"Well, she _is_ a dear!"
Had I had a sword in my hand I should undoubtedly have slain Philippa;
but before I could express my sentiments in any way, a violent shock
flung me endways on top of the man who was pulling stroke. Thanks to
Maria, we had reached our destination all unawares; the two men,
respectfully awaiting my instructions, had rowed on with disciplined
steadiness, and, as a result, we had rammed the _Eileen Oge_ amidships,
with a vigour that brought Mr. Shute tumbling up the companion to see
what had happened.
"Oh, it's you, is it?" he said, with his mouth full. "Come in; don't
knock! Delighted to see you, Mrs. Yeates; don't apologise. There's
nothing like a hired ship after all--it's quite jolly to see the
splinters fly--shows you're getting your money's worth. Hullo! who's
this?"
This was Maria, feigning exhaustion, and noisily treading water at the
boat's side.
"What, poor old Maria? Wanted to send her ashore, did he? Heartless
ruffian!"
Thus was Maria installed on board the _Eileen Oge_, and the element of
fatality had already begun to work.
There was just enough wind to take us out of Clountiss Harbour, and
with the last of the out-running tide we crept away to the west. The
party on board consisted of our host's sister, Miss Cecilia Shute, Miss
Sally Knox, and ourselves; we sat about in conventional attitudes in
deck chairs and on adamantine deck bosses, and I talked to Miss Shute
with feverish brilliancy, and wished the patience-cards were not in the
cabin; I knew the supreme importance of keeping one's mind occupied,
but I dared not face the cabin. There was a long, almost imperceptible
swell, with little queer seabirds that I have never seen before--and
trust I never shall again--dotted about on its glassy slopes. The
coast-line looked low and grey and dull, as, I think, coast-lines
always do when viewed from the deep. The breeze that Bernard had
promised us we should find outside was barely enough to keep us moving.
The burning sun of four o'clock focussed its heat on the deck; Bernard
stood up among us, engaged in what he was pleased to call "handling the
stick," and beamed almost as offensively as the sun.
"Oh, we're slipping along," he said, his odiously healthy face glowing
like copper against the blazing blue sky. "You're going a great deal
faster than you think, and the men say we'll pick up a breeze once
we're round the Mizen."
I made no reply; I was not feeling ill, merely thoroughly disinclined
for conversation. Miss Sally smiled wanly, and closing her eyes, laid
her head on Philippa's knee. Instructed by a dread freemasonry, I knew
that for her the moment had come when she could no longer bear to see
the rail rise slowly above the horizon, and with an equal rhythmic
slowness sink below it. Maria moved restlessly to and fro, panting and
yawning, and occasionally rearing herself on her hind-legs against the
side, and staring forth with wild eyes at the headachy sliding of the
swell. Perhaps she was meditating suicide; if so I sympathised with
her, and since she was obviously going to be sick I trusted that she
would bring off the suicide with as little delay as possible. Philippa
and Miss Shute sat in unaffected serenity in deck chairs, and stitched
at white things--teacloths for the _Eileen Oge_, I believe, things in
themselves a mockery--and talked untiringly, with that singular
indifference to their marine surroundings that I have often observed in
ladies who are not sea-sick. It always stirs me afresh to wonder why
they have not remained ashore; nevertheless, I prefer their tranquil
and total lack of interest in seafaring matters to the blatant
Vikingism of the average male who is similarly placed.
Somehow, I know not how, we crawled onwards, and by about five o'clock
we had rounded the Mizen, a gaunt spike of a headland that starts up
like a boar's tusk above the ragged lip of the Irish coast, and the
_Eileen Oge_ was beginning to swing and wallop in the long sluggish
rollers that the American liners know and despise. I was very far from
despising them. Down in the west, resting on the sea's rim, a purple
bank of clouds lay awaiting the descent of the sun, as seductively and
as malevolently as a damp bed at a hotel awaits a traveller.
The end, so far as I was concerned, came at tea-time. The meal had
been prepared in the saloon, and thither it became incumbent on me to
accompany my hostess and my wife. Miss Sally, long past speech,
opened, at the suggestion of tea, one eye, and disclosed a look of
horror. As I tottered down the companion I respected her good sense.
The _Eileen Oge_ had been built early in the sixties, and headroom was
not her strong point; neither, apparently, was ventilation. I began by
dashing my forehead against the frame of the cabin door, and then,
shattered morally and physically, entered into the atmosphere of the
pit. After which things, and the sight of a plate of rich cake, I
retired in good order to my cabin, and began upon the Yanatas.
I pass over some painful intermediate details and resume at the moment
when Bernard Shute woke me from a drugged slumber to announce that
dinner was over.
"It's been raining pretty hard," he said, swaying easily with the swing
of the yacht; "but we've got a clinking breeze, and we ought to make
Lurriga Harbour to-night. There's good anchorage there, the men say.
They're rather a lot of swabs, but they know this coast, and I don't.
I took 'em over with the ship all standing."
"Where are we now?" I asked, something heartened by the blessed word
"anchorage."
"You're running up Sheepskin Bay--it's a thundering big bay; Lurriga's
up at the far end of it, and the night's as black as the inside of a
cow. Dig out and get something to eat, and come on deck---- What! no
dinner?"--I had spoken morosely, with closed eyes--"Oh, rot! you're on
an even keel now. I promised Mrs. Yeates I'd make you dig out. You're
as bad as a soldier officer that we were ferrying to Malta one time in
the old Tamar. He got one leg out of his berth when we were going down
the Channel, and he was too sick to pull it in again till we got to
Gib!"
I compromised on a drink and some biscuits. The ship was certainly
steadier, and I felt sufficiently restored to climb weakly on deck. It
was by this time past ten o'clock, and heavy clouds blotted out the
last of the afterglow, and smothered the stars at their birth. A wet
warm wind was lashing the _Eileen Oge_ up a wide estuary; the waves
were hunting her, hissing under her stern, racing up to her, crested
with the white glow of phosphorus, as she fled before them. I dimly
discerned in the greyness the more solid greyness of the shore. The
mainsail loomed out into the darkness, nearly at right angles to the
yacht, with the boom creaking as the following wind gave us an
additional shove. I know nothing of yacht sailing, but I can
appreciate the grand fact that in running before a wind the boom is
removed from its usual sphere of devastation.
I sat down beside a bundle of rugs that I had discovered to be my wife,
and thought of my whitewashed office at Shreelane and its bare but
stationary floor, with a yearning that was little short of passion.
Miss Sally had long since succumbed; Miss Shute was tired, and had
turned in soon after dinner.
"I suppose she's overdone by the delirious gaiety of the afternoon,"
said I acridly, in reply to this information.
Philippa cautiously poked forth her head from the rugs, like a tortoise
from under its shell, to see that Bernard, who was standing near the
steersman, was out of hearing.
"In all your life, Sinclair," she said impressively, "you never knew
such a time as Cecilia and I have had down there! We've had to wash
_everything_ in the cabins, and remake the beds, and _hurl_ the sheets
away--they were covered with black finger-marks--and while we were
doing that, in came the creature that calls himself the steward, to ask
if he might get something of his that he had left in Miss Shute's
'birthplace'! and he rooted out from under Cecilia's mattress a pair of
socks and half a loaf of bread!"
"Consolation to Miss Shute to know her berth has been well aired," I
said, with the nearest approach to enjoyment I had known since I came
on board; "and has Sally made any equally interesting discoveries?"
"She said she didn't care what her bed was like; she just dropped into
it. I must say I am sorry for her," went on Philippa; "she hated
coming. Her mother made her accept."
"I wonder if Lady Knox will make her accept _him_!" I said. "How often
has Sally refused him, does any one know?"
"Oh, about once a week," replied Philippa; "just the way I kept on
refusing you, you know!"
Something cold and wet was thrust into my hand, and the aroma of damp
dog arose upon the night air; Maria had issued from some lair at the
sound of our voices, and was now, with palsied tremblings, slowly
trying to drag herself on to my lap.
"Poor thing, she's been so dreadfully ill," said Philippa. "Don't send
her away, Sinclair. Mr. Shute found her lying on his berth not able to
move; didn't you, Mr. Shute?"
"She found out that she was able to move," said Bernard, who had
crossed to our side of the deck; "it was somehow borne in upon her when
I got at her with a boot-tree. I wouldn't advise you to keep her in
your lap, Yeates. She stole half a ham after dinner, and she might
take a notion to make the only reparation in her power."
I stood up and stretched myself stiffly. The wind was freshening, and
though the growing smoothness of the water told that we were making
shelter of some kind, for all that I could see of land we might as well
have been in mid-ocean. The heaving lift of the deck under my feet,
and the lurching swing when a stronger gust filled the ghostly sails,
were more disquieting to me in suggestion than in reality, and, to my
surprise, I found something almost enjoyable in rushing through
darkness at the pace at which we were going.
"We're a small bit short of the mouth of Lurriga Harbour yet, sir,"
said the man who was steering, in reply to a question from Bernard. "I
can see the shore well enough; sure I know every yard of wather in the
bay----"
As he spoke he sat down abruptly and violently; so did Bernard, so did
I. The bundle that contained Philippa collapsed upon Maria.
"Main sheet!" bellowed Bernard, on his feet in an instant, as the boom
swung in and out again with a terrific jerk. "We're ashore!"
In response to this order three men in succession fell over me while I
was still struggling on the deck, and something that was either
Philippa's elbow, or the acutest angle of Maria's skull, hit me in the
face. As I found my feet the cabin skylight was suddenly illuminated
by a wavering glare. I got across the slanting deck somehow, through
the confusion of shouting men and the flapping thunder of the sails,
and saw through the skylight a gush of flame rising from a pool of
fire, around an overturned lamp on the swing-table. I avalanched down
the companion and was squandered like an avalanche on the floor at the
foot of it. Even as I fell, McCarthy the steward dragged the strip of
carpet from the cabin floor and threw it on the blaze; I found myself,
in some unexplained way, snatching a railway rug from Miss Shute and
applying it to the same purpose, and in half-a-dozen seconds we had
smothered the flame and were left in total darkness. The most striking
feature of the situation was the immovability of the yacht.
"Great Ned!" said McCarthy, invoking I know not what heathen deity, "it
is on the bottom of the say we are? Well, whether or no, thank God we
have the fire quinched!"
We were not, so far, at the bottom of the sea, but during the next ten
minutes the chances seemed in favour of our getting there. The yacht
had run her bows upon a sunken ridge of rock, and after a period of
feminine indecision as to whether she were going to slide off again, or
roll over into deep water, she elected to stay where she was, and the
gig was lowered with all speed, in order to tow her off before the tide
left her.
My recollection of this interval is but hazy, but I can certify that in
ten minutes I had swept together an assortment of necessaries and
knotted them into my counterpane, had broken the string of my
eye-glass, and lost my silver matchbox; had found Philippa's
curling-tongs and put them in my pocket; had carted all the luggage on
deck; had then applied myself to the manly duty of reassuring the
ladies, and had found Miss Shute merely bored, Philippa
enthusiastically anxious to be allowed to help to pull the gig, and
Miss Sally radiantly restored to health and spirits by the cessation of
movement and the probability of an early escape from the yacht.
The rain had, with its usual opportuneness, begun again; we stood in it
under umbrellas, and watched the gig jumping on its tow-rope like a dog
on a string, as the crew plied the labouring oar in futile endeavour to
move the _Eileen Oge_. We had run on the rock at half-tide, and the
increasing slant of the deck as the tide fell brought home to us the
pleasing probability that at low water--viz. about 2 A.M.--we should
roll off the rock and go to the bottom. Had Bernard Shute wished to
show himself in the most advantageous light to Miss Sally he could
scarcely have bettered the situation. I looked on in helpless respect
while he whom I had known as the scourge of the hunting field, the
terror of the shooting party, rose to the top of a difficult position
and kept there, and my respect was, if possible, increased by the
presence of mind with which he availed himself of all critical moments
to place a protecting arm round Miss Knox.
By about 1 A.M. the two gaffs with which Bernard had contrived to shore
up the slowly heeling yacht began to show signs of yielding, and, in
approved shipwreck fashion, we took to the boats, the yacht's crew in
the gig remaining in attendance on what seemed likely to be the last
moments of the _Eileen Oge_, while we, in the dinghy, sought for the
harbour. Owing to the tilt of the yacht's deck, and the roughness of
the broken water round her, getting into the boat was no mean feat of
gymnastics. Miss Sally did it like a bird, alighting in the inevitable
arms of Bernard; Miss Shute followed very badly, but, by innate force
of character, successfully; Philippa, who was enjoying every moment of
her shipwreck, came last, launching herself into the dinghy with my
silver shoe-horn clutched in one hand, and in the other the tea-basket.
I heard the hollow clank of its tin cups as she sprang, and appreciated
the heroism with which Bernard received one of its corners in his
waist. How or when Maria left the yacht I know not, but when I applied
myself to the bow oar I led off with three crabs, owing to the devotion
with which she thrust her head into my lap.
I am no judge of these matters, but in my opinion we ought to have been
swamped several times during that row. There was nothing but the
phosphorus of breaking waves to tell us where the rocks were, and
nothing to show where the harbour was except a solitary light, a
masthead light, as we supposed. The skipper had assured us that we
could not go wrong if we kept "a westerly course with a little northing
in it;" but it seemed simpler to steer for the light, and we did so.
The dinghy climbed along over the waves with an agility that was safer
than it felt; the rain fell without haste and without rest, the oars
were as inflexible as crowbars, and somewhat resembled them in shape
and weight; nevertheless, it was Elysium when compared with the
afternoon leisure of the deck of the _Eileen Oge_.
At last we came, unexplainably, into smooth water, and it was at about
this time that we were first aware that the darkness was less dense
than it had been, and that the rain had ceased. By imperceptible
degrees a greyness touched the back of the waves, more a dreariness
than a dawn, but more welcome than thousands of gold and silver. I
looked over my shoulder and discerned vague bulky things ahead; as I
did so, my oar was suddenly wrapped in seaweed. We crept on; Maria
stood up with her paws on the gunwale, and whined in high agitation.
The dark objects ahead resolved themselves into rocks, and without more
ado Maria pitched herself into the water. In half a minute we heard
her shaking herself on shore. We slid on; the water swelled under the
dinghy, and lifted her keel on to grating gravel.
"We couldn't have done it better if we'd been the Hydrographer Royal,"
said Bernard, wading knee-deep in a light wash of foam, with the
painter in his hand; "but all the same, that masthead light is some
one's bedroom candle!"
We landed, hauled up the boat, and then feebly sat down on our
belongings to review the situation, and Maria came and shook herself
over each of us in turn. We had run into a little cove, guided by the
philanthropic beam of a candle in the upper window of a house about a
hundred yards away. The candle still burned on, and the anæmic
daylight exhibited to us our surroundings, and we debated as to whether
we could at 2.45 A.M. present ourselves as objects of compassion to the
owner of the candle. I need hardly say that it was the ladies who
decided on making the attempt, having, like most of their sex, a
courage incomparably superior to ours in such matters; Bernard and I
had not a grain of genuine compunction in our souls, but we failed in
nerve.
We trailed up from the cove, laden with emigrants' bundles, stumbling
on wet rocks in the half-light, and succeeded in making our way to the
house.
It was a small two-storied building, of that hideous breed of
architecture usually dedicated to the rectories of the Irish Church; we
felt that there was something friendly in the presence of a pair of
carpet slippers in the porch, but there was a hint of exclusiveness in
the fact that there was no knocker and that the bell was broken. The
light still burned in the upper window, and with a faltering hand I
flung gravel at the glass. This summons was appallingly responded to
by a shriek; there was a flutter of white at the panes, and the candle
was extinguished.
"Come away!" exclaimed Miss Shute, "it's a lunatic asylum!"
We stood our ground, however, and presently heard a footstep within, a
blind was poked aside in another window, and we were inspected by an
unseen inmate; then some one came downstairs, and the hall-door was
opened by a small man with a bald head and a long sandy beard. He was
attired in a brief dressing-gown, and on his shoulder sat, like an
angry ghost, a large white cockatoo. Its crest was up on end, its beak
was a good two inches long and curved like a Malay kris; its claws
gripped the little man's shoulder. Maria uttered in the background a
low and thunderous growl.
"Don't take any notice of the bird, please," said the little man
nervously, seeing our united gaze fixed upon this apparition; "he's
extremely fierce if annoyed."
The majority of our party here melted away to either side of the
hall-door, and I was left to do the explaining. The tale of our
misfortunes had its due effect, and we were ushered into a small
drawing-room, our host holding open the door for us, like a nightmare
footman with bare shins, a gnome-like bald head, and an unclean spirit
swaying on his shoulder. He opened the shutters, and we sat decorously
round the room, as at an afternoon party, while the situation was
further expounded on both sides. Our entertainer, indeed, favoured us
with the leading items of his family history, amongst them the facts
that he was a Dr. Fahy from Cork, who had taken somebody's rectory for
the summer, and had been prevailed on by some of his patients to permit
them to join him as paying guests.
"I said it was a lunatic asylum," murmured Miss Shute to me.
"In point of fact," went on our host, "there isn't an empty room in the
house, which is why I can only offer your party the use of this room
and the kitchen fire, which I make a point of keeping burning all
night."
He leaned back complacently in his chair, and crossed his legs; then,
obviously remembering his costume, sat bolt upright again. We owed the
guiding beams of the candle to the owner of the cockatoo, an old Mrs.
Buck, who was, we gathered, the most paying of all the patients, and
also, obviously, the one most feared and cherished by Dr. Fahy. "She
has a candle burning all night for the bird, and her door open to let
him walk about the house when he likes," said Dr. Fahy; "indeed, I may
say her passion for him amounts to dementia. He's very fond of me, and
Mrs. Fahy's always telling me I should be thankful, as whatever he did
we'd be bound to put up with it!"
Dr. Fahy had evidently a turn for conversation that was unaffected by
circumstance; the first beams of the early sun were lighting up the rep
chair covers before the door closed upon his brown dressing-gown, and
upon the stately white back of the cockatoo, and the demoniac
possession of laughter that had wrought in us during the interview
burst forth unchecked. It was most painful and exhausting, as such
laughter always is; but by far the most serious part of it was that
Miss Sally, who was sitting in the window, somehow drove her elbow
through a pane of glass, and Bernard, in pulling down the blind to
conceal the damage, tore it off the roller.
There followed on this catastrophe a period during which reason
tottered and Maria barked furiously. Philippa was the first to pull
herself together, and to suggest an adjournment to the kitchen fire
that, in honour of the paying guests, was never quenched, and,
respecting the repose of the household, we proceeded thither with a
stealth that convinced Maria we were engaged in a rat hunt. The boots
of paying guests littered the floor, the debris of their last repast
covered the table; a cat in some unseen fastness crooned a war song to
Maria, who feigned unconsciousness and fell to scientific research in
the scullery.
We roasted our boots at the range, and Bernard, with all a sailor's
gift for exploration and theft, prowled in noisome purlieus and emerged
with a jug of milk and a lump of salt butter. No one who has not been
a burglar can at all realise what it was to roam through Dr. Fahy's
basement storey, with the rookery of paying guests asleep above, and to
feel that, so far, we had repaid his confidence by breaking a pane of
glass and a blind, and putting the scullery tap out of order. I have
always maintained that there was something wrong with it before I
touched it, but the fact remains that when I had filled Philippa's
kettle, no human power could prevail upon it to stop flowing. For all
I know to the contrary it is running still.
It was in the course of our furtive return to the drawing-room that we
were again confronted by Mrs. Buck's cockatoo. It was standing in
malign meditation on the stairs, and on seeing us it rose, without a
word of warning, upon the wing, and with a long screech flung itself at
Miss Sally's golden-red head, which a ray of sunlight had chanced to
illumine. There was a moment of stampede, as the selected victim,
pursued by the cockatoo, fled into the drawing-room; two chairs were
upset (one, I think, broken), Miss Sally enveloped herself in a window
curtain, Philippa and Miss Shute effaced themselves beneath a table;
the cockatoo, foiled of its prey, skimmed, still screeching, round the
ceiling. It was Bernard who, with a well-directed sofa-cushion, drove
the enemy from the room. There was only a chink of the door open, but
the cockatoo turned on his side as he flew, and swung through it like a
woodcock.
We slammed the door behind him, and at the same instant there came a
thumping on the floor overhead, muffled, yet peremptory.
"That's Mrs. Buck!" said Miss Shute, crawling from under the table;
"the room over this is the one that had the candle in it."
We sat for a time in awful stillness, but nothing further happened,
save a distant shriek overhead, that told the cockatoo had sought and
found sanctuary in his owner's room. We had tea _sotto voce_, and
then, one by one, despite the amazing discomfort of the drawing-room
chairs, we dozed off to sleep.
It was at about five o'clock that I woke with a stiff neck and an
uneasy remembrance that I had last seen Maria in the kitchen. The
others, looking, each of them, about twenty years older than their age,
slept in various attitudes of exhaustion. Bernard opened his eyes as I
stole forth to look for Maria, but none of the ladies awoke. I went
down the evil-smelling passage that led to the kitchen stairs, and,
there on a mat, regarding me with intelligent affection, was Maria; but
what--oh what was the white thing that lay between her forepaws?
The situation was too serious to be coped with alone. I fled
noiselessly back to the drawing-room and put my head in; Bernard's
eyes--blessed be the light sleep of sailors!--opened again, and there
was that in mine that summoned him forth. (Blessed also be the light
step of sailors!)
We took the corpse from Maria, withholding perforce the language and
the slaughtering that our hearts ached to bestow. For a minute or two
our eyes communed.
"I'll get the kitchen shovel," breathed Bernard; "you open the
hall-door!"
A moment later we passed like spirits into the open air, and on into a
little garden at the end of the house. Maria followed us, licking her
lips. There were beds of nasturtiums, and of purple stocks, and of
marigolds. We chose a bed of stocks, a plump bed, that looked like
easy digging. The windows were all tightly shut and shuttered, and I
took the cockatoo from under my coat and hid it, temporarily, behind a
box border. Bernard had brought a shovel and a coal scoop. We dug
like badgers. At eighteen inches we got down into shale and stones,
and the coal scoop struck work.
"Never mind," said Bernard; "we'll plant the stocks on top of him."
It was a lovely morning, with a new-born blue sky and a light northerly
breeze. As we returned to the house, we looked across the wavelets of
the little cove and saw, above the rocky point round which we had
groped last night, a triangular white patch moving slowly along.
"The tide's lifted her!" said Bernard, standing stock-still. He looked
at Mrs. Buck's window and at me. "Yeates!" he whispered, "let's quit!"
It was now barely six o'clock, and not a soul was stirring. We woke
the ladies and convinced them of the high importance of catching the
tide. Bernard left a note on the hall table for Dr. Fahy, a beautiful
note of leave-taking and gratitude, and apology for the broken window
(for which he begged to enclose half-a-crown). No allusion was made to
the other casualties. As we neared the strand he found an occasion to
say to me:
"I put in a postscript that I thought it best to mention that I had
seen the cockatoo in the garden, and hoped it would get back all right.
That's quite true, you know! But look here, whatever you do, you must
keep it all dark from the ladies----"
At this juncture Maria overtook us with the cockatoo in her mouth.
XI
OCCASIONAL LICENSES
"It's out of the question," I said, looking forbiddingly at Mrs.
Moloney through the spokes of the bicycle that I was pumping up outside
the grocer's in Skebawn.
"Well, indeed, Major Yeates," said Mrs. Moloney, advancing excitedly,
and placing on the nickel plating a hand that I had good and recent
cause to know was warm, "sure I know well that if th' angel Gabriel
came down from heaven looking for a license for the races, your honour
wouldn't give it to him without a charackther, but as for Michael!
Sure, the world knows what Michael is!"
I had been waiting for Philippa for already nearly half-an-hour, and my
temper was not at its best.
"Character or no character, Mrs. Moloney," said I with asperity, "the
magistrates have settled to give no occasional licenses, and if Michael
were as sober as----"
"Is it sober! God help us!" exclaimed Mrs. Moloney with an upward
rolling of her eye to the Recording Angel; "I'll tell your honour the
truth. I'm his wife, now, fifteen years, and I never seen the sign of
dhrink on Michael only once, and that was when he went out o'
good-nature helping Timsy Ryan to whitewash his house, and Timsy and
himself had a couple o' pots o' porther, and look, he was as little
used to it that his head got light, and he walked away out to dhrive in
the cows and it no more than eleven o'clock in the day! And the cows,
the craytures, as much surprised, goin' hither and over the four
corners of the road from him! Faith, ye'd have to laugh. 'Michael,'
says I to him, 'ye're dhrunk!' 'I am,' says he, and the tears rained
from his eyes. I turned the cows from him. 'Go home,' I says, 'and
lie down on Willy Tom's bed----'"
At this affecting point my wife came out of the grocer's with a large
parcel to be strapped to my handlebar, and the history of Mr. Moloney's
solitary lapse from sobriety got no further than Willy Tom's bed.
"You see," I said to Philippa, as we bicycled quietly home through the
hot June afternoon, "we've settled we'll give no licenses for the
sports. Why even young Sheehy, who owns three pubs in Skebawn, came to
me and said he hoped the magistrates would be firm about it, as these
one-day licenses were quite unnecessary, and only led to drunkenness
and fighting, and every man on the Bench has joined in promising not to
grant any."
"How nice, dear!" said Philippa absently. "Do you know Mrs. McDonnell
can only let me have three dozen cups and saucers; I wonder if that
will be enough?"
"Do you mean to say you expect three dozen people?" said I.
"Oh, it's always well to be prepared," replied my wife evasively.
During the next few days I realised the true inwardness of what it was
to be prepared for an entertainment of this kind. Games were not at a
high level in my district. Football, of a wild, guerilla species, was
waged intermittently, blended in some inextricable way with Home Rule
and a brass band, and on Sundays gatherings of young men rolled a heavy
round stone along the roads, a rudimentary form of sport, whose
fascination lay primarily in the fact that it was illegal, and, in
lesser degree, in betting on the length of each roll. I had had a
period of enthusiasm, during which I thought I was going to be the
apostle of cricket in the neighbourhood, but my mission dwindled to
single wicket with Peter Cadogan, who was indulgent but bored, and I
swiped the ball through the dining-room window, and some one took one
of the stumps to poke the laundry fire. Once a year, however, on that
festival of the Roman Catholic Church which is familiarly known as
"Pether and Paul's day," the district was wont to make a spasmodic
effort at athletic sports, which were duly patronised by the gentry and
promoted by the publicans, and this year the honour of a steward's
green rosette was conferred upon me. Philippa's genius for hospitality
here saw its chance, and broke forth into unbridled tea-party in
connection with the sports, even involving me in the hire of a tent,
the conveyance of chairs and tables, and other large operations.
It chanced that Flurry Knox had on this occasion lent the fields for
the sports, with the proviso that horse-races and a tug-of-war were to
be added to the usual programme; Flurry's participation in events of
this kind seldom failed to be of an inflaming character. As he and I
planted larch spars for the high jump, and stuck furze-bushes into
hurdles (locally known as "hurrls"), and skirmished hourly with people
who wanted to sell drink on the course, I thought that my next summer
leave would singularly coincide with the festival consecrated to St.
Peter and St. Paul. We made a grand stand of quite four feet high, out
of old fish-boxes, which smelt worse and worse as the day wore on, but
was, none the less, as sought after by those for whom it was not
intended, as is the Royal enclosure at Ascot; we broke gaps in all the
fences to allow carriages on to the ground, we armed a gang of the
worst blackguards in Skebawn with cart-whips, to keep the course, and
felt that organisation could go no further.
The momentous day of Pether and Paul opened badly, with heavy clouds
and every indication of rain, but after a few thunder showers things
brightened, and it seemed within the bounds of possibility that the
weather might hold up. When I got down to the course on the day of the
sports the first thing I saw was a tent of that peculiar filthy grey
that usually enshrines the sale of porter, with an array of barrels in
a crate beside it; I bore down upon it in all the indignant majesty of
the law, and in so doing came upon Flurry Knox, who was engaged in
flogging boys off the Grand Stand.
"Sheehy's gone one better than you!" he said, without taking any
trouble to conceal the fact that he was amused.
"Sheehy!" I said; "why, Sheehy was the man who went to every magistrate
in the country to ask them to refuse a license for the sports."
"Yes, he took some trouble to prevent any one else having a look in,"
replied Flurry; "he asked every magistrate but one, and that was the
one that gave him the license."
"You don't mean to say that it was you?" I demanded in high wrath and
suspicion, remembering that Sheehy bred horses, and that my friend Mr.
Knox was a person of infinite resource in the matter of a deal.
"Well, well," said Flurry, rearranging a disordered fish-box, "and me
that's a church-warden, and sprained my ankle a month ago with running
downstairs at my grandmother's to be in time for prayers! Where's the
use of a good character in this country?"
"Not much when you keep it eating its head off for want of exercise," I
retorted; "but if it wasn't you, who was it?"
"Do you remember old Moriarty out at Castle Ire?"
I remembered him extremely well as one of those representatives of the
people with whom a paternal Government had leavened the effete ranks of
the Irish magistracy.
"Well," resumed Flurry, "that license was as good as a five-pound note
in his pocket."