Changeling, and Other Stories
There a woman was down at a fence and men stopped to help her. There a
riderless horse went by, mane tossing, stirrups flying. Now a groan,
now a curse. The country-side flew by as in a motion picture. Patch
of brown, patch of green, patch of gray, like a crazy-quilt. The crack
of hunting crops, the _ppk_ of spurs. "Tally-ho, boys! tally-ho! On
hounds! On!"
Morgan with certainty crept ahead of the field, not a hundred yards
behind master and huntsman. Beneath him the great gray moved like a
steam-engine. A little steadying forward, a rush and a thud, and they
were over. Now a ditch was taken with a clatter, now a fence cleared
nicely, now through a blackthorn hedge, Morgan's arm up to protect his
eyes. Five minutes! Seven. Eight minutes! Nine. Ten, by the Lord
Harry! And suddenly they were at Kyle na Maroo--Dead Men's Wood. And
the hounds were sniffing, wailing, at check.
An old earth-stopper, wizened, purple-lipped, like a grave-digger of
"Hamlet," appeared like a troll.
"Into the wood he went, your Honor," he addressed the master. "Into
the wood the Red One went, your Honor, like a man diving into his own
house."
"Are all the holes stopped, Mickey Dan?"
"Stopped is it, your Honor. Sure they 're stopped as if they were the
burrows of the devil himself and the saints to be out hunting him on
the judgment-day. Stopped is it? Sure, a worm itself could n't get in
or out of them the way I 'm after stopping them with interest and grand
care--"
"All right, Mickey Dan!" The master interrupted. "Hoick in!" He
ordered the huntsmen.
"Leu in, boys, leu in. Tinker! David! Dermot! Ranger! Tally in,
beauties! Tally in!"
Morgan pulled up his hunter and turned around to watch the field come
up, no longer bunched, but straggling now. The burst to check had been
too much for them. His horse was still fresh, his seat easy. He had
done a notable thing, following so closely on the master's mount--the
great racer that had won the Grand National--and the huntsman's mare,
fleet as a greyhound, with so little weight up. Morgan desired a word
of commendation, even a look of envy. But they took no notice of him.
He might have been some old fox-hunter, invisible, long dead, riding a
specter horse, over some well-remembered run, for all the attention
they paid him. To them he was n't there; he did n't exist.
And because of Reynardine.
And what had he done to Reynardine? It was n't his fault. It was
hers. She was in love with him, and then she turned and was not. Was
it his fault that a woman was fickle?
Yes, she was in love with him. He could even yet see her dark
murmuring eyes in the golden light of the candles, as she set there in
her white frock and sang to him, her beautifully cut ivory hands
plucking haunting melody from a pianoforte as from some old-time
clavichord.
"Sun and dark I followed her,
Her eyes did brightly shine:
She took me o'er the mountains,
Did my sweet Reynardine.
If by chance you look for me
Perhaps you'll not me find--"
Oh, damn! What did she ever come into his life for, anyway! She
didn't want a man. She wanted a poet. Crazy! That's what she was,
crazy as a coot. He supposed her daughter--their daughter--was as
crazy as she!
First of all there 'd been the trouble about the hunting. She never
said a word about it, but her face had blanched the first morning he
saddled up for the Lonth. She had expected him, he laughed, to have
the same crazy notions as her family. And her face had been drawn with
pain when he came back in the evening. And she had said nothing. Too
proud. Too damn crazy and too proud!
That evening he had asked her to play "Reynardine"--not that he liked
the tune; he'd rather have had something popular, something with body
to it, none of your blasted wailing folk-songs. But he just thought it
might please her to have him ask. She shook her head, and plunged into
Chopin.
"I don't think I could play--'Reynardine'--to-night," she said.
And she had never played or sung "Reynardine" to him again.
She and her folk had such darn queer notions. They thought more of a
horse under them than themselves. They went to infinite pains and
immense time to train a green horse or break in a dog where another
person with a flick of spurs or, a crack of the whip could do it in
half the time. True, they did it well. But, after all, you did n't
make human friendships with animals. You made them do what you wanted
to; or if they did n't-- That was a man's way.
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