It was somewhere towards the end of March that one chimney stack
re-entered the list of combatants, trim in new cement, and crowned with
tall and hideous chimney-pots. They all smoked, a thing that had never
occurred before, but Walkin' Aisy said that the chimneys were cold, and
that they wouldn't do it when they'd come to themselves; and (this was
a little later on) that any chimney would smoke in an east wind. It
was true that a period of east wind and drought had set in. The pump
in the yard went dry; carts had to be sent half a mile for water, and
it was reported to me that the masons had as much water put astray,
mixing mortar and all sorts, as would drown a herring.
Other unpleasant things occurred. The housemaid gave half-an-hour's
warning, and married one of the quarry men, and Mrs. Cadogan then
revealed that it wasn't once nor twice during the winter that she had
given that particular quarryman the full of the poker, to put him out
from under her feet when she'd be dishing up the dinner. Shreelane was
twice drawn blank by Flurry Knox's hounds, and their master said that
as long as I had every idle blackguard in the country tending Walkin'
Aisy, and making short cuts through the covert, how would I have foxes
there? I ignored the conundrum, and hoped that the quarryman's yellow
dog would remain where I had last seen him, in the ashpit, till Flurry
had left the premises.
It was some little time after this that Captain Larpent advanced upon
us on a week's leave from the Curragh; he wrote to say that I evidently
wanted a Clerk of the Works, and that he would see if he couldn't get a
move on Shanahan. I was away when he arrived, and on my return
Philippa met me in the hall.
"Meg Longmuir is here!" she said, not without a touch of defiance.
"Doctor Catherine had to go to Scotland, so I asked Meg here for a few
days. She'll play duets with Andrew. She's up on the roof with him
now."
"Better have a string band up there at once," I said, "and open it as a
public recreation ground."
"And the Flurry Knoxes and Bernard Shute are coming to dinner,"
continued my wife, ignoring this _jeu d'esprit_; "the smoking-room
chimney is all right, and we can have the oil stove and some music in
the drawing-room."
With this agreeable prospect in store, we sat down to dinner. We were
too many for general conversation, and the table was round, which is
unfavourable for _tete-a-tetes_. Yet it was not round enough to
frustrate Miss Meg Longmuir's peculiar gift for duets, and I was
presently aware that she was unwarrantably devoting herself to Bernard
Shute, leaving Captain Larpent derelict, and that the latter was, after
the manner of derelicts, becoming a danger to navigation, and was
laying down laws and arguing about them acridly with Mr. Knox. I
realised too late that there should have been champagne. Whisky and
soda is all very well, but it will not warm wet blankets.
Meg Longmuir, however, was doing remarkably well without either; she
wore something intricate that was either green or blue or both, and
glittered. I recognised it as the panoply of war, and knew that the
tomahawk was concealed in its folds. So also was Andrew's scalp; I
don't know why I felt some pleasure in remembering that it had a bald
patch on it.
After the ladies had gone, Bernard, to whose head Miss Longmuir had
mounted as effectively as if she had been the missing champagne,
rejoined the lesser world of men by asking Flurry why he had shut up
the season so early, and suggested a by-day, if only for the sake of
giving the horses something to do.
Flurry put the end of his cigarette into his finger-glass, and lit
another at the flaming tongue of my tame Chinese dragon.
"I didn't know you had one that would carry a lady?" he said.
"Oh rot!" said Bernard helplessly.
"I haven't one that will carry myself," went on Flurry. "There's five
lame legs among three of them this minute. Anyway the hounds are in
sulphur."
The discussion progressed with the prolixity proper to such themes; I
think it was Andrew who suggested the paper-chase. He had, he said,
ridden in paper-chases in Egypt, and he gave us details of the stark
mud walls and fathomless water-courses that were common-places of these
events. We were left with the impression that none of us had ever seen
obstacles so intimidating, and, more than that, if we had seen them we
should have gone home in tears.
"I think we'd better make a hare of _you_," said Flurry, fixing
expressionless eyes upon Captain Larpent. "It mightn't be hard."
The double edge of this suggestion was lost upon Andrew, who accepted
it as a tribute, but said he was afraid he didn't know the country well
enough.
"That's your Egyptian darkness," said Flurry with unexpected erudition.
Andrew glanced sideways and suspiciously at him over the bridge of his
sunburnt nose, and said rather defiantly that if he could get hold of a
decent horse he wouldn't mind having a try.
"I suppose you ride about 11.6?" asked Flurry, after a moment or two of
silence. His manner had softened; I thought I knew what was coming.
"I've a little horse that I was thinking of parting..." he began.
A yell, sharp and sudden as a flash of lightning, was uttered outside
the door, followed by a sliding crash of crockery, and more yells. We
plunged into the hall, and saw Julia, the elderly parlourmaid,
struggling on the floor amid ruins of coffee cups and their adjuncts.
"The rat! He went in under me foot!" she shrieked. "He's in under me
this minute!"
Here the rat emerged from the ruins. Simultaneously the drawing-room
door burst open, and the streaming shrieks of Minx and her son and
daughter were added to those of the still prostrate Julia.
The chase swept down the passage to the kitchen stairs, the pack
augmented by Bob, the red setter, and closely followed by the dinner
party. A rat is a poor performer on a staircase, and, at the door
leading into the turf-house, the dogs seemed to be on top of him. The
bolt-hole under the door, that his own teeth had prepared, gave him an
instant of advantage; Flurry had the door open in a second, someone
snatched the passage lamp from the wall, but it was obviously six to
four on the rat.
The turf-house was a large space at the very root of the house, vaulted
and mysterious, bearing Shreelane on its back like the tortoise that
supports the world. Barrels draped with cobwebs stood along one wall,
but the rat was not behind them, and Minx and her family drove like
hawks into a corner, in which, beneath a chaotic heap of broken
furniture and household debris, the rat had gone to ground. We
followed, treading softly in the turf-mould of unnumbered winters. We
tore out the furniture, which yielded itself in fragments; the delirium
of the terriers mounting with each crash, and being, if possible,
enhanced by the well-meant but intolerable efforts of the red setter to
assist them. Finally we worked down to an old door, lying on its face
on something that raised it a few inches from the ground.
"Now! Mind yourselves!" said Flurry, heaving up the door and flinging
it back against the wall.
The rat bolted gallantly, and darted into an old box, of singular
shape, that lay, half open, among the debris, and there, in a storm of
tattered paper, met his fate. Minx jumped out of the box very
deliberately, with the rat across her jaws, and a scarlet bite in her
white muzzle. With frozen calm, and a menacing eye directed at the red
setter, she laid it on the turf mould, and stiffly withdrew. Her son
and daughter advanced in turn, smelt it respectfully and retired.
There was no swagger; all complied with the ritual of fox-terrier form
laid down for such occasions.
I was then for the first time aware that the ladies, in all the glitter
and glory of their evening dresses, had each mounted herself upon a
barrel; in the theatrical gloom of the vaulted turf-house, they
suggested the resurrection of Ali Baba's Forty Thieves.
"Look where he had his nest in among the old letters!" said Flurry to
Philippa, as she descended from her barrel to felicitate Minx and to
condole with the rat. "That box came out of the rumble of an old
coach, the Lord knows when!"
"There's some sort of a ring in the floor here," said Andrew, who was
rooting with a rusty crowbar in the turf-mould where the door had lain.
"Bring the light, someone----"
The lamp revealed a large iron ring which was fixed in a flat stone; we
scraped away the turf-mould and found that the stone was fastened down
with an iron bar, passing through a staple at either end, and padlocked.
"As long as I'm in this place," said Flurry, "I never saw this outfit
before."
"There's a seal over the keyhole," said Andrew, turning over the
padlock.
"That means it was not intended it should be opened," said Meg Longmuir
quickly.
I looked round, and, bad as the light was, I thought her face looked
pale.
Andrew did not answer her. He poised the crowbar scientifically, and
drove it at the padlock. It broke at the second blow, releasing the
bar.
"No trouble about that!" he said, addressing himself to the gallery,
and not looking at Miss Longmuir. "Now, then, shall we have the flag
up?"
There were only two dissentients; one was Flurry, who put his hands in
his pockets, and said he wasn't going to destroy his best evening
pants; the other was Miss Longmuir, who said that to break an old seal
like that was to break luck. She also looked at Andrew in a way that
should have gone far to redress the injuries inflicted during dinner.
Apparently it did not suffice. Captain Larpent firmly inserted the end
of the bar under the edge of the flag. Bernard Shute took hold of the
ring.
"All together!" said Andrew.
There was a moment of effort, the flag came up abruptly, and, as
abruptly, Bernard sat down in the turf-mould with the flag between his
legs. The crowbar slipped forward, and vanished with a hollow-sounding
splash down a black chasm; Andrew, thrown off his balance, also slipped
forward, and would have followed it, head first, had not Flurry and I
caught him.
The chasm was a well, nearly full; the water twinkled at us,
impenetrably black; it made me think of the ink in the hollowed palm of
a native who had told my fortune, up at Peshawur.
"That was about as near as makes no difference!" said Bernard. "You've
cut your cheek, Larpent."
"Have I?" said Andrew vaguely, putting up a rather shaky hand to his
face. "I think my head took the edge of the well."
We covered the hole with the old door, and Andrew was taken away to
have his wound attended to. It was not a severe wound, but the process
was lengthy, and involved the collaboration of all the ladies. It
seemed to the three neglected males, waiting for a fourth to play
bridge, that this mobilisation of ministering angels was somewhat
overdone.
Andrew came down to breakfast next morning with a headache, and said he
had slept badly. Had he discovered the source of the Nile in the
turf-house the night before, my wife and Miss Longmuir could not have
been more adulatory and sympathetic, nor could the projects, based upon
the discovery, have been more ambitious. I went forth to my work and
to my labour without so much as a dog to wave me farewell; all were in
the turf-house, surrounded by visionary force-pumps, bath-rooms, and
even by miraged fountains in the garden.
When I drove the car into the yard on my return that afternoon, I was
confronted by a long chestnut face with a white blaze, looking at me
out of the spare loose-box--the face, in fact, of "the little horse" of
whom Flurry had spoken to Andrew. There was also, added to the more
familiar heaps of mortar, gravel, and stones, a considerable deposit of
black and evil-smelling sludge. It seemed, as was not uncommonly the
case, that a good many things had been happening during my absence.
The stone floor of the hall was stencilled with an intricate pattern of
black paw-marks, and was further decorated with scraps of torn paper; a
cold stench pervaded the smoking-room (which was situated above the
turf-house); far away, a sound as of a gramophone in the next world
indicated that Captain Andrew's _affaire de coeur_ was finding an
outlet in song.
I followed the sounds to the drawing-room, and found Andrew and Miss
Longmuir at the piano, in a harmony obviously world-forgetting, though
not likely to be by the world forgot. Philippa was sitting by the oil
stove, and was, I hope, deriving some satisfaction from inhaling its
fumes, its effect upon the temperature being negligible.
Andrew's song was a Hungarian ditty, truculent and amorous, and very
loud; under cover of it my wife told me that he, assisted by Walkin'
Aisy and the quarrymen, and attended by Miss Longmuir, had baled out
the newly discovered well, and that the quarrymen had exacted whisky to
sustain them during the later stages of the process, and that the
sludge would be ideal for the roses. They believed the well was
filling again beautifully, but they had to leave it because Flurry came
over with the horse for Andrew for the paper-chase, and Andrew and Meg
went out schooling.
"What paper-chase?" I interpolated coldly.
"Oh, they've got one up for Monday," said Philippa airily. "The
children have been tearing up paper all day. I found--rather with
horror--that Flurry had given them those old letters out of the
turf-house to tear up--I said you and I would ride, of course"--she
looked at me with apprehension veiled by defiance, and I said it was
thoughtful of her.--"But I want to tell you about old Mrs. Knox," she
said, hurrying on. "She told Flurry that the well had never been used
since the time of the Famine, when they got up a soup-kitchen here, and
the day after they opened the well she said the servants flew in a body
out of the house, like wild geese!"
"I don't wonder, if it smelt as it does now," I said. "Was that why
they flew?"
"Flurry said he didn't know what lifted them. But Flurry never says he
doesn't know unless he _does_ know and doesn't want to tell!"
The following day was Saturday, and for the first time for many weeks a
Sabbath stillness prevailed on the roof. Walkin' Aisy was absent; no
explanation was forthcoming, and I diagnosed a funeral in the
neighbourhood. It was on Sunday afternoon that I was roused from my
usual meditation--consequent upon Sunday roast beef--by the
intelligence that Mrs. William Shanahan wanted to speak to me. Mrs.
Shanahan was a fair freckled woman, with a loud voice and a red face
and the reputation of ruling Walkin' Aisy with a rod of iron. It
appeared that Walkin' Aisy was confined to his bed; that he had had a
reel in his head after getting home on Friday, and that whatever work
it was that young gentleman gave him to do, he wasn't the better of it.
"And he was as wake in himself and as troubled in his mind as that he
couldn't walk to Mass. I told him he should mind the chickens while
I'd be out, and when I came in the dog had three of me chickens dead on
the floor, and where was himself, only back in the room, and he
kneeling there with the two hands up, sayin' his prayers! 'What ails
ye?' says I, 'ye old gommoch, that ye'd let the dog kill me chickens?'
'Sure, I was sayin' me prayers,' says he; 'That the Lord mightn't hear
your prayers!' says I. God forgive me, I had to say it!"
I recalled her to the question of the chimneys, pointing out that the
gable chimney was half down, and could not be left as it was.
To this Mrs. Walkin' Aisy replied at great length that William's father
had given him an advice not to go in it, and that the father was dark
these scores of years, and it was what he blamed for it was the work he
done in Shreelane House in the time of the Famine. It was after that
the sight went bandy with him.
She declined to offer any opinion as to when Walkin' Aisy would return
to work, and withdrew, leaving me to consider my position under the
Employers' Liability Act in the event of her husband's demise, and to
wish, not for the first time, that Andrew (now strolling at his ease
with Miss Longmuir, reviewing a course for the paper-chase), had been
at Jericho, or any other resort of the superfluous, before he
interfered with the tranquil progress of the chimneys towards
dissolution.
There were strange lapses at dinner,--delays, omissions, disasters, and
Julia the parlourmaid had a trembling hand and a general suggestion of
nerve-storm. After dinner it was reported to Philippa that Anthony was
not well, and after a prolonged absence she returned with the
information that he had had a nightmare, and that there was a rumour in
the house that all the servants were going to give warning the
following morning. Their reason for this was obscure, but was somehow
connected with Mrs. Walkin' Aisy's visit, and the fact that the
swing-door leading to the turf-house had opened and shut twice, of its
own volition. We did not mention these matters to our guests, and
retired to rest in perturbation. I admit that at some time during the
night, which was a still one, I heard the turf-house door groan on its
hinges, and slam. I went downstairs and found nothing; it was
certainly unusual, however, that Bob, the red setter, had abandoned his
lair in the smoking-room, and was spending the night on the mat outside
my dressing-room door.
Next morning Philippa, considering that a thrust was better than a
parry, held a court of enquiry in the lower regions, and, according to
her own report, spoke seriously on the grave responsibility incurred by
those who frightened other people about nonsense. Julia's version of
the proceedings, I heard at a later date. She said that "the Misthress
spoke to us lovely, and the Priest couldn't speak better than her. She
told us that the divils in hell wasn't worse than us."