Front matter (continued 3)

"Cecily! Cecily!" He ran around the little house.

One of the big Inca foreman detached himself from a standing group, and stood in front of the frenzied man.

"Excellency," he said, "there's no good calling Madame. Madame has left us."

"Left us? What do you mean?"

"Excellency—" the big Indian threw his hands toward the river—"the bridge is there, but Madame has left us. Don't you understand?"

With numbing force the blow descended on Lovat.

"The bridge took her, you mean."

"No, señor. She left us."

Lovat suddenly straightened up.

"Mason, what do you mean?"

"Señor, when the wind came and the flood, the men quit. The wind shrieked through the arches. The river rose and attacked the piers. And the bridge groaned, and we left. It was the will of God, we thought. He did n't want this chasm joined.

"And I came up toward your house, señor, to see if everything was right there. I met Madame on the path. She had her big black cloak on.

"'You had better go back, señora,' I said.

"'I am going to the bridge,' she said.

"'But it is growing black as night, señora; you had better go back.'

"'Stand aside, Vicente,' was all she said. And there was something in her eyes that made me give way. She went on.

"Excellency, I loved Madame, as did every one here. And she liked me. And I was your man. I followed her down the path. I caught up to her at the bridge. It was blue dark, like twilight. The bridge was quivering. I caught the edge of her cape.

"'What are you going to do, señora?'

"'Stand aside, Vicente.'

"'You are crazy, señora!' I cried out.

"'No, Vicente, I am wise.'

"'You must n't, señora!'

"'I must, Vicente.'

"'Let me, señora,' I pleaded.

"'Vicente,' she said, 'you 've done your work on the bridge. Now I must do mine.'

"I could n't stop her, Excellency. Something in the face, in the eyes—I don't know—I dropped on my knees. She moved over the bridge.

"Excellency, from the time she was on it the bridge stopped quivering, the wind hushed. I saw her drop her cloak as she stood in the center. I saw her step forward, sure, unafraid. And for an instant I saw her, like a blossom in the wind....

"And so, Excellency, the bridge stands, will always stand...."

X

So there it was, all finished, all done, and for the last time Lovat looked at it, saw the green mountains, the tumbling river, the white span of the bridge. But the bridge and he were finished now. His work was done.

The little Latin-American official touched his elbow deferentially.

"Excellency, the train!"

"Yes, the train," Lovat repeated mechanically. His companion looked at him with grave sympathy. Only three months ago Lovat was a young and happy bridegroom. To-day the builder was a grave gray-haired man.

Yes, the bridge was done, Lovat knew. A little while ago it was just the product of his hand and genius and will, a thing of himself. But now it was a fulfilled entity, with its own duties, its own uses, its own destiny. Over it went trains joining country to country and sea to sea. Over it went the loping Latin people. Over it went the little patient burros, pannier-laden. In confidence all went over it.

"It will stand." Lovat knew. "It will always stand."

But there was no high note of proud achievement in his thought. It would not stand because of skill in building or strength in masonry. But because there guarded it one whose pleading sacrificial fingers would unclench the angry hand of God. Flood and thunder and immense winds would spare it because of that guardian like a white flame, to whose unselfishness selfish nature must do reverence.

The official ventured to recall him:

"Excellency!"

"Just one more moment!"

He had a vision of her for the moment, and his throat quivered and his eyes were uncertain. He saw her in her white, billowing gown, with her dark head and face like a flower. Two brown shy little children were standing fearful of the bridge, and she knelt to them. "Come, darlings," he could hear the deep remembered voice. She led them confidently across his bridge, and as she led them she smiled to him.

Well, he must go. There was other work to be done, other bridges to build, until the time the Master of the Masons told him to rest. He must be about his work.

"All our life is work," he said to himself as he boarded the train. "All our love is comradeship."

Well, there was work to be done, and there was comradeship. She would always be with him now, being dead....

IN PRAISE OF LADY MARGERY KYTELER

I

All those things I dreamed about, and I thousands of miles away, are there still: the house, half farm-house and half castle, at one end an ancient military tower, at the other a thatched cottage; all the trees—the ash, the elms, the chestnut with the dark-green foliage and the prickly bulb containing the polished mahogany fruit, the rowan-trees with the gallant red berries, bitter as death, the copper beech with the foliage of lace and the fuzzy brown nuts, the apple- and pear-trees, and the trees of cherries that the birds do be ever after.

The lawns that were once shaven so closely are now rectangles of high sweet grass where the bees are seeking. And the tennis-courts, where once was the laughter of young girls—those, too, are knee-high in grass, swaying in the soft Irish wind. And here and there is a gallant yew-tree, blackly green. Roses still cling to the wall, and around all the walls are riots of flowers.

The low greenhouses are still there, under whose glass roofs grew great purple grapes, and where row on row of exotic flowers grew and delicate ferns whose names are unknown to me, so much closer are men and horses to me than flowers and ferns. Ivy is on the walls, soft-looking as velvet, and the winds and rains have been kind to the lodge and the stables. The walls are still white and a little moss is on the slates of them, and a soft and gentle grass is between the cobbled stones.

And the deep well is there. And everywhere are birds and bees. The bees are wild now, who once lived in skips of yellow straw, and their nests are in the long grass, and there, too, is the meadowlark, and under the eaves the swallows flit. And here the robin is safe with his impudent eye, and the blackbird of the yellow bill. And everywhere the throaty murmur of the wood-pigeons, the thrum of their wings.

Eh! There it is all still, at the foot of the soft and purple mountains—the Sugarloaves, the Big Sugarloaf and the Little, and the hill called Kitty Gallagher's, and the Scalp with its slender tower and the sweet shoulder of Three Rock Mountain. And below—one could pitch a stone nearly—is Dublin, the abiding city. There the Liffey, rippling gently to the sea. And one can almost see St. Patrick's, where great Swift was Dean, and Trinity, where poor Goldsmith and fearless Burke were students. The broad streets, the princely squares. And there Robert Emmet was hanged for treason against our Sovereign Lord the King, His Crown and Majesty, and Lord Edward, the rebel Geraldine, was stabbed. And there is Clontarf, where Brian the High King fought the red Danes, fought and died, but fought and conquered. And there Howth, where Iseult, the Dublin princess, sailed to marry Mark in rugged Cornwall, sailed with Tristram....

Eh! There from Mount Kyteler one can see it all—the soft dreaming mountains, the sad weeping city. And here where was once the laughter of young women, the barking of dogs, the neighing of horses, the shouting of lads—here is silence, but for the husky note of the wood-pigeon, the little thunder of his wings, and the droning of the seeking bees. All, all are dead, but here is no desolation. There is the sweet gentleness of remembered twilights, and the copper beech rustles, and the rowan nods, and the apple-trees murmur with their antique boughs: "Is it yourself is in it, Ronnie? Is it yourself, long lad? And it is long you've stayed away from us in foreign lands and bitter seas. And it's Lady Margery you 're looking for? And Paddy the Pipes? You mind him, do you so? And Jacky Sullivan—ah, the great lad! Sure, they 've just left this minute, laughing fellow. Gone to see the old earl, they have. Sure, you'll be following them, and seeing them all soon. Over the mountains they went, a wee ways. You 'll see them all soon, very soon, a wheen of years...."

Not for long will be this sweet silence, this soft, dim loneliness. Soon will be business of courts, justices sitting in wig and gown. And Mount Kyteler will die, and its name be forgotten. Sad history will pass and affairs proceed in their inexorable ordinance. And where once great Norman fighters charged in mail, and Elizabethan nobles ruffled, and the old red-faced earl swore when the gout was on him, and of late Lady Margery moved over lawns and walks with her sweet, sad-faced dignity, will be three or four little farms, their smoke blue against the purple of Three Rock Mountain. And the lawns will turn to fields of blue corn, and fat cattle will graze where once was a maze of flowers.

And all the crops will prosper there. And the children that are born of the farmer folk will be happy as the birds in the trees. There will be no blight on the milk the cows give, and there will be great luck on the stock of the kindly land. Always will there be prodigal bees and the dancing of swallows.

There are houses and lands that are kindly, and places that are sinister, fields that are surly, meadows that are sweetly generous. Old things, if we watch them, have a very human quality, and that is because they have been intimately connected with people who have these qualities themselves. One influences one's surroundings so much. Whirling sparks of personality fall from us and charge what we have usually by us. On all the estate came such a current of sweetness that even the thieving wood-pigeons grew generous, leaving the young trees alone.

Will she ever come back here when Mount Kyteler is gone, and the little whitewashed farmhouses are an outpost against the heather of Three Rock Mountain? I think she will. She will have so much beauty to know, now she is dead, that she will not begrudge the loss of the flower gardens and the courts where tennis was played. Apple-trees and flowers will be hers wherever she is, and perhaps the same ones—who can say no? Yet I can see her come to visit the whitewashed houses in the hushed summer twilight, when the daisies have tucked in their modest heads and only the great foam of the hawthorn billows over the country-side. On some warm little breeze from Three Rock Mountain she will come. And horses in their stalls will know her, and the kine will turn their heads to her, lowing gently, and the dogs will bark joyously, and some little child on the floor will stand up suddenly and run forward, its arms outstretched, bubbles of laughter beating from the tiny lips....

II

Now when the last Lord Kyteler died, there was very little fuss made. Another poverty-stricken Irish peer gone. He had n't been rich enough to own an estate large enough for tenants to squabble on. A few farms here and there through the country, Mount Kyteler itself, not worth a tremendous amount. He was the last lord of one of these very, very old families who had been lost in the back-wash of Irish history. Once Kytelers had fought in the Holy Land under Richard the Lion-Hearted and had fought later under Irish viceroys against the O'Bernes and O'Tooles and O'Moores of the Wicklow hills; and antiquarians remembered that Dame Alice Kyteler was the most sinister witch of all Ireland, and was burned at the stake in Kilkenny many centuries before. But it was a matter of politics more than demonology, though undoubtedly Dame Alice was second only to Gilles de Rais, murderer and Marshal of France, in worship of evil idols and in sinister sacrifice....

It was one of these old names that should have died out, when the medieval chivalry of Europe died, Knights Templar and sporting Norman bishops and morbid medieval ladies. But it existed, as many things exist in Ireland and are forgotten in Europe and never known in America,—strange Christian customs, strange pagan beliefs,—and "It" the most horrible of all horrible ghosts.

They were a poor family, as poor is understood in Ireland. That is, they had money enough for all necessities and many luxuries. They had money enough for food, for clothes, for a few good horses for conveyance and hunting, and they could go to the viceregal court at Dublin Castle and be decent figures there. But they could not keep racehorses, which is really a great hardship if you are Irish, and they could not afford to live in London as an Irish nobleman should live, which should be as a very great nobleman indeed. They were as well off as a rich farmer, and they had a title, and they were not intolerably proud.

If you were to meet a very red-faced man in tweeds and with a heavy stick, at the Curragh races, betting modest sovereigns, and were told that he was the Earl of Mount Kyteler, you would feel that there was something wrong. He had not that terrible courtesy of the earls and better sort of dukes which makes you feel like a clodhopper, no matter from which particular Irish king you claim direct descent. He was too human, too decent an old skate; you chuckled when you thought of a coronet cocked rakishly over that red, weather-beaten face.

Oh, but Lady Margery! that was different!

Her appearance I could describe to you: the close-bound black hair, the face like some rain-washed flower, the dark luminous eyes and laughing lips, the balanced neck, the body that was half boy's and half young woman's. All that means nothing, but if I say that when she appeared there was a chime like an old silver bell, such antique sweetness came upon the air ... the feet that never seemed to touch the ground, her long, white, quiet hands. How that old-world title fitted her, described her! Not demure miss, not buxom mistress, but the Lady Margery Kyteler.

How important it is for me to bring her back, to have her real for an instant in the clear air! But not as a necromancer under the glittering stars, with circle and acolyte, fire, sword, and crown, saying terrible words—Here be the symbols of secret things, the flags and banners of God the Conqueror, the weapons to compel the aerial potencies—and have that sweet face come white and fearful in the gray dawn. I would have her seen with her merry smile, her feet that moved lightly, as to hidden music, her long quiet hands. For all her boyish strong body, there was such harmony and light, one knew that beyond the body was something that would not die with the years—no more than the sun dies when it drops into the sea, or the sweet, friendly moon. To see her was more than miracles; she convinced better than the fathers of the church.

Very unconsciously she did all this. And very embarrassed she would have been and a little mad she would have thought one, had she been told she was an argument for eternity. Know her to be eternal, but see her playing with a terrier, pulling its tail, its ears, and clipping it deftly under the jaw as it snapped playfully. Or stroking the sleek neck of a horse, and talking to it as horses love to be talked to, or kneeling to comfort some crying child of the people, and wooing it back to happiness by being very happy herself....

III

Now by the ordinance of time and nature the old earl was quietly gathered to his forbears—to Gilles de Kyteler, who came over to Ireland with Strongbow; to Piers Kyteler, who could run against a horse for five miles; to Dame Alice Kyteler, whose name is still used to frighten little children; to Fulke, or the bastard Kyteler, who joined with Silken Thomas in rebellion; Hugh, who lost the family money in the South Sea Bubble; to another Pierce, who backed Boxer Donelly, the Irishman, against the English champion, Cooper, for a thousand pounds—and won!—to Hugh, who grew rare tulips, and to Patrick, of whom it was said he was the stupidest man in Ireland. Some one has written a book about the family; possibly it's worth reading, probably not.

And now of the family of the Earls of Mount Kyteler there was only one left, the Lady Margery Kyteler, and she was alone in the world.

Except for the ordinary natural grief for the old earl, whom she loved and liked, she did n't mind being alone. Mount Kyteler had now only seven servants, an ancient cook and two equally ancient maids, a gardener so ancient as to need an assistant, who was himself so verging on the ancient that it was a puzzle as to what assistance he could give. There were a couple of lads in the stable, lads of fifty, a groom, and a coachman, the coachman assuming the livery of butler on great occasions, such as in Horse Show Week. Ancient grumbling people they all were, who were united only in this, that they loved her. Among themselves there were always ancient grudges, present fights. And instead of her ruling them, they ruled her with a terrible tyranny.

The old cook below-stairs was forever complaining of the great work to be done, and refusing to have any help given her.

"Is it bringing in another you 'd be and me here child and woman for fifty years? Twelve years old I was when they brought me into the pantry and set me to cleaning knives, and now it's on top of me you 'd be bringing some streel you 'd be getting out of a register's office, a woman does be following the tinkers to the Country Wicklow, mad with love. Och, to think of the insult put on me this day! Wirra, is thrue!"

"Sure, it 's only to help you, Peggy."

"And what help would I be needing, me that's the fine, supple woman, in the prime o' my years! Ne'er a day over sixty I am, and thirty hard years' work in me still."

"But you were complaining, Peggy."

"Sure, 't was only to keep my mind active I was."

The old gardener could be terrible, with his face like an apple and his bent back. He watched her as he might watch a thieving boy.

"Now, if it's a thing you 'd be wanting chrysanthemums, my lady, would n't it be the right and proper thing for you to be coming to me, that's the head gardener of this garden, and if it's a thing there 's chrysanthemums in it, you 'll get them, and if it's a thing there 's no chrysanthemums in it, you won't."

"I thought I 'd save you trouble, Darby."

"And what trouble would you be saving me, my Lady, by destroying the symmetry of the design? All the work that 's on me, and ne'er a hand's turn do I get from the young fellow that's the assistant. Devil the hand's turn he 's done in all the forty-three years he 's been here, barring playing the bagpipes in the greenhouse and talking about the good ould times. I mind the time your grandfather was in it, my Lady—a real gentleman him. He would n't put a hand on an apple, or a gooseberry itself, without asking the head gardener's permission."

Also were the two ancient maids problems in their way. They were forever sniffing at each other, and complaining of each other to Margery.

"If your Ladyship would be so kind as to give Rose Ann a tip about her conduct, 't would be a mercy so. For the queer way she does be acting with the postman is no credit to this house at all. New ribbons in her cap, indeed, looking for love, when she ought to be making her peace with God and man."

But Rose Ann had the same story.

"If your Ladyship pleases, a wee word to Ellen would not be out of the way. 'T is the postman, your Ladyship, has been complaining bitterly. 'Ma'am,' says he to me, 'would you be telling a secret?' 'If so be as I know it,' says I, 'I will.' 'Is that one,' says he, 'right in her head?' 'Is it Ellen you mean?' says I. ''T is that same,' says he. ''T is that has been puzzling myself, but why do you ask?' say I. ''T is the dirty look she has in her eye,' says he, 'and the queer conversation is at her. "'T is the world's wonder you never married," she does be telling me, "and you the fine lad you are."' Your Ladyship should speak to her. You should so."

"I will, Rose Ann."

But worst of all were the quarrels between the coachman and the groom. The coachman was a fine, florid man, and the groom was a wizened little troll who had once been a jockey. The coachman was always in decent black, the groom in corduroys. They were forever arguing on everything, from politics to horses. Once Lady Margery had come into the yard to see the groom stepping around like a bantam boxer, his hands up, his feet tapping the ground like a dancer's.

"Put up your hands!" he was shouting. "Put up your hands!"

"Go 'way t' the divil out o' that!"

"Come on if you 're fit! Come on if you 're man enough! I 'll give you a beating you 've been spoiling for for the last thirty years."

"Go 'way t' the divil out o' that!"

"I will not go 'way out o' that. It's fight I want. I 'm boiling mad for one clout at your ugly gob."

"Will you whisht!" The coachman had seen Lady Margery.

"I will not whisht. Put up your hands! I 'll not stop till I 'm dug out of ye!"

"Kelleher, Brady, what's this?"

The groom dropped his fighting attitude and pulled off his cap.

"'T is just a foolish wee argument we were having, m'lady. I was telling this bloody old cod—begging your pardon, m'lady, for giving him his right name—that Lynchehaun the murderer was by rights a cousin to my mother's people, and he said that it was n't in either side of my family to produce a fine murdering man like the same Lynchehaun. So I up and gives him a tip about himself and his drunken old mother...."

"Kelleher!"

"Not that I know anything about her, m'lady, but I just thought that if he had any pride, it would cut him to the quick!"

IV

Nobody in the world but herself, she thought often, could have kept them. But if she sent them away, where would they go? The old gardener—could he last away from the soil he had tended with the care of parents?

And the maids would be lost in a modern world. And for all that the two men in the stable fought, they loved each other in a strange way. She couldn't pension them off; and, also, they got their work done in a surprisingly efficient manner.

And, besides, she could not see new servants in the old house. The maids were as much part of the place as the portraits of dead Kytelers on the walls. They had blended into a mellow composition. They all loved her in their queer selfish way, depended on her for vitality. She could hardly go on visits any more, so much did they grumble. "Sure, it is n't to England you 'd be going, my lady, and the grand house you have of your own!" And not only the servants but the old drowsing dog, Sheila, the little Scottie bitch, who was drawing on fourteen years old and nearly blind, and the foxhound puppies, who waited for her when she was n't there, and ancient Fenian, the old steeplechaser, who was near ending his days. All these laid imploring hands on her.

Her mother she had not known, the countess dying when Margery was not yet two; and the earl had never married again. But the house had been a mother to her. The deep drawing-room, the heavy formal dining-room, the little sitting-room so bright. There was no place in the world so comfortable as the drawing-room of Mount Kyteler in the winter evenings, with the portraits blinking in the light of candles in their silver sticks and the glimmer of the sea-coal in the grate. And her own room at night, on moonlight nights, whence she could see Dublin Bay shine silver and the dark trees bending in the breeze from Three Rock Mountain.

Every tree she knew; every tree had for her a personality. The copper beech was friendly and kindly, the rowan-trees aloof but kindly, the oaks majestic but clumsily kindly; the apple-trees were smiling. All the flowers she knew, all the shrubs. They had seen her stumble as a child of two, they had seen her rollick as a child of seven, they had seen her dream at ten, and grow ugly at twelve, and grow pretty in her late teens, and at twenty beautiful, and now beautiful and assured.

In no other country than Ireland, in no other city than Dublin could such beauty and grace exist alone in an old house. They would have fêted her, made merry with her, married her. A young beauty in an ancient house with grizzled servants. But in Ireland a great beauty has so many competitors for the songs of the poets, the passion of the young men. There is the biting excitement of treason, politics charged with lightning. There are the far places of the world calling to Irish adventurers. There are careers calling for vitality and ambition. And what young woman dare presume to bother poets when there are great purple mountains to enthrall them, and wooded glens and the crashing sea? And winds like wine. The crooning of great romantic ghosts. And an Irish poet is not a pale man to be comforted by women, but a lithe, muscular man with a sword.

Also, in Ireland is little marriage or giving in marriage, if we except the peasantry and the very poor. The young men spread their wings to go abroad, and when they return it is usually with a foreign bride, so that there are convents innumerable in that country, also many mad women at large, as in politics. Unless a girl is very rich she has little chance of a happy marriage. A title may help her, curates and captains in the army having a belief that the daughters of earls will help them to preferment; also, it sounds well, they think—the Reverend Septimus and Lady Jones, Captain and Lady Plantagenet Murphy. There are sadder things in Ireland than the weeping skies.

But though the right of marriage may be often denied them, young Irish girls have always their inalienable right of dreams. Soft winds and nodding flowers and sun going down on the western hills, and with the twilight comes always a love. Out of the blue twilight and soft wind they weave a magical life of love that will be always young, of a world that will be ever kind, of little dark children and loyal friends, of the pageantry of foreign cities, of triumphs for their own beauty and the lover's ability. The skies are always blue in their dreams, and tragedies there are none, nor any sordidness. And they grow old so peacefully in their dreams, so gracefully, and death comes so gently, so kindly—the lover always by, always young, always loving.... Out of the blue twilight and soft wind they dream their dreams, and they never notice that the blue of the twilight has become a threatening black, and the soft wind has withdrawn in itself with the set sun, as a flower does, and all of a sudden it has grown cold, damp, and lonely and cold.

The dream of Margery was around Mount Kyteler. It seemed to her that the house, and the garden and the trees, and the old servants, and the drowsing dogs, and the ancient steeplechaser out to grass were all part of the French nursery, "La Belle au Bois Dormant," "The Beauty in the Sleeping Wood." And one day the princely lover would come, breaking through the hedge of Irish stillness, and Mount Kyteler would bloom again. The backs of the gardeners would straighten and the maids become young again. And by some strange magical process the steeplechaser would again win races, and the old dog win ribbons, and children would stumble under the tall trees, as she had stumbled twenty years before. All this would happen with the coming of the prince, all this she could see, but his features she could not plainly see. Only she knew this, that his face would be shining with love and smiles.

V

So that when she met him she did not recognize him at first, nor for many days afterward. On his face were puzzlement and a frown. A clean-cut, red-headed man, he was standing in the road on a frosty November morning, when she was out walking a brace of foxhound puppies. The puppies seemed delighted at the sight of him, all but tearing the leash from her hand.

"Could you tell me," he asked, "where Tallaght is?" He pulled the ears of the foxhound puppies.

"You 're in Tallaght," she said.

He looked incredulously at the scattered houses.

"Is this—"

"Yes. Is there any place in particular you 're looking for?"

"No," he said, "just Tallaght."

"Well, you have Tallaght." She laughed a little at his rueful expression. "You seem surprised."

"I am," he laughed. "For many years, when I was a child, I have been hearing about Tallaght, until it had assumed tremendous proportions for me, and now—"

"Abroad?"

"Yes."

"Australia?"

"No. America."

"What are you looking for? The old homestead?"

"No," he said; "I don't think there ever was an old homestead. There might have been a little cabin somewhere, but it was n't here." He laughed. "I 'll tell you. My father was an old Fenian, and he was at Tallaght when they gathered to descend on Dublin, but for some reason or other the battle was not fought, nor the enemy driven into the sea, nor anything. And my father, with a lot of others, fled to America. But I had an impression of a mountain pass and camp fires and great guns."

"It rained all night, did n't it? Did your father say?"

"No, he never mentioned the rain."

She liked this man, she told herself directly. The big, clean look of him, his gray eyes and red hair, his splendid teeth. Also there was something about him so easy. He was Irish; no mistaking that. But pleasant, fine Irish. It was not always you met them pleasant and sincere. And this man was sincere. This man was not inimical. They would make a nice pair, she thought simply, he big and clear-eyed and red, herself slim and dark.

"Could I bother you again?" he asked. "How do I get to the railway station?"

"I 'm going that way, if you care to come."

There was a nice chivalry about him; she felt that as they walked together. Was that American? she wondered.

"May I ask you something? Are most Americans like you?"

"Yes," he said, "of course."

She was puzzled. She had an impression that all Americans were called "Silas" and twanged, "I guess." Also, they chewed gum. There was something wrong.

"You are n't called Silas, are you?"

"No; Richard. Did you think all Americans were called Silas?"

"Something like that," she admitted. And they looked at each other and laughed. She had a joyous feeling that the maids at home would disapprove of this strongly. And that the old gardeners would tremble with rage. But the dogs approved.

"What sort of time are you having in Ireland?"

"Not so good," he admitted. "I 've been here a week, and the only friends I 've made are cab-drivers. Also, I have a bowing acquaintance with a head waiter."

"Cab-drivers are good fun," she ruminated.

They were at the station now.

"Look here," she said suddenly as she was leaving: "if you are having a rotten time like that in Dublin, and know nobody, it must be lonely! I wonder—" She looked at him fearlessly. "Look here: if you 'd care to, come out and see me at Mount Kyteler—my name 's Kyteler. There are dogs and horses and an old house you might like to see."

"May I? Thanks. My name's O'Conor. I 'll come, then, Miss Kyteler."

"Lady Margery Kyteler."

"Do I call you all that? Lady Margery Kyteler?"

"No. Just Lady Margery."

"Lady Margery! That's nice."

When he came, he came with a great armful of flowers, which Margery received with a smile and courtesy, and turned over to Rose Ann. He seemed scrubbed, so glistening was he. How like an old friend he was, with his firm handshake and laughing eyes.

"Now," he said, "I 'd like the worst over."

"What is the worst?"

"Oh, meeting people. Your relatives. The Lady This and the Lady That, and the countess, and the duke. Above all, the duke."

"There are none," she said. "I live here by myself."

"All by yourself, in this big house?"

"Yes."

"Might I ask, are you married?"

"No-o-o," she pondered. "Um, no."

He looked at her incredulously. He had never in his life seen any one so beautiful, he thought. The small face, the soft and sweet and smiling dark eyes, the hair like a perfumed dark cap on a head whose sweet shape he could imagine. And the supple figure in the frock that was close in the bosom and belled like a dancer's from the waist down.

"Well, that beats—" he murmured.

"Beats hell, doesn't it?" She finished for him.

"These old pictures, some of them are good." She smiled. "That's Gilles de Kyteler—not the one who came with Strongbow but a later one. And that's Fulke Kyteler, who rebelled with Silken Thomas, and tried to burn the Archbishop of Cashel in his own cathedral. They were very disappointed when they found the archbishop had slipped out. And that—" she pointed to a polished oval of black stone, framed in antique silver—"is Dame Alice Kyteler's magical mirror. She was the greatest of the Irish witches."

She gave him tea and listened to him talk of America and of his work there. He was some sort of engineer, building bridges. She got an impression of him standing on an artifice of some kind, with plans in his hand, directing a whole crowd of workmen. He had been in Brazil and in China.

"You must be a good engineer," she said in her direct way.

"I 'm supposed to be a very good engineer," he laughed.

"Do you make a great deal of money?"

"A good deal. Not a great deal."

"I 'm glad," she said. He looked at her in surprise. She was dusting her fingers daintily, but her eyes smiled. She was really glad. And he said to himself, "My soul! we 're friends."

She took him into the garden, and he laughed.

"And I brought you flowers." There was a little shade of disappointment in his laugh.

"Indeed and indeed—" she looked him in the eyes and lied sweetly—"'Twas I needed them, for it's the devil and all for me to get any flowers out of my own garden. My two old gardeners are that mean! Darby 'd begrudge me a daisy for fear it 'd leave an unsightly gap in the grass. There he is, watching me for fear I 'll pull a leaf. Darby, this is Mr. O'Conor, and I 'm showing him the garden."

"If he 'd come fifteen years ago, your Ladyship, or even ten years ago, he 'd have seen the like would have made his heart glad. But in the latter years, with the bad weather that's in it, now too much rain and now not enough rain at all, and the wind that nothing is a shelter against, and the soil that's growing poor, for all the time that's spent on it, till it's hard to rear anything, even a head o' cabbage itself—m'lady, will you for God's sake leave off pulling at that hedge?"

She took him to see old Fenian in the paddock, and she liked the way he pulled the jumper's ears, ran his firm hand down the fetlocks.

"Was he a great horse?"

"Nearly the greatest of his day," she answered. "He never won a Grand National, but was third twice and second once. He had a great heart. No horse tried harder. The people loved him.... Kelleher, this is Mr. O'Conor, from America."

"From America, is it, your Ladyship? Oh, sure, they 've fine horses over there. But they 've got to come to us for the hunters. Begging your Ladyship's pardon, but was your Honor ever in Kansas City?"

"I was."

"D' your Honor ever meet a man named Hannigan out there? Red Hannigan, they called him, a holy terror for bloody murder, the same man was."

"I don't think so."

"He was n't as red as your Honor—begging your pardon—but sandy like. And he carried his head on one side on account of a belt in the gob he got in a wee argument out at the Lamb Doyle's."

"He must have gone when I got there."

"He must have, your Honor, or you 'd have met him. A genius for horses, the same Red. 'T was he cured Colonel Nolan's charger of biting. 'Roast a leg of lamb,' he told them, 'and take it out of the oven mad hot, and when he offers to bite,' says he, let him bite into that. By God! he 'll never bite again.' And he never did."

Came at last the time for leaving.

"I wonder," he ventured, "I wonder if I could get you to come in and have dinner and go to the theater. I don't know what kind of a theater it is, but would you?"

How like a flower she herself was, he thought—the white stalk of her dress, the sweet face, the dark head! She frowned. His heart sank.

"I don't see how I could," she said. "I 've got to get back here. I usually take the dinners and theaters in a quarterly debauch of one week. No, I don't see how ..."

His heart sank a little farther. Was this definitely good-by?

"No, but I 'll tell you what you could do, if you 'd care to. Come out on Saturday and take me to the Leopardstown races. I 'm sick of going alone."

His heart rose.

"And come back and have dinner with me instead."

His heart sang.

Came now a day of wonder. Day of Leopardstown, frosty morning and road glistening like pewter, and the grass crackling underfoot, stiff with hoar. The little race-course at the foot of the mountains. Crowds stamping in the friendly cold. The horses jibbing, curving under their jockeys at the starting-wire. Flash of jockeys' colors, gold and green, red and white, all sorts of blue—sky, sea, St. Patrick's. The drop of the flag. The flying wedge of stretching mounts and huddled riders. Thunder of hoofs coming to jumps, hurdling, lightning spring and over, larruping canter toward the next, smack of crop, over, by Heaven! The hedge now and the five-barred gate, and the stretch toward the judges' stand. A mad cheering and the clanging of a great bell. The favorite 's won!

A little hush, a rush to the ring to see the horses for the next race. She wore a great frieze coat, like a man's, and a riding-hat, like a man's too. At a little distance she seemed like a boy in clothes too big for him, and as one came nearer, one noticed, between the collar and the brim of the hat, the sweet narrow neck and the hair gathered up like some very little girl's. There was something heart-pulling in it, like a child's curled fingers. And then she turned, and her face showed, pointed like a cub fox's. The cheeks flushed with the cold, the lips with a merry smile, her eyes with a deeper smile—there were so many there who knew her, and to whom O'Conor was presented, including an Irish duchess, with a voice like a saw, who rasped; "H' a' yo?" and then wailed, "My God! D' yo' ever see such a God-forsaken bunch o' mokes in all your life?" And a tall, thin baronet who asked him was he one of the O'Conors of Baltimore, to which he replied, no, that he was one of the O'Conors of Forty-seventh Street and Seventh Avenue. "Ah, yes! Ah, yes!" There was a French cavalry officer buying horses in Ireland, a dark, thin man with a heavy mustache, who looked more like a New York plain-clothes policeman than a hero of Algiers. Also, there was Mr. Kelly.

Margery had noticed a great rangy gelding in the ring. He looked to have the power of a steam-engine.

"See?"

O'Conor nodded.

"Flying Fish."

A large red-faced man with a stout ash plant was passing.

"Oh, Mr. Kelly!"

"Ah, sure, Lady Margery!"

"Do you know anything of Flying Fish?" She lowered her voice. "Is he a good horse?"

"He is. And he is n't."

"Might he win this race?"

"He might. And he might n't."

"You 're not telling me much."

"I am," he looked wise, "and I am n't," he looked wiser.

"Good enough," she said. "Come," she told O'Conor.

Bookies crying raucously in the little ring. Signaling of touts. Milling of people.

"I 'll lay two to one the field," a booky was shouting. His eyes were all but out of his cheeks. His shoulders hunched with effort. His voice exploded as though thrown against a wall, and he atomized a fine spray before him. "I 'll lay three to one bar one; I'll lay four to one bar two. I'll lay even money Munster Pride. Even money Irish Dragoon. Four to one Little Dorrit. Seven to two Carnation. Here, four to one Carnation. Eight to one Murderer's Pet. Twelve to one Irish Gentility. I 'll lay twenty to one—twenty to one Thunderbolt. Twenty-five to one Flying Fish—"

"How much, Joe Jack?"

"Is it you, Lady Margery? God love you. I'll lay you thirty to one Flying Fish. How much will you take?"

"Ten pounds' worth."

"Three hundred and ten pounds Flying Fish, Lady Margery Kyteler. I hope you win, m'lady. I do so there I 'll lay two to one the field. I 'll lay three to one bar one. I 'll lay four to one bar two—"

Dropping of flag and clatter of bell. There they were in the distance, flying down the regulation. They rise to the ditch, three abreast. Canter again—the water jump. The lump becomes a line. And who's ahead? Can you see? Carnation! Ah, my jewel Carnation! And now the bank. There's a horse down. Thunderbolt! Ah, be damned to the same Thunderbolt! Is that the gray ahead? It is so! Is it Flying Fish is in it? Flying Fish it is, and he running like a hare! 'T is win in a canter he will. They 're coming to the hedge. Ah! what is it, Mister? Flying Fish it is, and he stopping dead. A dead stop he 's made, and the jockey pasting the ribs out of him. Ah, he 's on now, but in the heel of the hunt he is! Carnation wins. Carnation—ah, my sweet wee lady!

They passed the post, Flying Fish bringing up the rear with a supercilious arrogance.

"Fish!" Margery wrinkled her nose in disgust. "Fish was good."

And "There goes my new hat!" she wailed. And who should pass by but Mr. Kelly. Out of his red face peered an inquisitive gray eye.

"You didn't?" he said.

"I did."

"How much?"

"Ten pounds."

"Ah, well," he decided cruelly; "It'll teach you." And he passed on.

"Well, the devil scald you!" she called after him, "and your thick ignorance!"

Last race and the end of the day. He swung her lightly to the side-car. Firm elbows, rounded arms, and how light she was, elastic! A woman in a shawl and a battered sailor-hat stood with folded arms and began a street ballad:

"Bold Robert Emmet, the darling of Ireland! Bold Robert Emmet, he died with a smile! Farewell, my company-ions both loyal and loving! A hero I 'll die for the Emerald Isle."

Margery was grinning above the press of the people, O'Conor turned and dug his hand in his pocket. Threw the woman a large silver coin.

"Well, may God keep and preserve you, my fine noble red-headed man! And the sweet lady beside you—may God bless her! And may you live comfortable and die happy, the both of you, and leave behind you a dozen of the finest children."

"Drive on! Drive on!" O'Conor implored.

"Is it over the heads of the decent people you 'd have me drive, then?" asked the jarvey, in abrupt horror.

"And of the twelve may six of them be like yourself, fine and red-headed, and six like herself, sweet and dark. Ah, 't is the fine man you have, my sweet mistress!"

O'Conor saw the scarlet of her face against the black hair. Eh, Lord, how beautiful she was!

VI

The click of the wicket-gate and he was gone, and down the frosty road his firm step was echoing. She stood at the long drawing-room window and listened. Eh, what a moon! And to-night the hare would be out on Three Rock Mountain, and the red fox pad toward the chicken-coops—the rogue of the world! And on the mountain lakes southward there would be a lid of mist hovering, blue mist and dark mountains and the white moon!

And under the moon her own garden, her own house lay so quietly sleeping. Crisp lawn and the graveled paths and the high wall and the greenhouses glistening, and the yew-trees against the wall. And the bigger trees of the garden, the oak and ash, and the rowan-trees—the mountain-ash, they called it in England—all the trees that were silent now, even the wind being still. The low dining-room that spread out at right angles, and was thatched like an old-time cottage—how sweet it seemed from here! And the stables, where the horses were in their stalls, and the coachman and groom slept. The little lodge where the gardeners were, a huddle of ivy. Oh, the sweet domain!

It seemed to her, when the old place and the servants slept, and the dogs were curled up sleeping, and the horses in their stalls, that she somehow was the guardian and protector of all this. The old servants were not afraid because a Kyteler still lived, and they knew they would be cared for, their whimsies understood. There being no strong man to stand against the encroachments of the world, what was better than her own sweet virginity? She could conceive of nothing harming the place or people when she was there. Even the spirits of the hills would pass it by gently; the dark Irish things that frighten folk in their sleep, the rumble of the death-coach, the wailing banshee, the thud of the Pooka's terrible hooves—none of them had power while she was there.

Would she always protect it—or would there be some one else? she mused. A big man. She turned from the window and went toward the fire. The face she had seen all day in reality was with her now in vision of the fire—the face with the strong jaw, the gray eyes, bronzed head, and red curls. How every one had looked at him, she remembered proudly, at the race-course to-day! How fine he was! How strong, too! She had been a feather to him when he swung her up on the car. And when his hands had caught her elbows and her feet left the ground, her heart jumped, fluttered....

And how nice he was! When the old rip of a battered singer had wished them a multitude of children, he had blushed like a girl.

And when he had lifted her from the car, he had held her for the fraction of a second in the air. He had thought she did n't notice it—and she had been afraid he would hear her heart beating, so loudly did it hammer in her breast. When she had turned him over to Rose Ann, to take to her father's old room and turned and gone into her own, she had closed her door and leaned against it, and said to herself, "Margery, this man 's in love with you!" and then, in a lower, hushed tone, "And, Margery, you 're in love with him!"

And all by herself she had blushed terribly and felt in a wild panic. "He will see it," she said; "he will know." But then she said, "No, he will not; I won't let him." And a song had come into her heart. A great pride and wonder filled her. She felt she should be dressed in soft scarlet robes, in some symbolic vestment of wonder and joy. But she came down to dinner in a demure white frock, her hair done very demurely, her eyes demure. And all the time her heart was bubbling with sweet, low laughter, and saying, "Do you know, Margery, this man 's in love with you, and he does n't know you know it. And you 're in love with him, and he does n't know that either. And we won't tell him, Margery, will we? We 'll let him find out for himself."

All through dinner and after, she got him to talk of where he had been—Brazil and China—and of New York, where he was born and which he loved. She watched him over the sullen saffron candlelight, and she thought, "He 's got a noble head," and again irrelevently, "You could n't muss that hair of his, no matter how much you tried. Those short red curls would spring back. I 'd like to try." And again she wondered, "Will he try to kiss me when he says good night? And what shall I do? Shall I kiss him back, or give him a piece of my mind? And if I give him a piece of my mind he may never come again. And if I kiss him he 'll think very little of me. It's awfully hard." And again, "Ah, he won't try," she said. "He would n't in my own house. And, besides, he 's really in love. I know it."

And he had only shaken hands with her, and said he was going soon, and might he come to see her before he went? And her heart sank, and she said, yes, she 'd be very sorry if he did n't. And he said, When? And she pondered over a possible engagement that did n't matter at all, and said, Tuesday, then, and her heart murmured disconsolately. Two long days.

Through dinner and after she thought she had only been thinking of his strong, eager face, but now he was gone, all he had said she remembered. And she thought of hot China, and the sun-baked South, and the yellow rivers. And of Brazil with all its forests, and the speckled snakes, and the whistling monkeys, and the egrets standing by the fountains, and the little armadillo lumbering across the roads. And of New York, the vital city, with its houses challenging the thunder of summer skies, its explosion of light when evening came, its hurrying myriads, keen-eyed, alert. Against all these backgrounds she could see his clean-cut, gray-eyed face, and she could see herself small and slight, looking up at him in wonder and pride.

"I could go with him anywhere," she whispered.

And then something seemed to call: "Margery!"

She looked up. There was nothing there, but the dimmed loved room obtruded itself upon her, and through the moonlit window she could see the antique trees, and the silver glint to the greenhouses, and in a clairvoyant instant she could see the old men sleeping after the day's work, and the ancient maids, and Fenian in his paddock, and poor Sheila, and the foxhounds. She knew what called.

"Margery!"

"Yes, dears."

"Oh, Lady Margery!"

"Hush, now. It's all right."

She had thought that to-night she would sleep as a child sleeps, and try to recapture the magic day in dreams. And be so happy. But the voice of the trees, and the murmur of the old house, and the pleading eyes of dog and horse, and the wailing tyranny of the sleeping aging folk shocked her into the knowledge that there was a sterner thing than dreaming before her. To-night she would not sleep.

"Margery! Lady Margery!"

"Yes. Yes."

"You couldn't, little mistress, you couldn't.'

"Hush, hearts, hush. I will not go away."

VII

He was very handsome, very erect, very noble there, standing by the old fireplace. He was not merry to-night, so he was going to ask her to marry him, she knew. And in the black and white of evening things, bronzed face and curling hair, he looked the equal of any old Kyteler on the wall. And he had more than they had, she felt—abounding energy. She was very pretty herself to-night, too, she knew, and stately a little.

He was hurting, hurting her badly, for he was speaking now of South Africa, where he was going. And he was carefully telling her how wonderful he had heard that country was: the mass of Table Mountain and the rolling hills, the great acres of grapes, the miles of veldt with the white Boer farmhouses, the sun forever shining, hunting such as she had never dreamed of, great, majestic storms.

"You 'd like it; you 'd like it ever so much."

"Oh, I don't know," she lied. "Ireland is a lot to me."

He was telling her clumsily, shamefacedly of another thing—of a lucky chance he had had in Brazil many years ago, a chance he had taken laughingly, and that had made him indecently rich, and he still a very young man. She understood.

She moved away, and began hunting for a piece of music, so that her back was to him.

"Did you ever think," she said, "of settling down in Ireland? You 're Irish, you know.

"And it's not a bad place," she went on before he answered. "It's a sort of sportsman's paradise. Fishing and hunting and race-courses. And sailing. And if you get tired you can run over to London, or Paris, or Madrid.

"Oh, damn!" she said, "I can't find that thing at all!" She was trembling from head to heel. "Why don't you marry some nice Irish girl and settle down?"

"Oh, I could n't settle down in Ireland."

"No?"

"There 's my work to do."

"But you just said you were rich."

"That's no excuse for not working."

"I thought—I don't know."

"No, I 'd be a very poor sort," he laughed, "if I stopped work because I was rich. I 'd have no self-respect—"

"No?" she said dully. The trembling had passed now. She was just numb, numb and dead.

"But as to marrying an Irish girl, Lady Margery—Margery—"

She stood up and turned about. She was smiling quizzically.

"You 're not proposing to marry me, are you?"

"Yes."

"Don't. Don't, O'Conor," she said. "Please don't."

"Why?"

"Because of this—" she looked at him squarely—"I like you. I like you immensely. To me you 're everything a man should be, but just—I don't seem to see you that way. I don't love—do you see? And I don't think I ever could. No. I never could."

"Well, that's straight. Thanks."

"Are we friends still?"

"Of course, but—" He smiled. "Do you mind if I go?"

"I 'll see you out myself.

"O'Conor," she half whispered in the hall, "I'm an awful son of a gun. I should love you—you 're so fine, so decent, so—so everything—but I don't. I 'm sure I could never love any one. I 'm a very selfish woman, I sometimes think. It wouldn't have been worth while marrying me."

"You're not selfish, and you're very sweet, Margery."

"No, no! Shall I see you again?"

"I 'm afraid not. To-morrow I go to London, and from there to Africa."

"O'Conor, will you do something for me because we are friends?"

"Yes."

"Will you send me pictures of South Africa, and an occasional one of you, because we are friends?"

"Yes, Margery."

"And, O'Conor, if twenty years from now you want to settle down, come to me and let me find you a nice girl to marry—oh! the nicest girl in the world—or if you are sick or crippled, come."

He smiled.

"Promise me."

"All right, Margery. I will." He put out his hand.

"O'Conor," she said. Again she was trembling, but her voice—thank God!—her voice was all right. "I know you 're disappointed, and—O'Conor, would it help if you kissed me?"

"No," he said, "I 'm afraid it would hurt more. So I won't."

"I suppose it would hurt more." She stepped forward and put out her hand. "I am always your friend, O'Conor, your assured friend. And good-by now, O'Conor, and God bless you wherever you go!"

"And you too, Margery."

"You 'll come back, O'Conor, if you 're sick or hurt, or want to settle down, and talk to me about it—your friend, O'Conor, your little Irish friend. You won't forget?"

"I 'll never forget."

He walked down the path under the cloud-touched moon. Would he look back? No, he would n't. He did n't. Oh, there went a man!

VIII

She heard the wicket-gate close, and in her heart she knew that she would never again see him. No gray eyes any more, nor curly hair. Her face had become now a white and quivering mask. She snatched a cloak up and, wrapping it round her, she went blindly into the garden.

She began to shake with great silent sobs. Her face was wet now, and she could n't see. She sank at the roots of the mountain-ash.

"Rowan-tree, rowan-tree!" she cried, "I shall never see him any more!"

And as she sobbed, a little breeze came from the Three Rock Mountain, and all the trees in the garden murmured gently. The great ash unbent, the elm swayed, and the little apple-trees nodded with compassion. All the shrubs in the garden rustled.

Hush—hush! Hush—hush! Hush—hush!

"Oh, rowan-tree! rowan-tree!"

Hush—hush! Hush—hush!

The moon came gently from behind a great saffron-edged cloud and seemed to bend toward her. Its rays poured sweetly toward the dark head. A rabbit had come somehow into the garden and sat up near her, its ears lop, its pink nose twitching.

See—see! See—see! See—see! The trees were like kindly muses. The sobbing ceased as she watched, as a child's sobbing might.

It scampered off now, for in the kennel the foxhound puppies had wakened—her step or some cry of hers, maybe—and were snuffling and whining to get at her. And from the stables came the rap-rap of Fenian's hoofs, uneasy in his stall.

"I must go in," she said.

Her hand patted the bark of the rowan-tree, and she turned to go into the old house that had been there so many centuries and was there still, sheltering the complement of aging, tyrannous servants in their peaceful sleep, and was beckoning her, she felt, beckoning her to its wide lap....

REYNARDINE

I

The big gray hunter caracoled under him, and with a vicious twitch of curb and snaffle Morgan brought him to stand. He smacked the croup and touched the gelding's fore thigh with the toe of his riding boot until the great hunter stood like a horse in an illustration. Then Morgan turned around.

About him was the cold gray of an Irish morning in November. Woolly, dull, frost on the roads and a touch of easting to the wind—a perfect day for hunting. Forward of him a hundred and fifty yards the hounds were circling around the copse, while the leaders were inside, raising the red fox. Through the gray branches of the wood, gaunt as witches' arms, the pink of the whipper-in's coat showed like a Hallowe'en candle back of a screen. And here and there were knots of the hunt, talking to one another as neighbors talk. There were the women's fluting voices; there was the men's deep laughter. All were friendly, toward one another, toward the world, toward the red fox himself, friendly toward every one except Morgan. Well, to blazes with them, Morgan swore to himself. What the blazes did he care about them—a crowd of country squires and young army men, of stray farmers, and an occasional doctor or parson. What did they amount to, anyway? he 'd like to know.

And yet, he had thought they would be different. It had all been twenty years ago, and he 'd been away all that time, and he 'd been only two days back. But they 'd never forgotten. What haters they were, these Irish! What implacable enemies! What brought him back, anyhow? He could have been happy in America. Or hunting in England. What he 'd come back for was the red Irish fox.

"Steady, blast you!" he warned the big hunter.

"There he goes!" some woman cried, and "No, Janet, no!" a friend laughed. Janet! That would be Janet Conyers. And Janet Conyers must be forty now, and here she was still riding to hounds. Yes, he recognized a full dozen of them. Good Lord! Did people live as long as that? There was old Sir John Burroughs, spare as a lance, and old McGinty, who owned the Mill Farm. Yes, and the Master of Munsterbeg was there, red-faced, hale, all of sixty. And that Grecian profile—was n't that Di Connors, who was now Baroness Rothlin? And the big gaunt man with the hook nose, was n't that Ian More Campbell of the Antrim glens? Poet and soldier and horseman. Morgan felt a tremor of fear before the great Ulster Scot.

There was the yelp of a foxhound and a roar of anger. The thundering master of the hounds was turning on an inoffensive stranger.

"What the—what the—what the blazes do you mean, sir, riding over hounds in that manner? What hunt do you belong to, anyhow?"

"I don't belong to any hunt."

"Well, what the—what did you come out here for, anyhow?"

"My medical man told me I needed fresh air and exercise, and I thought—"

"You thought! You thought! Why in blazes don't you buy a bellows and stick it up your nose? You 'd get all the fresh air and exercise you want, but—"

There was a roar of laughter from the field, and above it rose Morgan's deep basso, like the bourdon note of an organ. But the instant the field noted his laughter, their laughter died.

Morgan smothered a curse and moved fifty yards down where he could get a flying start away from the rush of hunting. How they hated him, resented him, he felt, and yet he had killed no man, stolen no money, betrayed no woman. They hated him as much as they had loved and admired his wife Reynardine. Queer! Queer! He was the one they should love and she was the one they should have felt aloof toward. For he was the steeplechaser, the horseman, the hunter of foxes, and she was of a family whose tradition it was never to hunt or harry a fox, but to protect and aid it. You would have thought it would be the other way around; that they would have liked him and been cool or indifferent toward Reynardine, these hunting women, these sporting men. But no!

And that was twenty years ago, and they hated still. Twenty years! War and famine and pestilence had raged through the world. But they remained the same, these Irish gentlefolk. Yes, it was all of twenty years, nearly to a day, since he had left for foreign parts, and Reynardine, his wife, had died.

II

"Cop forard away!" went the ringing formula of the huntsmen. "Cop forard away!" A long wail on the horn. The covert had been drawn blank.

Two sharp notes and a halloing. "Yo ho, Tinker! Yo ho! Tim! Forard, hounds, forard!" And the pack of hounds began to move like a slow wave toward the distant woodland. The hunt followed at a slow trot....

Her name had been Petronilla, but through the country-side she was known as Reynardine, partly because of the Irish folk-song she could sing so well, with its haunting minors, its suggestion of superhuman music. He could see her slight form still, spiritual, virginal in the Irish twilight. He could hear her pulsating contralto voice:

No, he would n't look for her, though he knew where she was. She was in her castle, for sure! Her deep and narrow castle in the ancient, disused Cistercian monastery where the Fitzpauls buried their dead. Tier on tier the old Norman-Irish family lay, with their strange names, Fulke and Gilles, Milo, Tortulf, Bertran. There they lay with their carved effigies, dogs at their feet and swords at their side—old Crusaders. There they lay, ancient harriers of the Irish clans, Arnold and Eudo. There they lay, old peers of the Irish parliament, Robert, Gerald and Byssak. There lay the newer landlords, Jenico and Maurice. There they lay, dead as their tradition. There they lay, and be damned to them, Morgan thought! All there was left of them now was one daughter, his and Reynardine's, whom he had seen only once, in swaddling-clothes, and whom, he trusted, he would never see again.

"If by chance you look for me," her song had gone. "Look for you," Morgan sneered. "I 'll be in my castle!" "Well, you can stay there, wife!" he sneered.

He 'd never look for her, even though he could see the monastery where she slept from where he sat on his horse's back....

They had come to a woodland upwind and the hunt had slowed down to a walk. The hounds were being urged in by the pink-coated huntsman. He heard the short note of the huntsman to wake the fox, saw the pack pour in like a stream....

III

He had come out this morning, his second morning in the country, to hunt, to kill the fox, to enjoy the sport he loved with what had become a mania. And now his day was being spoiled by old black memories. Perhaps it was the Abbey where Reynardine slept that nudged him with ghostly concentration, perhaps it was the field that ignored him as though he did not exist, perhaps it was the proximity of the fox itself—he had n't seen or hunted an Irish fox for twenty years. But he was troubled as a man is troubled by imminent disaster. He wished they 'd get on.

"Wind him, boys. Wind him. Yooi, get him out. Joyous! Tinker! Marvan! Leu in!"

But there was naught but the crash of whins, and the whirring of pheasants as they rose. There rose the huntsman's clear call:

"Yo hote back. Yooi over try back!" And the blast of the horn as he turned to draw the woodland again.

Twenty years ago! Could it have been only twenty years ago that he had met and married and parted from Reynardine? It was so misty, so vague, he had come to think of it as centuries before. He had come north from Dublin, a boy of twenty-two, just out of Trinity, son of old Jasper Morgan who had made a half-dozen fortunes in remounts for the South African War, grandson of Ed Morgan who had been ostler and stableman and later livery-keeper at Kingstown. And because he rode hard and well he was admitted everywhere. There is no democracy as open as that of the Ulster clans. A baron from William the Conqueror's invasion, or an Irish chieftain whose ancestors were Druidists yields precedence to any man who can do a thing better than he.... At a hunt ball young Morgan met Petronilla Fitzpaul, who was known through the country as Reynardine.

She was just at the momentous instant when a girl turns woman, that strange first of three tides in a woman's life. And the first tide breathlessly waited, curled, flowed in as he came. Very slight, very dark-haired, very deep-eyed, she was spared the ancestral Norman traits. She had n't the eagle beak of her brothers, or their intent scowling brows. She was a little thing of kindliness and deep emotions. One felt it in the face, somehow like a pansy, one felt it in her eyes, one felt it in her hands....

She liked him. He was new to her. She liked his dash. She liked, as gentlewomen will, the faint flavor of vulgarity in him. It was new to her. She liked the dash of his clothes. His assurance overcame her. She liked him. And she was at the mystic tide of her life. She thought she loved him.

And what intrigued Morgan was the spirit within. Some faint conception of her beauty and mystery penetrated to him. No man is interested in a woman bodily, no matter how much he thinks he is. He is interested in cosmic womanhood, or in the one spiritual entity that actuates the body. And before Morgan was a thread of flame that might lead him now down a formal garden, rhythmic with the murmur of bees, now through a woodland where the thrush sang in the branches, now through a Roman crypt, mysterious and sanctified. He was like a barbarian who has found a great jewel, topaz or opal or sapphire, the light of which enthralls him, but of whose value and use he is ignorant....

Her brothers and her father were not inclined to view a marriage between them with favor. It was not because of his lack of lineage, but because the points of view were so different. They saw a gulf. But Reynardine dissuaded them.

"Brothers dear and my father, cannot I, cannot we all—" she put her hands out toward them—"make him see our way, take our things to his heart?"

They were all great hulking men, her father and her brothers, Ulick, Garrett, Gilchrist, Kevin, and she was the only woman of them—her mother had died so long ago!—and she was so little, so pleading! They were as wax in her hands.

"You know, dears—" she hung her head—"I love this man."

"Do what your heart says, Reynardine," they gave her the precept they obeyed themselves with such success and chivalry. And they frowned the family frown. "If she can do so much with us, what can't she do with him!" they reasoned in their simple way. Alas! poor gentlemen!

There was an immensity of pride in Morgan's heart, apart from pride in his young wife, to be allied to a family such as the Fitzpauls. Twice they had refused duchies. They were so old they went back into the mists of Norman tradition. They had the quaint customs of their sort, and strange superstitions, such as all Irish families have—superstitions being but ancient mystic conceptions of nature, and customs observed so often through the centuries that their shadows became facts.

But of all quaint customs, their friendship to the fox was strangest of all. Their crest was a fox courant, and over no square foot of their lands could a fox be hunted. Great horsemen they were, but none had ever followed the hounds in a hunt. Perhaps some old Fitzpaul, seeing all people concentrated on ridding the land of the fox, had pitied the little red hunted one, and given it protection. Perhaps by some accident of border warfare a fox had deflected the chase from a hunted Fitzpaul and so earned the family gratitude. Perhaps this. Perhaps that. What did it matter?

Yes, a quaint observance, this trait of the Fitzpauls. An idiosyncrasy, a person might put it, such as a woman's objection to mice, or the energy of Henry Bergh—God rest him!—who fought that the law should protect horses from maltreatment. But what was queerer still, was their power over the foxes. Foxes greeted a Fitzpaul joyously, barking and wagging their tails like dogs—foxes, the most suspicious of all animals of the field. The Fitzpauls had some strange rhythmic power over foxes, as some people have over dogs. And yet, though this was mysterious, it was not so immensely mysterious. Some trainers are born with power over man-eating tigers, some men can handle snakes, some can sooth stampeding cattle. Morgan remembered hearing his father speak of Whistler Sullivan, who was called in when all hope of breaking a horse was gone. A mean, ferret-faced man, he would steal into the stall where a man-eating horse was tied and hackled, closing the door behind him, and a half-hour later he would bring the horse out. The horse would be coved and dripping with sweat, and never afterward would it balk or bolt or rear. And the Whistler had never laid a hand on him. He had only talked or hissed. People were afraid of the Whistler; the peasantry declared he had bargained his soul with the devil; but he had only power over horses, as the Fitzpauls had over the foxes of the field.

Well, that was all explicable, within the range of human knowledge. It was extraordinary, but that was all. But there was an eerier thing yet about that family. Other families had their banshees, their ghostly pipes, their drummers on battlements to portend or announce approaching death. But when a Fitzpaul died,—so went the tradition, so it had been attested by living men, so it had happened within a wheen of years,—the lawns were peopled with foxes at the dusk of day. Not spectral things, but foxes of the field and wood who gathered to bid their protectors God-speed on their strange, strange journey. They knew of death as bee-keepers say bees know. They made no sound but for the rustle of the grass and the faint thudding of their pads. But they were there. And a passing peasant might see them and raise his hat.

"God be good to the Fitzpauls," he would pray. "'T is they are good to the poor!"

A strange thing that of the foxes, a thing not understood. How little, after all did we know of animals! But to blazes with that! Morgan swore. Animals were n't here to be understood. Animals were here to be used, a horse to be ridden; a hound to hunt with; a fox to be chased to the death—as he was here to ride and hunt and chase to-day; as he had done always; as he had done when Reynardine, his wife, lived....

A bird rose shrieking from the copse, and suddenly a hound gave tongue, and then another, and then the pack cried as one dog. There was a blast of the horn.

"Gone away!" came the cheer of the huntsman. "Away! Away!"

Then fifty horses thundered.

IV

First there was the minute red flash of the fox, slipping through the furze like a serpent, then the dappled flood of hounds, tails up, giving tongue like bells, then the master of the hunt on his great brown steeplechaser, then the huntsman, gay in pink, leather-faced with puckered eyes, on his little black mare. Then came the bunched hunt, the crash of ditches, the crackle of brambles, the thunder over turf, the splosh-splosh over plowed land. There was the cheering of the country-side.

There a woman was down at a fence and men stopped to help her. There a riderless horse went by, mane tossing, stirrups flying. Now a groan, now a curse. The country-side flew by as in a motion picture. Patch of brown, patch of green, patch of gray, like a crazy-quilt. The crack of hunting crops, the ppk of spurs. "Tally-ho, boys! tally-ho! On hounds! On!"

Morgan with certainty crept ahead of the field, not a hundred yards behind master and huntsman. Beneath him the great gray moved like a steam-engine. A little steadying forward, a rush and a thud, and they were over. Now a ditch was taken with a clatter, now a fence cleared nicely, now through a blackthorn hedge, Morgan's arm up to protect his eyes. Five minutes! Seven. Eight minutes! Nine. Ten, by the Lord Harry! And suddenly they were at Kyle na Maroo—Dead Men's Wood. And the hounds were sniffing, wailing, at check.

An old earth-stopper, wizened, purple-lipped, like a grave-digger of "Hamlet," appeared like a troll.

"Into the wood he went, your Honor," he addressed the master. "Into the wood the Red One went, your Honor, like a man diving into his own house."

"Are all the holes stopped, Mickey Dan?"

"Stopped is it, your Honor. Sure they 're stopped as if they were the burrows of the devil himself and the saints to be out hunting him on the judgment-day. Stopped is it? Sure, a worm itself could n't get in or out of them the way I 'm after stopping them with interest and grand care—"

"All right, Mickey Dan!" The master interrupted. "Hoick in!" He ordered the huntsmen.

"Leu in, boys, leu in. Tinker! David! Dermot! Ranger! Tally in, beauties! Tally in!"

Morgan pulled up his hunter and turned around to watch the field come up, no longer bunched, but straggling now. The burst to check had been too much for them. His horse was still fresh, his seat easy. He had done a notable thing, following so closely on the master's mount—the great racer that had won the Grand National—and the huntsman's mare, fleet as a greyhound, with so little weight up. Morgan desired a word of commendation, even a look of envy. But they took no notice of him. He might have been some old fox-hunter, invisible, long dead, riding a specter horse, over some well-remembered run, for all the attention they paid him. To them he was n't there; he did n't exist.

And because of Reynardine.

And what had he done to Reynardine? It was n't his fault. It was hers. She was in love with him, and then she turned and was not. Was it his fault that a woman was fickle?

Yes, she was in love with him. He could even yet see her dark murmuring eyes in the golden light of the candles, as she set there in her white frock and sang to him, her beautifully cut ivory hands plucking haunting melody from a pianoforte as from some old-time clavichord.

Oh, damn! What did she ever come into his life for, anyway! She didn't want a man. She wanted a poet. Crazy! That's what she was, crazy as a coot. He supposed her daughter—their daughter—was as crazy as she!

First of all there 'd been the trouble about the hunting. She never said a word about it, but her face had blanched the first morning he saddled up for the Lonth. She had expected him, he laughed, to have the same crazy notions as her family. And her face had been drawn with pain when he came back in the evening. And she had said nothing. Too proud. Too damn crazy and too proud!

That evening he had asked her to play "Reynardine"—not that he liked the tune; he'd rather have had something popular, something with body to it, none of your blasted wailing folk-songs. But he just thought it might please her to have him ask. She shook her head, and plunged into Chopin.

"I don't think I could play—'Reynardine'—to-night," she said.

And she had never played or sung "Reynardine" to him again.

She and her folk had such darn queer notions. They thought more of a horse under them than themselves. They went to infinite pains and immense time to train a green horse or break in a dog where another person with a flick of spurs or, a crack of the whip could do it in half the time. True, they did it well. But, after all, you did n't make human friendships with animals. You made them do what you wanted to; or if they did n't— That was a man's way.

But people are queer, some of them. One man is proud that his horse whinnies in the stall when he hears the beloved footstep. And some men give friendship to dogs they never give to women, and their hearts break when a hound dies. And to some folk the birds of the air will come and eat out of their hand, so confident are the birds. And the death of a rabbit is a great tragedy to children. There is a virgin glade in nearly all folks' hearts where neither blood nor marriage wander, but the love of animals possesses. It is some mystic link in the chain of creation.

But he never had it. Never could understand it, Morgan thought. After all, man is the lord of creation, Morgan decided—that's true isn't it?—and all living things were for him to use. He had all rights over them, even to life and death. That was how some folks looked at it—not crazy people like the Fitzpauls.

And Reynardine did n't like the way he broke horses. Reynardine did n't like the way he shot pheasants. She was a queer girl, but—God!—she was very beautiful!

Well, that was the whole story of it; they did n't get on. There grew a gulf between them, and was that his fault? he asked. Was it his fault he was n't insane? Was it his fault he was too much of a man for her?

And when she was to have a child, she expected so much of him. She never asked of course—oh, no! She would never ask for anything, but she followed him with dumb eyes. What did she expect, anyhow? It was no man's job to hang around a gravid woman all the time, holding her hand. A million women in the world were bearing children. What was there to it, after all? Every one did it.

And then she had run home. Let her run. Crazy coot!

And when she was dying and sent for him, did he refuse to go and see her, as many a man would have done? No, he went. He remembered well the soft April twilight; the dim white figure in the great bed, with the haunting eyes. And her four big brothers standing around with set, grim faces.

"My husband," she had said, "for anything I did to you here, for any way I hurt, will you please forgive me?"

"That's all right, Reynardine," he said. "We were just not suited. And I forgive you." Then, awkwardly: "I'm sorry to see you this way, Reynardine."

A light had gone out of her face:

"Then—good-by!" Her hand unclasped from his.

"Good-by!" he had said uncomfortably, and turned to go. He noticed three of the brothers look at the senior, Gilchrist, meaningly. Gilchrist turned to go after him. A cold shiver had gone down Morgan's spine. His knees trembled. And then came the very soft voice:

"Gilchrist, and brothers dear, in a minute maybe I 'll have gone with the twilight, and I shall not be able to talk to you again, ever again, with these human lips. And I 'm going to ask you just one more favor, brothers dear, my brothers. Please do it for your sister. Let my—let this man go!"

Then Gilchrist threw open the door.

"This is no place for you," he had said. "Go!"

A crazy breed! He had never heard from them again. Never had they asked him to see or support his daughter. He had even forgotten her name. But he did n't want to see her. He wanted to see no more of the Fitzpaul blood. She was living in the old place, he understood, which was hers now.

Well, let her—

But—funny! He could never get out of his mind's eye the vision of his wife sitting by the great piano, plucking out the ancient melody:

The hounds shifted, grew keen. "Ay! Ay!" came the tongue of the finder. Scent was picked up again. "Ay! Ay! Ay!" went the pack, heads up, tails straight. There was a red flash ahead in the grassy field.

"Come up, Finn!" the master shoved his great horse onward.

"Ay! Ay! Ay!" They were off. "Ay! Ay! Ay!" Seventy hounds and forty horsemen. "Ay! Ay! Ay!" And one red fox running for his life. "Ay! Ay!" A dead fox or a broken neck! "Ay! Ay! Ay!"

V

For years he had been looking forward to this first fox-hunt in Ireland, and now with the red speck ahead of him, and the flood of hounds following it, and the great gray between his knees, it occurred to him that he was not enjoying it. Never was a morning better for hunting, never a keener scent, never a better pack; never had he pushed as powerful, as sure-footed a horse at a fence. Behind him the field fell, was blown, dropped out, until there were hardly a half-dozen left. And he was close on the master of the hunt, close on the huntsman, close on the pack. Yet there was something in it that took the thrill away and left a leaden depression instead.

She would n't go out of his mind, would Reynardine. What was that daughter of hers—and his—like? Like her mother, he 'd be bound, every inch of her a Fitzpaul. Hardly any of his blood there. His only were the mechanics of procreation; she was not his daughter. Nothing lifeful of him had fused with the soul of Reynardine to perform the ineffable miracle. No, she would be all her mother—all Fitzpaul.

God! how he hated that name of Fitzpaul! How he hated Reynardine, who had made him feel like a cur, though he wouldn't admit it! How he had hated those four big brothers, who had made him feel afraid—an unforgivable thing!

Well, they were dead, he laughed, all dead. Gilchrist had died on Nevison's expedition to the pole, and he lay somewhere in the immaculate Arctic snows with the inscription his comrades had written on a simple cross: "Here lies a very gallant Irish gentleman." And Kevin had died fighting the Turks in Asia. And Ulick! Ulick was somewhere in the depths of the Irish sea, where he went out with the coast-guards to rescue a vessel in distress. And Garrett was funniest of all. He was killed defending a woman of the people from her drunken husband in a Dublin slum. All dead! Serve them right, too. They were always doing something that never got them anywhere. Fools!

He had hated them in life, and he hated them in death. But now their bodies were in dissolution, there was nothing concrete to hate, and, by some strange symbolism, he had come to hate what in his mind was most closely allied to the family, the fox that was their crest, the fox that had their protection. He hated it. He hunted it. He wanted to kill it. The day on which a fox was killed was to him a red-letter day. He felt somehow that he had killed a Fitzpaul.

Foxes took on for him now a strange, sinister entity. By thinking much of them, he had come to think of them as a quasi-human, supernormal race. There was something strange about them, anyway. Cleverest of all the beasts of the field, with their cunning they outwitted men. They were strange in their likes and dislikes. Their only friend was the dull-witted badger, a dark personality, too, whose burrows they used, with whom they often lived. They would eat fruit and shellfish. And though they killed birds, they would not touch a dead bird of prey. They had tabus as strict as a Maori's. Strange, mystical laws.

Very sinister they seemed to Morgan. Once in America he had seen Michi Itow, the Japanese, dance his dance of the fox. And there was something terrible in it, something so mysteriously awful that he all but rose in his seat, the cry of the pack ringing from his throat: "Ay! Ay! Ay! ... Ay! Ay!"

And he had a dreadful waking dream, of an acre of foxes watching him in the twilight, never moving, still on their pads. Just their pointed muzzles, their baleful, luminous eyes....

He had hunted foxes everywhere since he left Ireland. In Canada, where he had many a good kill. In England, where the sport was too ladida, too much of a social gathering to please. In America, in Maryland, where they hunted the gray fox, with hounds stag crossed with fox, but seldom killed. He could n't stand their way of hunting. The Marylanders did n't care to kill, and they had dubbed their favorite foxes with endearing nicknames. No! That was ridiculous! What he wanted was an Irish hunt—fine horses and good riders, and keen hounds, and a dead fox at the end of the day.

He looked up from the pack as they swung through a plowed field. The fox had swung in a circle and was running to where it had started. There was Cashelshane, King John's castle. There was Owana Ma ach Meg, the river of the little trout! There was Crock Na Mero, the hill of the querns! There was—there was the abbey where the Fitzpauls, where Reynardine slept.

A great castle that, he laughed, six feet underground.... Damn it! Were those hounds checked again?

VI

A piece of bog in process of reclamation—there the fox had taken refuge. He might be lying in some clump of grass. He might have slipped into one of the many drains the strong farmer had made in his attempt to make arable land of what was morass. Here and there were green patches, still dangerous, where a whole hunt might be engulfed. Neither the master nor the huntsman cared to chance their mounts in that treacherous sward. They halloed the hounds to and fro.

"Leu in, lads, leu in! Ranger, Rambler, Tinker, Tim! On to him, beauties, on to him!"

But the hounds were at fault, utterly. They howled with baffled desire. They went to and fro, sterns twitching, noses aground. Two or three beaten hunters turned up, their horses gone, their fire quenched, sitting dully in the saddle, thankful for the respite of check.

"We 've overrun," the huntsman grumbled.

"I 'm afraid so, Willie John," the master nodded. But some secondary sense told Morgan the fox was there. He had gone to ground and the hounds had failed to mark him.

"Try a short up-wind cast," the master directed.

The hounds were halloed out, and as they swung to the left, Morgan noticed the red shadow flit along a ditch, slip through a hedge. He spurred his horse in excitement.

"Yoi doit!" Morgan called. "View halloo!" But some trick of wind muffled his voice. Behind him three hundred yards away the hounds were following the huntsman about, heads up.

The fox was tired, his brush heavy with mud and dragging as he ran. Behind him Morgan thundered alone. He damned the huntsman. He damned the hounds.

"They 're going to miss, blast their stupid heads!" But he kept on. His hope was that the fox would turn, and the huntsman and hounds see him, and coming up, finish the day's work.

But the fox kept onward. Now across a plowed field, now across fallow land. Here a fence, here a ditch, here a hedge. What was the use of following him, with no hounds? But a mania arose in Morgan's brain, and he could n't bear to drop the chase now, so near to completion. A vast anger arose in him. He felt he had been betrayed. Never was a huntsman so stupid. Never hounds so bad.

The fox ahead of him put on a new spurt, and Morgan dug his heels into his horse's flanks. Where was it heading for?

He looked up for a moment and saw the four-foot crumbling wall of the old abbey. So there 's where it thought sanctuary might be found. The fox sought the protection of the Fitzpauls, even now they were dead.

A sinister grin passed over Morgan's face. Of a sudden he felt diabolical. Others might respect that sanctuary, but not he! He was n't crazy with sentiment. A hunter, he! He 'd hunt it over the legions of dead Fitzpauls. He 'd hunt it over Reynardine's grave, by God! How would she like that? Eh? He 'd kill that fox if he had to run it blind and throttle it with his bare hands.

"I 'll get you," he laughed.

The fox gathered itself for a last effort. He saw the whirl of its brush, saw it leap, disappear....

Morgan steadied his hunter for an instant. Suddenly gave it reins and spurs. Looked up, as it flew toward the wall.

From his height he could see within and his hair rose in a dreadful chill. For standing there was a white figure, with a book in her hand. Against the white dress the red fox cowered. The face was the face of Reynardine. The years were the years of Reynardine. The eyes were the eyes of Reynardine, black, deep, dilated with fear.

"Reynardine! Reynardine!" A cry of terror broke from him.

An immense panic seized him, and his hands checked the horse as it rose to the jump—a savage jerk on curb and snaffle. The gray was already in the air. Its hind legs came down uncertain. Its great bulk fell backward. Fear flooded him like cold water. In an instant he knew his neck would be broken like a dry twig. Christ! There it went! Snap!