Changeling, and Other Stories

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. "Leu in, lads, leu in! Ranger, Rambler, Tinker, Tim! On to him, beauties, on to him!" But the hounds were at fault, utterly. They howled with baffled desire. They went to and fro, sterns twitching, noses aground. Two or three beaten hunters turned up, their horses gone, their fire quenched, sitting dully in the saddle, thankful for the respite of check. "We 've overrun," the huntsman grumbled. "I 'm afraid so, Willie John," the master nodded. But some secondary sense told Morgan the fox was there. He had gone to ground and the hounds had failed to mark him. "Try a short up-wind cast," the master directed. The hounds were halloed out, and as they swung to the left, Morgan noticed the red shadow flit along a ditch, slip through a hedge. He spurred his horse in excitement. "Yoi doit!" Morgan called. "View halloo!" But some trick of wind muffled his voice. Behind him three hundred yards away the hounds were following the huntsman about, heads up. The fox was tired, his brush heavy with mud and dragging as he ran. Behind him Morgan thundered alone. He damned the huntsman. He damned the hounds. "They 're going to miss, blast their stupid heads!" But he kept on. His hope was that the fox would turn, and the huntsman and hounds see him, and coming up, finish the day's work. But the fox kept onward. Now across a plowed field, now across fallow land. Here a fence, here a ditch, here a hedge. What was the use of following him, with no hounds? But a mania arose in Morgan's brain, and he could n't bear to drop the chase now, so near to completion. A vast anger arose in him. He felt he had been betrayed. Never was a huntsman so stupid. Never hounds so bad. The fox ahead of him put on a new spurt, and Morgan dug his heels into his horse's flanks. Where was it heading for? He looked up for a moment and saw the four-foot crumbling wall of the old abbey. So there 's where it thought sanctuary might be found. The fox sought the protection of the Fitzpauls, even now they were dead. A sinister grin passed over Morgan's face. Of a sudden he felt diabolical. Others might respect that sanctuary, but not he! He was n't crazy with sentiment. A hunter, he! He 'd hunt it over the legions of dead Fitzpauls. He 'd hunt it over Reynardine's grave, by God! How would she like that? Eh? He 'd kill that fox if he had to run it blind and throttle it with his bare hands. "I 'll get you," he laughed. The fox gathered itself for a last effort. He saw the whirl of its brush, saw it leap, disappear.... Morgan steadied his hunter for an instant. Suddenly gave it reins and spurs. Looked up, as it flew toward the wall. From his height he could see within and his hair rose in a dreadful chill. For standing there was a white figure, with a book in her hand. Against the white dress the red fox cowered. The face was the face of Reynardine. The years were the years of Reynardine. The eyes were the eyes of Reynardine, black, deep, dilated with fear. "Reynardine! Reynardine!" A cry of terror broke from him. An immense panic seized him, and his hands checked the horse as it rose to the jump--a savage jerk on curb and snaffle. The gray was already in the air. Its hind legs came down uncertain. Its great bulk fell backward. Fear flooded him like cold water. In an instant he knew his neck would be broken like a dry twig. Christ! There it went! Snap! VII "Dark childeen, what is wrong with you? What is wrong? There was a wing in my heart until I saw you coming." "Nurse Ellen, there 's a man dead at the abbey. I saw him die, with my two eyes." "_O alanna veg_! Is it any one we know? It isn't the master, is it, or Sir Maurice?" "No, Nurse Ellen, no! It's no one I know. I was sitting reading by Mother's grave, and a wee red fox, a wee hunted fox, ran up to me for help. And then the man came jumping the wall, and his horse reared and he was killed. I never saw him before, but we know him, Nurse Ellen. I know we do." "Why dotey child? Why do you say so?" "He saw me and he took me for Mother, Nurse Ellen. He called, 'Reynardine!'" "Was he a dour, black man, child of grace? Would you be afraid of him, and he alive?" "Yes, that's he, Nurse Ellen. Who is it we know?" "It's no one we know, _a lanna_. No one at all." "But he called, 'Reynardine!'" "You only think so, dark childeen, you trembling there and standing by your mother's grave. A trick your mind played you, _machree dheelish_. He was no one you know, or nothing to you. Only a strange man was it, a strange bad man." DRAMATIS PERSONÆ I It must be for the thousandth time now he was sitting down at the neat table looking out on the little lawn, and trying to get his ideas together, trying to get something new, something startling, that would awaken these hard-boiled men who had control of theaters, magazines, publishing houses to the sense that he was alive, worth while, valuable. If he could only think up a new detective, or--or something. Any other than he would have given up the game long ago, but he knew he had talent--he would n't go quite so far as to say genius, but great talent. It was no use their turning him down all the time. He was certain they never read the stuff. He was certain, too, there was some trick, some knack he had n't discovered. Just some little trick. These men of national, international fame--he could see from their faces they had no especial brains, any more than he had. But just some little trick he could n't get. He had taken courses in writing, gone to schools of journalism, and here were all his manuscripts with neat rejection slips; here was what he thought the great American novel battered and dog-eared, a study of the temptations of a girl in the great city; and here was his crook drama, that some filthy reader had marked with the rim of a coffee cup. It was enough to make a man quit. But he would n't quit. He 'd be as big as the biggest of them. He, too, would have his pictures in the papers, not gaunt and bitter as most of them seemed, but pleasant, dignified, literary. And his picture would look like an author's, with its well-marked features, its masculine little mustache, its intellectual glasses. And he, too, would be interviewed. And he, too, would sign contracts involving great sums of money. And there would be gossip about him, too, in the papers, where in Florida he was spending the winter vacation, what he was doing in summer. He would n't quit. Had n't they all said at school and college he was cut out to be a writer? Had n't he gone to Europe for six months? And, what was more, had n't he the money his father, the hardware man, had left him? Had n't he his home? He could stick it out. His home! His wife! If instead of these few trees, this lawn, the outlook of the quiet sound, if instead of here he lived somewhere in the welter of affairs, wouldn't he be better? Somewhere things changed, where one did not have to go three quarters of an hour in a train to the theater. Down town in New York. Only trees and grass and water and sky here. Nothing to write about. And his wife, Berenice--oh, she was a sweet girl, a nice girl, but--hadn't he perhaps made a mistake? She was so good and wholesome! Too much? Would n't it have been better to be married to--to an actress, or a sculptress, or--or something. Some one who could feel things; who would n't smile, and be nice. Berenice was all right, but-- And his mother. She was a nice, darling person, but--she did n't just understand. She was just a mother, like anybody's mother: If she could feel the great complex things! But she was just loving, and everything he did was right. Berenice, and his mother ... the trees, the water ... essential barrenness of life ... nothing to write about ... so unfair. II Because Barry had hinted it annoyed him to have her in the house while he was trying to write, Berenice had decided to go out for an hour or so, to give the poor lad a chance. And for a few minutes it bothered her to be idling, whereas there were so many little things that needed her attention. A house became so weary. It needed a flick of the hand here and there, a touch to flowers. But the white road, and the arching blue-green trees, and the drift of the dogwood--a cloud, not a flower, did it seem, so delicately balanced was it in the May air--all these took her eyes, and the immense miracle of spring drew her thoughts from the gracious artifice of the house. How gently, how imperceptibly it came, a little curling wave of the west wind, and the clearly pitched note of an adventuring bird! It was like the moon, spring was; a clear thin line of silver in the gray sky, like the minute green of the waking willow-tree, and it grew ... under your eyes was its sweet benevolence. And it was hard to go to sleep at night, so much was being accomplished, for fear you would miss some phase of the return of beauty. Oh, the little birds ... so fussy, so intense about their nests. The showers like great sheets of silver; and after each the slim trees were more like pretty ladies, and the great thick trees like pleasant stalwart men. And the flowers came shyly, demurely, just as young girls might come; just as she herself, Berenice, felt, acted when she was fifteen, and was brought into a roomful of strange people. And she stopped for an instant at the dark pool where the little turtles were busy, swimming to and fro, a clear-cut, fine line on the dusky water, a minute head with crystalline beads of eyes, just showing ... and if they thought you were watching them they dived--a flick and