The Peculiar Exploits of Brigadier Ffellowes (10 page)

             
"We were chatting one fall morning after a very dull run and I asked him why he always wore a black hunting coat of a non-hunt member. I knew he belonged to some hunt or other and didn't understand why he never used their colors.

             
" 'Highly embarrassing to explain to you, Donald, of all people,' he said, but he was smiling. 'My family were Irish and very patriotic during our Revolution. No pink coats ('pink' being the term for hunting red) for us. Too close to the hated Redcoat Army in looks, see? So we wear light green and I frankly get damned tired of being asked what it is. That's all.'

             
"I was amused for several reasons and said, 'Of course I understand. Some of our own hunts wear other colors, you know. But I thought green coats were for foot hounds, beagles,
bassetts
and such?'

             
" 'Ours is much lighter, like grass, with buff lapels,' he said. He seemed a little ill at ease for
some reason, as our horses shifted and stamped under the hot Virginia sun. 'It's a family hunt, you see. No non-Waldron can wear the coat. This sounds pretty snobby, so again, I avoid questions by not wearing it except at home. Betty feels the same way and she hates black. Here she comes now. What did you think of the ride, Sis?'

             
" 'Not very exciting,' she said quietly, looking around so that she should not be convicted of rudeness to our hosts. I haven't mentioned Betty Waldron, have I? Even after all these years, it's still painful.

             
"She was nineteen years old, very pale and no sun ever raised so much as a freckle. Her eyes were almost black, her hair midnight and her voice very gentle and sad. She was quiet, seldom smiled and when she did my heart turned over. Usually, her thoughts were miles away and she seemed to walk in a dream. She also rode superbly, almost absent-mindedly, to look at her."

             
Ffellowes sighed and arched his hands together in his lap, his gaze fixed on the rug before him.

             
"I was a poor devil of an artillery subaltern, few prospects save for my pay, but I could dream, as long as I kept my mouth shut. She seemed to like me as much, or even more, than the gaudy lads who were always flocking about and I felt I had a tiny, the smallest grain of hope. I'd never said a thing. I knew already the family must be staggeringly rich and I had my pride. But also, as I say, my dreams.

             
" 'Let's ask Donald home and give him some real sport,' I suddenly heard Can say to her.

             
" 'When?' she asked sharply, looking hard at him.

             
" 'How about the end of
cubbing
season? Last week in October. Get the best of both sports, adult and young. Hounds will be in good condition and it's our best time of year.' He smiled at me and patted his horse. 'What say, Limey? Like some real hunting, eight hours sometimes?'

             
"I was delighted and surprised, because I'd heard several people fishing rather obviously for invitations to the Waldron place at one time or another and all being politely choked off. I had made up my mind never to place myself where such a rebuff could strike me. There was a goodish number of fortune-hunting Europeans about just then, some of them English, and they made me a trifle ill. But I was surprised and hurt too, by Betty's reaction.

             
" 'Not this fall, Can,' she said, her face even whiter than usual. 'Not—this—fall!' The words were stressed separately and came out with an intensity I can't convey.

             
" 'As the head of the family, I'm afraid what I say goes,' said Canler in a voice I'd certainly never heard him use before. It was heavy and dominating, even domineering. As I watched, quite baffled, she choked back a sob and urged her horse away from us. In a moment her slender black back and shining topper were lost in the milling sea of the main body of the hunt. I was really hurt badly.

             
" 'Now look here, old boy,' I said.
'I
don't know what's going on, but I can't possibly accept your invitation under these circumstances. Betty obviously loathes the idea and I wouldn't dream of coming against her slightest wish.'

             
He urged his horse over until we were only a yard apart. 'You must, Donald. You don't understand. I don't like letting out family secrets, but I'm going to have to in this case. Betty was very roughly treated by a man last year, in the fall. A guy who seemed to like her and then just walked out, without a word, and disappeared. I know you'll never speak of this to her and she'd rather die than say anything to you. But I haven't been able to get her interested in things ever since. You're the first man she's liked from that time to this and you've got to help me pull her out of this depression. Surely you've noticed how vague and dreamy she is? She's living in a world of unreality, trying to shut out unhappiness. I can't get her to see a doctor and even if I could, it probably wouldn't do any good. What she needs is some decent man being kind to her in the same surroundings she was made unhappy in. Can you see why I need you as a friend so badly?' He was damned earnest and it was impossible not to be touched.

             
" 'Well, that's all very well,' I mumbled, 'but she's still dead set against my coming, you know. I simply can't come in the face of such opposition. You mentioned yourself as head of the family. Do I take it that your parents are dead? Because if so, then Betty is my hostess. It won't do, damn it all.'

             
" 'Now look,' he said. 'Don't turn me down. By tomorrow morning she'll ask you herself, I swear. I promise that if she doesn't the whole thing's off. Will you come if she does and give me a hand at cheering her up? And we are orphans, by the way, just us two.'

             
Of course I agreed. I was wild to come. To get leave would be easy. There was nothing much but routine at the embassy anyway and mixing with people like the
Waldrons
was as much a part of my duties as going to any Fort Leavenworth maneuvers.

             
"And sure enough, Betty rang me up at my Washington flat the next morning and apologized for her behavior the previous day. She sounded very dim and tired but perfectly all right. I asked her twice if she was sure she wanted my company and she repeated that she did, still apologizing for the day before. She said she had felt feverish and didn't know why she'd spoken as she had. This was good enough for me and so it was settled.

             
"Thus, in the last week in October, I found myself hunting the coverts of—well, call it the valley of Waldrondale. What a glorious, mad time it was! The late Indian summer lingered and each cold night gave way to a lovely misty dawn. The main Waldron lands lay in the hollow of a spur of the Appalachian range. Apparently some early Waldron, an emigrant from Ireland during the
1600's
, I gathered, had gone straight west into Indian territory and somehow laid claim to a perfectly immense tract of country. What is really odd is that the red men seemed to feel it was all fine, that he should do so.

             
" 'We always got along with our Indians,' Canler told me once. 'Look around the valley at the faces, my own included. There's some Indian blood in all of us. A branch of the lost Erie nation, before the Iroquois destroyed them, according to the family records.'

             
"It was quite true that when one looked, the whole valley indeed appeared to have a family resemblance. The women were very pale and both sexes were black-haired and dark-eyed, with lean, aquiline features. Many of them, apparently local farmers, rode with the hunt and fine riders they were too—well-mounted and fully familiar with field etiquette.

             
"Waldrondale was a great, heart-shaped valley, of perhaps eight thousand acres. The
Waldrons
leased some of it to cousins and farmed some themselves. They owned still more land outside the actual valley, but that was all leased. It was easy to see that in Waldrondale itself they were actually rulers. Although both Betty and Can were called by their first names, every one of the valley dwellers was ready and willing to drop whatever he or she was doing at a moment's notice to oblige either of them in the smallest way. It was not subservience exactly, but instead almost an eagerness, of the sort a monarch might have gotten in the days when kings were sacred beings. Canler shrugged when I mentioned how the matter struck me.

             
" 'We've just been here a long time, that's all. They've simply got used to us telling them what to do. When the first Waldron came over from Galway, a lot of retainers seem to have come with him. So it's not really a strictly normal American situation.' He looked lazily at me. 'Hope you don't think we're too effete and baronial here, now that England's becoming so democratized?'

             
" 'Not at all,' I said quickly and the subject was changed. There had been an unpleasant undertone in his speech—almost jeering, and for some reason he seemed rather irritated.

             
"What wonderful hunting we had! The actual members of the hunt, those who wore the light green jackets, were only a dozen or so, mostly close relatives of
Canler's
and Betty's. When we had started the first morning at dawn I'd surprised them all for I was then a full member of the Duke of Beaufort's pack, and as a joke more than anything else had brought the blue and yellow-lapelled hunting coat along. The joke was that I had been planning to show then, the
Waldrons
, one of our own variant colors all along, ever since I had heard about theirs. They were all amazed at seeing me not only not in black, but in "non-red" so to speak. The little withered huntsman, a local farmer named McColl, was absolutely taken aback and for some reason seemed frightened. He made a curious remark, of which I caught only two words, "Sam Haines," and then made a sign which I had no trouble at all interpreting. Two fingers at either end of a fist have always been an attempt to ward off the evil eye, or some other malign spiritual influence. I said nothing at the time, but during dinner asked Betty who Sam Haines was and what had made old McColl so nervous about my blue coat. Betty's reaction was ever more peculiar. She muttered something about a local holiday and also that my coat was the 'wrong color for an Englishman,' and then abruptly changed the subject. Puzzled, I looked up, to notice that all conversation seemed to have died at the rest of the big table. There were perhaps twenty guests, all the regular hunt members and some more besides from the outlying parts of the valley. I was struck by the intensity of the very similar faces, male and female, all staring at us, lean, pale and dark-eyed, all with that coarse raven hair. For a moment I had a most peculiar feeling that I had blundered into a den of some dangerous creatures or other, not unlike a wolf. Then Canler laughed from the head of the table and conversation started again. The illusion was broken, as a thrown pebble shatters a mirrored pool of water, and I promptly forgot it.

             
"The golden, wonderful days passed as October drew to a close. We were always up before dawn and hunted the great vale of Waldrondale sometimes until noon. Large patches of dense wood had been left deliberately
uncleared
here and there and made superb coverts. I never had such a good going, not even in Leicestershire at its best. And I was with Betty, who seemed happy, too. But although we drew almost the entire valley at one time or another there was one area we avoided, and it puzzled me to the point of asking Can about it one morning.

             
Directly behind the Big House (it had no other name) the ground rose very sharply in the direction of the high blue hills beyond. But a giant hedge, all tangled and overgrown, barred access to whatever lay up the slope. The higher hills angled down, as it were, as if to enclose the house and grounds, two arms of high rocky ground almost reaching the level of the house on either side. Yet it was evident that an area of some considerable extent, a smallish plateau in fact, lay directly behind the house, between it and the sheer slopes of the mountain, itself some jagged outlier of the great Appalachian chain. And the huge hedge could only have existed for the purpose of barring access to this particular piece of land.

             
" 'It's a sanctuary,' Canler said when I asked him. 'The family has a burial plot there and we always go there on—on certain days. It's been there since we settled the area, has some first growth timber among other things, and we like to keep it as it is. But I'll show it to you before you leave if you're really interested.' His voice was incurious and flat, but again I had the feeling, almost a sixth sense if you like, that I had somehow managed to both annoy and, odder, amuse him. I changed the subject and we spoke of the coming day's sport.