"Heard ye the arrow hurtle through the sky?
Heard ye the dragon monster's deathful cry?"
whispered Viola. "Mamma won't let me cheer, and I must have it out somehow."
And as I sprang up and hurried to Harold, she came with me, taking care to cast no look behind, for fear of detaining glances; and she put out both hands to shake his, as he stood with the smile lighting up his face as he saw the pleasure he had given; though Eustace never came forward, unable to rejoice where he had been so palpably and publicly excelled.
Hippolyta behaved well. She came up holding out her hand, and saying, "Well, Mr. Alison, if one is to fall, it is a pleasure to have so mighty a victor. But why did you never let me see before what a Palnatoke (if I must not say Tell) I had to deal with?"
"I had no time for the practices," said Harold, puzzled as to who Palnatoke was.
"Worse and worse! You don't mean that you shoot like this without practice?"
"Lucy taught me a little."
"Well, if heaven-born archers come down on one, there's nothing for it but submitting. Robin Hood must prevail," said Hippolyta, as the belt was handed over to Harold, with a sigh that made him say in excuse, "I would not have done it, but that Eustace wanted to have it in his hands, for family reasons."
"Then let him look to it; I mean to get it again next year. And, I say, Mr. Alison, I have a right to some compensation. All you archers are coming to lunch at Therford on Thursday, if the sun shines, to be photographed, you know. Now you must come to breakfast, and bring your lion's skin and your bow--to be done alone. It is all the consolation I ask. Make him, Lucy. Bring him."
There was no refusing; and that was the way the photograph came to be taken. We were reminded by a note after we went home, including in the invitation Eustace, who, after being a little sulky, had made up his mind that a long range was easier to shoot at than a short one, and so that he should have won the prize if he had had the chance; and the notion of being photographed was, of course, delightful to him.
"In what character shall you take me?" he asked of Miss Horsman, when we were going out on the lawn, and it dawned on him that Harry was to be a Hercules.
"Oh! as Adonis, of course," said Hippo.
"Or Eurystheus," whispered her sister.
Eustace did not understand, and looked pleased, saying something about a truly classical get up; but Harold muttered to me, "Aren't they making game of him?"
"They will take care not to vex him," I said.
But Harold could not overlook it, and took a dislike to the Horsmans on the spot, which all Hippolyta's genuine admiration of him could not overcome. She knew what the work of his eighteen months in England had been, and revered him with such enthusiasm for what she called his magnificent manhood and beneficence, as was ready on the least encouragement to have become something a good deal warmer; but whatever she did served to make her distasteful to him. First, she hastily shuffled over Eustace's portrait, because, as she allowed us to hear, "he would give her no peace till he was disposed of." And then she not only tormented her passive victim a good deal in trying to arrange him as Hercules, but she forgot the woman in the artist, and tried to make him bare his neck and shoulder in a way that made him blush while he uttered his emphatic "No, no!" and Baby Jack supported him by telling her she "would only make a prize-fighter of him." Moreover, he would have stood more at ease if the whole of Therford had not been overrun with dogs. He scorned to complain, and I knew him too well to do so for him; but it was a strain on his self-command to have them all smelling about his legs, and wanting to mumble the lion skin, especially Hippo's great bloodhound, Kirby, as big as a calf, who did once make him start by thrusting his long cold nose into his hand. Hippo laughed, but Harold could do nothing but force out a smile.
And I always saw the disgusted and bored expression most prominently in her performance, which at the best could never have given the grandeur of the pose she made him take, with the lion skin over his shoulder, and the arrows and bow in his hand. He muttered that a rifle would be more rational, and that he could hold it better, but withdrew the protest when he found that Hippo was ready to implore him to teach her to shoot with pistol, rifle--anything.
"Your brother can show you. You've only to fire at a mark," was all that could be got out of him.
Nor would he be entrapped into a beneficent talk. His great talent for silence served him well, and though I told him afterwards that he had not done Hippo justice--for she honestly wanted an opening for being useful--he was not mollified. "I don't like tongue," was all he further said of her.
But whatever Hippo was, or whatever she did, I shall always be grateful to her for that photograph.
CHAPTER X. DERMOT'S MARE.
All this time Dermot Tracy had been from home. He had not come back after the season, but had been staying with friends and going to various races, in which, as usual, he had heavy stakes. He persuaded my two nephews to meet him at Doncaster, where he ran one of the horses bred on his Irish estate, and afterwards to go and make him a visit at Killy Marey, County Kildare, where he used to stay about once a year, shooting or hunting, as the season might be, and always looking after his horses and entertaining all the squires and squireens of the neighbourhood, and many of the officers from the Curragh. The benefit of those visits was very doubtful both as to morals and purses, and Lord Erymanth pointedly said he was sorry when he heard that Harold and Eustace were of the party.
I do not know whether Lady Diana viewed them as bad companions for her son, or her son as a bad companion for them; but she was very severe about it, and when I thought of the hunt dinner at Foling, my heart sank, even while I was indignant at any notion of distrusting Harold; and it did indeed seem to me that he had learnt where to look for strength and self-command, and that he had a real hatred and contempt of evil. Yet I should have been more entirely happy about him if he had not still held aloof from all those innermost ordinances, of which he somehow did not feel the need, or understand the full drift. Nor would he bow himself to give to any man the confidence or the influence over him he had given to an incapable girl like me. And if I should have feared for the best brought up, most religious of young men, in such scenes as I was told were apt to take place at Killy Marey, how could I not be anxious for my nephews? But nothing ever turns out as one expects.
I was at Arked one day, and Lady Diana was telling me of the great rambling house at Killy Marey, and how, when she arrived as a bride, none of the doors would shut except two that would not open, behind one of which lived the family ghost; how the paper hung in festoons on the walls, and the chairs were of the loveliest primrose-coloured brocade; and how the green of the meadows was so wonderful, that she was always remembering it was the Emerald Isle; but how hopeless and impossible it was to get anything properly done, and how no good could be done where the Romish priests had interfered. All the old story of course. In the midst, a telegraph paper was brought to her; she turned deadly white, and bade me open it, for she could not. I knew she thought her son had met his father's fate, and expected to astonish her with the tidings that he was coming home by the next steamer, or that he had sent some game, or the like. Alas! no; the mother's foreboding had been too near the truth. The telegram was from Eustace: "Tracy has had a bad horse accident. The doctor wishes for you."
There was nothing for it but to speed the mother and daughter on their hurried start to catch the Holyhead packet and cross that night. I went home to await in terror and trembling the despatch I might receive, and to be enlivened by Mrs. Sam Alison's cheering accounts of all the accidents she could recollect. "Horses are dangerous creatures to meddle with, and your poor papa never would let me take the reins when we kept a gig--which was when he was living, you know, my dear. 'You never can trust their heels,' he used to say; and it was only last week little Cocker was kicked off, but that was a donkey, and they were using him shamefully," I felt as if a swarm of bees were humming in my ears, and walked about to make the suspense more tolerable, but I absolutely had no news at all till Viola's letter came. It was a long one, for she could be of no service as yet, and to write letters was at once her use and her solace.