XI
“Andyou aren’t really sorry you didn’t get over?”
“Sorry? Wouldn’t you be?”
“Well, I don’t know. Considering the hordes of disillusioned veterans I’ve met this winter—”
“At least they had a chance to get disillusioned in action. Something for their money. With me it’s just two years—practically three years—gone to pot, and a sort of feeling it isn’t worth while to go back at all. To college, I mean.”
“You couldn’t start this time of year, could you?”
“I suppose I could do something.”
“It would be fun having you around until Fall—like old times.”
Hal laughed shortly.
“You’d care?”
“I’ve had a good long spell of Thornhill alone, you know. Next year I shan’t mind, because I’ll be away at school myself.”
“My Lord, Moira, have you anything more to learn?”
“Oh, yes, I could learn to be useful, for instance.”
“You manage to be most anything, if the notion strikes you.”
“I’m not so crazy to go,” she mused. “I imagine it’ll be rather awful. Formalities, lady lecturers, highbrow girls with shell-rimmed glasses. They’ve been cramming education down the throats of the fashionable young for a generation and what’s the result? Country clubs, prohibition, and a beastly war.”
“Cynical, eh?”
“No more than you would be, if you’d done nothing but read newspapers these last two years. I suppose now they’ll all combine and squeeze everything out of Germany that she has left—just as the Persians and the Greeks did, and the kings in the Bible. And there’ll be a lot of moralizing—more than ever. Of course, you’ll be glad. The victor is always spoiled.”
“Pooh,” he laughed. “You’ve got me wrong. I don’t give a damn what they do. Say, the only principles I have left are principles of horsemanship. I’m highly interested in the way you sit Elfin.”
“Isn’t she a beauty!”
“She’s a pretty horse. But I wasn’t referring entirely to the equine part of the combination.”
It was the first real day they had had together since Hal’s discharge from camp the week before. The weather was like an Indian summer afternoon, one of those exceedingly mild days of February between spells of stiff cold. They had been galloping along the high road, when Moira suddenlypulled up and turned her horse into a meandering lane, so narrow that the stripped branches met in sharply accentuated patterns overhead against the sky. The fields were a monotonous, hard stubbly brown, except where pockets of soiled snow lay in the holes and under the protecting sides of hillocks.
“Is Selden Van Nostrand coming out to-morrow?” asked Hal, after they had ridden a hundred yards in silence.
“Yes.”
“Does he come out often?”
“Yes ... let’s go as far as Corey’s Inn for a bite. I’m famishing, aren’t you?”
“I don’t like him. I suppose you know that.”
“You’re not going to be like the rest of the patriots, are you? Get so you despise anybody with a critical mind?”
“I admire people who say what they mean as much as anybody. But I do object to Van Nostrand, because he’s faintly rotten, and even his wit is literary. He always seems to be rehearsed. Anybody can do that Wilde thing if they study up on it long enough. The point is, is it worth while?”
She laughed with a touch of malice.
“You sound like a book review, Hal. His line is pretty easy, but it’s a line. Nobody ever even tries to be amusing here, and he not only tries but I think he succeeds.”
“It’s from him, I suppose, you got this fellow-feeling for the Germans. Well, he had plenty of opportunity to cultivate it, staying at home.”
Moira gave him a glance of friendliness.
“Oh, it’s such fun to have you back, I don’t care what you say. If you knew all the dreams I’ve had, terrifying dreams, seeing you—hurt and cut up and dead. I’d wake up mad enough to kill Germans myself.”
“Did you really dream about me, Moira?” He pulled his horse closer to hers, leaning as far as he could. The girl’s mount, disliking to be crowded, pranced out of control, and Hal had to swerve away, but he kept his eyes on the straight, slim figure.
“God, Moira, what a beauty you’ve grown!”
She began to murmur aloud:
“When I was one and twentyI heard a wise man sayGive crowns and pounds and guineasBut not your heart away,Give gold away and rubiesBut keep your fancy free,But I was one and twenty,No use to talk to me.”
“When I was one and twentyI heard a wise man sayGive crowns and pounds and guineasBut not your heart away,Give gold away and rubiesBut keep your fancy free,But I was one and twenty,No use to talk to me.”
“When I was one and twenty
I heard a wise man say
Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away,
Give gold away and rubies
But keep your fancy free,
But I was one and twenty,
No use to talk to me.”
“Moira!” he cried, but she was gone, at full gallop down the lane.
“Hurry!” she called back, “I’m nearly dead with hunger.”
And from there to the inn was a race.
When they returned it was dark, and both were eager to reach the stables, but as they wheeled into the little pasture road which led through the tenant’s land and past Hermann Dietz’ house, a curious scene halted them.
The house was a very old-fashioned small wooden dwelling, with a high stone foundation, built by the past generation of Dietzes twenty-five or thirty years before. The barn, larger than the house, was some twenty yards from the kitchen door, across a squalid cow yard. A dim lamp or two was burning in the house, but this was completely deserted, the doors hanging open and giving it a half-witted grimace. The centre of attraction was a big double barn door. Around this, in a lighted semi-circle stood the Dietz family, consisting of the bony, tall, salmon-faced father, the emaciated, dreadfully stooped mother, and four children of varying ages. A curious murmur arose from the group, and riding closer, Moira and Hal saw that they were weeping. Beyond, they could catch a glimpse of the body of a horse, swaying slightly from side to side in its last agony, and casting monstrous shadows on the high cobwebbed walls behind, thrown by the lantern which stood on the ground at Hermann’s feet.
Moira dismounted and signalled to Hal to follow her.
“They’ve been grieving this way since yesterday,”she whispered, “and to-day the veterinary told them he couldn’t save the horse.”
The sobs arising from the pitiful group, two of the smallest of whom clung to their mother’s skirts and hid their faces, more frightened at the commotion than troubled about the horse, rose and fell with the spasms of suffering that swept over the dying beast. Moira heard Ellen’s reassuring voice and saw her face for the first time in the lantern light at the far end of the group.
“Ah, Mrs. Dietz, let them put the poor animal out of its pain,” she was saying in a loud whisper to the mother. “It can’t live.”
Moira turned to Hal and took his arm. He had been smiling grimly at the scene, but as her hand fell upon his sleeve he covered it with his own. The horse, the drama of primitive sorrow, everything was forgotten, except her features and hair, and gipsy loveliness in the wavering light.
“They’re Ellen’s children, these people,” she said. “She’s wonderful to them. She told me yesterday ‘that horse is like a member of their family, Miss Moira. It’ll be terrible when it dies.’ Isn’t she fine to come down here and comfort them?”
They turned at the sound of foot-steps crossing the hard earth and stubble, and two stocky figures passed them.
“Hullo,” said one, with a grin. It was Rob Blaydon, carrying in his hand something fromwhich they caught a quick gleam as he passed. The veterinary was with him. Both went up to Hermann and held a hurried consultation, and during this the family fell silent. Presently the three men parted. Hermann spoke up in a high, quavering voice.
“Well, Momma, they say it’s jest got to be done. We jest got to give her up, and put her out of her misery. I don’t know where we’re a-goin’ to git another one like her. I don’t know—that I don’t. Poor old Molly. She’s been with us now longer than my boy there, pretty near as long as Lilly here. It breaks me up to lose her. Yes, sir, it goes hard, but there ain’t no helping it.”
“That’s the way to look at it, Hermann,” said Rob, with gruff good nature.
Hal raised his voice from where he stood with Moira at some distance.
“I’ll give you another horse, Dietz,” he said. Moira squeezed his arm.
“Thank you, thank you, Mr. Hal,” the farmer responded, obsequiously, peering for him in the weak light. “Now, Momma, ain’t that fine! Well, children, I guess we better be movin’ in. Poor Molly—I’d rather not see you do it, gentlemen, if you don’t mind.”
The family turned to obey, exhibiting a variety of expressions, from fright to the deepest woe, but Moira observed that there was one who had not shared the general grief—the short, mature,straw-haired girl of sixteen or seventeen, whose face bore a stolid, disdainful look. She followed toward the kitchen after Ellen and one of the small children, but as she reached the porch she turned and gazed at Rob Blaydon, fascinated by the revolver in his hand. In the weird light, which cast a romantic glow over her figure and uncouth clothing, Moira thought the girl had a touch of beauty, fresh and coarse and natural as earth.
“Poor Hermann,” she said, “he’s a rustic Pierrot, Hal.”
Just as they topped the ridge they heard the harsh double-fire of Rob Blaydon’s revolver. She was glad to see the lights of Thornhill.
“Well,” said Hal, “Rob had a good hunch to-night—even if it was fun for him. Just the sort of thing he’d love. There’s the boy who needed to go to France. As it is he’ll get over that raw streak very slowly.”
“Rob’s a dear,” she broke in, earnestly. “I’m not one of those who worry about him. He’s a good animal—without a shred of theory in him. I let him get me most beautifully pickled twice last Fall.”
“The devil you did!” exclaimed Hal.
“Why not? He knows everybody everywhere and they like him. And he drives like a wild man—when he’s had a few. Now you wouldn’t be such a good fellow, would you, Hal? You’d becautious and look after my morals, and count my drinks and take me home early.”
“Yes, I’m afraid I would,” he said. “And I suppose you wouldn’t like it.”