Part 10 (1/2)

”I!” he stammered, ”not care to speak to _you_! You ought to know--”

”Yes, indeed, I do know!” broke in f.a.n.n.y, pa.s.sing from the frigid to the torrid zone with characteristic speed, ”I know what a _failure_ your horse-dealing at the Dublin Show was! I've heard how you bought my mare, and had her shot the same night, because you wouldn't take the trouble even to go and look at her after the poor little thing was hurt! Oh! I can't bear even to _think_ of it!”

Rupert Gunning remained abjectly and dumfoundedly silent.

”And then,” continued f.a.n.n.y, whirling on to the final point of her indictment, ”you pretended to Captain Carteret and me that the horse you had bought was 'a common brute,' _a cob for carting_, and you said the other night that you had made a fool of yourself over it! I didn't know then all about it, but I do now. Captain Carteret heard about it from the dealer in Dublin. Even the dealer said it was a pity you hadn't given the mare a chance!”

”It's all perfectly true,” said Rupert, in a low voice.

A soft answer, so far from turning away wrath, frequently inflames it.

”Then I think there's no more to be said!” said f.a.n.n.y hotly.

There was silence. They had reached the top of the hill, and the grey mare began to trot.

”Well, there's just one thing I should like to say,” said Rupert awkwardly, his breath coming very short, ”I couldn't help everything going wrong about the mare. It was just my bad luck. I only bought her to please you. They told me she couldn't get right after the accident.

What was the good of my going to look at her? I wanted to cross in the boat with you. Whatever I did I did for you. I would do anything in the world for you--”

It was at this crucial moment that there arose suddenly from the dim grey road in front of them a slightly greyer shadow, a shadow that limped amid the clanking of chains. The Connemara mare, now masquerading as a County Cork cob, asked for nothing better. If it were a ghost, she was legitimately ent.i.tled to flee from it; if, as was indeed the case, it was a donkey, she made a point of shying at donkeys. She realised that, by a singular stroke of good fortune, the reins were lying in loops on her back.

A snort, a sideways bound, a couple of gleeful kicks on the dashboard, and she was away at full gallop, with one rein under her tail, and a pleasant open road before her.

”It's all right!” said Rupert, recovering his balance by a hair-breadth, and feeling in his heart that it was all wrong, ”the Craffroe Hill will stop her. Hold on to the rail.”

f.a.n.n.y said nothing. It was, indeed, all that she could do to keep her seat in the trap, with which the rus.h.i.+ng road was playing cup and ball; she was, besides, not one of the people who are conversational in emergencies. When an animal, as active and artful as the Connemara mare, is going at some twenty miles an hour, with one of the reins under its tail, endeavours to detach the rein are not much avail, and when the tail is still tender from recent docking, they are a good deal worse than useless. Having twice nearly fallen on his head, Rupert abandoned the attempt and prayed for the long stiff ascent of the Craffroe Hill.

It came swiftly out of the grey moonlight. At its foot another road forked to the right; instead of facing the hill that led to home and stable, the mare swung into the side road, with one wheel up on the gra.s.s, and the cus.h.i.+ons slipping from the seat, and Rupert, just saving the situation with the left rein that remained to him, said to himself that they were in for a bad business.

For a mile they swung and clattered along it, with the wind striking and splitting against their faces like a cold and tearing stream of water; a light wavered and disappeared across the pallid fields to the left, a group of starveling trees on a hill slid up into the skyline behind them, and at last it seemed as if some touch of self-control, some suggestion of having had enough of the joke, was shortening the mare's grasping stride. The trap pitched more than ever as she came up into the shafts and back into her harness; she twisted suddenly to the left into a narrow lane, cleared the corner by an impossible fluke, and f.a.n.n.y Fitz was hurled ignominiously on to Rupert Gunning's lap. Long briars and twigs struck them from either side, the trap b.u.mped in craggy ruts and slashed through wide puddles, then reeled irretrievably over a heap of stones and tilted against the low bank to the right.

Without any exact knowledge of how she got there, f.a.n.n.y found herself on her hands and knees in a clump of bracken on top of the bank; Rupert was already picking himself out of rugs and other jetsam in the field below her, and the mare was proceeding up the lane at a disorderly trot, having jerked the trap on to its legs again from its reclining position.

f.a.n.n.y was lifted down into the lane; she told him that she was not hurt, but her knees shook, her hands trembled, and the arm that was round her tightened its clasp in silence. When a man is strongly moved by tenderness and anxiety and relief, he can say little to make it known; he need not--it is known beyond all telling by the one other person whom it concerns. She felt suddenly that she was safe, that his heart was torn for her sake, and that the tension of the last ten minutes had been great. It went through her with a pang, and her head swayed against his arm. In a moment she felt his lips on her hair, on her temple, and the oldest, the most familiar of all words of endearment was spoken at her ear. She recovered herself, but in a new world. She tried to walk on up the lane, but stumbled in the deep ruts and found the supporting arm again ready at need. She did not resist it.

A shrill neigh arose in front of them. The mare had pulled up at a closed gate, and was apparently apostrophising some low farm buildings beyond it. A dog barked hysterically, the door of a cowshed burst open, and a man came out with a lantern.

”Oh, I know now where we are!” cried f.a.n.n.y wildly, ”it's Johnny Connolly's! Oh, Johnny, Johnny Connolly, we've been run away with!”

”For G.o.d's sake!” responded Johnny Connolly, standing stock still in his amazement, ”is that Miss f.a.n.n.y?”

”Get hold of the mare,” shouted Rupert, ”or she'll jump the gate!”

Johnny Connolly advanced, still calling upon his G.o.d, and the mare uttered a low but vehement neigh.

”Ye're deshtroyed, Miss f.a.n.n.y! And Mr. Gunning, the Lord save us! Ye're killed the two o' ye! What happened ye at all? Woa, gerr'l, woa, gerrlie! Ye'd say she knew me, the crayture.”

The mare was rubbing her dripping face and neck against the farmer's shoulder, with hoa.r.s.e whispering snorts of recognition and pleasure. He held his lantern high to look at her.

”Musha, why wouldn't she know me!” he roared, ”sure it's yer own mare, Miss f.a.n.n.y! 'Tis the Connemara mare I thrained for ye! And may the divil sweep and roast thim that has it told through all the counthry that she was killed!”