All through the night the drizzling rain fell fast, and on the morning of the 26th, when the gentlemen at the manor-house rectory went to their windows to look out upon the weather, they were gratified by finding that southerly wind and cloudy sky so dear to the heart of a huntsman.
At half-past eight o’clock the whole party assembled in the dining~room, where breakfast was prepared.
Many gentlemen living in the neighbourhood had been invited to breakfast at the rectory; and the great quadrangle of the stables was crowded by grooms and horses, gigs and phaetons, while the clamour of many voices rang out upon the still air.
Every one seemed to be thoroughly happy — except Reginald Eversleigh. He was amongst the noisiest of the talkers, the loudest of the laughers; but the rector, who watched him closely, perceived that his face was pale, his eyes heavy as the eyes of one who had passed a sleepless night, and that his laughter was loud without mirth, his talk boisterous, without real cheerfulness of spirit.
“There is mischief of some kind in that man’s heart,” Lionel said to himself. “Can there be any truth in the gipsy’s warning after all?”
But in the next moment he was ready to fancy himself the weak dupe of his own imagination.
“I dare say my cousin’s manner is but what it always is,” he thought; “the weary manner of a man who has wasted his youth, and sacrificed all the brilliant chances of his life, and who, even in the hour of pleasure and excitement, is oppressed by a melancholy which he strives in vain to shake off.”
The gathering at the breakfast-table was a brilliant one.
Lydia Graham was a superb horsewoman; and in no costume did she look more attractive than in her exquisitely fitting habit of dark blue cloth. The early hour of the meet justified her breakfasting in riding~costume; and gladly availing herself of this excuse, she made her appearance in her habit, carrying her pretty little riding-hat and dainty whip in her hand.
Her cheeks were flushed with a rich bloom — the warm flush of excitement and the consciousness of success. Lionel’s attention on the previous evening had seemed to her unmistakeable; and again this morning she saw admiration, if not a warmer feeling, in his gaze.
“And so you really mean to follow the hounds, Miss Graham?” said Mrs. Mordaunt, with something like a shudder.
She had a great horror of fast young ladies, and a lurking aversion to Miss Graham, whose dashing manner and more brilliant charms quite eclipsed the quiet graces of the lady’s two daughters. Mrs. Mordaunt was by no means a match-making mother; but she would have been far from sorry to see Lionel Dale devoted to one of her girls.
“Do I mean to follow the hounds?” cried Lydia. “Certainly I do, Mrs. Mordaunt. Do not the Misses Mordaunt ride?”
“Never to hounds,” answered the matron. “They ride with, their father constantly, and when they are in London they ride in the park; but Mr. Mordaunt would not allow his daughters to appear in the hunting-field.”
Lydia’s face flushed crimson with anger; but her anger changed to delight when Lionel Dale came to the rescue.
“It is only such accomplished horsewomen as Miss Graham who can ride to hounds with safety,” he said. “Your daughters ride very well, Mrs. Mordaunt; but they are not Diana Vernons.”
“I never particularly admired the character of Diana Vernon,” Mrs. Mordaunt answered, coldly.
Lydia Graham was by no means displeased by the lady’s discourtesy. She accepted it as a tribute to her success. The mother could not bear to see so rich a prize as the rector of Hallgrove won by any other than her own daughter.
Douglas Dale was full of his brother’s new horse, “Niagara,” which had been paraded before the windows. The gentlemen of the party had all examined the animal, and pronounced him a beauty.
“Did you try him last week, Lionel, as I requested you to do?” asked Douglas, when the merits of the horse had been duly discussed.
“I did; and I found him as fine a temper as any horse I ever rode. I rode him twice — he is a magnificent animal.”
“And safe, eh, Lio?” asked Douglas, anxiously. “Spavin assured me the horse was to be relied on, and Spavin is a very respectable fellow; but it’s rather a critical matter to choose a hunter for a brother, and I shall be glad when to-day’s work is over.”
“Have no fear, Douglas,” answered the rector. “I am generally considered a bold rider, but I would not mount a horse I couldn’t thoroughly depend upon; for I am of opinion that a man has no right to tempt Providence.”
As he said this, he happened by chance to look towards Reginald Eversleigh. The eyes of the cousins met; and Lionel saw that those of the baronet had a restless, uneasy look, which was utterly unlike their usual expression.
“There is some meaning in that old woman’s dark hints of wrong and treachery,” he thought; “there must be. That was no common look which I saw just now in my cousin’s eyes.”
The horses were brought round to the principal door; a barouche had been ordered for Mrs. Mordaunt and the two young ladies, who had no objection to exhibit their prettiest winter bonnets at the general meeting-place.
The snow had melted, except here and there, where it still lay in great patches; and on the distant hills, which still wore their pure white shroud.
The roads and lanes were fetlock-deep in mud, and the horses went splashing through pools of water, which spurted up into the faces of the riders.
There was only one lady besides Lydia Graham who intended to accompany the huntsmen, and this lady was the dashing young wife of a cavalry officer, who was spending a month’s leave of absence with his relatives at Hallgrove.
The hunting-party rode out of the rectory gates in twos and threes. All had passed out into the high road before the rector himself, who was mounted on his new hunter.
To his extreme surprise he found a difficulty in managing the animal. He reared, and jibbed, and shied from side to side upon the broad carriage-drive, splashing the melted snow and wet gravel upon the rector’s dark hunting-coat.
“So ho, ‘Niagara,’” said Lionel, patting the animal’s arched neck; “gently, boy, gently.”
His voice, and the caressing touch of his hand seemed to have some little effect, for the horse consented to trot quietly into the road, after the rest of the party, and Lionel quickly overtook his friends. He rode shoulder by shoulder with Squire Mordaunt, an acknowledged judge of horseflesh, who watched the rector’s hunter with a curious gaze for some minutes.
“I’ll tell you what it is, Dale,” he said, “I don’t believe that horse of yours is a good-tempered animal.”
“You do not?”
“No, there’s a dangerous look in his eye that I don’t at all like. See how he puts his ears back every now and then; and his nostrils have an ugly nervous quiver. I wish you’d let your man bring you another horse, Dale. We’re likely to be crossing some stiffish timber to-day; and, upon my word, I’m rather suspicious of that brute you’re riding.”
“My dear squire, I have tested the horse to the uttermost,” answered Lionel. “I can positively assure you there is not the slightest ground for apprehension. The animal is a present from my brother, and Douglas would be annoyed if I rode any other horse.”
“He would be more annoyed if you came to any harm by a horse of his choosing,” answered the squire. “However I’ll say no more. If you know the animal, that’s enough. I know you to be both a good rider and a good judge of a horse.”
“Thank you heartily for your advice, notwithstanding, squire,” replied Lionel, cheerily; “and now I think I’ll ride on and join the ladies.”
He broke into a canter, and presently was riding by the side of Miss Graham, who did not fail to praise the beauty of “Niagara” in a manner calculated to win the heart of Niagara’s rider.
In the exhilarating excitement of the start, Lionel Dale had forgotten alike the gipsy’s warning and those vague doubts of his cousin Reginald which had been engendered by that warning. He was entirely absorbed by the pleasure of the hour, happy to see his friends gathered around him, and excited by the prospect of a day’s sport.
The meeting-place was crowded with horsemen and carriages, country squires and their sons, gentlemen-farmers on sleek hunters, and humbler tenant-farmers on their stiff cobs, butchers and innkeepers, all eager for the chase. All was life, gaiety excitement, noise; the hounds, giving forth occasional howls and snappish yelpings, expressive of an impatience that was almost beyond endurance; the huntsman cracking his whip, and reproving his charges in language more forcible than polite; the spirited horses pawing the ground; the gentlemen exchanging the compliments of the season with the ladies who had come up to see the hounds throw off.
At last the important moment arrived, the horn sounded, the hounds broke away with a rush, and the business of the day had begun.
Again the rector’s horse was seized with sudden obstinacy, and again the rector found it as much as he could do to manage him. An inferior horseman would have been thrown in that sharp and short struggle between horse and rider; but Lionel’s firm hand triumphed over the animal’s temper for the time at least; and presently he was hurrying onward at a stretching gallop, which speedily carried him beyond the ruck of riders.
As he skimmed like a bird over the low flat meadows, Lionel began to think that the horse was an acquisition, in spite of the sudden freaks of temper which had made him so difficult to manage at starting.
A horseman who had not joined the hunt, who had dexterously kept the others in sight, sheltering himself from observation under the fringe of the wood which crowned a small hill in the neighbourhood of the meet, was watching all the evolutions of Lionel Dale’s horse closely through a small field-glass, and soon, perceived that the animal was beyond the rider’s skill to manage. The stretching gallop which had reassured Mr. Dale soon carried the rector beyond the watcher’s ken, and then, as the hunt was out of sight too, he turned his horse from the shelter he had so carefully selected, and rode straight across country in an opposite direction.
In little more than half an hour after the horseman who had watched Lionel Dale so closely left the post of observation, a short man, mounted on a stout pony, which had evidently been urged along at unusual speed, came along the road, which wound around the hill already mentioned. This individual wore a heavy, country-made coat, and leather leggings, and had a handkerchief tied over his hat. This very unbecoming appendage was stained with blood on the side which covered the right cheek and the wearer was plentifully daubed and bespattered with mud, his sturdy little steed being in a similar condition. As he urged the pony on, his sharp, crafty eyes kept up an incessant scrutiny, in which his beak-like nose seemed to take an active part. But there was nothing to reward the curiosity, amounting to anxiety, with which the short man surveyed the wintry scene around. All was silent and empty. If the horseman had designed to see and speak with any member of the hunting-party, he had come too late. He recognized the fact very soon, and very discontentedly. Without being so great a genius, as he believed and represented himself, Mr. Andrew Larkspur was really a very clever and a very successful detective, and he had seldom been foiled in a better-laid plan than that which had induced him to follow Lionel Dale to the meet on this occasion. But he had not calculated on precisely the exact kind of accident which had befallen him, and when he found himself thrown violently from his pony, in the middle of a road at once hard, sloppy, and newly-repaired with very sharp stones, he was both hurt and angry. It did not take him a great deal of time to get the pony on its legs, and shake himself to rights again; but the delay, brief as it was, was fatal to his hopes of seeing Lionel Dale. The meet had taken place, the hunt was in full progress, far away, and Mr. Andrew Larkspur had nothing for it but to sit forlornly for awhile upon the muddy pony, indulging in meditations of no pleasant character, and then ride disconsolately back to Frimley.
In the meantime, Nemesis, who had perversely pleased herself by thwarting the designs of Mr. Larkspur, had hurried those of Victor Carrington towards fulfilment with incredible speed. He had ridden at a speed, and for some time in a direction which would, he calculated, bring him within sight of the hunt, and had just crossed a bridge which traversed a narrow but deep and rapid river, about three miles distant from the place where he Andrew Larkspur had taken sad counsel with himself, when he heard the sound of a horse’s approach, at a thundering, apparently wholly ungoverned pace. A wild gleam of triumphant expectation, of deadly murderous hope, lit up his pale features, as he turned his horse, rendered restive by the noise of the distant galloping, into a field, close by the road, dismounted, and tied him firmly to a tree. The hedge, though bare of leaves, was thick and high, and in the angle which it formed with the tree, the animal was completely hidden.
In a moment after Victor Carrington had done this, and while he crouched down and looked through the hedge, Lionel Dale appeared in sight, borne madly along by his unmanageable horse, as he dashed heedlessly down the road, his rider holding the bridle indeed, but breathless, powerless, his head uncovered, and one of his stirrup~leathers broken. Victor Carrington’s heart throbbed violently, and a film came over his eyes. Only for a moment, however; in the next his sight cleared, and he saw the furious animal, frightened by a sudden plunge made by the horse tied to the tree, swerve suddenly from the road, and dash at the swollen, tumbling river. The horse plunged in a little below the bridge. The rider was thrown out of the saddle head foremost. His head struck with a dull thud against the rugged trunk of an ash which hung over the water, and he sank below the brown, turbid stream. Then Victor Carrington emerged from his hiding-place, and rushed to the brink of the water. No sign of the rector was to be seen; and midway across, the horse, snorting and terrified, was struggling towards the opposite bank. In a moment Carrington, drawing something from his breast as he went, had run across the bridge, and reached the spot where the animal was now attempting to scramble up the steep bank. As Carrington came up, he had got his fore-feet within a couple of feet of the top, and was just making good his footing below; but the surgeon, standing close upon the brink, a little to the right of the struggling brute, stooped down and shot him through the forehead. The huge carcase fell crashing heavily down, and was sucked under, and whirled away by the stream. Victor Carrington placed the pistol once more in his breast, and for some time stood quite motionless gazing oh the river. Then he turned away, saying —
“They’ll hardly look for him below the bridge — I should say the fox ran west;” and he letting loose the horse he had ridden, walked along the road until he reached the turn at which Lionel Dale had come in sight. There he found the unfortunate rector’s hat, as he had hoped he might find it, and having carried it back, he placed it on the brink of the river, and then once more mounted him, and rode, not at any remarkable speed, in the opposite direction to that in which Hallgrove lay.
His reflections were of a satisfactory kind. He had succeeded, and he cared for nothing but success. When he thought of Sir Reginald Eversleigh, a contemptuous smile crossed his pale lips. “To work for such a creature as that,” he said to himself, “would indeed be degrading; but he is only an accident in the case — I work for myself.”
Victor Carrington had discharged his score at the inn that morning, and sent his valise to London by coach. When the night fell, he took the saddle off his horse, steeped it in the river, replaced it, quietly turned the animal loose, and abandoning him to his fate, made his way to a solitary public-house some miles from Hallgrove, where he had given a conditional, uncertain sort of rendezvous to Sir Reginald Eversleigh.
The night had closed in upon the returning huntsmen as they rode homewards. Not a star glimmered in the profound darkness of the sky. The moon had not yet risen, and all was chill and dreary in the early winter night.
Miss Graham, her brother Gordon, and Sir Reginald Eversleigh rode abreast as they approached the manor-house. Lydia had been struck by the silence of Sir Reginald, but she attributed that silence to fatigue. Her brother, too, was silent; nor did Lydia herself care to talk. She was thinking of her triumphs of the previous evening, and of that morning. She was thinking of the tender pressure with which the rector had clasped her hand as he bade her good-night; the soft expression of his eyes as they dwelt on her face, with a long, earnest gaze. She was thinking of his tender care of her when she mounted her horse, the gentle touch of his hand as he placed the reins in hers. Could she doubt that she was beloved?
She did not doubt. A thrill of delight ran through her veins as she thought of the sweet certainty; but it was not the pure delight of a simple-hearted girl who loves and finds herself beloved. It was the triumph of a hard and worldly woman, who has devoted the bright years of her girlhood to ambitious dreams; and who, at last, has reason to believe that they are about to be realized.
“Five thousand a year,” she thought; “it is little, after all, compared to the fortune that would have been mine had I been lucky enough to captivate Sir Oswald Eversleigh. It is little compared to the wealth enjoyed by that low-born and nameless creature, Sir Oswald’s widow. But it is much for one who has drained poverty’s bitter cup to the very dregs as I have. Yes, to the dregs; for though I have never known the want of life’s common necessaries, I have known humiliations which are at least as hard to bear.”
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