mr. glasgow made no difficulty about hunting the hounds during hugh’s absence. the office was very much to his taste, and its obligations fitted in satisfactorily with his inclinations. these he summarized with a fine brevity. he promised himself that he would wipe french’s eye; his exact motive for doing so he did not attempt to define. he calculated that he would have four days of office before hugh returned. four days only! the inequality of things! he thought, with an impatient sigh, gathering up a bundle of highly unsatisfactory letters, that he had received that morning, and slamming the lid of his desk down on them.
fortune favoured him. the weather was{91} perfect, from a hunting point of view, there never was better scent, and the foxes ran the way they were wanted. “bedad,” said danny-o, “if i had a red herrin’ in a halther i couldn’t make a nater line than thimselves.” there were long jogs to the meets through the pleasant soft weather, when lady susan rode at the head of her husband’s hounds with the acting master, while slaney and bunbury followed old danny at their heels. once or twice they left off twelve or fourteen miles from home, and a friendship can progress marvellously in the slow return in the twilight, with the golden link of a day’s enjoyment, and the easy snatches of talk and silence of a tête-à-tête on horseback.
it had become a custom that glasgow should dine at french’s court on hunting days, and it was on the third of these occasions that a letter from hugh arrived, saying that he was prolonging his visit for a few more days. the post had been brought in while dessert was in progress. lady{92} susan leaned back in her chair with folded arms. they were white arms, and had that composure about them that belongs to arms accustomed from their infancy to emerge from the latest variety of sleeve.
“hughie says that we’re bound to go to this show to-night, and he’s thanking his stars he’s out of it, the little beast!” she remarked presently. “what sort of thing will they do, slaney? you know all about ’em, i suppose. i never went to a parochial hall in my life. will they sing the doxology? i never can remember exactly what the doxology is. oh, i say, bunny, shall you ever forget that night we dined with old lady pemberton, when she wanted her pet bishop to say grace, and she leaned over and told him in her awful solemn old way to say ‘god save the queen’!” lady susan laughed her loud short laugh, and looked across the round table at major bunbury.
glasgow, sitting beside her, caught at that passing flash of her glance that was{93} intended for him specially, and replied to it with an intimacy that startled slaney. his face was pale, and had the tired look that comes with mental rather than physical fatigue, but the crisp tingle of the champagne had given its inimitable fillip; the excellence of the dinner had brought him into charity with all men—even with his irish workmen—and the warm luxury and charm of the surroundings had the effect of a perfume whose dizzy fragrance can steep mind and body in repose. the anxieties that he had to bear alone, the reverses that hit him harder than he dared admit, slept in this atmosphere of ease. “lovely thais” sat beside him, and the gods had considerately prolonged the absence of her husband. even slaney, who might at one time have complicated the situation, now fell into her place in the general sentiment of repose, and made a pleasant background of literary intelligence and perceptiveness. he remembered only as a transient caprice the moment, unforgetable for her, that had{94} given her life its first touch of passion. he finished his glass of burgundy, and took a cigarette from the silver box that his hostess pushed towards him.
“we’ll play bézique in the ’bus,” pursued lady susan; “we couldn’t possibly talk for six miles. i should go to sleep.”
“oh, heavens, not more cards!” groaned bunbury. “do you know, miss morris, that she made me play rubicon bézique with her for three hours on end this afternoon. i’d hardly got my boots off when she sent william to hurry me down. i wish she’d teach william to play with her.”
“i used to play ‘spoilt five’ with the yard boys when i was a child,” said slaney. “i never aspired to any one as grand as william. we used to play secretly in an old loose box, and the cards were so black that we only knew them by private marks on their backs.”
her eyes were clear and half shy, like a boy’s. bunbury looked at her delicate, clever hand, and tried to imagine it holding{95} the grimy cards, and wondered how it was that so many impossible things were possible in ireland.
the concert in the parochial hall at letter kyle was neither more nor less than such entertainments are wont to be. lady susan, in her gorgeous sortie-de-bal, sat in the front row and carried on a conversation with mr. glasgow that, thanks to the vigour of her lungs, was quite unhampered by the efforts of the performers, and was only interrupted when some achievement of letter kyle millinery stupefied her into a moment of silence. slaney was inured to parochial concerts. it was beside her that glasgow had sat at the last of them, not so many months ago. she remembered how angry uncle charles had been because they laughed when the school-master’s wife had tranquilly omitted the top note in “the lost chord” as being beyond her compass. to-night she felt as though a wall had been built between her and the founts of laughter.{96}
weighted by encores, the dismal programme wore on, and it was eleven o’clock before the french’s court party could escape from the long incarceration in hot air, winnowed by draughts that were heavy with hair oil. slaney leaned back in the corner of the ’bus, and the darkness of the heart that she had been striving with fell upon her like a tangible thing. in spite of hot-water tins and a vast fur rug the cold breath of a foggy night made itself felt. the faces of the four occupants of the ’bus glimmered white as the glimmer of the windows. glasgow was sitting beside slaney, and some feeling blended of compunction and of desire to retain a captive, made him try to involve her in the desultory talk. she tasted a certain joyless gratification in ignoring him. the road was very dark as they drove through a wood, and the glimmer of slaney’s face was almost lost when glasgow, determined to remind her of the kiss that had so lightly come and gone between the firelight and the moonlight, slid{97} his hand along the rug, and took hers with confident tenderness. it was gone from him in a moment, and slaney, with that level politeness of voice that is the distilled essence of a perfected anger, was telling lady susan that her head ached, and that she would like to sit by the door.
lady susan changed places with her, and presently fell to arranging, with mr. glasgow, the details of an expedition up the new railway line in a cattle-truck. their voices sank gradually to that level that indicates to an outside world that it is superfluous. what they said seemed to be wholly trivial, and flagrant only in aridness; yet the low voices, half-lost in the noise of the wheels, had a quality that drove bunbury and slaney into a conversation lame with consciousness of what it tried to ignore.
glasgow’s dog-cart was waiting for him at french’s court, and it waited long before the supper was over, at which lady susan made amends for her philanthropy in cigarettes and hock and seltzer. when{98} the door at length opened to let the guest out into the fog, lady susan was near it, tall and resplendent, with the fur of her glistening silk wrap clinging round her white neck. the door closed, and as she turned away she saw something white under its flap.
“i say, it’s a letter,” she exclaimed, stooping for it, “some one must have dropped it, and it caught under the door. why, it’s for hughie—looks like a washerwoman’s bill. funny way of sending it in, isn’t it?” she yawned hugely; “well, it will keep, anyhow. let’s go to bed; good-night, my dears.” she flung the letter on a table and rustled up-stairs.
slaney was in the habit of saying her prayers. she knelt down and put her head into the soft cushion of the chair, conscious of little except that she had flung down the burden of another day. she remained for a long time on her knees, with a blank, spent mind, soothed in some dull way by the suggestions of her attitude, till a slight{99} sound on the terrace, under her open window, made her lift her head and listen.
the sound came and went, and slaney was roused to put aside the curtains and look down. there was nothing to be seen but the fog that had risen out of the sea and settled on the land, with frost and moonlight blended in its whiteness; all the world seemed arrested and tranced, all the air changed with its cold and mysterious presence.
“it was a rabbit,” she said to herself, and instantly, as if to contradict her, a black-and-grey collie passed quickly under the window, with its nose down as if running a trail.
