Part II, Continued
V.
For years he had been looking forward to his 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 the name of Fitzpaul! How he hated Reynardine, who had made him feel like a cur, though he would n'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 the Nevison expedition to the pole, and he lay somewhere in the immaculate Arctic snows with the inscription of his comrades written on a simple stone: "Here lies a very gallant Irishman." ANd Kevin had died fighting the Turks in Asia. And Ulick! Ulik was somewhere in the depths of the Irish sea, were he went out with the coast-guards to rescue a vessel in distress. And Garrent was funnies 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 in 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! Theere was Crock Na Mero, the hill of the querns! There was--there was the abbery where the Fitzpauls, where Reynardine slept.
"If by chance you look for me
Perhaps you'll not me find,
For I'll be in my castle--"
A great castle that, he laughed, six feet under-ground....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 clup 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 shadwo flit along a ditch, skip 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, 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 hallow 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 rose 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 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 over the legions of dead Fitzpauls. He'd hunt in 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 checke 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!
VII.
"Dark childeen, what is wrong with you? What is wrong? There was a wing in my heart until I saw you coming."
"Nurse Ellen, there's a man dead at the abbey. I saw him die, with my two eyes."
O _alanna veg_! Is it any one we know? It is n't the master, is it, or Sir Maurice?"
"No, Nurse Ellen, no! It's no one I know. I was sitting reading by Mother's grave, and a wee red fox, a wee hunted fox, ran up to me for help. And then the man came jumping the wall, and his horse reared and he was killed. I never saw him before, but we know him, Nurse Ellen. I know we do."
"Why dotey child! Why do you say so?"
"He saw me and he took me for Mother, Nurse Ellen. He called, 'Reynardine!'"
"Was he a dour, black man, child of grace? Would you be afraid of him, and he alive?"
"Yes, that's he, Nurse Ellen. Who is it we know?"
"It's no one we know, _a lanna_. No one at all."
"But he called, 'Reynardine!'"
"You only think so, dark childeen, you trembling there and standing by your mother's grave. A trick your mind played on you, _machree dheelish_. He was no one you know, or nothing to you. Only a strange man it was, a strange bad man."
The End."
Prepared by Bob Champ