An hour later Susan looked at herself in the long mirrors that were all round her, and did not know herself any longer, she was so changed.
She had grown used to the deep black garments that seemed a part of her life. Far off and dimly she remembered the old family lawyer in shocked consultation with her nurses, his old-fashioned anxiety that when she was strong enough to travel she should be fittingly attired, and do honour to her sad estate....
A door opened at the other end of the room, and she saw Barnaby in the mirror, saw him standing petrified on the threshold till Mélisande's laugh called him to his senses.
"Do you like her?" said she. Susan did not hear what he said. But in the mirror he came towards her, and she turned round to meet him shyly.
"Take her away, then," said Mélisande. "Buy a shilling's-worth of violets and stick them in her coat; it's all that's lacking. I'll send down a trunk full of oddments with you to-night.—And give my compliments to Julia when you see her. 'To account rendered,' you can murmur in her ear."
Her malicious laugh pursued them a little way down the stairs. They came out into the street and walked along side by side.
"I went to see Dawson," said Barnaby suddenly. "Burst into his office, meaning to scare the old jackass out of his wits. He—he turned the tables on me. Made me feel a brute."
"How?" asked Susan.
He did not explain at once, engaged in making a way for her on the pavement. Then he answered briefly.
"He told me how he had found you."
His tone, angry as it was, warmed her soul.
"But,—it was not your business," she said, in a low voice. "It had nothing to do with you."
"I couldn't tell him that," said Barnaby. "Lord, how he went for me, poor old chap—! Spared me nothing. Said I could never make it up to you.... It's ridiculous, isn't it? But if you'd heard him attacking me!—I had to promise him I would try."
He was walking on beside her, so close that his arm brushed hers, his long strides falling in with her little steps. And he was looking down on her with a sort of raging kindness.
"You poor little girl!" he said.
They went on for awhile in silence, and then Barnaby stopped in his absent-minded progress. His good-humour was back, and the joke of this expedition was again uppermost in his head. He pointed with his stick at a strange and wonderful work of art in a milliner's window.
"Let's go in here and buy some of these hats," he said.
All her life Susan remembered that day with him. It was all so absurd, so simple. That strange town, London, was always to her the place where he and she made acquaintance, playing to ignorant audiences their game of Let's Pretend. She began to know him;—the way he walked, swinging his shoulders, stopping short when a sight amused him; his whimsical earnestness over little things, and the lines that came round his mouth when he smiled....
There were horses being put into the train when they arrived at St. Pancras. The grooms in charge of them were leading them gingerly through the people, past the lighted bookstall, persuading them up the gangways into their boxes. There was a small commotion as one of them, snorting, refused to step on the slanting boards. Tugging and shouting at him made him worse; he began to plunge, scattering the onlookers and the porters smiting his flanks.
"Hi! you infernal idiots..." said Barnaby. "Back him in."
He went over to the horse himself, and took hold of his bridle, turned him round, and walked him in like a lamb. Then, as the porters clapped shut the side of the horse-box, he waited to ask whose hunters were going down. Susan, lingering a little way apart, saw a big man with a cigar in his mouth spin round and seize him. Two or three more shot out of the throng and hurled themselves upon him, wringing his hand.
"It's Barnaby himself," they shouted. "Barnaby himself!"
They crowded him up the platform, a noisy escort, hiding their feelings under boisterous chaff; Meltonians, old acquaintances.... They passed by Susan, gossiping hard.
All at once Barnaby broke loose from them, turning back. "Great Joseph!" he said. "I've lost my wife!"
What if he had? What if she had cut the tangle, had slipped when his back was turned into one of these moving trains, and passed out of his life, out of the bustle into the throbbing darkness, like a match that had been lit and extinguished, leaving no trace?
She watched him hurrying back, looking for her; saw his quick glance along a glimmering line of carriages passing him on his left, and guessed his apprehension. Soon he was bearing down on her, charging through the press, and had pulled her hand through his arm.
"It was too bad, wasn't it?" he said. "I'm awfully sorry,—Susan."
There was a real relief in his voice. She felt it, wondering. Was he so glad to find her still his prisoner, his accomplice?
"Did you think," she said, and in her own voice laughter struggled with a strange inclination to tears,—"that I had run away?"
"Come on," he said cheerfully, not replying. "Hold on to me. Those chaps are looking at us."
He marched her to his friends, who had halted in a body when he dashed back, and waited, grinning sympathetically, for his return.
"Here is my wife," he said. "I brought her up to town to get rid of her widow's weeds."
They shook hands with her solemnly, a kind gravity in their manner to her subduing them for a minute; and then, as Barnaby settled her in the Melton slip, they hung round the carriage door, and their tongues were loosened.
"Where did you pick up these horses? Are they part of your baggage from another world?"
Barnaby laughed.
"They aren't mine," he said. "I brought nothing back with me, not even a collar-stud. Why, I pawned my watch in the States!"
"Wouldn't the ferryman let you return on tick? But you were mixed up with them, Barnaby, when I saw you. I'd know your voice anywhere, shouting Woa!"
"He's bound to get mixed up with horses, alive or dead," said the big man. "I tried to find out myself whose cattle they are, but the name is unintelligible. They can't pronounce it down there; not all the sneezing and snarling in the station can do it. I'll bet its another of these wild Austrians."
"D'you remember the three counts who set out on a slippery day to ride to the meet at Scalford;—and were fetched back to the Harboro', the three of them, half an hour afterwards, in a cart?"
"Broken ribs, wasn't it?" said Barnaby.
"Cracked heads, I fancy. I'll never forget the sight it was; all you could see of 'em was the three shiny top hats, stove in."
The lights were flickering in the station only the great yellow clock-face shone unchangeable, with its minute hand creeping up. Down below on the platforms scurrying passengers went their ways, gathering in thickening groups and eddying here and there round a pile of luggage. Everywhere there was restlessness.
Susan leant back in her corner. Their end of the platform was a little dim, and it was less frequented. She noticed a woman's figure passing along the train.
Barnaby was loitering, half in, half out of the door, absorbed in chatter. They were asking him if he were coming out with the Quorn, offering to lend him a crock to-morrow; relating the current news about men and horses. Once the big man turned his head casually as the figure that Susan had noticed passed. His mouth shaped itself in a whistle, but he made no remark. Only his broad back seemed to block out a little more of the view.
"It's about time we started," he said.
"What's the matter down there?" asked Barnaby.
"Oh, I fancied I saw a customer," he said promptly. "Did you take your wife to the grasping Mélisande? You might have patronized another old friend in me. There's a hat in the window I trimmed myself."
"What?" said Barnaby.
The big man chuckled heavily.
"You didn't know I'd gone in for millinery?" he said. "If you had had your eyes about you you'd have seen my establishment.There'sa business that women never will understand! They haven't got bold ideas; they are too fond of twisting. It was an accident, really. I was financing an aunt of mine, Clara Lady Kilgour,—and the thing was going bankrupt. I strolled into the shop one morning and found Clara weeping, and the Frenchy who had lured her into it sniffing like a noxious weed in a bed of artificial roses. Just by way of cheering her up a bit, I snatched up an affair the serpent was working at—a muddle of feathers and scraps of lace.—'You'll ruin that!' they wailed. But hey, presto! I had found my vocation. I kicked out the bailiffs and took it over. And now I am running it as 'The Earl of Kilgour, late Fleur-de-lis.'"
The guard came down the train, shutting doors. Barnaby's friends dropped off, tumbling into the smoker behind. The whistle shrilled.
"Wouldn't you rather get in with them?" said Susan, in sudden shyness.
"What? that would never do," explained Barnaby, pulling up the window. "The poor dear fellows have left us religiously to ourselves."
He threw aWestminsteron her knee and took off his hat.
"What was Kilgour staring at, do you know?" he asked. "He seemed rather disturbed; didn't want us to notice."
"I don't know," she said.
Barnaby laughed out loud.
"We got on famously," he declared. "We'd pass muster anywhere. But you are tired out, aren't you? Lean back in your corner and go to sleep."
The slip carriage was rocking from side to side, and her head ached from the strain and excitement of the day. The same shyness that had smitten her as his friends left them made her shut her eyes under his regard. She rested her head on the stiff padding, listening to the thrum of the engine, wandering in dreams that could not match the fantastic unlikeliness of what had befallen; and all the while feeling his gaze on her.
She was roused by the jar as the train stopped at Bedford. The carriage door was opened and closed; they were no longer by themselves.
"Barnaby!"
Tears were imminent in the emotional Irish voice.
"How do you do, Julia."—The man's tone was firm and hard.
"I knew you were in the train.... But with these gossiping wretches all round you!—I could not bear to meet you with them...."
"Don't waken my wife. She's tired."
His warning struck abruptly on her impulsive murmur. She sat down, rustling, unfastening the furs at her throat. The train had started again, and was speeding on.
In her far corner Susan stirred. This was the figure she had seen in the distance, the figure that Barnaby's friend had tried to block out from his attention. All Barnaby's friends must guess how hard it would be for him to meet her again, since he had once worshipped her.... Looking straight into the flying darkness, Susan tried not to see his profile reflected in it, tried not to watch his expression, inscrutable as it was.
"What fools we were!" sighed Julia.
"Regular fools," he said.
The girl drew a quick breath. She had thought she was beginning to know him, and still she could not guess if he spoke in irony or despair. She raised her head; fluttered the paper on her knee.—They must not think that she was asleep. And Barnaby looked at her.
"This is an old friend of mine, Susan," he said sedately. Julia presented a pale face and shining eyes.
"Mrs. Hill must be quite accustomed to the enthusiasm of your friends," she said. "Ihave been lingering at St. Pancras since three o'clock,—somebody told me you had been seen in a restaurant—for the sake of travelling back with you."
"How good of you," said Barnaby, in the same constrained way. "We didn't know, did we, Susan, that we had been spotted?"
Julia turned to him again; her speaking eyes hardly left him.—"Not good," she said, "only human."
The train rocked on, filling the inevitable pause with its throbbing. Then Barnaby's voice cut into the silence.
"We don't mind indulging your human curiosity, Julia," he said, "but why stare at us so hard? We, too, are only human, aren't we, Susan?"
"It is so strange," said Julia, "to think of you with a wife."
Barnaby bit his lip. He reddened. Perhaps the sight of her had shaken him, had hit him deeper than he was willing to betray. Her emotion at meeting the man whom she had mourned as dead was visible; she made no attempt to hide it. Perhaps his own was the greater for being stifled by his determined effort at self-control. He got up, fiddling with the window-sash.
"Would you like this a bit down?" he said. "How is your headache?"
Did he know that her head ached, or had he addressed her at random? The girl felt an unreasonable anger at his ostentatious solicitude. Was he playing her off against his old love? Did such bitterness wait behind their compact? For the first time, his kindness hurt her. All a farce, all a blind, and a make-believe....
In the morning Barnaby went out hunting. He started gaily, in old clothes, on a borrowed horse.
"Next time I die," he said, "and they put away my relics, I beg you all not to scatter infernal white knobs of poison among them to keep away the moths. I call it irreverent. And unless this horrible smell wears off I'll have to keep to leeward. A single whiff of it would kill the scent."
He came in at dusk, stiff and splashed, but contented, calling for tea, and waking up the house. It was extraordinary what a difference his presence made as he limped into the hall and hung up his whip. Life and vigour seemed to blow in with him; the terriers rushed at him dancing, barking, pattering into the library at his heels. Lady Henrietta, propped on her sofa, gave a little sharp sigh.
"Give him his tea, Susan," she said briskly. "How did he carry you, Barnaby? Who was out?"
"Oh, all the world and his wife," he said. "Carry me? He wouldn't have carried a grasshopper. But I changed on to a chestnut that Rivington wants to sell. I've bought him. Not much to look at, but he goes well enough, and I was so pleased to feel a real galloper under me, I'd have given him any price.... It's good to be here again. Though my boots are as hard as iron. I believe I am lamed for life. By the by, Susan, I've let you in for one thing. I couldn't help it."
She looked up, startled, from her place by the fire.
"It's only to dine out with some people to-morrow night," he said, noticing her alarm. "I couldn't get out of it, really; they mobbed me so."
"Who is it?" asked Lady Henrietta.
"Only the Drakes," said Barnaby.
His mother nodded. "Yes; show her off to your friends!" she said.
She was in and out of Susan's room next evening all the while she was dressing, and when the girl's toilet was finished she came with her hands full of jewel-cases.
"You can't wear much to-night," she said.
"It would look dressed up. But a few pins,—and a star or two to give you confidence in yourself.... My dear, you don't know what a help it is! And all the women you'll meet have been at one time or another in love with Barnaby. Hold up your head, and don't let them make you wretched. Is that you, Barnaby? I want you."
Barnaby passed by on his way from his own room, and her shrill call stopped him. His step outside sent the colour into Susan's cheek, and his voice came doubtfully through the door.
"Yes, mother?"
"Come in; come in. How shy you are!" said she, and the handle turned.
"You will tire yourself," he said, but she brushed aside his remonstrance.
"Rubbish!" she said. "I have the whole evening to lie up and swallow physic. Come here and stick these in for me, will you? Margaret is so clumsy."
"I beg your pardon," he said, under his breath, as he bent down, fulfilling his office.—"The exigencies of the piece must excuse me."
"What a queer way of apologizing for running a pin into your wife!" said his mother sharply. She might have been trusted to overhear. He had straightened himself, and was withdrawing rather precipitately, when his eyes fell on his own picture above the chimney-piece. "What is that thing doing here?" he asked, off his guard.
Lady Henrietta desisted from her pleased contemplation of Susan decked out with jewels.
"Well!" she said. "Of all things! Do you mean to say?—It has been there ever since she came. I had it hung there myself to be company for your heart-broken widow."
"Anyhow, we'll have it down now," he said hastily. "You'd rather not have the daub glaring at you, wouldn't you, Susan?"
Lady Henrietta turned her back on him.
"Don't mind him, my dear," she said. "We'll keep it."
There was warmth in her tone. She squeezed the girl's arm, bidding her remember that none of Barnaby's old flames could hold a candle to her. Somehow or other he had fallen under her displeasure.
"I'm afraid my acting doesn't come up to yours," he said, when they were shut into the motor. "My mother thinks I am too undemonstrative ... that I am unworthy of my good luck."
"Don't!" she said.
He laid his hand comfortingly on hers.
"Look here, little girl," he said. "It's no use taking things hard. We have to make the best of it. It won't last for ever.... We must look at the funny side of it. That's the bargain."
The swift drive through the night was already over. Three men, pushing aside the servants, were slapping Barnaby on the back. They bore a family likeness to each other, big men, with creased red necks, and short, rumpled sandy hair.
"Come along in," they cried heartily. "The house is full of old friends wanting to get at you,—and nothing but odds and ends for dinner."
But one of them managed to lower his hearty voice a trifle.—"You won't mind meeting Julia Kelly? She has asked herself for the night."
"Who else?" said Barnaby, in his ordinary tones.
"Kilgour and the Slaters and Rackham and the Duchess;—and a few more," reeled off his host, thankfully dropping the awkward subject now he had got out his warning. He rushed them into the house, and Susan was bewildered by the tumult that greeted them, the sea of unknown faces. Men and women alike were seizing on Barnaby and exclaiming. She hardly realized that they were at the same time taking stock of her. The three Drakes stood near her like a bodyguard, kind and stolid, settling into their usual phlegmatic form; and she felt glad of them.
"Getting on all right?" said Barnaby, as she passed him on her way in to dinner, and she smiled back at him.
He and she were not near each other; but once or twice he looked her way, bending his head and slewing half round to catch a glimpse of her; that—or else Lady Henrietta's stars, kept up her courage. She listened politely, not understanding much, to the local gossip running along the table.
"Have you picked up any horses yet, Barnaby? Sims has one or two going up on Saturday, at Leicester."
"I can let you have a bay, a capital fencer——"
"Oh, you don't palm off your roarers on me. I heard him to-day," said Barnaby.
"Well, I don't deny that he makes a noise——"
"I suppose you think I've been in the wilds so long I don't know a horse from a hedgehog!" said Barnaby. "Can anyone tell me what became of a black mare I had four seasons ago?"
"Do you mean Black Rose?" said Kilgour.
"That's the one. Do you know who has her?"
"I have," said Kilgour. "I took her from Peters. The fellow couldn't ride her. You can have her back if you want her, Barnaby; she isn't up to my weight. I remember you rode her at Croxton Park."
"And won," said Barnaby. "Want her? Rather."
Kilgour chuckled heavily.
"She isn't as young as she was, mind," he said. "But she can go still. I suppose you're not as keen as you used to be on breaking your neck?"
"As keen as ever," said Barnaby, with conviction.
"Does your wife ride?"
The question sounded maladroit; it was inconceivable that Barnaby should have married a wife who did not. His hesitation was singular in their eyes; they all stopped to listen.
"I really don't know," he said.
In the general burst of laughter Susan caught his glance of amused consternation. In that hard-riding company his ignorance was incredible. Men, having a curious predilection towards the unsuitable in wives, he might, after all, have committed that inconceivable piece of folly. Barnaby's wife might lamentably turn out incapable of sitting on a horse. But that Barnaby should not know—!
It was while they were all laughing at him that Susan became aware of Julia Kelly.
She was on the same side of the table as herself, placed far from the lion of the occasion; and was leaning her elbows on the table, looking full at Susan. The man between them was sitting back in his chair roaring helplessly at the joke.
"What an ignorant husband, Mrs. Hill," said Julia, and her musical voice vibrated through the laughter. "Do you ride?"
"I have ridden," said Susan quietly. It was difficult for her to blot the memory of an encounter that the other woman ignored.
"But not with him?"
Mrs. Drake, springing up, made diversion.
"Why not have a steeplechase?" she cried.
She was one of these little women, all skin and bone, who cannot bear inaction, and whose wishes are carried out.
"Cross country," she said, silencing a growl from her husband. "You can ride the point-to-point course. We'll send round and tell everybody, and get them all here by twelve. And we'll put grooms with lanterns to mark the jumps."
The men jumped up, enthusiastic. The idea was just mad enough to appeal to their sporting instincts. In about three minutes the dining-room was deserted, and five motors were humming into the darkness to apprise and rally all who were reckless enough to join. In a neighbourhood always ready for a frolic there was no danger of the inspiration falling flat.
Barnaby himself was in the thick of it, mapping out preliminaries with the other men in the hall. The women clustered together, almost hysterical with excitement. And Susan drifted apart from the chattering circle, feeling outside it all.
She heard a gruff voice in her ear, and started. The tall, gaunt, hard-faced Duchess was standing over her.
"How are you getting on?" she said.
"It is a little strange to me," said Susan.
"But you are not moping," said the Duchess. "I can see you are made of better stuff. They are all mad, of course, but nobody will get hurt, if that is what you are afraid of."
Yes, that must be what she was afraid of, what inspired her with an undefined wretchedness. If she had been what they thought her, surely she would be feeling nervous. She was glad she had not made the mistake of pretending to be gay.
"I am an old friend of your husband's," said the Duchess, "—and he has asked me to be kind to you. I shan't warn you to beware of Julia; all the rest of them will, if they haven't already;—but I don't call that kindness."
"Barnaby asked you to be kind to me?" repeated Susan; she could not keep the wistfulness out of her voice; she had been thinking herself so utterly forgotten.
"Yes. It isn't the fashion here for husbands to worry about their wives, but he is a bit old-fashioned. I told him I'd come and talk to the little fish out of water. It is just a strange pond, my dear, and you'll soon begin swimming."
The clash of voices grew more uproarious in the hall. A man put his head in and vanished, looking for somebody. His brief appearance made the contrast between the excitement out there and this empty room more emphatic.
"I must get out of this," said the Duchess, switching her train as she rose from the sofa. "Kitty will have to lend me a habit and one of her husband's coats. I shall ride. There's a brook jump where there'll be trouble, and I want to see the fun. You had better drive with Kitty. I'll see to it. Have you anything warm to put on?"
Her caution was hardly equal to her good nature, and the clamour in the hall hardly drowned her indignant voice as she seized on a confidant in the doorway.
"I like her pluck. She's terrified to death, of course, but she doesn't look woe-begone. We must seem a pack of dangerous lunatics.... Where do these Americans get their spirit?"
"You don't read history, do you, Duchess?"
"Why?"
The man she had seized laughed shortly, amused at her bewildered face.
"Oh," he said, "we English are frightfully cock-a-hoop over our pedigrees. We don't remember it's they who are condescending to us. There's bluer and better blood across the Atlantic than any of ours, and it isn't smirched. They don't boast. They don't remind us of our blotted scutcheons.—We to talk of race!"
"What on earth do you mean, Kilgour?" said the Duchess. "Half of them are Huns and Finns, and the scum of Europe."
The big man was leaning against the door-post; his bantering tongue took on a sudden heat.
"A few," he said. "But the rest—! Scum, Duchess?—We're the dregs. There's not one of our great families that isn't mixed with the blood of traitors; that hasn't at one time or another sold its honour or stained its sword. Scots and English, all that was best of us once, are there, handing their valour down. After Culloden the country was drained of its gentlemen. Why, you can still hear the Highland tongue in South Carolina....Theywent into exile while we hugged our estates and truckled to an usurper. And the soul of a country is the soul of its heroes.... Oh, I believe in race!—Let the rest of us take a pride in our tarnished titles and wonder at the fineness of strangers who are descended from the men who lost all for the sake of honour and loyalty to their King!"
The Duchess dropped her blunt voice into a lower key.
"Poor old Kilgour," she said. "You're thinking of that little brute Tillinghame and his dollar princess."
"Well!" he said, between his teeth. "You've only to look at them!—And his people sneer at her for aspiring to bear an illustrious title that began in dishonour, and has been dragged a few hundred years in the mud—!"
The Duchess moved away from the door; she had remembered Susan.
"I wish you'd capture Barnaby and send him in to his wife," she said. "He has forgotten that she exists.... I've had to make up a message.... I couldn't stand the dumb wistfulness in her face. It's a foolhardy business."
"I've just sent for Black Rose," said Kilgour, in his ordinary tone. "He was keen to ride her." He raised his voice. "—Here, Barnaby, you're wanted!"
But the messengers were returning already, and strange cars were dashing up. The hubbub was at its height. It was impossible to win Barnaby's attention. He turned his head impatiently as Kilgour made a grab at him.
"What is it now?" he said. "Oh, don't bother me, there's a good fellow. They want to settle how—Jim, Jim, is that you? Have you brought the horses?"
He ran down the steps.
A clatter of hoofs was audible in the darkness, and a groom, riding one horse and leading another pulled up below the steps, steadying his charges as they flung up their bewildered heads, blinking, kicking up the gravel.
"Ah, my beauty!" said Barnaby, in the voice of a lover. "Did you think I was dead?"
"Is that Black Rose?" called one of the men crowding to the door. "Wasn't she sold?"
"She was. But I'll have her back," he shouted up to them, rubbing the mare's dark head. "To the half of my kingdom I'll buy her back!"
The women, wrapped thickly, and disguised in furs, were streaming into the hall. Julia Kelly, who had lingered to the last, and was not yet ready, rushed down impulsively to his side.
"Oh, Barnaby, is that Black Rose? Dear thing, is she there? Oh, Barnaby—!"
Her voice thrilled and sank; she stretched out her hand, patting the mare's neck, rejoicing with him.
"It's like old times, isn't it?" he said.
The night wind ruffled his bare head, kissed a wisp of Julia's lace and blew it against him. She might have been forgiven for thinking his thick utterance was for her. The little scene, to all present who knew their tale, was romantic.
Kitty Drake looked over her shoulder in a funny, conscience-stricken way; the Duchess was poking her in the back, and at the same time interposing her rugged presence between romance and Susan. In a minute the girl was shielded by an oddly-sympathizing bevy of women, fussing over her in a transparent hurry to see that she was wrapped up warm.
The stable clock behind the house was beginning to strike, and the men who had been dining there had disappeared to change. Nobody was measuring the length of that interview.... At last Barnaby came in three steps at a time, a portmanteau in his arms.
"I say, Kitty; where can I go and dress?"
She looked at him severely over Susan's head.
"Run in anywhere," she said, and he pursued his impetuous way upstairs. Julia reappeared by herself, on her face what Kitty Drake stigmatized as a maddening consciousness.
"They say they are going to ride in their shirt-sleeves," she said, "but that will hardly make them visible. It's nearly pitch dark outside."
"They are idiots," said Kitty Drake. "Fancy Gregory calling to us when we were upstairs to know if we would lend them our night-dresses. I told him I was too thrifty."
"Why not?" said Julia. "Barnaby can have mine."
A blank pause saluted her speech, and then, with one accord, the women began to acclaim the notion as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world. Even Kitty, in her haste to dissipate the impression that Julia's declaration might make on the girl beside her, caught up the idea and made it hers. She flew up and down arranging.
"A bit mediæval, isn't it?" said Kilgour, watching the riders as they struggled with gossamer raiment that sometimes flopped over their heads unassisted, and sometimes clung, entangling them in cobwebs.—"In the days of knighthood we all wore bits of our ladies' clothing."
The Duchess grumbled.
"Pity we can't revive other habits," she said. "There was a useful practice of wringing obnoxious people's necks."
"Poor Julia," said Kilgour. "Don't grudge her her little triumph. She only wants to publish it abroad that it was her own fault she was forsaken."
But the Duchess's brow was grim.
The night was black and starless, and had been still. The villages they passed gave back startled echoes, awakened out of sleep by the rattling of the cavalcade. Susan was tucked in between Kitty Drake and the Duchess, who intended to change to her horse when the race began, and in the meantime was driving them at a smacking pace. She kept her buggy at the head of the procession, and was the first to whisk round a perilously sudden turning that led off the turnpike, and sent them bumping into a field.
In front of them stretched a dim line of country that had darkened into strangeness, puzzling the most familiar eyes. Here and there were flickering lights, like will-o'-the-wisps, luring and warning, indicating danger. And the men were to ride there....
Susan stood up in the buggy, supported by Kitty's arm, straining her eyes to watch the start. She could make out a little; by dint of hard gazing she learnt to distinguish the figures that moved yonder. In the middle of the field an indistinct line of riders were drawn up, waiting.
A man shouted back to the watchers, and their prattle hushed. There was an instant of absolute silence, suspended breath;—and then somebody swung a lantern.
"Go!" he cried.
Leaping into the darkness the line of horses broke like a wave and went, their limbs gleaming. Already they were blundering into the first hedge, and there was a crash, relieved by laughter as the first spill resulted in one man picking himself up unhurt. The rest were swinging on; rising again, more warily, a little farther; and just visible, for the last time, black objects against the sky.
The Duchess set her foot in the stirrup and galloped off. Susan rocked as she stood, and was nearly flung out as the buggy started forward, and the whole cavalcade whirled blindly into a lane that was all ruts and stones and turf.
Strange what an unimagined wildness darkness and ignorance lent to that plain strip of country. The fields that slanted were dreadful hills sinking into unknown abysses, the brooks rushed like rivers, the hedges lifted themselves gigantic. Many who had ridden over the ground by daylight times without number exclaimed, and wished the night at an end.
Kitty Drake, however, was screaming with delight.
"Here they come!" she shrilled. "Oh, shut up, you people. You'll scare the horses. I know it's awfully weird, but still—! That's Dicky, of course. I'd know Nanny's frills anywhere; he looks like a mad pierrot. Oh, and Colonel Birch, with Mrs. Uffington's chiffon scarf tied on to him. Mrs. Uffington, it was base of you not to risk it. My best garment is floating there, being torn to ribbons by Gregory's spurs."
"Sit down, Kitty!" cried somebody at her elbow. "You can't see anything yet; it's all imagination."
"I see it with my mind's eye," she declared; but subsided.
A few men on horseback scampered out of the nothingness and drew up beside them. This was the place to watch the riders jump the water. They pressed close in a peering bunch, the cigars in their mouths making red points in the gloom. The Duchess halted by the buggy, a curious figure in Gregory Drake's greatcoat, with the sleeves turned up.
"All right, so far," she said, in her gruff voice, cheerily. "They have been signalling with the lanterns. Queer how the darkness seems to swallow 'em up alive!"
As she spoke they all heard a distant thudding. There was something terrifying in this invisible approach; it seemed to promise catastrophe. Surely some sudden end would come to that beating of horses' hoofs—! Nearer and nearer the unseen racers came, until they were almost on the top of the watching throng. Then there was a glimpse of great beasts rising in the air.
The first horse came down short of the landing-place, plunging into the hidden water that ran beneath. His splash was followed by another as the next man faltered and went in deep. Then a third went up.
Someone had an acetylene motor lamp, and held it suddenly on high. It made a vivid glare, illuminating that rider's face, his eyes staring ahead, his mouth shut and smiling——
"Turn out that lamp. You'll dazzle 'em, you damned idiot!" yelled Kilgour. "It isn't a pantomime!"
The next horse had taken fright. There was stamping and swearing; and then the blinding flare was extinguished, leaving the scene darker. The faces that had shone pale and unearthly in that brief wave of limelight could not longer be recognized.
Susan shivered with excitement. That was Barnaby she had seen....
No woman was in his head just then; his spirit was intent on the splendid peril of that night ride. Something in herself understood him. She felt proud of him, reckless with him, afraid of nothing. But he had landed and was away on the farther side.
Now they were all in or over, and the water jump was deserted. The last who had failed to clear it had struggled up the bank and swung dripping into his saddle, feeling for his reins. They were laughing at him because he had let go and tried to swim, not at first realizing that it wasn't up to his knees....
But he had lost his head in the dark.
There was time, if they hurried, to reach the hillside at the back of the intervening dip, full of pitfalls, and gain a place of vantage to witness what they might of the finish. Kilgour, who knew the country blindfold, pushed on ahead, guiding them; and the rest trusted to his instinct. He unlatched a gate, flinging it wide for the others to scramble through, cut along close under the branching side of a spinney, forded a water-course, and spun up a cart track; emerging suddenly on the side of the hill. Behind him pressed a clattering, jolting troop, that stopped dead as he threw up his arm and listened.
The riders had to make a circuit, but they should be near. What was the meaning of this long pause? of the utter silence? For the first time the women betrayed a nervous thrill that was not pure excitement. The waiting dashed their spirits. They tried to laugh, and their laughter sounded strange.
"There's bound to be some misfortune," muttered someone, as a night bird croaked in the trees. And above the hush a woman's voice pealed, hysterical, calling on heaven to witness that she had dissuaded Billy——
"Hush!"
The men who were judging talked in whispers as they sat quietly on their horses, motionless, save for an occasional jingling bit, under the clump of firs that was the winning-post. Their ears were on the alert, but all the queer noises of the night were treacherously alike, and that might be nothing but running water that seemed a distant galloping. One man looked at his watch.
"They're due," he said. "Bar accidents. Can't you hear 'em?"
Then at last, clear in the distance, the gallop came.
Far in that mysterious valley the lanterns twinkled, making the darkness visible. Where the lights glimmered there was danger.
"D'you see that?" said Kilgour in the ear of his neighbour. A spark dipped suddenly.—"One man down."
At the next jump another light went out.
"A bit weird, these signals," said Kilgour's neighbour. "I don't like 'em; it's too infernally suggestive. Where are they now?"
The watchers herded together, all standing up, all staring; trying to pierce the gloom, as the unseen horses came thundering up the rise. Singly they ran in.
Susan was sure that Barnaby would win. She could not understand why her heart beat so loud.
"One—two—three—!"
They were all frantically counting. Five men still up;—but not yet near enough to distinguish faces.
"If Barnaby isn't in the first three he's down."
Who said that? She gave one shudder and was quite still.
"Oh, God, don't let him be killed. Don't let him be killed!" she was crying to herself.
The fir trees spread their dark plumes overhead; in the boughs there was a strange sighing.... If he was not in the first three, if he was missing—her one friend in a land of strangers, lying there crushed and lifeless in the dark:—
"Oh God—!" she cried under her breath.
And then out of the blackness shot a headlong figure, cleaving it like an arrow. That blur beneath was the final jump, the last hedge that barred the way with its ragged line. And he charged it as if it were not there, keeping on in his tremendous rush.
"Barnaby!" they shouted. They knew his laugh before they could see his face.
"A near thing," he said, and pulled up the black mare, who turned her head towards him as he dismounted, her eye-balls glistening in the darkness with something like human pride.
"You didn't steady her there," said Kilgour.
"Steady her?—We had to come for all we were worth!" he said.
The Duchess, striding afoot, made her way into the circle round him. Barnaby was explaining how he had ridden into one of the lantern-bearers, a silly fool who had turned his light and was standing into the hedge; and how he had got off to make sure the poor devil wasn't injured. He had had to ride after that like fury; no leisure to grope his way....
"Since you are not smashed up," said the Duchess, shaking him by the arm, "go and show yourself to your wife. You nearly frightened her to death."
She piloted him to the buggy, and stood by, with her unsentimental countenance considerately averted.
"I am so glad you won," said Susan. She spoke steadily, controlling the traitorous catch in her throat. How was she to assure him that she was not guilty of causing him to be dragged to her side?
The man smiled at her stiff politeness. He was still hot, still breathing a little hard, the spell of his ride still on him;—and Julia's wisp of muslin was twisted round his neck.
"I'm sorry you were scared," he said. "I'm rather in the habit of doing ridiculous things like this. There wasn't much danger really ... and I didn't think you would mind."
His casual apology struck her like a blow. What right had she—? How it must amuse him that she should affect to care.
"I did not mind," she said proudly. "It was—funny."
One of his friends was coming up with a coat to throw over him. The men who had come to grief were straggling in, bruised and dirty, but miraculously sound. Kitty Drake leaned over the wheel on the other side, hailing them, calling to each man to ask if he was alive....
"Was it?" said Barnaby, and smiled. The glint in his eyes reminded her of his face as the light flashed on him, dare-devil, reckless, down there when he jumped the water.
Perhaps the joke was a little too much for him.
"You are not altogether a callous person," he said slowly. "I don't believe you, Susan. You fainted when I came home...."