CHAPTER X

THE BIRDS OF THE AIR TAKE THEIR BREAKFAST

Ormiston's first sensation on reentering his sister's room was one of

very sensible relief. For Katherine leaned back against the pink

brocade cushions in the corner of the sofa, with the baby sleeping

peacefully in her arms. Her colour was more normal too, her features

less mask-like and set. The cloud which had shadowed the young man's

mind for nearly a fortnight lifted. She knew; therefore, he argued, the

worst must be over. It was an immense gain that this thing was fairly

said. Yet, as he came nearer and sat down on the sofa beside her,

Ormiston, who was a keen observer, both of horses and women, became

aware of a subtle change in Katherine. He was struck--he had never

noticed it before--by her likeness to her--and his--father, whose

stern, high-bred, clean-shaven face and rather inaccessible bearing and

manner impressed his son, even to this day, as somewhat alarming.

People were careful not to trifle with old Mr. Ormiston. His will was

absolute in his own house, with his tenants, and in the great

iron-works--almost a town in itself--which fed his fine fortune. While

from his equals--even from his fellow-members of that not over-reverent

or easily impressible body, the House of Commons--he required and

received a degree of deference such as men yield only to an unusually

powerful character. And there was now just such underlying energy in

Katherine's expression. Her eyes were dark, as a clear midnight sky is

dark, her beautiful lips compressed, but with concentration of purpose,

not with weakness of sorrow. The force of her motherhood had awakened

in Katherine a latent, titanic element. Like "Prometheus Bound,"

chained to the rock, torn, her spirit remained unquelled. For good or

evil--as the event should prove--she defied the gods.

And something of all this--though he would have worded it very

differently in the vernacular of passing fashion--Ormiston perceived.

She was unbroken by that which had occurred, and for this he was

thankful. But she was another woman to her who had greeted him in

pretty apology an hour ago. Yet, even recognising this, her first words

produced in him a shock of surprise.

"Is that horse, the Clown, still at the stables?" she asked.

Ormiston thrust his hands into his pockets; and sitting on the edge of

the sofa with his knees apart, stared down at the carpet. The mention

of the Clown always cut him, and raised in him a remorseful anger. Yes

she was like his father, going straight to the point, he thought. And,

in this case, the point was acutely painful to him personally.

Ormiston's moral courage had been severely taxed, and he had a fair

share of the selfishness common to man. It was all very well, but he

wished to goodness she had chosen some other subject than this. Yet he

must answer.

"Yes," he said; "Willy Taylor has been leading the gallops for the

two-year-olds on him for the last month."--He paused. "What about the

Clown?"

"Only that I should be glad if you would tell Chifney he must find some

other horse to lead the gallops."

Ormiston turned his head.

"I see--you wish the horse sold," he said, over his shoulder.

Katherine looked down at the sleeping baby, its round head, crowned by

that delicious crest of silky hair, cuddled in against her breast. Then

she looked in her brother's eyes full and steadily.

"No," she answered. "I don't want it sold, I want it shot, by you,

here, to-night."

"By Jove!" the young man exclaimed, rising hastily and standing in

front of her.

Katherine gazed up at him, and held the child a little closer to her

breast.

"I have been alone with my baby. Don't you suppose I see how it has

come about?" she asked.

"Oh, damn it all!" Ormiston cried. "I prayed, at least, you might be

spared thinking of that."

He flung himself down on the sofa again--while the baby clenching its

tiny fist, stretched and murmured in its sleep--and bowed himself

together, resting his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands.

"I'm at the bottom of it. It's all my fault," he said. "I am haunted by

the thought of that day and night, for if ever one man loved another I

loved Richard. And yet if I hadn't been so cursedly keen about the

horse all this might never have happened. Oh! if you only knew how

often I've wished myself dead since that ghastly morning. You must hate

me, Kitty. You've cause enough. Yet how the deuce could I foresee what

would come about?"

For the moment Katherine's expression softened. She laid her left hand

very gently on his bowed head.

"I could never hate you, dear old man," she said. "You are innocent of

Richard's death. But this last thing is different." Her voice became

fuller and deeper in tone. "And whether I am equally innocent of his

child's disfigurement, God only knows--if there is a God, which

perhaps, just now, I had better doubt, lest I should blaspheme too

loudly, hoping my bitter words might reach His hearing."

Yet further disturbed in the completeness of it's comfort, as it would

seem, by the seriousness of her voice, the baby's mouth puckered. It

began to fret. Katherine rose and stood rocking it, soothing it--a

queenly young figure in her clinging gray and white draperies, which

the instreaming sunshine touched, as she moved, to a delicate warmth of

colour.

"Hush, my pretty lamb," she crooned--and then softly yet fiercely to

Ormiston, "You understand, I wish it. The Clown is to be shot."

"Very well," he answered.

"Sleep--what troubles you, my precious," she went on. "I want it done,

now, at once.--Hush, baby, hush.--The sun shall not go down upon my

wrath, because my wrath shall be somewhat appeased before the sunset."

Katherine swayed with a rhythmic motion, holding the baby a little away

from her in her outstretched arms.

"Tell Chifney to bring the horse up to the square lawn, here, right in

front of the house.--Hush, my kitty sweet.--He is to bring the horse

himself. None of the stable boys or helpers are to come. It is not to

be an entertainment, but an execution. I wish it done quietly."

"Very well," Ormiston repeated. He hesitated, strong protest rising to

his lips, which he could not quite bring himself to utter. Katherine,

the courage and tragedy of her anger, dominated him as she moved to and

fro in the sunshine soothing her child.

"You know it's a valuable horse," he remarked, at last, tentatively.

"So much the better. You do not suppose I should care to take that

which costs me nothing? I am quite willing to pay.--Sleep, my pet,

so--is that better?--I do not propose to defraud--hush, baby darling,

hush--Richard's son of any part of his inheritance. Tell Chifney to

name a price for the Clown, an outside price. He shall have a cheque

to-morrow, which he is to enter with the rest of the stable

accounts.--Now go, please. We understand each other clearly, and it is

growing late.--Poor honey love, what vexes you?--You will shoot the

Clown, here, before sunset. And, Roger, it must lie where it falls

to-night. Let some of the men come early to-morrow, with a float. It is

to go to the kennels."

Ormiston got up, shaking his shoulders as though to rid himself of some

encumbering weight. He crossed to the fireplace and kicked the logs

together.

"I don't half like it," he said. "I tell you I don't. It seems such a

cold-blooded butchery. I can't tell if it's wrong or right. It seems

merciless. And it is so unlike you, Kitty, to be merciless."

He turned to her as he spoke, and Katherine--her head erect, her eyes

full of the sombre fire of her profound alienation and revolt--drew her

hand slowly down over the fine lawn and lace of the baby's long white

robe, and held it flat against the soles of the child's hidden feet.

"Look at this," she said. "Remember, too, that the delight of my life

has gone from me, and that I am young yet. The years will be many--and

Richard is dead. Has much mercy been shown to me, do you think?"

And the young man seeing her, knowing the absolute sincerity of her

speech, felt a lump rise in his throat. After all, when you have acted

hangman to your own sister, as he reasoned, it is but a small matter to

act slaughterman to a horse.

"Very well," he answered, huskily enough. "It shall be as you wish,

Kitty. Only go back to the sofa, and stay there, please. If I think you

are watching, I can't be quite sure of myself. Something may go wrong,

and we don't want a scene which will make talk. This is a business

which should be got through as quickly and decently as possible."

The sun was but five minutes high, and no longer brightened the

southern house front, though it spread a ruddy splendour over the

western range of gables, and lingered about the stacks of slender

twisted chimneys, and cast long slanting shadows across the lawns and

carriage drives, before Lady Calmady's waiting drew to a close. From

the near trees of the elm avenue, and from the wood overhanging the

pond below the terraced kitchen gardens, came the singing of blackbirds

and thrushes--whether raised as evening hymn in praise of their

Creator, or as love-song each to his mate, who shall say? Possibly as

both, since in simple minds--and that assuredly is matter for

thankfulness--earthly and heavenly affections are bounded by no harsh

dividing line. The chorus of song found its way in at the windows of

Katherine's room--fresh as the spring flowers which filled it, innocent

of hatred and wrong as the face of the now placid baby, his soft cheeks

flushed with slumber, as he nestled in against his mother's bosom.

Indeed a long time had passed. Twice Denny had looked in and, seeing

that quiet reigned, had noiselessly withdrawn. For Katherine, still

physically weak, drained, moreover, by the greatness of her recent

emotion, her senses lulled to rest by the warm contact and even

breathing of the child, had sunk away into a dreamless sleep.

The questioning neigh of a stallion, a scuffle of horse hoofs,

footsteps approaching round the corner of the house, passing across the

broad graveled carriage sweep and on to the turf, aroused her. And

these sounds were so natural, full of vigorous outdoor life and the

wholesome gladness of it, that for a moment she came near repentance of

her purpose. But then feeling, as he rested on her arm, her baby's

shortened, malformed limbs, and thinking of her well-beloved dying,

maimed and spent, in the fulness of his manhood, her face took on that

ashen pallor again and all relenting left her. There was a satisfaction

of wild justice in the act about to be consummated. And Katherine

raised herself from the pink brocade cushions, and sat erect, her lips

parted in stern excitement, her forehead contracted in the effort to

hear, her eyes fixed on the wide, carven, ebony bed and its embroidered

hangings. The poor Hart had, indeed, ceased to pasture in reposeful

security before the quaint pavilion, set--for its passing

refreshment--in the midst of the Forest of This Life. Now it fled,

desperate, by crooked tangled ways, over rocks, through briars, while

Care, the Leopard, followed hard behind.

First Roger Ormiston's voice reached her in brief direction, and the

trainer's in equally brief reply. The horse neighed again--a sound

strident and virile, the challenge of a creature of perfect muscle, hot

desire, and proud, quick-coursing blood. Afterwards, an instant's

pause, and Chifney's voice again,--"So-ho--my beauty--take it

easy--steady there, steady, good lad," and the slap of his open hand on

the horse's shoulder straightening it carefully into place. While

behind and below all this, in sweet incongruous undertone of

uncontrollable joy, arose the carolling of the blackbirds and thrushes

praising, according to their humble powers, God, life, and love.

Finally, as climax of the drama, the sharp report of a pistol, ringing

out in shattering disturbance of the peace of the fair spring evening,

followed by a dead silence, the birds all scared and dumb--a silence so

dead, that Katherine Calmady held her breath, almost awed by it, while

the hissing and crackling of the little flames upon the hearth seemed

to obtrude as an indecent clamour. This lasted a few seconds. Then the

noise of a plunging struggle and the muffled thud of something falling

heavily upon the turf.--

Dr. Knott had been up all night, but his patient, Lord Denier's second

coachman, would pull through right enough; so he started on his

homeward journey in a complacent frame of mind. He reckoned it would

save him a couple of miles, let alone the long hill from Farley Row up

to Spendle Flats, if on his way back from Grimshott he went by

Brockhurst House. It is stretching a point, he admitted, to drive under

even your neighbour's back windows at five o'clock in the morning. But

the doctor being himself in an unusually amiable attitude, was inclined

to accredit others with a like share of good temper. Moreover, the

natural man in him cried increasingly loudly for food and bed.

John Knott was not given to sentimental rhapsodies over the beauties of

nature. Like other beauties she had her dirty enough moods, he thought.

Still, in his own half-snarling fashion, he dearly loved this forest

country in which he had been born and bred, while he was too keen a

sportsman to be unobservant of any aspect of wind and weather, any

movement of bird or beast. With the collar of his long drab

driving-coat turned up about his ears, and the stem of a well-coloured

meerschaum pipe between his teeth, he sat huddled together in the high,

swinging gig, with Timothy, the weazel-faced, old groom by his side,

while the drama of the opening day unfolded itself before his somewhat

critical gaze. He noted that it would be fine, though windy. In the

valley, over the Long Water, spread beds of close, white mist. The blue

of the upper sky was crossed by curved windows of flaky, opalescent

cloud. In the east, above the dusky rim of the fir woods on the edge of

the high-lying tableland, stretched a blinding blaze of rose-saffron,

shading through amber into pale primrose colour above. The massive

house front, and the walls fencing the three sides of the square

enclosure before it, with the sexagonal, pepper-pot summer-houses at

either corner, looked pale and unsubstantial in that diffused,

unearthly light. At the head of the elm avenue, passing through the

high, wrought-iron gates and along the carriage drive which skirts the

said enclosure,--the great, square grass plot on the right hand, the

red wall of the kitchen gardens on the left,--Dr. Knott had the reins

nearly jerked out of his hand. The mare started and swerved, grazing

the off wheel against the brickwork, and stopped, her head in the air,

her ears pricked, her nostrils dilated showing the red.

"Hullo, old girl, what's up? Seen a ghost?" he said, drawing the whip

quietly across the hollow of her back.

But the mare only braced herself more stiffly, refusing to move, while

she trembled and broke into a sudden sweat. The doctor was interested

and looked about him. He would first find the cause of her queer

behaviour, and give her a good dressing down afterwards if she deserved

it.

The smooth, slightly up-sloping lawn was powdered with innumerable

dewdrops. In the centre of it, neck outstretched, the fine legs doubled

awkwardly together, the hind quarters and barrel rising, as it lay on

its side, in an unshapely lump, gray from the drenching dew, was a dead

horse. Along the top of the further wall a smart and audacious party of

jackdaws had stationed themselves, with much ruffling of gray, neck

feathers impudent squeakings and chatter. While a pair of carrion crows

hopped slowly and heavily about the carcass, flapping up with a stroke

or two of their broad wings in sudden suspicion, then settling down

again nearer than before.

"Go to her head, Timothy, and get her by as quietly as you can. I'll be

after you in a minute, but I'm bound to see what the dickens they've

been up to here."

As he spoke Dr. Knott hitched himself down from off the gig. He was

cramped with sitting, and moved forward awkwardly, his footsteps

leaving a track of dark irregular patches upon the damp grass. As he

approached, the jackdaws flung themselves gleefully upward from the

wall, the sun glinting on their glossy plumage as they circled and

sailed away across the park. But the crow who had just begun work in

earnest, stood his ground, notwithstanding the warning croak of his

more timid mate. He grasped the horse's skull with his claws, and tore

away greedily at the fine skin about the eye-socket with his strong,

black beak.

"How's this, my fine gentleman, in too much of a hurry this morning to

wait for the flavour to get into your meat?" John Knott said, as the

bird rose sullenly at last. "Got a small hungry family at home, I

suppose, crying 'give, give.' Well, that's taught better men than you,

before now, not to be too nice, but to snatch at pretty well anything

they can get."

He came close and stood looking meditatively down at the dead

race-horse--recognised its long, white-reach face, the colour and make

of it, while his loose lips worked with a contemptuous yet pitying

smile.

"So that's the way my lady's taken it, has she?" he said presently. "On

the whole I don't know that I'm sorry. In some cases much benefit

unquestionably is derivable from letting blood. This shows she doesn't

mean to go under if I know her; and that's a mercy, for that poor

little beggar, the baby's sake."

He turned and contemplated the stately facade of the house. The ranges

of windows, blind with closed shutters and drawn curtains, in the early

sunshine gave off their many panes a broad dazzle of white light.

"Poor little beggar," he repeated, "with his forty thousand a year and

all the rest of it. Such a race to run and yet so badly handicapped!"

He stooped down, examined the horse, found the mark of the bullet.

"Contradictory beings, though, these dear women," he went on. "So

fanciful and delicate, so sensitive you're afraid to lay a finger on

them. So unselfish, too, some of them, they seem too good for this old

rough and tumble of a world. And yet touch 'em home, and they'll show

an unscrupulous savagery of which we coarse brutes of men should be

more than half ashamed. God Almighty made a little more than He

bargained for when He made woman. She must have surprised Him pretty

shrewdly, one would think, now and then since the days of the apple and

the snake."

He moved away up the carriage drive, following Timothy, the sweating,

straining mare, and swinging gig. The carrion crow flapped back, with a

croak, and dropped on the horse's skull again. Hearing that bodeful

sound the doctor paused a moment, knocking the ashes out of his pipe,

and looking round at the bird at its ugly work, set as foreground to

that pure glory of the sunrise, and the vast noble landscape, misty

valley, dewy grassland, far ranging hillside crowned with wood.

"The old story," he muttered, "always repeating itself. And it strikes

one as rather a wasteful, clumsy contrivance, at times. Life forever

feeding on death--death forever breeding life."

Thus ended the Clown, own brother to Touchstone, of merry name and

mournful memory, paying the penalty of wholly involuntary

transgressions. From which ending another era dated at Brockhurst, the

most notable events of which it is the purpose of the ensuing pages

duly to set forth.