It opened on a shrieking
hinge, and she was out into a pale grey dawn, pure and cold, with the
shiver and freshness of new life in it.
The Mount Music stable yard was an immense square, with buildings
round its four sides, and a high, ivy-covered battlemented wall
surrounding and overlooking all. In the middle of the yard was an
island of grass, on which grew three wide-armed and sombre Irish yews,
dating, like the walls, from the days of Queen Elizabeth. Weeds were
growing in the gravel of the wide expanse; more than one stable-door
dropped on broken hinges under its old cut-stone pediments; the
dejection of a faded and remembered prosperity lay heavy on all things
in the thin, cold air of that September dawn.
The clatter of a horse's hoofs came cheerfully from a stable, and, as
Christian crossed the yard, a dishevelled young man, with a large red
moustache, put his head over the half-door.
"I'm this half-hour striving to girth her, Miss," he complained, "she
got very big entirely on the grass; the surcingle's six inches too
short for her, let alone the way she have herself shwoll up agin me!"
Charles, once ruler and lawgiver, was dead, and, with the departure of
the hounds, Major Dick's interest in the stables had died too; his
tall, grey horse was ending his days in bondage to the outside car;
the meanest of the underlings who had grovelled beneath Charles'
top-boots, was now in sole charge, and had grown a moustache,
unchecked; and Christian's only mount was a green four-year-old filly,
in whom she had invested the economies of a life-time, with but a
dubious chance of their recovery.
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