But people are queer, some of them. One man is proud that his horse whinnies in the stall when he hears the beloved footstep. And some men give friendship to dogs they never give to women, and their hearts break when a hound dies. And to some folk the birds of the air will come and eat out of their hand, so confident are the birds. And the death of a rabbit is a great tragedy to children. There is a virgin glade in nearly all folks' hearts where neither blood nor marriage wander, but the love of animals possesses. It is some mystic link in the chain of creation.
But he never had it. Never could understand it, Morgan thought. After all, man is the lord of creation, Morgan decided--that's true isn't it?--and all living things were for him to use. He had all rights over them, even to life and death. That was how some folks looked at it--not crazy people like the Fitzpauls.
And Reynardine did n't like the way he broke horses. Reynardine did n't like the way he shot pheasants. She was a queer girl, but--God!--she was very beautiful!
Well, that was the whole story of it; they did n't get on. There grew a gulf between them, and was that his fault? he asked. Was it his fault he was n't insane? Was it his fault he was too much of a man for her?
And when she was to have a child, she expected so much of him. She never asked of course--oh, no! She would never ask for anything, but she followed him with dumb eyes. What did she expect, anyhow? It was no man's job to hang around a gravid woman all the time, holding her hand. A million women in the world were bearing children. What was there to it, after all? Every one did it.
And then she had run home. Let her run. Crazy coot!
And when she was dying and sent for him, did he refuse to go and see her, as many a man would have done? No, he went. He remembered well the soft April twilight; the dim white figure in the great bed, with the haunting eyes. And her four big brothers standing around with set, grim faces.
"My husband," she had said, "for anything I did to you here, for any way I hurt, will you please forgive me?"
"That's all right, Reynardine," he said. "We were just not suited. And I forgive you." Then, awkwardly: "I'm sorry to see you this way, Reynardine."
A light had gone out of her face:
"Then--good-by!" Her hand unclasped from his.
"Good-by!" he had said uncomfortably, and turned to go. He noticed three of the brothers look at the senior, Gilchrist, meaningly. Gilchrist turned to go after him. A cold shiver had gone down Morgan's spine. His knees trembled. And then came the very soft voice:
"Gilchrist, and brothers dear, in a minute maybe I 'll have gone with the twilight, and I shall not be able to talk to you again, ever again, with these human lips. And I 'm going to ask you just one more favor, brothers dear, my brothers. Please do it for your sister. Let my--let this man go!"
Then Gilchrist threw open the door.
"This is no place for you," he had said. "Go!"
A crazy breed! He had never heard from them again. Never had they asked him to see or support his daughter. He had even forgotten her name. But he did n't want to see her. He wanted to see no more of the Fitzpaul blood. She was living in the old place, he understood, which was hers now.
Well, let her--
But--funny! He could never get out of his mind's eye the vision of his wife sitting by the great piano, plucking out the ancient melody:
"If by chance you look for me Perhaps you 'll not me find, For I 'll be in my castle--"
The hounds shifted, grew keen. "Ay! Ay!" came the tongue of the finder. Scent was picked up again. "Ay! Ay! Ay!" went the pack, heads up, tails straight. There was a red flash ahead in the grassy field.
"Come up, Finn!" the master shoved his great horse onward.
"Ay! Ay! Ay!" They were off. "Ay! Ay! Ay!" Seventy hounds and forty horsemen. "Ay! Ay! Ay!" And one red fox running for his life. "Ay! Ay!" A dead fox or a broken neck! "Ay! Ay! Ay!"
V
For years he had been looking forward to this 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 that name of Fitzpaul! How he hated Reynardine, who had made him feel like a cur, though he wouldn'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 Nevison's expedition to the pole, and he lay somewhere in the immaculate Arctic snows with the inscription his comrades had written on a simple cross: "Here lies a very gallant Irish gentleman." And Kevin had died fighting the Turks in Asia. And Ulick! Ulick was somewhere in the depths of the Irish sea, where he went out with the coast-guards to rescue a vessel in distress. And Garrett was funniest 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 from 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! There was Crock Na Mero, the hill of the querns! There was--there was the abbey 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 underground.... 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 clump 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.