Second String. Anthony HopeЧитать онлайн книгу.
and dropping as it veered. No frost yet, but the weather-wise predicted one before long. The scent should be good—a bit too good, Andy reflected, for riders on shanks' mare. Their turn is best served by a scent somewhat variable and elusive. A check here and there, a fresh cast, the hounds feeling for the scent—these things, added to a cunning use of short cuts and a knowledge of the country shared by the fox, aid them to keep on terms and see something of the run—just as they aid the heavy old gentlemen on big horses and the small boys on fat ponies to get their humble share of the sport.
But in truth Andy cared little so that he could run—run hard, fast, and long. His powerful body craved work, work, and work yet more abundantly. His way of indulging it was to call on it for all its energies; he exulted in feeling its brave response. Fatigue he never knew—at least not till he had changed and bathed; and then it was not real fatigue: it was no more than satiety. Now when they had found—and they had the luck to find directly—he revelled in the heavy going of a big ploughed field. He was at the game he loved.
Yes, but the pace was good—distinctly good. The spirit was willing, but human legs are but human, and only two in number. Craft was required. The fox ran straight now—but had he never a thought in his mind? The field streamed off to the right, lengthening out as it went. Andy bore to his left: he remembered Croxton's Dip. Did the fox? That was the question. If he did, the hunt would describe the two sides of a triangle, while Andy cut across the base.
He was out of sight of the field now, but he could hear the hounds giving tongue from time to time and the thud of the hoofs. The sounds grew nearer! A thrill of triumph ran through him; his old-time knowledge had not failed him. The fox had doubled back, making for Croxton's Dip. Over the edge of yonder hill it lay, half a mile off—a deep depression in the ground, covered with thick undergrowth. In the hope of catching up, Andy Hayes felt that he could run all day and grudge the falling of an over-hasty night.
"Blown," indeed, but no more than a rest of a minute would put right, he reached the ledge whence the ground sloped down sharply to the Dip. He was in time to see the hunt race past him along the bottom—leaders, the ruck, stragglers. Jack Rock and Wellgood were with the Master in the van; he could not make out Harry Belfield; a forlorn figure looking like the Bird laboured far in the rear.
They swept into the Dip as Andy started to race down the slope. But to his chagrin they swept out of it again, straight up a long slope which rose on his left, the fox running game, a near kill promising, a fast point-to-point secured. The going was too good for shanks' mare to-day. Before he got to the bottom even the Bird had galloped by, walloping his showy screw.
To the left, then, and up that long slope! There was nothing else for it, if he were so much as to see the kill from afar. This was exercise, if you like! His heart throbbed like the engines of a great ship; the sweat broke out on him. Oh, it was fine! That slope must be won—then Heaven should send the issue!
Suddenly—even as he braced himself to face the long ascent, as the last sounds from the hunt died away over its summit—he saw a derelict, and, amazed, came to a full stop.
The girl was not on her pony; she was standing beside it. The pony appeared distressed, and the girl looked no whit more cheerful. With a pang to the very heart, Andy Hayes recognized a duty, and acknowledged it by a snatch at his cap.
"I beg your pardon; anything wrong?" he asked.
He had been interested in Vivien Wellgood the evening before, but he was much more than interested in the hunt. Still, she looked forlorn and desolate.
"Would you mind looking at my pony's right front leg?" she asked. "I think he's gone lame."
"I know nothing about horses, but he does seem to stand rather gingerly on his—er—right front leg. And he's certainly badly blown—worse than I am!"
"We shall never catch them, shall we? It's not the least use going on, is it?"
"Oh, I don't know. I know the country; if you'd let me pilot you—"
"Harry Belfield was going to pilot me, but—well, I told him not to wait for me, and he didn't. You were at the meeting last night, weren't you? You're Mr. Hayes, aren't you? What did you think of the speeches?"
"Really, you know, if we're to have a chance of seeing any more of the—" It was not the moment to discuss political speeches, however excellent.
"I don't want to see any more of it. I'll go home; I'll risk it."
"Risk what?" he asked. There seemed no risk in going home; and there was, by now, small profit in going on.
She did not answer his question. "I think hunting's the most wretched amusement I've ever tried!" she broke out. "The pony's lame—yes, he is; I've torn my habit" (she exhibited a sore rent); "I've scratched my face" (her finger indicated the wound); "and here I am! All I hope is that they won't catch that poor fox. How far do you think it is to Nutley?"
"Oh, about three miles, I should think. You could strike the road half a mile from here."
"I'm sure the pony's lame. I shall go back."
"Would you like me to come with you?"
During their talk her eyes had wavered between indignation and piteousness—the one at the so-called sport of hunting, the other for her own woes. At Andy's question a gleam of welcome flashed into them, followed in an instant by a curious sort of veiling of all expression. She made a pathetic little figure, with her habit sorely rent and a nasty red scratch across her forehead. The pony lame too—if he were lame! Andy hit on the idea that it was a question whether he were lame enough to swear by: that was what she was going to risk—in a case to be tried before some tribunal to which she was amenable.
"But don't you want to go on?" she asked. "You're enjoying it, aren't you?" The question carried no rebuke; it recognized as legitimate the widest differences of taste.
"I haven't the least chance of catching up with them. I may as well come back with you."
The curious expression—or rather eclipse of expression—was still in her eyes, a purely negative defensiveness that seemed as though it could spring only from an instinctive resolve to show nothing of her feelings. The eyes were a dark blue; but with Vivien's eyes colour never counted for much, nor their shape, nor what one would roughly call their beauty, were it more or less. Their meaning—that was what they set a man asking after.
"It really would be very kind of you," she said.
Andy mounted her on the suppositiously lame pony—her weight wouldn't hurt him much, anyhow—and they set out at a walk towards the highroad which led to Nutley and thence, half a mile farther on, to Meriton.
She was silent till they reached the road. Then she asked abruptly, "Are you ever afraid?"
"Well, you see," said Andy, with a laugh, "I never know whether I'm afraid or only excited—in fighting, I mean. Otherwise I don't fancy I'm either often."
"Well, you're big," she observed. "I'm afraid of pretty nearly everything—horses, dogs, motor-cars—and I'm passionately afraid of hunting."
"You're not big, you see," said Andy consolingly. Indeed her hand on the reins looked almost ridiculously small.
"I've got to learn not to be afraid of things. My father's teaching me. You know who I am, don't you?"
"Oh yes; why, I remember you years ago! Is that why you're out hunting?"
"Yes."
"And why you think that the pony—?"
"Is lame enough to let me risk going home? Yes." There was a hint of defiance in her voice. "You must think what you like," she seemed to say.
Andy considered the matter in his impartial, solid, rather slowly moving mind. It was foolish to be frightened at such things; it must be wholesome to be taught not to be. Still, hunting wasn't exactly a moral duty, and the girl looked very fragile. He had not arrived at any final decision on the case—on the issue whether the girl were silly or the father