Part 1
by Donn ByrneFrom _Changeling and Other Stories_
New York & London, The Century Company, 1923
1.
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 witch's arms, the pink of the whipper-in's coat showed like a Hallowe'en candle back of a screeen. 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 everyone 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 Irish red 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 Munsterberg was there, redfaced, 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 blzaes 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 her 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 curese 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 feel aloof toward. For he was the steeple-chaser, the horseman, the hunter of foxes, and she was of a family who 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 like 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-sde 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 heard her pulsating contralto voice:
"If by chance you look for me
Perhaps you'll not me find,
For I'll be in my castle--
Enquire for Reynardine."
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-Irsih 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, Gerard 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.
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 twenty years. But hwas troubled as a man is troubled by imminent disaster. He wish'd they'd get on.
"Wind him, boys. Wind him. Yooi, get him out. Joyous! Tinker! Marvan! Leu in!"
But there was naught be the crash of wins, 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 haf-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 chieftan 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 women, 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 dah of his clothers. His assurance overcame her. She like 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 spiritual entity that actuates the body. And before Morgan was a thread of flame that might lead him now down a formal garden, rhythimic with the murmer of bees, now through a woodland where the thrust 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 ws 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?"
THere were all great hulking men, her father and her brothers, Ulick, Garret, 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 you 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 gentleman!
There was an immensity of pride in Morgan's heart, apart from the 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 objections 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 soothe 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 a half-hour later he would bring the horse out. The horse would be cowed 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 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 ws here to ride nd hunt and chase today; 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 huntman. "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 maste fo the hunt on his great brown steeplechaser, then the huntsman, gay in pink, leather-faced with puckered eyes, on his little black mare. Then can 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 liked a steam engine. A little steadying forward, a rush and a thud, and they were over. Nowa 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 suddently 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 huntsman.
"Leu in, boy, 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 brunched, 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 spectre horse, over some well-remembered run, for all the attention they paid to 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 is 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 a pianoforte as from some old-time clavichord.
"Sun and dark I followed her,
Her eyes did brightly shine;
She took me o'er the mountains,
Did my sweet Reynardine.
If by chance you look for me
Perhaps you'll not me find--"
Oh, damn! What did she ever come into his life for, anyway! She did n'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 a 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 whipe 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 deth 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 is n'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? Everyone 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!" 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:
"If by chance you look for me
Perchance you'll not me find,
For I'll be in my castle--"
The hounds shifted, grew keen. "Ay! Ay!" came the tongue of the finder. Scent was picked up again. "Ay! Ay! Ay!" went the pack, head 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!"
(Continued)