II.A LEAD OF HEARTS.
Mrs. Terwilliger Dehon—ah, Mrs. Dehon! Great heavens! why had they not met earlier—before she had sacrificed herself upon Terwilliger’s commonplace altars—before her radiant youth had been shrouded in tragedy?
The Russo-French police may be successfully evaded, but not so the laws of society. Naught but misery could he see in store for them both—one long life-agony of divided souls.
Of course, it took some time before this dismal prospect lay fairly out before them. At their first meeting there was nothing sadder in sight than the purple hills of Exmoor and the clear cascade of Bagworthy Water; and their talk was broken only by the cheerful yelp of hounds. And there had been fortune, too, in this; fortune wecall fate, when fortune turns out ill. He had hardly seen her at the Cloudsham meet, and but just knew who she was. Thither he had gone with his friends, the Leighs, to see the red deer hunted in his ancient lair; and as he stood there, snuffing with his horse the sea-breeze that came up from Porlock Bay, immaculate in coat and patent-leathers, she had ridden up with a fat and pursy citizen beside her. This stall-fed citizen was horse-back on another square-built brute, and it was very Psychecide to call the wretch her husband. A Diana, by heaven! thought he; and, indeed, she sat her horse as any goddess might, and clothed her own riding-habit as the moon her covering of cloud.
“Who’s that?” said he to Tom Leigh.
“That’s the girl that married old Dehon,” said Tom. “She did it——”
But when or how she did it Austin never knew, for just then there was a joyous baying from the hounds, and whish! they scampered downward, skirting hanging Cloudsham Wood. Unluckily, they were at the wrong end of the field, and before they reached the steep bit of gorsy moorthat overlooks the valley everyone else who meant to ride had disappeared in the cover of the forest. She reined in her beautiful horse on the very brink, and looked up the valley over Oare Hill; May stood a few yards below and looked down the valley in the direction of Porlock. Then she looked down the valley to Porlock, and May looked up the valley to Oare Hill. And their eyes met.
Her beautiful eyes glanced quickly off, like a sunbeam from a single eyeglass. She turned, as if in sudden decision, and sped like an arrow over the high moor. May’s eyes followed her; and his soul was in his eyes, and his body went after the soul. One dig of the spurs nigh unseated him, as if his spirited horse scorned such an incitement to chivalric duty; and so, for some twenty minutes on end they rode, May neither gaining nor losing, and both out of sight of the rest of the hunt. Now and then the cry of hounds came up from the forest-valley on the right, and May fancied he heard below a crashing as of bushes; but he had faith in his guiding goddess and he took her lead.
The high winds whistled by his head, and there were blue glimpses of the sea and wide gray gleams of misty moorland; but the soft heather made no sound of their mad gallop, and May was conscious of nothing else save the noble horse before him and the flutter of the lady’s riding-habit in the wind. Now the earth that rushed beneath was yellow with the gorse, now purple with the heather; here, he would sail over a turf-bank, there, his horse would swerve furiously from the feeling of an Exmoor bog; where she would ride, he would ride. This he swore to himself; but she rode straight, and he could make no gain. At the top of the moor, almost on the ridge of Dunkery Beacon, was a narrow cart-path, fenced six feet high in ferny turf, after the usual manner of Devonshire lanes. May saw it and exulted; this was sure to turn her, till she found a gate at least.
But his beautiful chase rode up the gentle inner incline and sailing over the lane like a bird, was lost to sight upon the other side.
“By heavens!” swore May to himself. “She means to kill herself.”
He rode at it and cleared the six-foot width of lane successfully; but his horse could not bunch his legs upon the narrow bank beyond. He rolled down it, and May over his head into a bank of heather.
The eager American prematurely began to swear before his head struck the ground; and before his one moderate oath was finished, he was upon his horse and off again. Mrs. Dehon had not even turned round upon his disaster; but May was none the less attracted to her by that. What was mortal mishap to a spirit wrecked like hers? Why should she?
They were riding down hill now; and she was riding a little more carefully, favoring her horse. But May cared neither for his horse nor his neck by this time. Straight down the hill he rode; and by the time they reached the Lynn he had gained the quarter-mile he lost. Here she had pulled up her horse, and he pulled up his at a courteous distance; and both sat still there, in the quiet valley; and the noise of their horses’ breathing was louder than the rustle of the wind in the old ash-trees around them.
May wondered if his pilot was at fault; but hardly had the thought crossed his mind before they heard again the music of the hounds, at full cry; and far up, two or more miles away, toward the Countisbury road, they saw the stag. Though so far off, he was distinctly visible, as he paused for one moment on the brow of the black moor, outlined against the blue sky; then he plunged downward, and the hounds after him, and May’s horse trembled beneath him; and May wondered why his goddess was not off.
But instead of riding down to meet the hunt, along the valley of the East Lynn, by Oare Church and Brendon, she turned and rode up in the direction of Chalk-water. May followed; and hardly had they left the Lynn and gone a furlong up the Chalk-water Combe, when she struck sharp to the right, breasting the very steepest part of Oare Oak Hill. If she knew that he was behind her, she did not look around; and May again had all that he could do to keep his guide in sight.
And now the event proved her skilful venery. For as they crested Oare OakHill, and the long bare swell of the moor rolled away before them, the sharp cry of the hounds came up like sounds of victory in the valley just below. Well had Diana known that either way of the Lynn would be too full of his enemies for the now exhausted deer to take. It must make for Bagworthy Water. Long ere they had ridden down the Lynn to the meeting of the streams, the hunt would have passed; but now, as they looked across and along the lonely Doone Valley, they saw the full pack far down at their feet, close by the foaming stream.
Then May could see his leader whip her horse, as if she would open the gap between them; and he set his teeth and swore that he would overtake her, this side the death. And he gained on her slowly, and the purple and yellow patches mingled to a carpet as they whirled by him, and he felt the springing of his horse’s haunches like the waves of a sea; and below them, hardly apace with them, was the hunt and the cry of hounds. Down one last plunging valley—no, there was another yet to cross, a deep side-combe running transversely, its bottomhid in ferns. But the hounds were now abreast of them, below, and there was no time to ride up and around. May saw her take it; and as she did, a great shelf of rock and turf broke off and fell into the brook below. He saw her turn and wave him back; it was the first notice she had taken of him; and he rode straight at the widened breach and took it squarely, landing by her side. Then, without a word, they dashed down, alongside of the slope, and there, in upper Bagworthy Waters, found the deer at bay, and the hounds; but of the hunt no sign, save Nicholas Snow, the huntsman, with reeking knife. He had already blooded his hounds; and now he sat meditatively upon a little rock by the stream, his black jockey-cap in his hands, looking at the body of the noble stag, now lifeless, that had so lately been a thing of speed and air. A warrantable deer it was, and its end was not untimely.
May pushed his panting horse up nearer hers. She was sitting motionless, her cheeks already pale again, her eyes fixed far off upon the distant moor. “Mrs. Dehon!” said he, hat in hand.
The faintest possible inclination of her head was his only response.
“I have to thank you for your lead,” said May.
For one moment she turned her large eyes down to him. “You ride well, sir,” said she.
When the M. D. H. and others of the hunt came up, they found these two talking on a footing of ancient friendship. The slot was duly cut off and presented to Mrs. Dehon; and many compliments fell to our hero’s share, for all of which May gave credit to the beautiful huntress beside him.
Tom Leigh cocked his eye at this, but did not venture to present him to her after that twenty-mile run. It were throwing the helve after the hatchet, to present the man after the heart. And thus it happened that to her our hero was never introduced.
When Mr. Dehon arrived, some hours later, Tom Leigh led him up. “Mr. Dehon,” said he, “I think that you should know my particular friend, Mr. Austin May.” And Tom Leigh cocked his eye again.
May looked at the pursy little old man, and felt that his hatred for him would only be buried in his enemy’s grave. But his enemy was magnanimous, and promptly asked them both to dinner, which May did not scruple to accept.