Mr. Glasgow’s brown hunter, Solomon, had not lived his thirteen years in vain. When he was led out into the yard one idle forenoon, and was there walked and trotted up and down in front of his owner and two strange men in tight trousers, and when, later, one of the strange men, who had the knowledgeable light fingers of a vet., passed his hand down his legs, and looked into his eyes, and pinched his throat, Solomon knew that it looked like his fifth change of owners. Afterwards he was taken out and cantered in a field, and though he felt chilly and dull, he jumped a trial bank with self-respect, and with the consciousness that he was giving a lead to the chestnut, who did{121} not understand the principle of jumping in cold blood. He was not mistaken in the purport of these things. Glasgow felt a pain about his throat as he saw the old horse walk into his stall again. He had not thought he would have minded so much. He stood by in the silence that characterizes horse-dealing, while the chestnut underwent examination, and looked round the yard at the miscellaneous collection of wreckage from his railway contract—the broken pumping-engine, the automatic crossing-gates that would not work, the corrugated iron hut that the men would not sleep in—and said to himself that the luck had been against him. It did not occur to him that he had shouldered his competitors out of the contract by a tender that left no margin for mistakes. Mr. Glasgow never made mistakes, but he had based his brilliant and minute calculations on the theory that the cheap Irish labour would accomplish as much in the day as the costly English, and{122} the fact that it had not done so was obviously beyond the sphere of rational calculation. In the long stable at the other side of the yard a heavy hoof was dealing sledge-hammer kicks to the stall, and Glasgow, as he heard it, estimated what price the creditors would get for the big dray-horses that he had brought over from England for the railway work. When he thought of the value of the plant that he was going to leave behind, he scarcely felt like a defaulter: there would be more than enough realized to pay the men, and the Railway Company could afford to lose. There remained to him his private means, the Argentine Republic, his own considerable gifts as a civil engineer, and—— Would Lady Susan remain? He felt little doubt about that part of his future.
Mr. Andrew Murphy was offering him, in the accents of Tipperary, a hundred pounds for the two horses—seventy for the chestnut and thirty for old Solomon—and he was holding out for a hundred and{123} twenty with his usual decision. If there were a weakness in his business dealings, it lay in his determination to be decisive at all points. The small and deliberate methods of expediency were intolerable to him; he would rather do without bread than accept the half-loaf. Now, even while each trivial episode was tinged with the reflected light of his future, and all were converging towards an immediate crisis, he held to his point, and had not Mr. Murphy known of an immediate customer for Solomon, the bargain might have ended untimely. As it was, the two horses changed hands at Mr. Glasgow’s price, with the understanding that both could be hunted next day by their former owner. Mr. Glasgow insisted on this point, and took all risks.
When it was all over, and Mr. Murphy and the vet. had had whiskies-and-sodas and gone away, Glasgow went back to his office and took up again his task of burning and sorting papers. Being habitually{124} orderly in his habits, the work went steadily, and, to all appearance, without effort; yet, as the time went on, his pale face became jaded and grey, and the lines about his mouth deepened.
The terrace at French’s Court witnessed that afternoon the least dignified of earthly sights—the struggles of a lady-beginner on a bicycle. It was somewhat of a descent from the heroics of forty miles an hour on an engine, yet as Slaney, flushed and dishevelled, wobbled to her one-and-twentieth overthrow, the past and future were forgotten in the ignoble excitements of the moment. Major Bunbury, himself in no mean condition of heat, picked her up out of a holly-bush and started her again; he had been doing the same thing for half-an-hour, but it had not seemed to pall. When the two-and-twentieth collapse had been safely accomplished, Slaney confessed to feeling somewhat shattered, and returning to the hall, sank into a chair, with aching knees and hands seamed with gravel.{125}
“It’s nothing to what you’ll feel like to-morrow,” said Major Bunbury, encouragingly. “You rode into the pillar of the gate so very hard last time.” He looked down at her from his position on the hearthrug, and then glanced across to the dusky, comfortable corner where the piano was. “I wonder if you remember that you said you were too tired this morning to play that Impromptu?”
“My hands were, and are, permanently hooked from holding on to the rail on the engine,” said Slaney, whose spirits had risen as surprisingly as her colour with her first experience on the bicycle, “and no one with a proper sense of how things ought to be would have expected me to do anything but lie on the sofa and faint. Instead of which, I am asked to sit on a music-stool and humiliate myself by playing things that I don’t know.”
“I think Susan looks more knocked out of time than you do,” remarked Bunbury, after one of those comfortable pauses that{126} mark intimacy, “and they really had not so near a shave as we had. They weren’t going anything like our pace when they saw that the cutting had fallen in.” Another pause. “By the way, did you—did you understand that I thought we should have to jump, that time that I—that I put my arm round you?”
“Oh, perfectly,” said Slaney distantly, and blushed with fervour. “Mr. Glasgow did not seem to mind missing his train, after all,” she went on, speeding into the topic she most wished to avoid, as is frequently the fate of those who talk for the sake of changing the conversation.
“I believe that was all a mistake. Glasgow hadn’t the slightest idea of going; he only wanted to see one of the directors who was travelling up by the mail,” said Bunbury elaborately.
“Susan waited for us at the station till she was frozen,” continued Slaney, taking her share in the apology. “She would have come on our engine only{127} that it would have spoiled her box cloth coat.”
“Do you know where she is now?” asked Bunbury, after another silence.
“She said something about going to look for daffodils. I saw her going up the backway towards the woods some time ago.”
“Are you too tired to walk up to meet her? You may choose between that and playing the Impromptu.”
They went up the hill at the back of the house by a seldom-used avenue, where cart-wheels had made deep brown ruts in the grass, and the bordering oaks hung their branches low and unpruned; pale winter pastures spread on either side, and the cattle were already moving downwards towards their night’s lodging. Yet the hint of coming spring was in the lengthened afternoon; stiff-necked daffodil buds were beginning to bend their heads and show the hoarded gold through the jealous green, and thrushes were twining a net of song in the shrubberies below. It is in the days of{128} February that the Irish air begins again to breathe suggestion—no longer mere food for the lungs, it invades the heart, and bewilders the brain with griefs and hopes. Even to the dimming of the eye that smell of the fields entered into Slaney; with a new and strong understanding of herself she could have wept for the guileless egoist who had been Slaney Morris when last the February winds blew sweet.
“Have you written that letter to say that you are not going home to-morrow?” said Bunbury, as he held open the gate that admitted them into the wood.
He had realized during his walk up across the pastures that days in which Slaney had no share would be strangely meaningless. Not being introspective the discovery was sudden enough to set his blood beating and his heart instinctively aching. He knew that she could look forward to days without him as unconcernedly as she would look back to days with him; she was self-sufficing, as the ideal ever seems to be the{129} idealizer, and such as he had no portion beyond the opening of gates for her to pass through. Major Bunbury’s elder sister must have faithfully fulfilled the mission of elder sisters, or else his natural estimation of himself was low.
“No,” replied Slaney, with her eyes on the ground, “after all, I made up my mind not to write.”
“Your mind was made up the other way when you talked about it after breakfast,” said Bunbury, looking down at her as she flicked a fir-cone aside with her stick. “Do you generally change it every few hours?”
“Emerson says that consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds,” replied Slaney, with a little sententious air that Bunbury found exasperatingly charming.
“Does Emerson say that Uncle Charles is a hobgoblin for small minds, and could very well look after himself for another week?” There was a resentment in Major Bunbury’s voice that he did not try to conceal.{130}
“He says nothing of the sort. He might have said Uncle Charles was a Diocesan Nominator, only he forgot to,” said Slaney, still preoccupied with the carpet of pine-needles on which they were walking. “But as you’re not an Irishman,” she went on, “I suppose you don’t even know what that is?”
“It seems to be a thing that requires a great deal of unnecessary attention, and can’t take care of itself,” said Bunbury gloomily.
“Well, you’re quite wrong,” replied Slaney, looking up with a laugh that was shy and fri............