He stood, a great rock of support, uttering leisurely words of consolation, while he quietly slipped one hand down the Major's arm, until his broad, perceptive finger-tips could feel the faint pulse jerking under their pressure.

d.i.c.k's colour crept back, and the veins, that had shown blue on the sudden yellow of his cheek, began to lose their vividness.

"That's more like it!" said the Doctor, tranquilly. "Do you sit quite here for a minute, now, and I'll go get you a drop of something from our friend, Mr. Evans, that'll do you no harm!"

He established his patient on a garden seat, and left him, moving slowly until he knew he was no longer in sight; then he swung into the house, with swift strides that would have compelled a smaller man to run, if he were to keep level with him.

"Poor old lad!" he thought, compa.s.sionately; yet, blended with the compa.s.sion, was the half-unconscious triumph of strong middle-age at sight of the failure of a senior. "That's the first knock. He'll want to mind himself from this out--the next one might hit him harder."

CHAPTER XXIII

The back stairs at Mount Music were old and precipitous. To descend them at high noon demanded circ.u.mspection at night, when the armies of the c.o.c.kroaches were abroad; and marauding rats came flopping up and down them, upon their unlawful occasions, only that man of iron, Robert Evans, was proof to their terrors. Christian, even though inured from childhood to the backstairs, held her habit skirt high, and thanked, heaven for her riding-boots, as she made her way down the worn stone steps, at some half-past four of a September morning.

Mount Music was one of the many houses of its period that, with, to quote Mrs. Dixon, "the globe of Ireland to build over," had elected to bestow its menials in dark and complex bas.e.m.e.nts. Christian and her candle traversed the long maze of underground pa.s.sages. The smell of past cooking was in the air, the black and evil glitter of c.o.c.kroaches twinkled on the walls on either hand. This was the horrible part of subbing, thought Christian, and told herself that nothing but the thought of seeing the _debut_ of Dido, the puppy that she had walked, would compensate her for facing the c.o.c.kroaches.

As she opened the kitchen door she was surprised to find a lighted lamp on the table. In the same glance she caught a glimpse of a figure, retreating hastily, with slippered shuffle, followed by the trailing tappings of braces off duty. On one end of the long kitchen table was seated a cat, in motionless meditation, like a profile in an Egyptian hieroglyphic; at the other end was a steaming cup of cocoa and plateful of bread and b.u.t.ter.

"Long life to Evans!" thought Christian, seating herself, like the cat, on the edge of the table, and entering upon the cocoa.

"Miss Christian!" a raven-croak came through a slit of the pantry-door; "keep off the Carmodys' land! Mind now what I'm tellin'

you!" The slit ceased.

"Thank you for the cocoa, Evans, but why must I?" called Christian, in a breath.

A lower croak, that seemed to end with the words "black papishes,"

came through the closed door.

"Old lunatic!" thought Christian; she drank the cocoa, and putting out the lamp, groped her way to the back-door. It opened on a shrieking hinge, and she was out into a pale grey dawn, pure and cold, with the shiver and freshness of new life in it.

The Mount Music stable yard was an immense square, with buildings round its four sides, and a high, ivy-covered battlemented wall surrounding and overlooking all. In the middle of the yard was an island of gra.s.s, on which grew three wide-armed and sombre Irish yews, dating, like the walls, from the days of Queen Elizabeth. Weeds were growing in the gravel of the wide expanse; more than one stable-door dropped on broken hinges under its old cut-stone pediments; the dejection of a faded and remembered prosperity lay heavy on all things in the thin, cold air of that September dawn.

The clatter of a horse's hoofs came cheerfully from a stable, and, as Christian crossed the yard, a dishevelled young man, with a large red moustache, put his head over the half-door.

"I'm this half-hour striving to girth her, Miss," he complained, "she got very big entirely on the gra.s.s; the surcingle's six inches too short for her, let alone the way she have herself shwoll up agin me!"

Charles, once ruler and lawgiver, was dead, and, with the departure of the hounds, Major d.i.c.k's interest in the stables had died too; his tall, grey horse was ending his days in bondage to the outside car; the meanest of the underlings who had grovelled beneath Charles'

top-boots, was now in sole charge, and had grown a moustache, unchecked; and Christian's only mount was a green four-year-old filly, in whom she had invested the economies of a life-time, with but a dubious chance of their recovery.

"Can't you get a bit of string and tie up the surcingle Tommy?"

suggested Christian, who was now too well used to these crises in the affairs of the stable to be much moved by them.

"Sure, I'm after doing it, Miss. T'would make a cat laugh the ways I have on it! She's a holy fright altogether with the mane and the tail she have on her! I tried to pull them last night, and she went up as straight as a ribbon in the stable!"

The flushed face and red moustache were withdrawn, and with considerable clattering and shouting, the holy fright was led forth.

She was a small and active chestnut mare, with a tawny fleece, a mane like a prairie fire, and a tail like a comet. Her impish eyes expressed an alarm that was more than half simulated, and the task of manoeuvring her into position beside the mounting block, was comparable only to an endeavour to extract a kitten from under a bed with the lure of a reel of cotton. An apple took the place of the reel of cotton, and its consumption afforded Christian just time enough to settle herself in her saddle. Since the days of Harry the Residue Christian had ridden many and various horses, and she had a reputation for making the best of a bad job that had often earned her mounts from those who, wishing to sell a horse as a lady's hunter, were anxious to impart some slight basis of fact into the transaction.

Tommy Sullivan watched her admiringly.

"Where's the meet, Miss?" he said, quickly, as she started, and as if he were struck by a sudden thought.

"Nad Wood."

"If they run the Valley, Miss, mind out for wire!" called Tommy after her, as she rode out of the yard. "Carmody's fences are strung with it!"

He ran to the gate to watch the mare as she capered and lunged sideways along the drive, and thanked G.o.d, not for the first time, for the heavy hands that preserved him from the duty of riding Miss Christian's horses.

Christian rode past the long ivy-covered lace of the house, that stared at her with the wall-eyed glare of shuttered windows, and down the long avenue, that curved submissive to the windings of the Onwashee, now black and br.i.m.m.i.n.g after a week of rain. Young cattle, that had slept, according to their custom, on the roadway, scrambled up as she came near, and crashed away through the evergreens, whose bared lower branches bore witness to their depredations. They were a sight hateful to Christian, who, in spite of her resignation to the methods of her groom, cherished a regard for tidiness that she had often found was more trouble than it was worth.

She let Nancy, the chestnut mare, have her head, a privilege that made short work of the remaining half-mile of avenue, and soon the stones and mud of the high road were flying behind her, as the little mare, s.n.a.t.c.hing at her bridle, and neglecting no opportunity for a shy, fretted on towards the sunrise, and the covert that lay, purple, on a long hill, three miles away.

Bill Kirby's foible was not punctuality; when Christian arrived at the appointed cross-roads in the middle of Nad Wood she found a patient little group of three or four men, farmers, all of them, she thought, waiting under the dewy branches of the beeches for the arrival of the hounds. One of them rode quickly from the group to meet her. A young man, with a slight figure and square shoulders, who was riding a long-legged bay horse, that, like its rider, was unknown to Christian. The light under the beech trees was dim and green, and such faint illumination as the grey and quiet sky afforded, was coming, like this rider, to meet Christian. He was close to her before he spoke, then he caught his cap off his head and waved it, and shouted: "Hurrah, Christian! Here I am! Home again! Don't pretend you never saw me before, because I won't stand swagger from you!"

"Larry! Not you? Not really?"

He had her hand by this time, and was shaking it wildly despite the resentment of the chestnut mare, at the sudden proximity of the bay horse.

"Yes! Me all right! _Moi qui vous parle_--as we say in French Paris! I only got home last night. I bought this chap at Sewell's on my way through. He's a County Limerick horse. I bet he's a goer! How do you like him?"

It was like Larry to require, instantly, praise and recognition for his new purchase, but Christian wasn't thinking of the horse. Her wide, clear eyes were fixed on his rider, her mind was a hustle of questions.

Had he changed? Would he stay? Did he know that he was "in black books" with her father? Would he care if he did know? What ages it seemed--! Four years, wasn't it? Her brain was working too hard to remember, but she certainly remembered that he had not had a moustache when he was last at home; such a fanciful little French sc.r.a.p of a moustache as it was too, made of pure gold!

"I rather like it, Larry!" she said, beaming at him; "_quite_ nice!"

"What? What's quite nice?" says Larry, beaming back; "oh, _this_?" He gave the moustache an extra upward twist. "Yes, rather so! Beats the Kaiser's to fits, I flatter myself! I'm glad you like it, but I don't see how you could help it!"

Yes! This was the old Larry, the right one; Christian felt very glad.

It might so easily have been some one else, some one not half so nice as her own old Larry.

"Why on earth didn't you say you were coming? Cousin Freddy told us that you were painting at etaples."

"So I was till one fine day I 'took the notion for to cross the raging ocean,' and I'm jolly glad I did too! Oh, by Jove! Look at old Bill and the hounds! What a swell! Christian, do you know I haven't seen a hound for four years! Do you mind if I call them 'dogs,' just till I get used to them a bit?"

There are few bonds more enduring than those that are woven round the playmates of childhood. In how many raids had Larry not been Christian's trusted leader! What stolen dainties had they not shared, what punishments not endured together! Larry's three years of seniority had only deepened the reverence and loyalty that he had inspired in his youngest follower; he had never presumed upon them; he had been a chieftain worthy of homage, and he had Had all Christian's.

There are some people who appear to change their natures when they grow up. They may have been pleasing as little boys or girls; they may be equally agreeable as men and women, but there is no continuity and no development. They have become new creatures. Christian, alone of her family, was essentially as she had ever been, and, being of those whose inward regard is as searching as their outward observation, she knew it. Now, Larry had come back again, and in half-a-dozen sentences she knew that neither had he changed, and that with him her ancient leader had returned.

The Wood of Nad (which, being interpreted, means a nest) filled a pocket on the side of Lissoughter Hill, and had thence spread over the crest of the hill, and ended near the cross-roads at which the hounds had met.

"Don't holloa away an old fox. I want to kill a cub if I can. I'll let you know if the hounds get away below. You needn't be afraid I won't!

Open the gate!"

Thus, magisterially, the Master, standing at the gate into the wood, with the hounds crushing round his horse's heels, "Leu in there!"

With a squeal or two of excitement from Dido and her brethren-puppies, the hounds squeezed through the narrow gateway, and were swallowed up by the wood.