Martin Ross

“ The pace of the engine increased momently, from a tremulous glide to a clattering rush; every movement of the driver’s hand as he heightened the speed was answered by a forward start, like a powerful horse touched with the spur—unhampered by carriage or tender it raced and swung. Slaney held on with both hands, while the wind from the open sides encircled and buffeted her, ardent with heat snatched from the engine fire, bitter with the frost that had turned the bog drain into mirrors for the keen colours of a winter sunset. ”

“ There were long jogs to the meets through the pleasant soft weather, when Lady Susan rode at the head of her husband’s hounds with the acting master, while Slaney and Bunbury followed old Danny at their heels. Once or twice they left off twelve or fourteen miles from home, and a friendship can progress marvellously in the slow return in the twilight, with the golden link of a day’s enjoyment, and the easy snatches of talk and silence of a tête-à-tête on horseback. ”

“ A luncheon-basket stood on a carpenter’s bench, a champagne-bottle on the window-sill, and Lady Susan and Slaney were sitting on boxes by the fire, eating game pie. Lady Susan had violets in her toque, and possessed more strikingly than usual that air of being very handsome that is not always given to handsome people. Behind her the empty window framed a gaunt mountain peak, a lake that frittered a myriad sparkles from its wealth of restless silver, and the grey and faint purple of the naked wood beyond it. ”

“ Lady Susan was close in his tracks, and, far from trying to stop her horse, she gave him a vigorous blow with her hunting-crop, and drove him full pace at the fence and its defender. The grey horse jumped like a deer, and Quin perforce sprang aside, cursing vilely and threatening Lady Susan with the stone. She was gone in an instant, and, before Glasgow had pulled his horse together, Slaney and Isabella were charging the place, Slaney with a white face and a crooked hat, Isabella with her long nose poked well forward to take her distance. ”

“ Major Bunbury’s conversation with the engine-driver had ended with an almost imperceptible glide of the latter’s hand into his trousers pocket, and Major Bunbury himself was standing beside Slaney in the cramped space available for them, looking preternaturally cheerful and unaffected. He possessed that gift of trivial observation that is the parent of tact and is one of the rarest of male attributes. It can be formidable, it can also be attractive beyond most other things. ”

“ It was an hour and a half before Glasgow, dropping down into a road from the top of a heathery bank, found the hounds at fault on the edge of a wide and famished expanse, half marsh, half bog. They seemed beaten and spiritless; some were already sitting idle and panting on their haunches, and one of the younger ones was baying at a little bare-legged girl, who was uttering lamentable cries at finding herself in the middle of the pack. She and the few starveling cattle she was tending were the only living creatures in sight. ”

“ Glasgow, sitting beside her, caught at that passing flash of her glance that was{93} intended for him specially, and replied to it with an intimacy that startled Slaney. His face was pale, and had the tired look that comes with mental rather than physical fatigue, but the crisp tingle of the champagne had given its inimitable fillip; the excellence of the dinner had brought him into charity with all men—even with his Irish workmen—and the warm luxury and charm of the surroundings had the effect of a perfume whose dizzy fragrance can steep mind and body in repose. ”

“ Lady Susan called out, “I want you to talk sense to your friend, Danny-O. The old pig refuses to draw that gorse above the railway—you know,” turning to Glasgow, “that place where the cutting is; he said it was an unlucky place, and that the fox there was a witch! Such rot!”
Slaney did not answer at once. There are some people for whom the limits of the possible seem to be set farther out than for the rest of the world. They see and hear things inexplicable; for them the darkened glass is less dark, to them all things are possible. ”

“ Any one who has loved horse or dog will know how and where they touch the heart and command the tear. Let us trust that in some degree it is known to them also, that the confiding spirit may understand that its god can grieve for it.
Maria Quin looked at Lady Susan with eyes that were as dry as glass. The Irish peasant regards the sorrow for a mere animal as a childishness that is almost sinful, a tempting of ill fate in its parody of the grief rightly due only to what is described as “a Christhian”; and Maria’s heart glowed with the unwept wrongs of her brother. ”

“ The mist thickened on the higher levels, Lady Susan and the hounds were suddenly lost to sight, and, after a minute or two of fruitless galloping, Hugh pulled up and listened, with his pulses thumping and his mouth dry. A curlew whistled overhead, a trembling crescent of sound, then, high up the hill to his left, he heard again the cry of the hounds. He rode to it desperately, skirting a high furzy knoll, and at the other side caught sight of the pack beginning to run fast again after a check, and his wife was still near them. ”

“ He could have found it in his heart to swear at her and tell her she need not take so much trouble; he would have liked to quarrel with Bunbury and show him which was the pluckier man; he dwelt on the thought with pitiful, childish intensity, and drove his heel into the gravel, half knowing himself to be pitiful and childish.
There are junctures in a life when deficiency of intellect may disastrously alter the moral balance, and the smaller mind may have need of supreme and heroic effort to attain the philosophy or even the sanity that are easy to stronger intelligences. ”

“ There was not as yet a signal worked on the line; they must trust to eyesight and pluck for the safety of an engine driven at nearly its best speed; and the strident shriek tore the air incessantly, and each curve or cutting meant a slackening and an instant of suspense before the long vista opened clear, and they were away again with that living bound that thrilled Slaney’s unaccustomed heart as only pace can thrill. ”

“ What on earth do you do with yourself at Letter Kyle, Slaney?”
“Do you grow a beard, Slaney?” shouted Lady Susan, with her mouth full of biscuit. “If I’m bored over there I shall just dye my hair again. How do you like it now, Bunny? I got it done in Paris on our way through. I think it might be a bit redder.”
“Why, it’s as red as a fox now,” said Major Bunbury, regarding it critically.
“Talking of foxes,” put in Slaney, endeavouring to be genial, “they all expect Hugh to start the hounds again when he comes over. That will give you something to do, Hugh.” ”

“ They flashed across it, and Hugh saw his wife ride unhesitatingly at the stark bog drain, that was the only fence of the unfinished line. The old horse jumped it like a four-year-old, and as he scrambled up the embankment Lady Susan looked back: the mist was creeping down the hill, but Hugh knew that she could not mistake the grey horse. He swore to himself that he would{154} show her that he was as good a man as Glasgow, his horse as good as Glasgow’s; the most primitive and animal of human hatreds had taken hold of him, and was disfiguring mind and face like a possession of the devil. ”

“ Those who lay out with a confident hand the order of a day’s events would do well to prepare also an alternative.
Yet Fate had, after all, reserved a blessing.
Slaney had scarcely settled herself by the fire, when she heard Lady Susan’s voice in the hall, and following on it the voices of Hugh and Mr. Glasgow. The afternoon leaped again into life and meaning. As she came into the lamp-lit hall to meet her visitors, Lady Susan and Major Bunbury realized in their different ways that she was better-looking than they had believed. ”

“ An old hound came working and yelping up through the dead bracken; she flung up her head with a long shriek of excitement as she crossed the path; half-a-dozen others rushed to her well-known cry, and went streaming past on the line. The grey horse was quivering and hopping from leg to leg with excitement. Hugh could feel his heart beating up through the saddle. ”

“ A long shout of “gone away” came from the watcher on the hill, and the hounds came tumbling out of the wood in the lovely headlong rush that has the shape of a wave and a thousandfold its impetuosity. With the indescribable chorus of yells and squeals that is known as full cry, they swept past Slaney, and it was at this juncture that Isabella, the brown mare, found herself the victim of a gush of enthusiasm. It may have been a survival in her old soul of the days when she had, according to tradition, carried the huntsman of the county pack ”

“ There are moments in life when it is given to some hearts to know their own happiness, and to know it trembling. Come what might, earth’s greatest pleasure was Slaney’s now: she knew it with all the tenderness and strong romance that were hidden in her nature, with all the comprehension of herself that had grown out of a bitter experience. ”

“ She led him down the field in the direction from which he had come, and saw, away by the fence, a motionless spot of scarlet and white.
In a few moments she was on her knees beside her husband. His face was buried in a heather tussock, his hands were clinched in the black and boggy soil; as she tried to turn him over the blood trickled heavily from the corner of his mouth. A little gurgling sound in his throat told her that he was alive, but he was far away in that trance of physical defeat in which soul and body seem alike absorbed. ”

“ The wood ran to the lips of the cutting on either side, and the strong fir-trees on the{24} height could look down the tawny slants upon their fallen comrades.
Standing below, the jaws of the ugly cleft let in the winter sunset and the twin glitter of the rails, while above, the fir-trees strove against the evening wind. It was worth remaining still to look at, in spite of the cold, and Mr. Wilfrid Glasgow, with two long account-books under his arm, and the peak of his cap over his eyes, stood for at least a minute surveying alternately his own handiwork and that of his Creator. ”

“ The hounds started once more in pursuit, and were themselves pursued by Danny-O, while the digging party broke into enthusiastic cheers.
Lady Susan was not at all amused. She felt much as a devout clergyman might feel at beholding a low travesty of the Church service, and she was almost shocked at the way in which Major Bunbury and Mr. Glasgow laughed.
“Men will laugh at anything,” she said, turning to Slaney, “but I call this awful rot, you know. Hughie gave a lot of money for these hounds, and this sort of nonsense should not be allowed.” ”

“ All Hugh’s native good-feeling was not enough{85} to avail him when he remembered his wife’s figure up against the sky on the top of the stone-faced bank, while he turned and made for the byways and highways that had been his portion throughout the day. Passionate admiration, turning to passionate jealousy of her flawless courage, and self-contempt, and knowledge that his eyes would never again meet hers without consciousness of failure; all these because a good little average man had but two ideas in his life, and when one was taken from him, the other sickened like a poisoned thing. ”

“ The{69} smoke from Quin’s farm rose bluely from the valley below, a long stretch of brown country spangled with lakes lay beyond, and behind all, rising to meet the eye, the sea stood high like a silver wall against the horizon. Curlew were crying on the sunny slopes above Slaney, and the whistling of green plover filled the air. No one was in sight save a rider posted out on the hill to watch the top of the covert; the inevitable mob of country boys was at the lower end, and the sound of Hugh’s and Major Bunbury’s voices, holloaing to the hounds, came distantly from the bottom of the wood. ”

“ Possibilities spread and soaked coldly through Slaney’s mind, like suddenly spilt water. Situations in novels that she had read lent their smooth probability to the raw and disjointed circumstance; she found herself wondering that it was all so horribly painful, so ugly, so devoid of subtle psychological interest and large bearing; not realizing that in actual life feeling is born first, help-{115}less as a blind puppy, and philosophy is not born at all, but is built, with infinite self-consciousness.
She was already on the engine—it was moving ”