Chapter XV: Madcap’s last Leap

There was a great meet of the Duranmore foxhounds at Kincorth, and on the lawn and about the drive were hunters in abundance: gentlemen in scarlet coats and buckskins by the dozen, grooms _ad libitum_, and hangers-on past counting.

It was a clear, bright morning. Every man’s spirits were of the highest; every man’s girths of the tightest; everybody was expecting prime sport; and the breakfast of which they had just partaken was one certainly not calculated to damp their courage or to retard their pace.

Wine had been drunk freely—conversation had circulated more freely still. Mr. Maxwell Drewitt was a good host, and knew how to make his guests comfortable; and the absence of a lady of the house tended, in the opinion of most present, to make the repast pleasanter still. Mr. Drewitt was perhaps the gayest of all present. He laughed, he joked, he talked, he drank—not to excess—but certainly beyond his wont; and he backed his mare, Madcap, to leap Durrow River—if, as was most likely, the fox took that course—better than the youngest hunter on the lawn. “She is nine years old,” he said; “but I would not change her for any other animal in my stable.”

“It is a shame for you to be hunting her still,” remarked Mr. Frost, who was Lady Marsden’s nephew.

“It would be a shame for you to hunt her,” retorted Maxwell; “for you ride, I suppose, thirteen stone every pound of it; but I, who am a light weight, cannot possibly distress her; and then she loves the tally-ho! and the long swinging gallop after the hounds as much as either of us.”

They had all risen from table by this time, and were standing, some on the lawn, some in the hall, some on the drive, making altogether a bright and animated picture.

Nothing prettier indeed in its way can be imagined than the scene at Kincorth that morning. Far below lay Duranmore Bay, with its green islands shining like emeralds in the beams of the midday sun. Although it was winter, the morning had broken up clear and bright and pleasant; the mountains were not enveloped in mists; you could see over the country for miles and miles; in the distance the Twelve Pins showed blue and distinct against the sky, while for foreground the looker-on had the lawn and trees and gardens of Kincorth; steeds plunging and pawing; grooms running hither and thither; the dogs kept in order by the whipper-in, and red coats and buckskins and top-boots appearing at every turn.

The fulness of life seemed to be in that place at that moment; it was impossible to imagine sickness prostrating one of those men, sorrow touching one of their hearts, anguish wringing one of their souls.

The winter’s sun looked down upon the scene, brightening and beautifying all it touched.

“One moment, Mr. Drewitt, if you please.” It was Ryan, who spoke to his employer when Maxwell came out to mount.

“Make haste, then.”

“I should like to see you alone.”

“What a fool you must be, Ryan, coming at this time! I cannot leave my guests. Say what you have got to say here, or else leave it to a more convenient opportunity.”

“I must speak to you in private. Lead your horse up to that privet hedge, if you do not wish to come into the house, for speak to you I must and will.”

Maxwell looked at the man who uttered these words, looked at him from head to foot, but Ryan never flinched.

“I am in earnest,” he said; “and I am sober. Let me speak to you; I will not keep you five minutes.”

Mr. Drewitt flung the reins to a groom.

“Hold her a second,” he said, and turned aside with his lawyer.

“Now, what excuse have you to make for intruding upon me?” he fiercely demanded: “what do you mean by coming up here at such a time?”

“I have a letter from London this morning,” said Ryan. “Mrs. Drewitt is dead.”

“How the devil does her death concern me?” asked Maxwell.

“It concerns me,” answered Ryan. “There is her son dead—here is she dead. Mr. Drewitt, I can’t stand it. I won’t stand it any longer.”

“What do you mean? Do you think I killed them?”

“Yes, I do,” returned Ryan; “you and I between us. I wish to God I had let old Neill do his worst! I wish to the Lord I had been hung, drawn, and quartered, before I ever was indebted to you for sixpence! But I won’t hold my tongue any longer. You promised me to do well for Mrs. Drewitt and her children, and this is the end of it—this!”

“Ryan, you are drunk,” said his employer, putting a curb upon his temper as he spoke.

“If I am, it is on grief then,” was the reply. “Oh! why did I ever put it in your power to beggar them—to send them away from home, and friends, and all, to die!”

“That is a question you ought to be able to answer for yourself without any difficulty,” sneered Maxwell Drewitt; “and as for holding your tongue, or not holding it, you can exercise your own discretion. I am not in your power. You may try to ruin me if you like, but you will only ruin yourself. You may say you gave the later will to me, and added the codicil to the former will yourself, at my dictation; but you have only your own word; you have no proof, no corroborative evidence. And look here, Ryan,” he added; “so sure as you begin a game of that kind, I will have you shut up in a mad-house for life. Poor fool! you thought to frighten me, I suppose. Go home, man, go home; I am not such a born idiot as to let any created being have the whip-hand of me.”

“But I have the whip-hand of you,” answered Ryan; “and if you don’t do the thing that is right by that woman’s children, by—I’ll use it. I am no fool either, Maxwell Drewitt. Yes, for all your properties, you are no more than Maxwell Drewitt to me now. And I knew that that Campnell you are so taken on with is your own son, and that it was he, not Harold Drewitt, who should have stood in the dock. Ha! have I touched you at last? Who is the fool now? Can nobody put two and two together, do you think, but yourself? I won’t keep silence,” he went on passionately; “it was only last night I was dreaming about Mrs. Drewitt, and I thought she came to the foot of my bed and said: ‘Ryan, you know all about that robbery; clear my poor boy’s memory.’ And I believe she was there, that is, her spirit. I am sure she came and parted the curtains, and spoke just those very words to me; and I will clear his memory, unless you give back Kincorth, or Kincorth’s value, to him who has the best right to it.”

“They are waiting for me, and I must go,” said Maxwell Drewitt, and his voice sounded so strange and unnatural, that Ryan’s rage was quieted for the moment. “What do you mean to do?” he asked.

“What do you mean to do?” and Maxwell faced round on him like a maniac.

“I mean to go to London and tell Brian Drewitt all,” was the reply.

“You can tell nothing without criminating yourself,” said Maxwell.

“I know that.”

“And you will tell him—about—tell him of what you suspect, in short?”

“Yes, everything. I swore long ago I would be even with you one day; and I will be even with you now.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I am;” and the pair drew back a step or two from one another, and looked each in his enemy’s face as they had done years before—years and years previously, in that little cottage down by the sea.

“I don’t think you will,” began Maxwell, after he had stared for a moment full into Ryan’s eyes; “I don’t think you will. You say Arthur Campnell is my son, and you say right; but you have not said who Arthur Campnell’s mother is. Can you guess?”

“No, and do not want to guess. What can it signify to me who she was?”

“Will you guess?”

“I have told you I will not.”

“Shall I tell you her name?”

“If you like.”

“Do you ask me to tell you?”

“I do not.”

“Then I will tell you without your asking. Arthur Campnell’s mother lives over at Durrow, and her husband’s name is Connor. Now do your worst. The man must get up very early in the morning who means to play card against card with me.”

“You are the damndest villain, and the most cursed liar!”

“Am I? Go and ask your sister if I lie.”

“I will; and if I find you are lying, as I feel sure you are—if I make sure you have thrown dirt on her name to shield your son from disgrace, then, Maxwell Drewitt, then the dogs pity your cries, for I won’t. I swear I won’t!”

But he spoke the last words to the air, for Mr. Drewitt had already left him, and was walking rapidly across the lawn to the spot where his horse stood.

In his heart he was cursing the hunt and the guests, the sunshine and the breeze; and as he rode to the piece of plantation on the side of Calgillan Hill, where the underwood was thick and the fox hidden away, he wished he had sent Ryan out of the country long before, and that, let come or go what would, he had not told him anything about Jenny, whom he had betrayed and ruined and deserted in the years that were now so very far behind him—in the years that could return no more.

“You were right—he has made for Durrow,” said Mr. Frost; and the words were scarcely out of his lips before the hounds were off in full cry, and the horses off after them.

On and away; galloping across the fields; leaping the eternal stone fences; plunging through bogs; dashing over the moorland—in the excitement of that mad ride Maxwell forgot everything save the wild pleasure which is caused by passing at the full top of a horse’s speed through the air—forgot everything save the pace at which Madcap was going, and the ease with which she took her leaps.

“Now for the river!” he said, and as though Madcap had heard his words, she laid back her ears, and bounded on like a thing possessed, towards the bank.

Age had not stiffened her limbs, nor crippled her pace. There was not a horse in the field could keep up with her save one, and that was a hunter belonging to Captain Crabbe, and ridden by that gentleman’s son, who, having been trying all the way to pass Madcap, now shot by, almost touching the chesnut as he did so, and eliciting a volley of oaths from Maxwell for his awkwardness.

Boring on the bit, Madcap tore along. All her spirit was up, and she flew after Captain Crabbe’s fleabitten old screw, as Maxwell had often contemptuously called the horse, like the wind.

Maxwell had his work cut out to hold her. It was a beautiful piece of turf, smooth and level as a bowling-green. There was no break, no pause, till they came to the river, which ran broad and deep between two steep and awkward banks away to the sea. Mr. Crabbe was already close on the brink; but at that very moment, when he thought he was going to beat the chesnut for ever—when with a blow of his heel and cut of his whip he was urging his horse to the leap, the brute swerved suddenly round, and sticking its plain ugly neck out straight before it, galloped back as hard as it could go along the way it had come.

Mr. Crabbe, taken completely unawares by this sudden manœuvre, had scarcely recovered himself from the shock of the sudden baulk before there came a tremendous crash.

Maxwell, tearing on for the leap himself, could not get out of the way. He saw the collision coming, but was powerless to avert it. He felt a shock just as though a battering ram had come up against him; a shock which lifted him right out of the saddle—lifted him so high, that he could remember the reins being jerked out of his hand; and then he came down flat, with his back on the ground and his face to the sky; in which position he lay while the whole field jumped over him.

“Drewitt’s down—Drewitt’s dead!” was the shout; but not a man could stop his horse to look after him until Mr. Frost, who had not been going at quite so furious a pace as the others, managed to pull up, and dismount.

“I’m not dead,” Maxwell managed to say, “but I’m badly hurt; don’t touch me. I didn’t try to move because I knew the horses would leap me, and that if I stirred I should likely have my brains knocked out. Let me lie quiet for a while; don’t stop for me, go on.”

But there were about half a dozen gathered about him by this time who would not go on; who sent to the nearest cabin and had a door taken off its hinges, on which Maxwell, groaning with pain, was laid gently and tenderly.

“The mare?” he said; but nobody answered him.

“The mare?” he repeated, and Mr. Frost asked—

“Where is the chesnut? he wants to know.”

“She is all right,” answered some one.

“You are not telling me the truth?” Maxwell said, turning his eyes on the speaker, for he was too much shaken to move his head. “I want to know about the mare.”

“Well, then, if you must know, poor old Madcap has taken her last leap, and she died in taking it.”

The injured man made no answer; he closed his eyes; whilst all the people around looked at one another.

There was not a person present who did not feel grieved at Madcap’s end.

She had been to each of them almost as a friend—so gallant, so fleet, so daring, so proud of herself, and her small head, and her arched neck, and her flowing mane, and her shining coat—so proud, so petted, so dainty, so conceited, and so beautiful, that Lord Marsden once said, “He thought there must be a woman’s soul inside her, for that he had never seen an animal give herself such airs and graces before.”

Poor Chessy—poor Madcap! She had made on like the rest for her leap, and taken it—taken it at the worst point she could have chosen. Missing her footing on the other side, she fought desperately for a moment to keep herself from slipping while she tried to scramble up the bank. One man made a clutch at her bridle, but missed it, fortunately, perhaps, for him; for, with a scream almost such as a human being might have uttered, she fell backwards into the river.

Flynn had always said she was as sensible as a Christian, and those who saw that mad struggle for life, who heard that sound which is never uttered by a horse, save under the influence of some terrible pain, or some frightful fear, thought that Madcap must have had a kind of human comprehension of what the river’s bed held for her—great blocks of granite, which cut her all to bits; huge stones, against which she was knocked all to pieces; and just enough water to float her, lying on her side and kicking convulsively, down the stream, which was dyed red with her blood.

Poor Madcap—poor beauty! She kept her head up as long as she could, but soon her strength failed, her neck sank below the surface, the water filled her nostrils, and before many minutes it was all over.

“She had,” as Maxwell’s informant truly said, “taken her last leap, and died in taking it.”

“And there’s not her like left in Ireland,” remarked Flynn, who in the course of the afternoon dragged her, stiff and stark, out of the river, at a curve half a mile below where the accident happened, and then he fell to sobbing over her like a child.

“I’ll hamstring that brute of Crabbe’s the first time I get the chance,” he said to the grooms who came with him; “a score of such ill-looking divils wouldn’t make one of her. Not but what we must all die some day,” he concluded; “and I don’t know that I wouldn’t as soon she had died that way as any other.”

As for Maxwell, in the midst of his own pain, in the midst of his own agony, he could not get the thought of that dead animal out of his mind.

It was not because he had ever cared for her, as some men do care for their horses; it was not that her wise, winning ways, her playful tricks, her never-failing spirit had made him feel for her any real affection; but he had been proud of her, vain of her. She had been his, and she was the best mare in the county; and above and beyond all this, there seemed to Maxwell something more than mere accident about the whole affair.

Like many men who are utterly irreligious, he was superstitious; and, lying there with his eyes shut, his mind was busy, piecing, in a kind of delirium, past, present, and future into a connected whole.

He saw Brian bidding his farewell to that mare the night he left Kincorth and went out into the world. He saw Harold taking that desperate leap at the Headlands; and he remembered, at the same time, that Harold was dead. He had heard that morning of Mrs. Drewitt’s death; he had been asked by Ryan to act justly at last by his uncle’s living children—and he refused. Ryan had threatened him; and he in return stabbed the lawyer in his tenderest point.

He had ridden out on Harold’s mare; and now Madcap was dead, too; while he was being carried, though he did not know it, straight as the mare who bore him could go to Durrow.

The same thing, or worse, might have happened, no matter on what horse he had been mounted; but, as the “wicked flee when no man pursueth,” so the wicked likewise are apt to be superstitious about circumstances to which better men would attach no importance; and the fever, which was already upon him, made Maxwell look at all things with a fearful and troubled mind.

He thought of what Ryan had said about Mrs. Drewitt; and he wondered if, when he was alone, she would come and stand at the foot of his bed, too.

How many more times was Harold going to take that hedge?—how often was his uncle’s head to drop forward on Brian’s breast? He knew they were carrying him to Kincorth; for he could see Kathleen standing at the hall-door; and Jenny, too—Jenny, with a child in her arms; he and she were wandering through the glen. They could not get the cover of the will opened—the seals would not break. They need not mind—he could tell them what was in the codicil—he had got Ryan to add it. Yes, and he could let them into a secret about what would make ink look faded! What was that? Was the house falling? He was going up in the air—up—up—up; and then his mind ceased to wander—for he fainted.