Monster-without-Manners was kept in his place all through the night by a simple but admirable expedient which Maudie did not profess to understand. As the sun peeped over the wall, Two-legs appeared at the top of the ladder, and peace departed from the earth till the sun went down again, when the Monster-without-Manners resumed his proper place upon the chain. He did not know how to treat a lady, and was impervious to scratches that would have taught one less s.h.a.ggy. He was rough, and no gentleman.

Maudie herself had the manners of an aristocrat of fiction. She walked through life, curling a contumelious lip, unshaken by the pa.s.sions, aloof from the struggles, high above the emotions that stir and beset the creatures of the dust. In Maudie's estimation Billy Bluff was a bounder. Certainly he bounded, and like most bounders he conceived of himself quite falsely as a funny fellow.

Brooding on her grievances, Maudie strolled thoughtfully across the yard, one eye always on her enemy, timing herself to be on the top of the wall just a second before the M.-w.-M. was free to bound.