“And so she gave you a great fright? Well, now, wasn’t that too bad? I wish I’d caught her at her tricks, and I’d soon have packed her about her business. You know, they say she was the best step-dancer in the country when she was a girl; and to think of her going dancing under your window, and you taking her for a ghost!”
Willy’s amusement overcame his sympathy, and he laughed loud and long.
I had been impelled to confide my alarm of Sunday night to him when we were on our way round to the stables to see the horses, on the following morning, and I now rather resented his refusal to see anything but the ludicrous side of the incident.
“You are very unsympathetic. I am sure you would have been just as frightened as I was,” I said. “She looked exactly like a ghost; and in any case I should like to know why she selected my window to dance under?”
“She meant it for a compliment, of course. I suppose she thought you’d be a good audience. I’ve seen her now and again jack-acting there in front of the house, but I’m afraid all I said was to tell her go home. But then, I’m not sympathetic like you!”
We had stopped to discuss the point at the spot whence I had seen Moll emerge, and now walked on past the untidy old flower-garden to the yard.
It was a large square, of which three sides were formed by stables and cowhouses, the house itself being the fourth, and was only redeemed from absolute ugliness by a row of four great horse-chestnut trees, which grew out of a grassy mound in the middle. We arrived in time to surprise the two little fox terriers, Pat and Jinny, in the clandestine enjoyment of a meal with the pig, whose trough was conveniently placed by the scullery door. On seeing us, they at once endeavoured to dissemble their guilty confusion by an unworthy attack on their late entertainer. This histrionic display did not, however, deceive Willy in the least. The dogs were ignominiously called off, and the pig was left master of the situation.
I wondered, as I looked round, if all Irish yards were like this one. Certainly I had never before seen anything like the mixture of prosperity and dilapidation in these solid stone buildings, with their ricketty doors and broken windows. Through the open coach-house door I saw an unusual amount of carriages, foremost among them the landau in which I had driven from Moycullen, with a bucket placed on its coach-box in order to catch a drip from the roof. A donkey and a couple of calves were roaming placidly about, and, though there was evidently no lack of stable-helpers and hangers-on, everything was inconceivably dirty and untidy.
The horses were, however, well housed and cared for. My future mount, “Blackthorn,” was the first to be displayed. He was a big black horse, with an arched back and an ugly head; but he had a look of power and intelligence which provided me with materials for a sufficiently laudatory criticism. In the next box, the bay mare Willy had bought in Cork was pushing her nose through the bars over the door to attract our attention.
“That’s the one kept me from going to meet you at Queenstown,” said Willy, opening the door, and catching the mare by the head. “She’s a nice little thing, but I’ll know better another time than to throw you over for her. Stand, mare!”—as that animal made a vigorous remonstrance at being deprived of her sheet.
“She looks as if she knows how to go,” I said. “What are you going to call her?”
“Don’t you think you might christen her for me?” Willy answered, with an insinuating glance at me from under his black eyelashes. “Just to show you don’t bear malice for my leaving you to cross Cork all alone.”
Notwithstanding the access of brogue with which this was said, there was something in the look which accompanied it at which, to my extreme annoyance, I felt my colour rise.
“Of course I don’t bear malice. I never even expected you to meet me,” I said, turning to stroke the mare’s shoulder. “If you really want a name for her, suppose you call her ‘Alaska.’ That was the steamer I came over in, and they say she’s the fastest on the line.”
Willy received this moderate suggestion with enthusiasm. “If she turns out half as good as she looks,” he said, as we walked out of the yard, “you shall have her for yourself to ride.”
“I think you are very rash to put me up on your horses when you don’t in the least know how I can ride.”
“Ah! well, I’ll trust you; though, indeed, after the funk you were put into by poor old Moll, I suppose I may expect to see you turning back at the first fence.”
To this sally I vouchsafed no reply.
“I must take the mare out this afternoon,” he continued, “to try can she jump. Blackthorn wants shoeing, or you should ride him; but I thought perhaps you’d like to walk up to the farm to see me schooling the mare. It’s only as far as those fields opposite the lodge that I’ll go.”
This was, I thought, a very good suggestion. A prospective day with the hounds made me anxious to see what Irish fences were like, and we settled to start early in the afternoon.
At lunch Uncle Dominick was more conversational than I had yet seen him.
“What have you been doing with yourself this morning, Theo, my dear?”—for the first time adopting the more familiar form of my name. “The roses in your cheeks do credit to our Irish air.”
Uncle Dominick’s faded gallantry always had the effect of making me shy and constrained. I laughed nervously, and before I could reply Willy struck in—
“She was round to the stables with me, sir.”
“Oho! so that was it, was it?” said my uncle, with the smile I disliked so much; and I felt that at that moment my cheeks more resembled peonies than roses.
“I was showing her the new mare,” said Willy, “and we’re going to call her ‘Alaska,’ because that’s the ship that”—here he stopped—“because that’s the fastest ship between this and America.”
“Why, is not that the vessel that brought you to us from America?” said Uncle Dominick, pursuing his advantage with unexpected facetiousness. “I think it is an admirable name, and will always have pleasant associations for you and me, eh, Willy?”
Willy made no reply, and my uncle rose from the table, apparently well satisfied with himself, and left the room humming a tune.
It was a softly brilliant afternoon. I thought, as I started for the farm where I was to see Alaska put through her paces, that I had never, even in America, seen anything like the glow of the yellow leaves against the blue sky—a blue so intense that it seemed to press through the half-stripped branches. The thick drifts of fallen leaves rustled like water about my feet, and floated on the surface of the pools which the rain of yesterday had formed in the low swampy ground under the clump of elms at the bend of the avenue. Just here a deep dyke ran parallel with the drive, separating it from the turf bog which I had seen from my bedroom window. Across it was a rough bridge of logs, from which a raised cart-track wound over the bog like a long brown serpent. I crossed the bridge and leaned upon the rusty iron gate that closed the approach to the bog road. The keen scent of the sea came to me across the heathery expanse, mingled with the pure perfume of the peat, and I regretted that my promise to Willy prevented me from following the meandering course of the cart-track over the headland, to where I heard the hollow draw of the sea on the rocks at the other side.
Retracing my steps, I went up the avenue, and found Willy with the two dogs waiting for me outside the gate. In the fence on the other side of the road was an opening partially filled by a low wall of loose stones—locally called a gap.
“I’ll take her in at this gap,” Willy said, turning the mare to give her room, and then putting her at the gap. Alaska, however, had probably her own reasons for preferring the road, for she refused with a vicious swerve, and a lively contest between her and her rider ensued.
The latter’s difficulties were considerably complicated by Pat and Jinny, who, with ostentatious activity, insisted on crossing and recrossing the gap at the most critical moments. When Jinny at length took up a commanding position on its top-most stone, in order to watch, with palpitating interest and ejaculatory yelps, Alaska’s misbehaviour, Willy’s temper gave way.
“Theo,” he said, with suppressed fury, “will you for goodness’ sake take that—that infernal dog out of my way?”
I captured Jinny, and held her wriggling in my arms, until at length Alaska, with a bound that would have cleared a five-barred gate, went into the field.
I climbed on to a gate-post, from whence I could conveniently see the schooling process. Willy was a fine rider, and Alaska acquitted herself very creditably; but after a quarter of an hour spent on my gate-post, I began to find it rather cold, and, Willy having gone to more distant fields in search of further educational difficulties, I decided to go home without him. Outside the gates was a large gravel sweep, with high flanking walls, forming a semicircular approach, and in these, at some height from the ground, several niches had been made, large enough to hold life-sized figures. As I turned to get down, I saw that a young girl was standing in one of the niches. She was leaning slightly forward, steadying herself with one hand on the wall, while with the other she shaded her eyes, as if looking after Willy’s departing figure.
On seeing me, she jumped quickly down, and ran to open one of the small gates. I recognized the shy, pretty face of Anstey Brian, and stopped inside the gate to speak to her.
“If Mr. Sarsfield comes, will you tell him I have gone home?” I said; and was turning away, when Anstey, with a nervous blush, said, in a soft, deprecating voice—
“Oh, miss, I beg your pardon! I was very sorry to hear you got anny sort of a fright from my mother last night. It’s just a little restless she is, those last few nights, and my father’d be greatly vexed if he thought you got anny annoyance by her.”
I assured her that my alarm had only been momentary, wondering vaguely how she had heard anything about it.
“Indeed, miss, she’d hurt no one. She’s this way, foolish-like, this long time.”
“How long is it since it began?” I said, with interest.
“I never remember her anny other way, miss, though my father says she was once a fine, handsome girl, and as sensible as yourself, miss.”
“Did her mind go from an accident?” I asked.
“Why, then, indeed, miss, I don’t rightly know. She had some strange turn in her always, and afther I was born she got quare altogether; and that’s the way she is ever since. Dumb, like she couldn’t spake, and silly in her mind.”
I was looking in the direction of the lodge while she spoke, half unconsciously noting how thickly the ivy trails hung over its small windows, when I became aware of a face looking out at me through one of them.
I could distinguish little of it beyond the wide-open, pale eyes, which were fixed upon me with a concentrated, half-terrified intentness; but with a momentary return of last night’s unreasoning panic, I knew it to be the face of the woman of whom we were speaking. Something of this must have been shown in my expression, for Anstey, following the direction of my eyes, said—
“Don’t be frightened at all, miss. Sure that’s only poor mother. Will I bring her out here for your honour to see?”
But I had no wish for any close acquaintance, so hastily saying that, as it was already dark, I had no time to stay, I wished Anstey good night.
I must confess that, as I walked away from the lodge, I was haunted by the frightened glare of Moll Hourihane’s eyes. There had been something in their expression which, beneath the oblivion of insanity, seemed almost to struggle into recognition. At the remembrance of them, I felt the same unconquerable dread creep over me again, and I hurried along the avenue towards home. To my imagination, the patches of grey lichen on the trees repeated in the growing twilight the effect of the grey face at the darkened window. The dead leaves awoke as I trod on them, and followed me with whisperings and cracklings. It was a relief to leave the little wood behind, and to see in the library windows the flickering glow which told of a good fire, and suggested tea.
I was surprised and annoyed by the unwonted nervousness which had lately affected me. I prided myself upon being a singularly practical, unimaginative person; and yet now, for the third time since my arrival at Durrus, my self-possession had been disturbed by a trivial event, which I should formerly have laughed at. I walked rapidly to the house, determined for the future to give no toleration to my foolish fancy, and to——
“Here you are!” said Willy’s voice from the hall door. “Come on and have some tea.”
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It occurred to me several times during the next few days, how strangely little I saw of my uncle. Except at luncheon and dinner, he seldom or never appeared, even in the evenings preferring to sit alone over his wine in the gloomy dining-room, while Willy and I were in the drawing-room. At ten o’clock regularly the door would open, and his tall austere figure would appear, holding my candle ready lighted; and with the same little speech about the advantages of early hours for young people, he would wish me good night, politely standing at the foot of the stairs as I went up. As a rule, I did not see him again until luncheon next day, and I wondered more and more how he spent his time.
Willy seemed to know little more about his father’s occupations than I did.
“Oh, I don’t know what he’s up to,” he had said, when I asked him. “He prowls about the place from goodness knows what awful hour in the morning till breakfast, and he sits in that den of his all day, more or less. I’ve plenty to do besides watching him.”
Whether or not this was Willy’s real reason for avoiding his father, it was a sufficiently plausible one. All outdoor affairs at Durrus were under his control, and at any time during the morning he might be seen tramping in and out of the stable, or standing about the yard, giving orders and talking to the numerous workmen in a brogue in no way inferior to their own.
I may mention here that Willy, in common with most Irish gentlemen when speaking to the lower orders, paid them the delicate, if unintentional, compliment of temporarily adopting their accent and phraseology. I had plenty of opportunities of noticing this, as Willy evidently considered that the simplest method of providing for my amusement was to take me about with him as much as possible. I had at first rather dreaded the prospect of these constant tête-à-têtes, but I soon found that my cousin had always plenty to talk about, and was one of the only men I have ever met who was a good listener.
He contrived to include me in most of his comings and goings about the place. He took me down to the cove to see the seaweed carried up the rocks on donkeys’ backs to be spread on the land; or I watched with deep interest while the great turf-house was slowly packed for the winter with the rough chocolate-coloured sods; or, standing at a little distance, I listened with respect to his arbitration of a dispute between two of the tenants, who generally accepted his verdict as if it had been a pronouncement of the Delphic oracle. He was very popular with the country people, as much perhaps from his invincible shrewdness as from his ready good-nature, and subsequent observation has shown me that nothing so much compels the respect and admiration of the Irish peasant as the rare astuteness that can outwit him.
Thursday was fair day at Moycullen, and Willy, who regarded the attending of fairs as both a duty and privilege, proceeded thither with the first light of day. To say at cock-crow would scarcely be an exaggeration, for, knowing well the absurdity of expecting any servant within the walls of Durrus to call him, he had—so he informed me—resorted to the extraordinary device of putting over-night a vigorous barn-door cock on the top of his wardrobe. This bird’s relentless cries at dawn were, as may be imagined, of a sufficiently rousing character, and in consequence Willy’s arrival at even the most distant fairs was as a rule timely.
The result of his absence was a solitary morning for me, and lunch alone with Uncle Dominick. Although faintly alarmed at the latter prospect, I was at the same time glad of the chance which it offered of getting to know him a little better.
But in this I was disappointed. My uncle did not abate an atom of his usual impenetrable civility, and conversed with me on entirely uninteresting topics, with a fluency that was as admirable as it was provoking. I was absolutely at a loss to understand him; and, being a person sensitive to the opinions of others, I puzzled myself a great deal as to what he thought about me. The compliments which he never lost an opportunity of making, and his evident desire that Willy should do all in his power to make my visit agreeable to me, were not, I felt sure, any real indications of his feelings. That he took an interest in me, I was certain. Often I surprised in his cold eyes a still scrutiny, a watchful appraising glance that suggested mistrust, if not dislike; and although his manner was distant and self-engrossed, I had a conviction that little that I said or did escaped him.
It was a depressing day. A quiet rain trickled steadily down, and through the blurred windows the trees looked naked and disconsolate against the threatening sky. I made up my mind that it was not a day to go out, and, with a pitying thought of Willy at the fair, I heaped turf and logs upon the library fire, and determined to write a really long letter to one of my friends in America.
After a period of virtuous endeavour with this intent, I discovered that I was becoming bored to stupefaction, and gave up the struggle. There was something in the air of Durrus antagonistic to letter-writing; or perhaps it was the impossibility of writing about a place which was so different from anything that I or my correspondents had been accustomed to, and was at the same time so devoid of interest for them. I bethought me of a certain old book of field-sports which Willy had commended to my notice, and I wandered round the dusty shelves, looking for it among the exceptionally uninteresting collection of books which formed my uncle’s library. Not being able to find it, I took the bold step of going to his room to ask him if he could tell me where it was.
As I went down the long dark passage that led to his room, I was keenly alive to the temerity of the proceeding, and knocked at the door with some trepidation.
“What is it?” came an unencouraging voice from within.
“Oh! I only wanted to ask you about a book, Uncle Dominick,” I began.
The door was opened almost immediately.
“Come in, my dear Theo,” said my uncle, with what was intended for a smile of welcome. “What book is it you want?”
I explained, adding that Willy had recommended the book to me.
“Oh, Willy told you of it, did he?” said my uncle, with interest; “and you cannot find it in the library?”—turning towards a large cupboard that filled a recess on one side of the chimney-piece. “Perhaps I have it in here.”
I heard a faint jingle of glass as he opened it; but the doors of fluted green silk, latticed with brass wire, prevented, from where I was standing, my seeing inside. My uncle ran his finger along one of the shelves in search of the book I wanted. Meantime I looked curiously about me.
It was a small, dingy room, disproportionately high for its size, with county and estate maps hanging on its damp-stained walls. A handsome old escritoire stood in the corner to the right of the lofty window that faced the door by which I had entered. On one or two tables, dusty pamphlets and papers lay about in a comfortless way. Right in front of the fire was a battered leather-covered armchair, in which my uncle had been sitting, though there was no book or newspaper to indicate that he had been occupied in any way.
“It is an unusual thing to hear of Willy recommending a book. I suppose this is due to your civilizing influence?” said my uncle, emerging from the recesses of the cupboard with the book in question in his hand.
“Oh, well,” I replied, laughing, “this is not a very high class of literature.”
“It is, nevertheless, a classic in its way,” he said, opening the book; “and the prints are very good indeed.”
I came and stood beside him, looking at the illustrations with him.
“The Regulator on Hertford Bridge Flat,” “The Race, Epsom,” “The Whissendine Brook”—we studied them together, Uncle Dominick becoming unexpectedly interesting and friendly in his reminiscences of his own sporting days when he was a young man at Oxford.
As he paused in looking at the pictures to enlarge upon an experience of his own, the pages slipped from his stiff bony fingers, and, turning over of their own accord, remained open at the title-page. There I saw, in faded ink, the words, “Owen Sarsfield, the gift of his affectionate Brother, D. S.”
My uncle looked at the inscription for half an instant, and, drawing a quick breath, closed the book.
“Uncle Dominick,” I said, with a sudden impulse, “won’t you tell me something about my father? My mother could never bear to speak of him, and I know so little about him.”
He turned his back to me, and replaced the book in the cupboard, feeling for its place in the shelves in a dull, mechanical way.
“I hate to give you pain,” I went on; “but if you knew how much I have thought about him since I have been here! I have always so connected him and Durrus together in my mind.”
He walked back to the fireplace, and placed one hand on the narrow marble shelf before answering.
“There are many circumstances connected with your father which make it painful for me to speak of him,” he began, in a very quiet, measured voice. “I loved him very dearly; we were always together until his lamentable quarrel with my father.”
He walked to the window, and stood looking out through the streaming panes, with his hands behind his back. After a few moments of waiting for him to speak again, I could bear the silence no longer.
“But what was the quarrel about? Was it my father’s fault?”
“It is a hard thing to say to you,” replied my uncle, turning round and looking past me into the fire, “but, under the circumstances, I feel that it is my duty to let you know the truth. Your father unfortunately got into money difficulties while at Oxford, which he was afraid to mention to his father. He went to London to study for the Bar with these debts still hanging over him, while I came home and undertook the management of the property.” He paused, and passed a large silk handkerchief over his face. “Owen always had a passion for the stage; he got entangled with a theatrical set in London, and finally he took the fatal step of making himself responsible for the expenses of an—in fact, of a travelling company of actors, with, I need hardly tell you, what result. Instead of the enterprise paying his debts, as he had hoped, he found himself liable for large sums of money.”
Uncle Dominick came back to the fireplace, where I was standing nervously grasping the shabby back of the leather armchair. I suppose my face told of the anxious conjectures that filled my mind, for, looking at me not unkindly, my uncle went on.
“I did all I could for him with my father, but he was a man of very violent temper, and was absolutely infuriated with Owen. He paid the debts, but he refused to see Owen again, and insisted on his leaving the country. I contrived to see him before he left England, and from that day until I got his letter saying he was ill in Cork, I neither heard of nor from him.”
“But,” I broke in, “why did he never write to you?”
My uncle hesitated, and drew his hand heavily over his moustache. I saw that it trembled. He sat down in the chair by which I stood, and did not answer. I put my hand on his shoulder.
“Surely he had not quarrelled with you, Uncle Dominick? Or was it that you—that you thought he had behaved too——” I could not finish the sentence.
“No, no, my dear,” he said quickly; “I had no such feelings. I would have done anything in the world for him at that time.” He cleared his throat and continued huskily, “It was Owen who misjudged me, who misconstrued all my efforts on his behalf, who ignored my offers of assistance. I cannot bear to think of what I went through,” he ended hastily, leaving his chair and again walking to the window. It was a French window, and a few stone steps led from it to the grass outside. He opened one door and looked down the drive.
It was getting darker, and the rain came driving in from the sea in ghost-like white clouds, as he stood there motionless, and apparently oblivious of the drops that fell from the roof on his head and shoulders.
“Are you looking out for Willy?” I said at length.
“Oh, Willy! Yes; is he not home yet?” he answered absently, closing the window.
“Is there any portrait of my father in the house?” I asked as he turned towards me, ignoring his remark about Willy in my anxiety to put a question that since my arrival at Durrus I had often wished to ask, and feeling that it might not be easy to find another opportunity of reopening the subject.
“There is one, taken when he was a child; it hangs in the corridor outside your bedroom door.”
“But I think there are two portraits of boys there,” I persisted. “I am afraid I should not know which was his.”
My uncle rose wearily from his seat. “If you wish, I will show it to you now,” he said. “If you will go upstairs, I will follow you in an instant.”
I went slowly up the passage, and before I had reached the foot of the stairs he overtook me, and we went up together. He had his crimson silk handkerchief in his hand, and I remember wondering why he kept pressing it to his mouth as we walked along the corridor side by side.
A faint light shone through the open door of the room over the hall door, the one that opened into mine, and against the grey light I saw in the window a crouching figure indistinctly silhouetted.
My uncle saw it too. With a muttered exclamation of anger, he walked quickly past me to the open doorway.
“What are you doing here?” he said sternly. “You know I desired you not to come upstairs, and this is the second time this week I have found you here.”
He stepped back to one side, and a tall woman with a shawl covering her bent shoulders shuffled out of the room. I had already guessed that it was Moll Hourihane, and I shrank back into the doorway of my own room; but she stopped, and, stretching out her neck towards me, she fixed her eyes upon my face with an expression of hungry eagerness.
“Did you hear what I ordered you? Go down at once,” repeated my uncle, placing himself between her and me. “Let me never find you here again.”
She immediately turned and slunk away round the far side of the corridor, and, looking back once more at me, disappeared through the door that led to the servants’ quarters.
I gave a sigh of relief. “That woman terrifies me,” I said. “I wish she would not look at me in that dreadful way.”
“You need not be alarmed”—he spoke breathlessly and with unusual excitement—“she is perfectly harmless; but I do not choose to have her roaming about the house. These are the pictures of which we were speaking,” he continued. “The one to the right was done of me, and this—this is the other”—pointing to an old-fashioned looking portrait of a pretty dark-haired boy holding a spaniel in his arms.
Blackthorn looked sedately amiable as Tom led him up to the hall door next morning, and I felt as I looked at him that I might safely trust him to initiate me into the mysteries of cross-country riding in the county Cork.
The day was lovely—sunny and mild, with a lingering dampness in the air that told of light rain during the night. I settled myself in the saddle, intoxicated by the idea that I was actually going out hunting for the first time, though I could not help a tremor of anxiety as I wondered if Willy would find his confidence in me had been misplaced.
I could hear him now in the hall, knocking down umbrellas and sticks in search of his whip, and presently, in response to his shouts, old Roche came shuffling to his aid.
“I was putting up your sandwiches, sir,” he said.
“Go on, and give hers to Miss Theo, and hurry,” said Willy’s voice, in a tone indicative of exasperation.
Roche bustled out on to the steps with a small packet in his hand, a jovial smile on his face. He looked at me, and his face changed.
“My God! ’tis Master Owen himself!” he said, as if involuntarily. “I beg your pardon, miss,” he continued, coming down the steps and putting the sandwiches into the saddle-pocket. “I suppose ’twas the man’s hat, and the sight of you up on the horse, made me think of the young master, as we called your father.”
Willy, at all times a carefully attired person, was to-day absolutely resplendent in his red coat and buckskins, and as we rode slowly down the avenue, I was impelled to tell him how smart both he and the mare looked. He beamed upon me with a simple satisfaction.
“Do you think so? Well, now, do you know what I was thinking? That no matter how good-looking a girl is, she always looks fifty per cent. better on a horse.”
“That is a most ingenious way of praising your own horse,” I said.
“Ah now, you know what I mean quite well,” rejoined Willy, with a look which was intended to be sentimental, but, by reason of his irrepressibly good spirits, rather fell away into a grin.
The meet was to be at the Clashmore cross-roads, and we passed many people on their way there. White-flannel-coated country boys and young men—“going for the best places to head the fox,” as Willy observed with bitterness, and little chattering swarms of national-school children. Every now and then a young farmer or two came clattering along, on rough, short-necked horses, whose heavy tails swung from side to side as they trotted at full speed past us, and an occasional red coat gave a reality to the fact that I was going out fox-hunting. The cross-roads were now in sight, and I saw a number of riders and people who had driven to see the meet, waiting for the hounds to come up.
“Why, I declare, here are the two Miss Burkes coming along in that old shandrydan of theirs with the bedridden grey pony!” said Willy, looking back. “Hold on, Theo. I must introduce you to them; they’re great specimens.”
We allowed the pony-carriage to overtake us, and Willy, pulling off his hat with as fine a flourish as his gold hatguard would allow, asked leave to introduce me.
“With the greatest of pleasure, Willy. Indeed, we’d no idea till yesterday, when we met Doctor Kelly in town, that Miss Sorsefield had arrived.” This from the elder Miss Burke, a large, gaunt lady with a good-humoured red face and an enormous Roman nose, and a curiously deep voice, whose varying inflections ran up and down the vocal scale in booming cadences.
“You ought to be riding the pony, Miss Burke. She looks in great form.”
“Oh, now, Willy! you’re always joking me about poor old Zoé. You’re very naughty about him. Isn’t he, Bessy?”
The younger Miss Burke, thus appealed to, replied with a genteel simper, “Reely, Mimi, I’m quite ashamed of the way you and the captain go on. Don’t ask me to interfere with your nonsense. We hope, Miss Sarsfield”—turning a face that was a pale dull replica of her sister’s towards me—“to have the pleasure of calling upon you very soon. But oh, my gracious! there are the dogs and Mr. Dennehy coming! And look at us keeping you delaying here! Good-bye, Miss Sarsfield. I hope you’ll obtain a fox.”
At the cross-roads we found the master of the Moycullen hunt, a big, wild-looking man with a long reddish-grey beard and moustache, seated on an ugly yellow horse with a black stripe, like a donkey’s, down his back.
“How do you do, Mr. Dennehy?” said Willy, as we rode up. “Nice day. This is my cousin, Miss Sarsfield. I hope you’ll show her some sport. Morning, Nugent. How are you, Miss Connie? Do you see the new mount I have?” and Willy forgot his duties as my chaperon, in a lively conversation with Miss O’Neill.
Mr. Dennehy, with what was, I believe, unwonted condescension, began to speak to me.
“I’m delighted to see you out, Miss Sarsfield,” he said in a slow, solemn brogue. “I hope we’ll have a good day for you, and if there’s a fox in Clashmore at all, these little hounds of mine will have him out.”
I did not know much about hounds, but even to inexperienced eyes these appeared to be a very motley collection. Mr. Dennehy saw me look with interest at two strange little animals, somewhat resembling long-legged black-and-tan terriers.
“Well, Miss Sarsfield, those are the two best hounds I have, though they’re ugly creatures enough. And there’s a good hound. Loo, Solomon, good hound! That’s a hound will only spake to game.”
Here Mr. Dennehy produced a battered little horn, and with two or three bleats upon it to collect his hounds, he put the yellow horse at a yawning black ditch that divided the road from a narrow strip of rough ground, perpendicularly from which rose a steep hill covered with laurels. The yellow horse took the ditch and the low stone wall on its farther side with unassuming skill, and he and Mr. Dennehy were presently lost to sight in the wood.
Willy now came up to me with Miss O’Neill and her brother, and I was introduced to the former, a small, fair-haired girl in a smart habit, with brown eyes and rather a high colour. She nodded to me with cheery indifference, and continued her conversation with Willy, leaving me to talk to her brother.
This I found to be a somewhat difficult task. His manner was exceedingly polite, but he appeared to be engrossed in watching the covert, and we finally relapsed into silence. At intervals Mr. Dennehy’s red coat showed between the low close-growing trees as he led his horse through the covert, and we could hear his original method of encouraging his hounds.
“Thatsy me darlins! Thatsy-atsy-atsy! Turrn him out, Woodbine! Hi, Waurior, good hound!”
I felt inclined to laugh, but as no one else seemed amused, I refrained and waited for further developments. Presently, with a few words to Willy, Mr. O’Neill put spurs to his big bay and galloped off. In a moment or two, Miss O’Neill, without further ceremony, followed her brother to the other end of the covert, and Willy and I remained with about twenty other riders on the road.
“See here!” he said in low, excited tones. “You keep close to me. Old Dennehy’s got a beastly trick of slipping away with his hounds directly they find, and making fools of the whole field, leaving them the wrong side of the covert. But I think we’re in a good place here. Whisht! wasn’t that a hound speaking? Come on this way.”
We set off down the road helter-skelter after Mr. O’Neill and Connie, but were stopped by an excited rush of country boys with shouts of, “He’s gone aisht! He’s broke the far side!” and at the same instant Mr. and Miss O’Neill came pounding down a ride out of the covert.
“It’s just as I thought; Dennehy’s gone away with the hounds by himself,” called out Mr. O’Neill. “A country fellow saw the fox heading for Lick, and Dennehy all alone with the hounds, going like mad!”
At this juncture I think it better not to record Willy’s remarks.
“It’s all right, Nugent,” said Connie. “I know a way over the hill lower down.”
“Don’t mind her, Theo,” said Willy in my ear; “just you stick to me.”
We had galloped past the eastern bound of the wood, and as he spoke he turned his horse and jumped the fence on the right of the road. Blackthorn followed of his own accord, and I found that an Irish bank did not feel as difficult as it looked.
Willy turned in his saddle to watch me.
“Well done! that’s your sort,” he shouted. “Hold him now, and hit him! This is a big place we’re coming to.”
We were over before I had time to think, and to my horror I saw that Willy was making for a hill that looked like the side of a house, covered with furze.
“There’s a way up here, but you’ll have to lead. Nip off! I’ll go first.”
I was fearfully out of breath, but Willy allowed no time for delay. Up the hill we scrambled, Blackthorn leading me considerably more than I led him. After the first few seconds of climbing, I felt as if it would be impossible to go on. My habit hindered me at every step. Blackthorn’s jerks and tugs at the reins nearly threw me on my face, and the fear of Willy alone prevented me from letting him finish the ascent by himself. When at last we reached the top, Willy and I were both so much out of breath that we could not speak, and I wished for nothing so much as to lie down. But Willy, with a blazing face, made signs to me to mount at once, and, jerking me into the saddle, we again set off.
The top of the hill which we had now gained was rough, boggy ground. Down to our right lay the gleaming laurel covert, and in front of us the hill sloped gradually down into a low tract of bog and lakes, with hills beyond. We could see nothing of any one, but a countryman, on the top of a bank above the wood, waved semaphore-like directions that the hounds were running to the north-east.
“Hullo! here’s Nugent,” said Willy, in a not over-pleased voice, and as he spoke I saw Mr. O’Neill’s bay horse coming along over the hill. He soon overtook us, looking, I was glad to see, as heated and dishevelled as Willy and I.
“I knew that way of Connie’s was no use, so I came back and went up the hill after you. Where are the hounds?”
“Going north-east, a fellow told me. But look! By Jove! there they are on the hill across the bog, and going straight for Killnavoodhee.”
“There is only one way to pick them up,” said Nugent, with what seemed to me unnatural calm—“we must cross the bog.”
“But, my dear fellow, I don’t believe there’s a way across, and once we got in, we’d not get out in a hurry.”
“Do you mind trying, Miss Sarsfield?” demanded Mr. O’Neill.
“Whatever Willy likes,” I said.
“Oh, all right,” said Willy. “Fire away, but you’ll have to pay for the funeral, Nugent.”
We had now reached the foot of the hill, and we rode rapidly along the verge of the bog for a short distance till we came to where an old fence traversed it in a north-easterly direction.
“Here’s the place. If we can get along the top of this, we shall just hit off their line,” Mr. O’Neill said. He went first, and the horses picked their way along the top of the bank like cats, though the sides crumbled under their feet, and sometimes the whole structure tottered as if it were going to collapse into the deep dykes on either side. At last it broke sharp off, at a pool of black mire. Our guide dismounted and jumped down into the bog, pulling his horse after him, and we slowly dragged our way through the heavy ground to the farther side of the bog.
Here we were confronted by the most formidable obstacle we had yet come to. It consisted of a low, soft-looking bank, with an immense boggy ditch beyond it.
“We’ve got to try it, I suppose,” said Willy, “but it’s a thundering big jump, and there’s a deuced bad landing beyond the water.”
He and Mr. O’Neill remounted, and the former put his horse at the place. The bay’s hoofs sank deep in the bank, but he took a spring that landed him safely on the opposite side on comparatively firm ground. My turn came next.
“Whip him over it!” exclaimed Willy.
I did so as well as I was able, but the treacherous ground broke under Blackthorn’s feet, and he all but floundered back into the ditch as he landed.
“Oh, Willy!” I cried, “I’m afraid you’ll never get her over now that the bank is broken.”
But Willy was already too much occupied with Alaska to make any reply. She refused several times, but finally, yielding to the inevitable, she threw herself rather than jumped off the bank, and the next moment she and Willy were in the ditch.
I was terrified as to the consequences, and was much relieved when I saw Willy, black from head to foot, crawl from the mare’s back on to the more solid mud of the bank on our side. Without a word he caught Alaska by the head, and began to try and pull her out. His extraordinary appearance, and the fact that he was much too angry to be in the least conscious of its absurdity, had the disastrous effect of reducing both Mr. O’Neill and me to helpless laughter.
“I am very sorry, Willy,” I panted, “and I am delighted you’re not hurt; but if you could only see yourself!”
Willy silently continued his efforts.
“Oh, Mr. O’Neill, do get down and help him,” I continued.
“I don’t want any help, thank you,” returned my cousin, with restrained fury. “Come up out of that, you brute!”—applying his hunting-crop with vigour to the recumbent Alaska, who thereupon, with two or three violent efforts, heaved herself out of the slough. All this time Mr. O’Neill had been grinning with that unfeigned delight which all hunting-men seem to derive from the misfortunes of their friends.
“You have toned down that new coat, Willy,” he remarked; “and I must say the little mare takes to water like an otter.”
“Oh, I dare say it’s very funny indeed!” retorted Willy, leading Alaska on to the higher ground where we were standing; “but if you’d an eye in your head you’d see the mare is dead lame.”
“By George! so she is. That’s hard luck. She must have given herself a strain.”
“Well, whatever ails her, there’s no use in your standing there looking at me,” replied Willy. “I can get home all right. I don’t want Theo to lose the run, and you’ll head them yet if you put on the pace.”
His magnanimity was almost more crushing than his wrath. I was filled with contrition for my heartless amusement, and begged to be allowed to stay with him. But I was given no voice in the matter; my offer was scouted, and before I had fairly grasped the situation, I was galloping up a narrow mountain road after Nugent O’Neill.
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