Then they led Raftery out and into the morning; they led him with care to the big north paddock and stood him beside the mighty hedge that had set the seal on his youthful valour. Very still he stood with the sun on his flanks, the groom, Jim, holding the bridle.
Stephen said: “I’m going to send you away, a long way away, and I’ve never left you except for a little while since you came when I was a child and you were quite young—but I’m going to send you a long way away because of your pain. Raftery, this is death; and beyond, they say, there’s no more suffering.” She paused, then spoke in a voice so low that the groom could not hear her: “Forgive me, Raftery.”
And Raftery stood there looking at Stephen, and his eyes were as soft as an Irish morning, yet as brave as the eyes that looked into his. Then it seemed to Stephen that he had spoken, that Raftery had said: “Since to me you are God, what have I to forgive you, Stephen?”
She took a step forward and pressed the revolver high up against Raftery’s smooth, grey forehead. She fired, and he dropped to the ground like a stone, lying perfectly still by the mighty hedge that had set the seal on his youthful valour.
But now there broke out a great crying and wailing: “Oh, me! Oh, me! They’ve been murderin’ Raftery! Shame, shame, I says, on the ’and what done it, and ’im no common horse but a Christian. …” Then loud sobbing as though some very young child had fallen down and hurt itself badly. And there in a small, creaky, wicker bath-chair sat Williams, being bumped along over the paddock by a youthful niece, who had come to Morton to take care of the old and now feeble couple; for Williams had had his first stroke that Christmas, in addition to which he was almost childish. God only knew who had told him this thing; the secret had been very carefully guarded by Stephen, who, knowing his love for the horse, had taken every precaution to spare him. Yet now here he was with his face all twisted by the stroke and the sobs that kept on rising. He was trying to lift his half-paralysed hand which kept dropping back on to the arm of the bath-chair; he was trying to get out of the bath-chair and run to where Raftery lay stretched out in the sunshine; he was trying to speak again, but his voice had grown thick so that no one could understand him. Stephen thought that his mind had begun to wander, for now he was surely not screaming “Raftery” any more, but something that sounded like: “Master!” and again, “Oh, Master, Master!”
She said: “Take him home,” for he did not know her; “take him home. You’d no business to bring him here at all—it’s against my orders. Who told him about it?”
And the young girl answered: “It seemed ’e just knowed—it was like as though Raftery told ’im. …”
Williams looked up with his blurred, anxious eyes. “Who be you?” he inquired. Then he suddenly smiled through his tears. “It be good to be seein’ you, Master—seems like a long while. …” His voice was now clear but exceedingly small, a small, far away thing. If a doll had spoken, its voice might have sounded very much as the old man’s did at that moment.
Stephen bent over him. “Williams, I’m Stephen—don’t you know me? It’s Miss Stephen. You must go straight home and get back to bed—it’s still rather cold on these early spring mornings—to please me, Williams, you must go straight home. Why, your hands are frozen!”
But Williams shook his head and began to remember. “Raftery,” he mumbled, “something’s ’appened to Raftery.” And his sobs and his tears broke out with fresh vigour, so that his niece, frightened, tried to stop him.
“Now uncle be qui‑et I do be‑seech ’e! It’s so bad for ’e carryin’ on in this wise. What will auntie say when she sees ’e all mucked up with weepin’, and yer poor nose all red and dir‑ty? I’ll be takin’ ’e ’ome as Miss Stephen ’ere says. Now, uncle dear, do be qui‑et!”
She lugged the bath-chair round with a jolt and trundled it, lurching, towards the cottage. All the way back down the big north paddock Williams wept and wailed and tried to get out, but his niece put one hefty young hand on his shoulder; with the other she guided the lurching bath-chair.
Stephen watched them go, then she turned to the groom. “Bury him here,” she said briefly.
IV
Before she left Morton that same afternoon, she went once more into the large, bare stables. The stables were now completely empty, for Anna had moved her carriage horses to new quarters nearer the coachman’s cottage.
Over one loosebox was a warped oak board bearing Collins’ studbook title, “Marcus,” in red and blue letters; but the paint was dulled to a ghostly grey by encroaching mildew, while a spider had spun a large, purposeful web across one side of Collins’ manger. A cracked, sticky wine bottle lay on the floor; no doubt used at some time for drenching Collins, who had died in a fit of violent colic a few months after Stephen herself had left Morton. On the windowsill of the farthest loosebox stood a curry comb and a couple of brushes; the comb was being eaten by rust, the brushes had lost several clumps of bristles. A jam pot of hoof-polish, now hard as stone, clung tenaciously to a short stick of firewood which time had petrified into the polish. But Raftery’s loosebox smelt fresh and pleasant with the curious dry, clean smell of new straw. A deep depression towards the middle showed where his body had lain in sleep, and seeing
