South Riding (15 page)

“Shouldn’t be surprised if we draw the Wastes first,” he ran on, trying to banish from his mind the thought that times had changed, that Carne, who made so handsome and proper a figure in his pink on the well-groomed horse, was no longer a gentleman out to enjoy himself, but a salesman exhibiting merchandise. “Leckton told me last month they threw in sixteen and a half couple of hounds and couldn’t see a dog. Lost in thistles and willow herb—but lousy with foxes.”

Carne did not answer.

It’s that damned letter from Harrogate, thought Hicks.

He met the postman, read postmarks and postcards, and kept an anxious, paternal eye on his master’s business. He knew all too well the discreet blue typewritten envelopes from the nursing home, or the sprawling uneven hand, tilted towards the top right-hand corner, which was his mistress’s. They let her write once a month, poor devil, but lately her letters had not appeared.

Hicks wondered if she had changed much. He could see her now as she was when she first came to the South Riding— a slim pale girl with wild brown eyes on a raking chestnut. She had been staying with the Lawrences. Mrs. Lawrence was laid up with a broken collar-bone and Mr. Rupert hunting his own hounds that day. “Miss Sedgmire comes from the West Country,” Hicks had heard him saying to Carne. “I want you to look after her for me. Give her a lead. She’s not used to our drains yet.”

After that, thought Hicks, it was she who’d led Carne. And what a dance she’d led him, not only across country but across Europe. Baden-Baden, Cannes, San Remo—seeking cures for her “nerves.” She never had nerves in the hunting season. It was the War that finished her. Not getting abroad and not able to hunt when her child was coming. Aye. That was it. If she’d been able to ride in the winter of ’17 and ’18, she wouldn’t be put away where she was now, poor lady—costing all that money and forcing Carne to sell his horses.

Hicks could remember how she walked up and down the dripping avenues at Maythorpe, fretting her heart out. “They won’t let me ride any more, Hicks,” she used to complain, her eyes puzzled and bright as a startled hare’s. Then she’d order the horse and trap and drive to the station and be off away to York or Doncaster or Newmarket—looking for race meetings that had never been billed.

Aye. It was a queer job for Carne. Pity the old man was gone. He might have helped him. Mr. William was no manner of use except to find the Home when she had to be put away.

Carne had had to go back to France before the baby arrived. He’d come out one day and stood in the stable-yard, a big fine chap in his uniform, but awkward and unhappy—
and
no wonder. “If Mrs. Carne orders you to get the trap ready, Hicks, don’t do it. Make some excuse. Say the mare’s lame or the shaft’s cracked. Lame the mare—crack the shaft if necessary. But don’t let her go. Doctor’s orders. Understand, eh?” He knew she was queer then, and he had to go off and leave her alone to the care of grooms and servants.

It wasn’t right, thought Hicks. And it wasn’t right for her own folk to have cast her off like that. As if the Carnes of Maythorpe weren’t good enough even for a baron’s daughter. They must have known she was a bit queer from the beginning. The wild Sedgmires. But she could ride. By God, she could ride. A clinker across country. Pity Midge never took to it.

The village street was crowded. Every one was making for the Cross—the butcher’s boy in his blue coat on a bicycle, the clergyman’s daughters trotting in their governess car, old Mr. Coster, nearly blind, on a white pony, pedestrians with walking-sticks, motorists, cyclists, hurrying between the raw red cottages, where women with babies in their arms leaned from the doorways.

“Hounds arrived yet?” Carne asked an old labourer, grinning through his whiskers and clutching a thorn stick in knotted hands.

“Aye. Yessir. Just gone through.”

There they were—moving and whimpering round the white war memorial.

The Master spoke to Carne.

“Thought it was going to be frost. Said so last night on the damned wireless.”

“Never listen to the things,” said Carne. “Don’t believe in ’em.”

“You’re right. You’re dead right. Been to the Wastes this season?”

“No, but my groom says it’s lousy with foxes.”

“Good man.”

Carne and the Master both grinned at Hicks. Hicks grinned back. Now he was happy. Here even Carne was happy. This was the life—this was the life undoubtedly. Farmers, county, villagers, yes, and even townsfolk, all drawn together by one common interest. And then some fools said fox-hunting was immoral.

Hicks reined the little mare aside. Aye, she was bonny. He didn’t approve of this salesmanship-in-the-field business, but she was a beauty—a rare little bloodstock. By Romeo II out of Galway Girl. Hicks liked a touch of Irish in a horse.

There was Alderman Mrs. Beddows driven up in her shabby car by Miss Sybil. A nice girl. Hicks approved of Sybil Beddows.

“Coming to Highways and Bridges this afternoon?” Mrs. Beddows asked Carne. He often hunted all morning, left his horse with Hicks, and caught a train from the nearest station to a committee at Flintonbridge. He had gone there once with two broken ribs and a bang on the head fit to knock out three other men.

“I’m coming if we land up anywhere within reason.”

“Anything I can do for you if you
don’t
get?” she twinkled.

“We-ell.” His horse moved impatiently beside the car. “They won’t get to that new Skerrow road business, I don’t suppose.”

“Can’t tell. Any orders?”

“Stamp on it. Nonsense. Waste of money. We’ve got the whole place splintered with motor roads now—can’t keep a horse on its feet. Hopeless for farmers.”

“I can’t say I feel all that about it. The new road might benefit us a good deal at Kiplington.”

“More trippers.
Come
up!”

The big horse pulled at the curb.

“Have you been to see Miss Burton yet?”

Carne shook his head.

“Well—you really
are——
! First you make all that fuss about the High School not being good enough for Midge. Then you can’t even bother to go and call on her head mistress.”

Mrs. Beddows teased, but her heart melted towards him. She loved to see him thus, superb in his pink, on his great black horse, standing beside her shabby car, talking to her, though half the county was present and ready to greet him. Flattered and charmed, she rallied him.

But hounds began to move off along the chalk road to Leame Ferry Waste, and Carne, waving good-bye to the Beddows, joined the jolting, tittirruping, creaking, plunging field. His eye was on the little bay mare, his mind absorbed by her. To him she meant both gracefully perfect horseflesh and the hundred and fifty pounds which would pay nearly four months of Muriel’s expenses. The ten guineas a week charged by the Laurels nagged at his mind, haunted his dreams, sat, like indigestion, upon his chest all day. Even the joy of riding towards a covert on a moist November morning was robbed of flavour.

He was losing now steadily on the farm—had been losing since 1929—not much at first, but each year increasingly. He was cutting into capital; he had a heavy overdraft and a mortgage on the estate. Another year like last and he would be ruined.

He liked the matron at the Laurels Nursing Home; but he knew the charges, fixed by her employers, to be inordinately high. Yet he dared not refuse one of the extras they demanded. He carried too vividly in his mind the memory of Muriel, crying, as she had cried that time he found her in Doncaster, standing wide-eyed and tense in the hotel bedroom. “Don’t let me down, Robin, promise! Promise! They’ve all failed me. Promise me you’ll stand by me, always, always!”

He had promised, and he had kept his promise. He had mortgaged Maythorpe, stinted Midge’s education, strained his overdraft, jeopardised the living, the sane, the active, in order that Muriel might be kept in comfort. A phantom rode with him to hounds, sat with him at table, shared with him his bed, a voice accused him, “You ride. You hunt. You take your pleasures, while I am for ever cut off from life and freedom. I am here, trapped in a living grave. Because I violated my own instincts and traditions; I married you; I bore your daughter; I am doomed and damned eternally.”

North of Garfield the South Riding no longer lies dead flat and striped with ditches. Tall hedges cut the round contours of undulating hills. The fields lie eighty and sixty acres broad, winter wheat, ploughed land, beautiful hunting country. If the fox got away North-East of the Wastes, he might give them a clinking run clear to the sea.

A familiar and lovely noise broke the tension of waiting. It had happened.

Away North-East of the tangled marsh and undergrowth of the Wastes rang the Gone Away.

Black Hussar wheeled abruptly, and if Carne had not been so experienced a horseman, lost as he was in melancholy thought, he might have been unseated. They were off down the side of the covert, crashing over the broken bank, plunging through thickets of thorn and hazel, and out, down, away across the open stubble.

The little mare shot past Carne like a bullet from a gun. His spirit saluted her. She could go and Hicks could ride her.

The big black brute that Carne rode was built for weight and staying power. He could keep going all day, pounding doggedly.

The little mare, rising to the fence ahead, took it like a bird. Hicks turned back to grin at Carne. She’s a natural jumper, thought Carne. But can she stay?

They were on heavy ploughed land now. The black horse thumped with regular powerful strides across the furrows; but the little bay danced ahead as though her light hoofs hardly broke the layers of earth.

Beyond the ploughed field came Ladlow’s farm, then the Minston allotments. Allotments made queer going. It was better to cut up sharp to the north, even if that meant making a detour. Here lay three parallel fields with higher fences. Farther up still was a gate. Hicks, racing ahead, waved to Carne his decision. Carne nodded. He wanted to see the mare at work over banks and fences. Her Irish blood should help her there. Reining back a little, he watched Hicks put the mare straight at the first thorn hedge.

She rose lightly, beautifully. Carne, holding his breath, lost no line of that proud and lovely movement. Then, as though checked in mid-air, she seemed to falter. Hicks screamed, “Wire, wire!” Carne saw a flurry of tossing hoofs, a somersaulting belly, and knew that the mare was down on the other side.

The field swerved to the gate. Dragging the black horse’s mouth Carne checked him ruthlessly and followed them, sweating with agony as he waited his turn in the jostling stampeding crowd. The seconds seemed hours.

Then he was through, jerking Black Hussar out of the stream of horsemen, and making for the tumbled tossing huddle below the fence.

Hicks was extricating himself.

“You all right?” Carne slid to the ground and helped to pull him clear.

Captain Gryson, on a stiff, panting pony, pulled back to help them.

“Any damage done?”

The groom, white-faced, clutched his right elbow, staring at the threshing hoofs of the plunging, struggling mare. Carne flung the rein of Black Hussar to Gryson and approached the fallen beast.

“Look out, sir!” called Hicks. But Carne knew his business. Speaking quietly, he stooped down beside the mare, got one knee on her neck, and loosened her girth, pulled aside the saddle, and ran his big hand down her spine.

Her plunging quietened.

He looked up, shaking his head.

“I’m afraid it’s no use. Her back’s broken. Can you get me a gun from somewhere, Gryson? One at that house, perhaps” he chuckled grimly, “Why, it’s our colleague, Snaith’s.”

Gryson galloped off.

Hicks coughed apologetically. “I’m sorry, sir.”

“Not your fault. But if ever I learn what blank, blanketty blank of a fool put up that wire without marking it, I’ll . . .”

The flow of language comforted even Hicks, nursing his broken shoulder, sick and giddy.

“It’s new, too. I’ve come across here a dozen times last year.” His voice faltered. He was faint with pain and nearly in tears. Carne realised for the first time that the mare was not the only casualty.

“Better sit down. You’ve had a nasty toss.”

But he still knelt by the twitching, kicking animal, cursing softly, gentling her head.

They were still thus when Snaith, walking hatless across the paddock, approached them.

“Is there anything I can do?”

Carne looked up and saw him standing, neat, grey, urban, a figure from another world.

“Where’s Gryson?”

“I suggested that he should ride on to the village. It happens that I possess no lethal weapons in my house, I have never been—er—a great taker of life.”

The thoughts boiling in Carne’s head could assume no articulate expression. He paused a moment to recapture control of his feelings, then asked, “Do you know who put up that wire?”

“Certainly,” said the little alderman. “Stathers, my tenant. He did so on my suggestion.”

“At your suggestion,” repeated Carne, breathing hard, his hand still automatically fondling the ears of the dying mare. “I see. Good of you to acknowledge it.”

“Not at all. Why not? I am sorry you have had an accident, but I always said that hunting was a risky game, even for others beside the fox.”