"This is the last dance I shall give," went on her ladyship,
unappeased; "the men in this country consist of children and cads."
I admitted that we were but a poor lot, "but," I said, "Miss Sally told
me----"
"Sally's a fool!" said Lady Knox, with a falcon eye at her daughter,
who happened to be talking to her distant kinsman, Mr. Flurry of that
ilk.
The races had by this time begun with a competition known as the "Hop,
Step, and Lep"; this, judging by the yells, was a highly interesting
display, but as it was conducted between two impervious rows of
onlookers, the aristocracy on the fish-boxes saw nothing save the
occasional purple face of a competitor, starting into view above the
wall of backs like a jack-in-the-box. For me, however, the odorous
sanctuary of the fish-boxes was not to be. I left it guarded by
Slipper with a cart-whip of flail-like dimensions, as disreputable an
object as could be seen out of low comedy, with some one's old white
cords on his bandy legs, butcher-boots three sizes too big for him, and
a black eye. The small boys fled before him; in the glory of his
office he would have flailed his own mother off the fish-boxes had
occasion served.
I had an afternoon of decidedly mixed enjoyment. My stewardship
blossomed forth like Aaron's rod, and added to itself the duties of
starter, handicapper, general referee, and chucker-out, besides which I
from time to time strove with emissaries who came from Philippa with
messages about water and kettles. Flurry and I had to deal
single-handed with the foot-races (our brothers in office being
otherwise engaged at Mr. Sheehy's), a task of many difficulties,
chiefest being that the spectators all swept forward at the word "Go!"
and ran the race with the competitors, yelling curses, blessings, and
advice upon them, taking short cuts over anything and everybody, and
mingling inextricably with the finish. By fervent applications of the
whips, the course was to some extent purged for the quarter-mile, and
it would, I believe, have been a triumph of handicapping had not an
unforeseen disaster overtaken the favourite--old Mrs. Knox's bath-chair
boy. Whether, as was alleged, his braces had or had not been tampered
with by a rival was a matter that the referee had subsequently to deal
with in the thick of a free fight; but the painful fact remained that
in the course of the first lap what were described as "his galluses"
abruptly severed their connection with the garments for whose safety
they were responsible, and the favourite was obliged to seek seclusion
in the crowd.
The tug-of-war followed close on this _contre-temps_, and had the
excellent effect of drawing away, like a blister, the inflammation set
up by the grievances of the bath-chair boy. I cannot at this moment
remember of how many men each team consisted; my sole aim was to keep
the numbers even, and to baffle the volunteers who, in an ecstasy of
sympathy, attached themselves to the tail of the rope at moments when
their champions weakened. The rival forces dug their heels in and
tugged, in an uproar that drew forth the innermost line of customers
from Mr. Sheehy's porter tent, and even attracted "the quality" from
the haven of the fish-boxes, Slipper, in the capacity of Squire of
Dames, pioneering Lady Knox through the crowd with the cart-whip, and
with language whose nature was providentially veiled, for the most
part, by the din. The tug-of-war continued unabated. One team was
getting the worst of it, but hung doggedly on, sinking lower and lower
till they gradually sat down; nothing short of the trump of judgment
could have conveyed to them that they were breaking rules, and both
teams settled down by slow degrees on to their sides, with the rope
under them, and their heels still planted in the ground, bringing about
complete deadlock. I do not know the record duration for a tug-of-war,
but I can certify that the Cullinagh and Knockranny teams lay on the
ground at full tension for half-an-hour, like men in apoplectic fits,
each man with his respective adherents howling over him, blessing him,
and adjuring him to continue.
With my own nauseated eyes I saw a bearded countryman, obviously one of
Mr. Sheehy's best customers, fling himself on his knees beside one of
the combatants, and kiss his crimson and streaming face in a rapture of
encouragement. As he shoved unsteadily past me on his return journey
to Mr. Sheehy's, I heard him informing a friend that "he cried a
handful over Danny Mulloy, when he seen the poor brave boy so
shtubborn, and, indeed, he couldn't say why he cried."
"For good-nature ye'd cry," suggested the friend.
"Well, just that, I suppose," returned Danny Mulloy's admirer
resignedly; "indeed, if it was only two cocks ye seen fightin' on the
road, yer heart'd take part with one o' them!"
I had begun to realise that I might as well abandon the tug-of-war and
occupy myself elsewhere, when my wife's much harassed messenger brought
me the portentous tidings that Mrs. Yeates wanted me at the tent at
once. When I arrived I found the tent literally bulging with
Philippa's guests; Lady Knox, seated on a hamper, was taking off her
gloves, and loudly announcing her desire for tea, and Philippa, with a
flushed face and a crooked hat, breathed into my ear the awful news
that both the cream and the milk had been forgotten.
"But Flurry Knox says he can get me some," she went on; "he's gone to
send people to milk a cow that lives near here. Go out and see if he's
coming."
I went out and found, in the first instance, Mrs. Cadogan, who greeted
me with the prayer that the divil might roast Julia McCarthy, that
legged it away to the races like a wild goose, and left the cream
afther her on the servants' hall table. "Sure, Misther Flurry's gone
looking for a cow, and what cow would there be in a backwards place
like this? And look at me shtriving to keep the kettle simpering on
the fire, and not as much coals undher it as'd redden a pipe!"
"Where's Mr. Knox?" I asked.
"Himself and Slipper's galloping the counthry like the deer. I believe
it's to the house above they went, sir."
I followed up a rocky hill to the house above, and there found Flurry
and Slipper engaged in the patriarchal task of driving two brace of
coupled and spancelled goats into a shed.
"It's the best we can do," said Flurry briefly; "there isn't a cow to
be found, and the people are all down at the sports. Be d----d to you,
Slipper, don't let them go from you!" as the goats charged and doubled
like football players.
"But goats' milk!" I said, paralysed by horrible memories of what tea
used to taste like at Gib.
"They'll never know it!" said Flurry, cornering a venerable nanny;
"here, hold this divil, and hold her tight!"
I have no time to dwell upon the pastoral scene that followed. Suffice
it to say, that at the end of ten minutes of scorching profanity from
Slipper, and incessant warfare with the goats, the latter had
reluctantly yielded two small jugfuls, and the dairymaids had exhibited
a nerve and skill in their trade that won my lasting respect.
"I knew I could trust _you_, Mr. Knox!" said Philippa, with shining
eyes, as we presented her with the two foaming beakers. I suppose a
man is never a hero to his wife, but if she could have realised the
bruises on my legs, I think she would have reserved a blessing for me
also.
What was thought of the goats' milk I gathered symptomatically from a
certain fixity of expression that accompanied the first sip of the tea,
and from observing that comparatively few ventured on second cups. I
also noted that after a brief conversation with Flurry, Miss Sally
poured hers secretly on to the grass. Lady Knox had throughout the day
preserved an aspect so threatening that no change was perceptible in
her demeanour. In the throng of hungry guests I did not for some time
notice that Mr. Knox had withdrawn until something in Miss Sally's eye
summoned me to her, and she told me she had a message from him for me.
"Couldn't we come outside?" she said.
Outside the tent, within less than six yards of her mother, Miss Sally
confided to me a scheme that made my hair stand on end. Summarised, it
amounted to this: That, first, she was in the primary stage of a deal
with Sheehy for a four-year-old chestnut colt, for which Sheehy was
asking double its value on the assumption that it had no rival in the
country; that, secondly, they had just heard it was going to run in the
first race; and, thirdly and lastly, that as there was no other horse
available, Flurry was going to take old Sultan out of the 'bus and ride
him in the race; and that Mrs. Yeates had promised to keep mamma safe
in the tent, while the race was going on, and "you know, Major Yeates,
it would be delightful to beat Sheehy after his getting the better of
you all about the license!"
With this base appeal to my professional feelings, Miss Knox paused,
and looked at me insinuatingly. Her eyes were greeny-grey, and very
beguiling.
"Come on," she said; "they want you to start them!"
Pursued by visions of the just wrath of Lady Knox, I weakly followed
Miss Sally to the farther end of the second field, from which point the
race was to start. The course was not a serious one: two or three
natural banks, a stone wall, and a couple of "hurrls." There were but
four riders, including Flurry, who was seated composedly on Sultan,
smoking a cigarette and talking confidentially to Slipper. Sultan,
although something stricken in years and touched in the wind, was a
brown horse who in his day had been a hunter of no mean repute; even
now he occasionally carried Lady Knox in a sedate and gentlemanly
manner, but it struck me that it was trying him rather high to take him
from the pole of the 'bus after twelve miles on a hilly road, and
hustle him over a country against a four-year-old. My acutest anxiety,
however, was to start the race as quickly as possible, and to get back
to the tent in time to establish an alibi; therefore I repressed my
private sentiments, and, tying my handkerchief to a stick, determined
that no time should be fashionably frittered away in false starts.
They got away somehow; I believe Sheehy's colt was facing the wrong way
at the moment when I dropped the flag, but a friend turned him with a
stick, and, with a cordial and timely whack, speeded him on his way on
sufficiently level terms, and then somehow, instead of returning to the
tent, I found myself with Miss Sally on the top of a tall narrow bank,
in a precarious line of other spectators, with whom we toppled and
swayed, and, in moments of acuter emotion, held on to each other in
unaffected comradeship.
Flurry started well, and from our commanding position we could see him
methodically riding at the first fence at a smart hunting canter,
closely attended by James Canty's brother on a young black mare, and by
an unknown youth on a big white horse. The hope of Sheehy's stable, a
leggy chestnut, ridden by a cadet of the house of Sheehy, went away
from the friend's stick like a rocket, and had already refused the
first bank twice before old Sultan decorously changed feet on it and
dropped down into the next field with tranquil precision. The white
horse scrambled over it on his stomach, but landed safely, despite the
fact that his rider clasped him round the neck during the process; the
black mare and the chestnut shouldered one another over at the hole the
white horse had left, and the whole party went away in a bunch and
jumped the ensuing hurdle without disaster. Flurry continued to ride
at the same steady hunting pace, accompanied respectfully by the white
horse and by Jerry Canty on the black mare. Sheehy's colt had clearly
the legs of the party, and did some showy galloping between the jumps,
but as he refused to face the banks without a lead, the end of the
first round found the field still a sociable party personally conducted
by Mr. Knox.
"That's a dam nice horse," said one of my hangers-on, looking
approvingly at Sultan as he passed us at the beginning of the second
round, making a good deal of noise but apparently going at his ease;
"you might depind your life on him, and he have the crabbedest jock in
the globe of Ireland on him this minute."
"Canty's mare's very sour," said another; "look at her now, baulking
the bank! she's as cross as a bag of weasels."
"Begob, I wouldn't say but she's a little sign lame," resumed the
first; "she was going light on one leg on the road a while ago."
"I tell you what it is," said Miss Sally, very seriously, in my ear,
"that chestnut of Sheehy's is settling down. I'm afraid he'll gallop
away from Sultan at the finish, and the wall won't stop him. Flurry
can't get another inch out of Sultan. He's riding him well," she ended
in a critical voice, which yet was not quite like her own. Perhaps I
should not have noticed it but for the fact that the hand that held my
arm was trembling. As for me, I thought of Lady Knox, and trembled too.
There now remained but one bank, the trampled remnant of the furze
hurdle, and the stone wall. The pace was beginning to improve, and the
other horses drew away from Sultan; they charged the bank at full
gallop, the black mare and the chestnut flying it perilously, with a
windmill flourish of legs and arms from their riders, the white horse
racing up to it with a gallantry that deserted him at the critical
moment, with the result that his rider turned a somersault over his
head and landed, amidst the roars of the onlookers, sitting on the
fence facing his horse's nose. With creditable presence of mind he
remained on the bank, towed the horse over, scrambled on to his back
again and started afresh. Sultan, thirty yards to the bad, pounded
doggedly on, and Flurry's cane and heels remained idle; the old horse,
obviously blown, slowed cautiously coming in at the jump. Sally's grip
tightened on my arm, and the crowd yelled as Sultan, answering to a
hint from the spurs and a touch at his mouth, heaved himself on to the
bank. Nothing but sheer riding on Flurry's part got him safe off it,
and saved him from the consequences of a bad peck on landing; none the
less, he pulled himself together and went away down the hill for the
stone wall as stoutly as ever. The high-road skirted the last two
fields, and there was a gate in the roadside fence beside the place
where the stone wall met it at right angles. I had noticed this gate,
because during the first round Slipper had been sitting on it,
demonstrating with his usual fervour. Sheeny's colt was leading, with
his nose in the air, his rider's hands going like a circular saw, and
his temper, as a bystander remarked, "up on end"; the black mare, half
mad from spurring, was going hard at his heels, completely out of hand;
the white horse was steering steadily for the wrong side of the flag,
and Flurry, by dint of cutting corners and of saving every yard of
ground, was close enough to keep his antagonists' heads over their
shoulders, while their right arms rose and fell in unceasing
flagellation.
"There'll be a smash when they come to the wall! If one falls they'll
all go!" panted Sally. "Oh!---- Now! Flurry! Flurry!----"
What had happened was that the chestnut colt had suddenly perceived
that the gate at right angles to the wall was standing wide open, and,
swinging away from the jump, he had bolted headlong out on to the road,
and along it at top speed for his home. After him fled Canty's black
mare, and with her, carried away by the spirit of stampede, went the
white horse.
Flurry stood up in his stirrups and gave a view-halloa as he cantered
down to the wall. Sultan came at it with the send of the hill behind
him, and jumped it with a skill that intensified, if that were
possible, the volume of laughter and yells around us. By the time the
black mare and the white horse had returned and ignominiously bundled
over the wall to finish as best they might, Flurry was leading Sultan
towards us.
"That blackguard, Slipper!" he said, grinning; "every one'll say I told
him to open the gate! But look here, I'm afraid we're in for trouble.
Sultan's given himself a bad over-reach; you could never drive him home
to-night. And I've just seen Norris lying blind drunk under a wall!"
Now Norris was Lady Knox's coachman. We stood aghast at this "horror
on horror's head," the blood trickled down Sultan's heel, and the
lather lay in flecks on his dripping, heaving sides, in irrefutable
witness to the iniquity of Lady Knox's only daughter. Then Flurry said:
"Thank the Lord, here's the rain!"
At the moment I admit that I failed to see any cause for gratitude in
this occurrence, but later on I appreciated Flurry's grasp of
circumstances.
That appreciation was, I think, at its highest development about
half-an-hour afterwards, when I, an unwilling conspirator (a part with
which my acquaintance with Mr. Knox had rendered me but too familiar)
unfurled Mrs. Cadogan's umbrella over Lady Knox's head, and hurried her
through the rain from the tent to the 'bus, keeping it and my own
person well between her and the horses. I got her in, with the rest of
her bedraggled and exhausted party, and slammed the door.
"Remember, Major Yeates," she said through the window, "you are the
_only_ person here in whom I have any confidence. I don't wish _any_
one else to touch the reins!" this with a glance towards Flurry, who
was standing near.
"I'm afraid I'm only a moderate whip," I said.
"My dear man," replied Lady Knox testily, "those horses could drive
themselves!"
I slunk round to the front of the 'bus. Two horses, carefully rugged,
were in it, with the inevitable Slipper at their heads.
"Slipper's going with you," whispered Flurry, stepping up to me; "she
won't have me at any price. He'll throw the rugs over them when you
get to the house, and if you hold the umbrella well over her she'll
never see. I'll manage to get Sultan over somehow, when Norris is
sober. That will be all right."
I climbed to the box without answering, my soul being bitter within me,
as is the soul of a man who has been persuaded by womankind against his
judgment.
"Never again!" I said to myself, picking up the reins; "let her marry
him or Bernard Shute, or both of them if she likes, but I won't be
roped into this kind of business again!"
Slipper drew the rugs from the horses, revealing on the near side Lady
Knox's majestic carriage horse, and on the off, a thick-set brown mare
of about fifteen hands.
"What brute is this?" said I to Slipper, as he swarmed up beside me.
"I don't rightly know where Misther Flurry got her," said Slipper, with
one of his hiccoughing crows of laughter; "give her the whip, Major,
and"--here he broke into song:
"Howld to the shteel,
Honamaundhiaoul; she'll run off like an eel!"
"If you don't shut your mouth," said I, with pent-up ferocity, "I'll
chuck you off the 'bus."
Slipper was but slightly drunk, and, taking this delicate rebuke in
good part, he relapsed into silence.
Wherever the brown mare came from, I can certify that it was not out of
double harness. Though humble and anxious to oblige, she pulled away
from the pole as if it were red hot, and at critical moments had a
tendency to sit down. However, we squeezed without misadventure among
the donkey carts and between the groups of people, and bumped at length
in safety out on to the high-road.
Here I thought it no harm to take Slipper's advice, and I applied the
whip to the brown mare, who seemed inclined to turn round. She
immediately fell into an uncertain canter that no effort of mine could
frustrate; I could only hope that Miss Sally would foster conversation
inside the 'bus and create a distraction; but judging from my last view
of the party, and of Lady Knox in particular, I thought she was not
likely to be successful. Fortunately the rain was heavy and thick, and
a rising west wind gave every promise of its continuance. I had little
doubt but that I should catch cold, but I took it to my bosom with
gratitude as I reflected how it was drumming on the roof of the 'bus
and blurring the windows.
We had reached the foot of a hill, about a quarter of a mile from the
racecourse; the Castle Knox horse addressed himself to it with
dignified determination, but the mare showed a sudden and alarming
tendency to jib.
"Belt her, Major!" vociferated Slipper, as she hung back from the pole
chain, with the collar half-way up her ewe neck, "and give it to the
horse, too! He'll dhrag her!"
I was in the act of "belting," when a squealing whinny struck upon my
ear, accompanied by a light pattering gallop on the road behind us;
there was an answering roar from the brown mare, a roar, as I realised
with a sudden drop of the heart, of outraged maternal feeling, and in
another instant a pale, yellow foal sprinted up beside us, with shrill
whickerings of joy. Had there at this moment been a boghole handy, I
should have turned the 'bus into it without hesitation; as there was no
accommodation of the kind, I laid the whip severely into everything I
could reach, including the foal. The result was that we topped the
hill at a gallop, three abreast, like a Russian troitska; it was like
my usual luck that at this identical moment we should meet the police
patrol, who saluted respectfully.
"That the divil may blisther Michael Moloney!" ejaculated Slipper,
holding on to the rail; "didn't I give him the foaleen and a halther on
him to keep him! I'll howld you a pint 'twas the wife let him go, for
she being vexed about the license! Sure that one's a March foal, an'
he'd run from here to Cork!"
There was no sign from my inside passengers, and I held on at a round
pace, the mother and child galloping absurdly, the carriage horse
pulling hard, but behaving like a gentleman. I wildly revolved plans
of how I would make Slipper turn the foal in at the first gate we came
to, of what I should say to Lady Knox supposing the worst happened and
the foal accompanied us to her hall door, and of how I would have
Flurry's blood at the earliest possible opportunity, and here the
fateful sound of galloping behind us was again heard.
"It's impossible!" I said to myself; "she can't have twins!"
The galloping came nearer, and Slipper looked back.
"Murdher alive!" he said in a stage whisper; "Tom Sheehy's afther us on
the butcher's pony!"
"What's that to me?" I said, dragging my team aside to let him pass; "I
suppose he's drunk, like every one else!"
Then the voice of Tom Sheehy made itself heard.
"Shtop! Shtop thief!" he was bawling; "give up my mare! How will I
get me porther home!"
That was the closest shave I have ever had, and nothing could have
saved the position but the torrential nature of the rain and the fact
that Lady Knox had on a new bonnet. I explained to her at the door of
the 'bus that Sheehy was drunk (which was the one unassailable feature
of the case), and had come after his foal, which, with the fatuity of
its kind, had escaped from a field and followed us. I did not mention
to Lady Knox that when Mr. Sheehy retreated, apologetically, dragging
the foal after him in a halter belonging to one of her own carriage
horses, he had a sovereign of mine in his pocket, and during the
narration I avoided Miss Sally's eye as carefully as she avoided mine.
The only comments on the day's events that are worthy of record were
that Philippa said to me that she had not been able to understand what
the curious taste in the tea had been till Sally told her it was
turf-smoke, and that Mrs. Cadogan said to Philippa that night that "the
Major was that dhrinched that if he had a shirt between his skin and
himself he could have wrung it," and that Lady Knox said to a mutual
friend that though Major Yeates had been extremely kind and obliging,
he was an uncommonly bad whip.
XII
"OH LOVE! OH FIRE!"
It was on one of the hottest days of a hot August that I walked over to
Tory Lodge to inform Mr. Flurry Knox, M.F.H., that the limits of human
endurance had been reached, and that either Venus and her family, or I
and mine, must quit Shreelane. In a moment of impulse I had accepted
her and her numerous progeny as guests in my stable-yard, since when
Mrs. Cadogan had given warning once or twice a week, and Maria, lawful
autocrat of the ashpit, had had--I quote the kitchen-maid--"tin battles
for every male she'd ate."
The walk over the hills was not of a nature to lower the temperature,
moral or otherwise. The grassy path was as slippery as glass, the
rocks radiated heat, the bracken radiated horseflies. There was no
need to nurse my wrath to keep it warm.
I found Flurry seated in the kennel-yard in a long and unclean white
linen coat, engaged in clipping hieroglyphics on the ears of a young
outgoing draft, an occupation in itself unfavourable to argument. The
young draft had already monopolised all possible forms of remonstrance,
from snarling in the obscurity behind the meal sack in the
boiler-house, to hysterical yelling as they were dragged forth by the
tail; but through these alarms and excursions I denounced Venus and all
her works, from slaughtered Wyandottes to broken dishes. Even as I did
so I was conscious of something chastened in Mr. Knox's demeanour, some
touch of remoteness and melancholy with which I was quite unfamiliar;
my indictment weakened and my grievances became trivial when laid
before this grave and almost religiously gentle young man.
"I'm sorry you and Mrs. Yeates should be vexed by her. Send her back
when you like. I'll keep her. Maybe it'll not be for so long after
all."
When pressed to expound this dark saying, Flurry smiled wanly and
snipped a second line in the hair of the puppy that was pinned between
his legs. I was almost relieved when a hard try to bite on the part of
the puppy imparted to Flurry's language a transient warmth; but the
reaction was only temporary.
"It'd be as good for me to make a present of this lot to old Welby as
to take the price he's offering me," he went on, as he got up and took
off his highly-scented kennel-coat; "but I couldn't be bothered
fighting him. Come on in and have something. I drink tea myself at
this hour."
If he had said toast and water it would have seemed no more than was
suitable to such a frame of mind. As I followed him to the house I
thought that when the day came that Flurry Knox could not be bothered
with fighting old Welby things were becoming serious, but I kept this
opinion to myself and merely offered an admiring comment on the roses
that were blooming on the front of the house.
"I put up every stick of that trellis myself with my own hands," said
Flurry, still gloomily; "the roses were trailing all over the place for
the want of it. Would you like to have a look at the garden while
they're getting tea? I settled it up a bit since you saw it last."
I acceded to this almost alarmingly ladylike suggestion, marvelling
greatly.
Flurry certainly was a changed man, and his garden was a changed
garden. It was a very old garden, with unexpected arbours madly
overgrown with flowering climbers, and a flight of grey steps leading
to a terrace, where a moss-grown sundial and ancient herbaceous plants
strove with nettles and briars; but I chiefly remembered it as a place
where washing was wont to hang on black-currant bushes, and the kennel
terrier matured his bones and hunted chickens. There was now rabbit
wire on the gate, the walks were cleaned, the beds weeded. There was
even a bed of mignonette, a row of sweet pea, and a blazing party of
sunflowers, and Michael, once second in command in many a filibustering
expedition, was now on his knees, ingloriously tying carnations to
little pieces of cane.
We walked up the steps to the terrace. Down below us the rich and
southern blue of the sea filled the gaps between scattered fir-trees;
the hillside above was purple with heather; a bay mare and her foal
were moving lazily through the bracken, with the sun glistening on it
and them. I looked back at the house, nestling in the hollow of the
hill, I smelled the smell of the mignonette in the air, I regarded
Michael's labouring back among the carnations, and without any
connection of ideas I seemed to see Miss Sally Knox, with her
golden-red hair and slight figure, standing on the terrace beside her
kinsman.
"Michael! Do ye know where's Misther Flurry?" squalled a voice from
the garden gate, the untrammelled voice of the female domestic at large
among her fellows. "The tay's wet, and there's a man over with a
message from Aussolas. He was tellin' me the owld hairo beyant is
givin' out invitations----"
A stricken silence fell, induced, no doubt, by hasty danger signals
from Michael.
"Who's 'the old hero beyant'?" I asked, as we turned toward the house.
"My grandmother," said Flurry, permitting himself a smile that had
about as much sociability in it as skim milk; "she's giving a tenants'
dance at Aussolas. She gave one about five years ago, and I declare
you might as well get the influenza into the country, or a mission at
the chapel. There won't be a servant in the place will be able to
answer their name for a week after it, what with toothache and
headache, and blathering in the kitchen!"
We had tea in the drawing-room, a solemnity which I could not but be
aware was due to the presence of a new carpet, a new wall-paper, and a
new piano. Flurry made no comment on these things, but something told
me that I was expected to do so, and I did.
"I'd sell you the lot to-morrow for half what I gave for them," said my
host, eyeing them with morose respect as he poured out his third cup of
tea.
I have all my life been handicapped by not having the courage of my
curiosity. Those who have the nerve to ask direct questions on matters
that do not concern them seldom fail to extract direct answers, but in
my lack of this enviable gift I went home in the dark as to what had
befallen my landlord, and fully aware of how my wife would despise me
for my shortcomings. Philippa always says that she never asks
questions, but she seems none the less to get a lot of answers.
On my own avenue I met Miss Sally Knox riding away from the house on
her white cob; she had found no one at home, and she would not turn
back with me, but she did not seem to be in any hurry to ride away. I
told her that I had just been over to see her relative, Mr. Knox, who
had informed me that he meant to give up the hounds, a fact in which
she seemed only conventionally interested. She looked pale, and her
eyelids were slightly pink; I checked myself on the verge of asking her
if she had hay-fever, and inquired instead if she had heard of the
tenants' dance at Aussolas. She did not answer at first, but rubbed
her cane up and down the cob's clipped toothbrush of a mane. Then she
said:
"Major Yeates--look here--there's a most awful row at home!"
I expressed incoherent regret, and wished to my heart that Philippa had
been there to cope with the situation.
"It began when mamma found out about Flurry's racing Sultan, and then
came our dance----"
Miss Sally stopped; I nodded, remembering certain episodes of Lady
Knox's dance.
"And--mamma says--she says----"
I waited respectfully to hear what mamma had said; the cob fidgeted
under the attentions of the horseflies, and nearly trod on my toe.
"Well, the end of it is," she said with a gulp, "she said such things
to Flurry that he can't come near the house again, and I'm to go over
to England to Aunt Dora, next week. Will you tell Philippa I came to
say good-bye to her? I don't think I can get over here again."
Miss Sally was a sufficiently old friend of mine for me to take her
hand and press it in a fatherly manner, but for the life of me I could
not think of anything to say, unless I expressed my sympathy with her
mother's point of view about detrimentals, which was obviously not the
thing to do.
Philippa accorded to my news the rare tribute of speechless attention,
and then was despicable enough to say that she had foreseen the whole
affair from the beginning.
"From the day that she refused him in the ice-house, I suppose," said I
sarcastically.
"That _was_ the beginning," replied Philippa.
"Well," I went on judicially, "whenever it began, it was high time for
it to end. She can do a good deal better than Flurry."
Philippa became rather red in the face.
"I call that a thoroughly commonplace thing to say," she said. "I dare
say he has not many ideas beyond horses, but no more has she, and he
really does come and borrow books from me----"
"Whitaker's Almanack," I murmured.
"Well, I don't care, I like him very much, and I know what you're going
to say, and you're wrong, and I'll tell you why----"
Here Mrs. Cadogan came into the room, her cap at rather more than its
usual warlike angle over her scarlet forehead, and in her hand a
kitchen plate, on which a note was ceremoniously laid forth.
"But this is for you, Mrs. Cadogan," said Philippa, as she looked at it.
"Ma'am," returned Mrs. Cadogan with immense dignity, "I have no
learning, and from what the young man's afther telling me that brought
it from Aussolas, I'd sooner yerself read it for me than thim gerrls."
My wife opened the envelope, and drew forth a gilt-edged sheet of pink
paper.
"Miss Margaret Nolan presents her compliments to Mrs. Cadogan," she
read, "and I have the pleasure of telling you that the servants of
Aussolas is inviting you and Mr. Peter Cadogan, Miss Mulrooney, and
Miss Gallagher"--Philippa's voice quavered perilously--"to a dance on
next Wednesday. Dancing to begin at seven o'clock, and to go on till
five.--Yours affectionately, MAGGIE NOLAN."
"How affectionate she is!" snorted Mrs. Cadogan; "them's Dublin
manners, I dare say!"
"P.S.," continued Philippa; "steward, Mr. Denis O'Loughlin; stewardess,
Mrs. Mahony."
"Thoughtful provision," I remarked; "I suppose Mrs. Mahony's duties
will begin after supper."
"Well, Mrs. Cadogan," said Philippa, quelling me with a glance, "I
suppose you'd all like to go?"
"As for dancin'," said Mrs. Cadogan, with her eyes fixed on a level
with the curtain-pole, "I thank God I'm a widow, and the only dancin'
I'll do is to dance to my grave."
"Well, perhaps Julia, and Annie, and Peter----" suggested Philippa,
considerably overawed.
"I'm not one of them that holds with loud mockery and harangues,"
continued Mrs. Cadogan, "but if I had any wish for dhrawing down talk I
could tell you, ma'am, that the like o' them has their share of dances
without going to Aussolas! Wasn't it only last Sunday week I wint
follyin' the turkey that's layin' out in the plantation, and the whole
o' thim hysted their sails and back with them to their lovers at the
gate-house, and the kitchen-maid having a Jew-harp to be playing for
them!"
"That was very wrong," said the truckling Philippa. "I hope you spoke
to the kitchen-maid about it."
"Is it spake to thim?" rejoined Mrs. Cadogan. "No, but what I done was
to dhrag the kitchenmaid round the passages by the hair o' the head!"
"Well, after that, I think you might let her go to Aussolas," said I
venturously.
The end of it was that every one in and about the house went to
Aussolas on the following Wednesday, including Mrs. Cadogan. Philippa
had gone over to stay at the Shutes, ostensibly to arrange about a
jumble sale, the real object being (as a matter of history) to inspect
the Scotch young lady before whom Bernard Shute had dumped his
affections in his customary manner. Being alone, with every prospect
of a bad dinner, I accepted with gratitude an invitation to dine and
sleep at Aussolas and see the dance; it is only on very special
occasions that I have the heart to remind Philippa that she had neither
part nor lot in what occurred--it is too serious a matter for trivial
gloryings.
Mrs. Knox had asked me to dine at six o'clock, which meant that I
arrived, in blazing sunlight and evening clothes, punctually at that
hour, and that at seven o'clock I was still sitting in the library,
reading heavily-bound classics, while my hostess held loud
conversations down staircases with Denis O'Loughlin, the red-bearded
Robinson Crusoe who combined in himself the offices of coachman,
butler, and, to the best of my belief, valet to the lady of the house.
The door opened at last, and Denis, looking as furtive as his prototype
after he had sighted the footprint, put in his head and beckoned to me.
"The misthress says will ye go to dinner without her," he said very
confidentially; "sure she's greatly vexed ye should be waitin' on her.
'Twas the kitchen chimney cot fire, and faith she's afther giving Biddy
Mahony the sack, on the head of it! Though, indeed, 'tis little we'd
regard a chimney on fire here any other day."
Mrs. Knox's woolly dog was the sole occupant of the dining-room when I
entered it; he was sitting on his mistress's chair, with all the air of
outrage peculiar to a small and self-important dog when routine has
been interfered with. It was difficult to discover what had caused the
delay, the meal, not excepting the soup, being a cold collation; it was
heavily flavoured with soot, and was hurled on to the table by Crusoe
in spasmodic bursts, contemporaneous, no doubt, with Biddy Mahony's
fits of hysterics in the kitchen. Its most memorable feature was a
noble lake trout, which appeared in two jagged pieces, a matter lightly
alluded to by Denis as the result of "a little argument" between
himself and Biddy as to the dish on which it was to be served. Further
conversation elicited the interesting fact that the combatants had
pulled the trout in two before the matter was settled. A brief glance
at my attendant's hands decided me to let the woolly dog justify his
existence by consuming my portion for me, when Crusoe left the room.
Old Mrs. Knox remained invisible till the end of dinner, when she
appeared in the purple velvet bonnet that she was reputed to have worn
since the famine, and a dun-coloured woollen shawl fastened by a
splendid diamond brooch, that flashed rainbow fire against the last
shafts of sunset. There was a fire in the old lady's eye, too, the
light that I had sometimes seen in Flurry's in moments of crisis.
"I have no apologies to offer that are worth hearing," she said, "but I
have come to drink a glass of port wine with you, if you will so far
honour me, and then we must go out and see the ball. My grandson is
late, as usual."
She crumbled a biscuit with a brown and preoccupied hand; her claw-like
fingers carried a crowded sparkle of diamonds upwards as she raised her
glass to her lips.
The twilight was falling when we left the room and made our way
downstairs. I followed the little figure in the purple bonnet through
dark regions of passages and doorways, where strange lumber lay about;
there was a rusty suit of armour, an upturned punt, mouldering
pictures, and finally, by a door that opened into the yard, a lady's
bicycle, white with the dust of travel. I supposed this latter to have
been imported from Dublin by the fashionable Miss Maggie Nolan, but on
the other hand it was well within the bounds of possibility that it
belonged to old Mrs. Knox. The coach-house at Aussolas was on a par
with the rest of the establishment, being vast, dilapidated, and of
unknown age. Its three double doors were wide open, and the guests
overflowed through them into the cobble-stoned yard; above their heads
the tin reflectors of paraffin lamps glared at us from among the
Christmas decorations of holly and ivy that festooned the walls. The
voices of a fiddle and a concertina, combined, were uttering a polka
with shrill and hideous fluency, to which the scraping and stamping of
hobnailed boots made a ponderous bass accompaniment.
Mrs. Knox's donkey-chair had been placed in a commanding position at
the top of the room, and she made her way slowly to it, shaking hands
with all varieties of tenants and saying right things without showing
any symptom of that flustered boredom that I have myself exhibited when
I went round the men's messes on Christmas Day. She took her seat in
the donkey-chair, with the white dog in her lap, and looked with her
hawk's eyes round the array of faces that hemmed in the space where the
dancers were solemnly bobbing and hopping.
"Will you tell me who that tomfool is, Denis?" she said, pointing to a
young lady in a ball dress who was circling in conscious magnificence
and somewhat painful incongruity in the arms of Mr. Peter Cadogan.
"That's the lady's-maid from Castle Knox, yer honour, ma'am," replied
Denis, with something remarkably like a wink at Mrs. Knox.
"When did the Castle Knox servants come?" asked the old lady, very
sharply.
"The same time yer honour left the table, and----Pillilew! What's
this?"
There was a clatter of galloping hoofs in the courtyard, as of a troop
of cavalry, and out of the heart of it Flurry's voice shouting to Denis
to drive out the colts and shut the gates before they had the people
killed. I noticed that the colour had risen to Mrs. Knox's face, and I
put it down to anxiety about her young horses. I may admit that when I
heard Flurry's voice, and saw him collaring his grandmother's guests
and pushing them out of the way as he came into the coach-house, I
rather feared that he was in the condition so often defined to me at
Petty Sessions as "not dhrunk, but having dhrink taken." His face was
white, his eyes glittered, there was a general air of exaltation about
him that suggested the solace of the pangs of love according to the
most ancient convention.
"Hullo!" he said, swaggering up to the orchestra, "what's this
humbugging thing they're playing? A polka, is it? Drop that, John
Casey, and play a jig."
John Casey ceased abjectly.
"What'll I play, Masther Flurry?"
"What the devil do I care? Here, Yeates, put a name on it! You're a
sort of musicianer yourself!"
I know the names of three or four Irish jigs; but on this occasion my
memory clung exclusively to one, I suppose because it was the one I
felt to be peculiarly inappropriate.
"Oh, well, 'Haste to the Wedding,'" I said, looking away.
Flurry gave a shout of laughter.
"That's it!" he exclaimed. "Play it up, John! Give us 'Haste to the
Wedding.' That's Major Yeates's fancy!"
Decidedly Flurry was drunk.
"What's wrong with you all that you aren't dancing?" he continued,
striding up the middle of the room. "Maybe you don't know how. Here,
I'll soon get one that'll show you!"
He advanced upon his grandmother, snatched her out of the donkey-chair,
and, amid roars of applause, led her out, while the fiddle squealed its
way through the inimitable twists of the tune, and the concertina
surged and panted after it. Whatever Mrs. Knox may have thought of her
grandson's behaviour, she was evidently going to make the best of it.
She took her station opposite to him, in the purple bonnet, the
dun-coloured shawl, and the diamonds, she picked up her skirt at each
side, affording a view of narrow feet in elastic-sided cloth boots, and
for three repeats of the tune she stood up to her grandson, and footed
it on the coach-house floor. What the cloth boots did I could not
exactly follow; they were, as well as I could see, extremely
scientific, while there was hardly so much as a nod from the plumes of
the bonnet. Flurry was also scientific, but his dancing did not alter
my opinion that he was drunk; in fact, I thought he was making rather
an exhibition of himself. They say that that jig was twenty pounds in
Mrs. Knox's pocket at the next rent day; but though this statement is
open to doubt, I believe that if she and Flurry had taken the hat round
there and then she would have got in the best part of her arrears.
After this the company settled down to business. The dances lasted a
sweltering half-hour, old women and young dancing with equal and
tireless zest. At the end of each the gentlemen abandoned their
partners without ceremony or comment, and went out to smoke, while the
ladies retired to the laundry, where families of teapots stewed on the
long bars of the fire, and Mrs. Mahony cut up mighty "barm-bracks," and
the tea-drinking was illimitable.
At ten o'clock Mrs. Knox withdrew from the revel; she said that she was
tired, but I have seldom seen any one look more wide awake. I thought
that I might unobtrusively follow her example, but I was intercepted by
Flurry.
"Yeates," he said seriously, "I'll take it as a kindness if you'll see
this thing out with me. We must keep them pretty sober, and get them
out of this by daylight. I--I have to get home early."
I at once took back my opinion that Flurry was drunk; I almost wished
he had been, as I could then have deserted him without a pang. As it
was, I addressed myself heavily to the night's enjoyment. Wan with
heat, but conscientiously cheerful, I danced with Miss Maggie Nolan,
with the Castle Knox lady's-maid, with my own kitchenmaid, who fell
into wild giggles of terror whenever I spoke to her, with Mrs. Cadogan,
who had apparently postponed the interesting feat of dancing to her
grave, and did what she could to dance me into mine. I am bound to
admit that though an ex-soldier and a major, and therefore equipped
with a ready-made character for gallantry, Mrs. Cadogan was the only
one of my partners with whom I conversed with any comfort.
At intervals I smoked cigarettes in the yard, seated on the old
mounting-block by the gate, and overheard much conversation about the
price of pigs in Skebawn; at intervals I plunged again into the
coach-house, and led forth a perspiring wallflower into the scrimmage
of a polka, or shuffled meaninglessly opposite to her in the long
double line of dancers who were engaged with serious faces in executing
a jig or a reel, I neither knew nor cared which. Flurry remained as
undefeated as ever; I could only suppose it was his method of showing
that his broken heart had mended.
"It's time to be making the punch, Masther Flurry," said Denis, as the
harness-room clock struck twelve; "sure the night's warm, and the men's
all gaping for it, the craytures!"
"What'll we make it in?" said Flurry, as we followed him into the
laundry.
"The boiler, to be sure," said Crusoe, taking up a stone of sugar, and
preparing to shoot it into the laundry copper.
"Stop, you fool, it's full of cockroaches!" shouted Flurry, amid
sympathetic squalls from the throng of countrywomen. "Go get a bath!"
"Sure yerself knows there's but one bath in it," retorted Denis, "and
that's within in the Major's room. Faith, the tinker got his own share
yestherday with the same bath, sthriving to quinch the holes, and they
as thick in it as the stars in the sky, and 'tis weeping still, afther
all he done!"
"Well, then, here goes for the cockroaches!" said Flurry. "What
doesn't sicken will fatten! Give me the kettle, and come on, you Kitty
Collins, and be skimming them off!"
There were no complaints of the punch when the brew was completed, and
the dance thundered on with a heavier stamping and a louder hilarity
than before. The night wore on; I squeezed through the unyielding pack
of frieze coats and shawls in the doorway, and with feet that momently
swelled in my pumps I limped over the cobble-stones to smoke my eighth
cigarette on the mounting-block. It was a dark, hot night. The old
castle loomed above me in piled-up roofs and gables, and high up in it
somewhere a window sent a shaft of light into the sleeping leaves of a
walnut-tree that overhung the gateway. At the bars of the gate two
young horses peered in at the medley of noise and people; away in an
outhouse a cock crew hoarsely. The gaiety in the coach-house increased
momently, till, amid shrieks and bursts of laughter, Miss Maggie Nolan
fled coquettishly from it with a long yell, like a train coming out of
a tunnel, pursued by the fascinating Peter Cadogan brandishing a twig
of mountain ash, in imitation of mistletoe. The young horses stampeded
in horror, and immediately a voice proceeded from the lighted window
above, Mrs. Knox's voice, demanding what the noise was, and announcing
that if she heard any more of it she would have the place cleared.
An awful silence fell, to which the young horses' fleeing hoofs lent
the final touch of consternation. Then I heard the irrepressible
Maggie Nolan say: "Oh God! Merry-come-sad!" which I take to be a
reflection on the mutability of all earthly happiness.
Mrs. Knox remained for a moment at the window, and it struck me as
remarkable that at 2.30 A.M. she should still have on her bonnet. I
thought I heard her speak to some one in the room, and there followed a
laugh, a laugh that was not a servant's, and was puzzlingly familiar.
I gave it up, and presently dropped into a cheerless doze.
With the dawn there came a period when even Flurry showed signs of
failing. He came and sat down beside me with a yawn; it struck me that
there was more impatience and nervousness than fatigue in the yawn.
"I think I'll turn them all out of this after the next dance is over,"
he said; "I've a lot to do, and I can't stay here."
I grunted in drowsy approval. It must have been a few minutes later
that I felt Flurry grip my shoulder.
"Yeates!" he said, "look up at the roof. Do you see anything up there
by the kitchen chimney?"
He was pointing at a heavy stack of chimneys in a tower that stood up
against the grey and pink of the morning sky. At the angle where one
of them joined the roof smoke was oozing busily out, and, as I stared,
a little wisp of flame stole through.
The next thing that I distinctly remember is being in the van of a rush
through the kitchen passages, every one shouting "Water! Water!" and
not knowing where to find it, then up several flights of the narrowest
and darkest stairs it has ever been my fate to ascend, with a bucket of
water that I snatched from a woman, spilling as I ran. At the top of
the stairs came a ladder leading to a trap-door, and up in the dark
loft above was the roar and the wavering glare of flames.
"My God! That's sthrong fire!" shouted Denis, tumbling down the ladder
with a brace of empty buckets; "we'll never save it! The lake won't
quinch it!"
The flames were squirting out through the bricks of the chimney,
through the timbers, through the slates; it was barely possible to get
through the trap-door, and the booming and crackling strengthened every
instant.
"A chain to the lake!" gasped Flurry, coughing in the stifling heat as
he slashed the water at the blazing rafters; "the well's no good! Go
on, Yeates!"
The organising of a double chain out of the mob that thronged and
shouted and jammed in the passages and yard was no mean feat of
generalship; but it got done somehow. Mrs. Cadogan and Biddy Mahony
rose magnificently to the occasion, cursing, thumping, shoving; and
stable buckets, coal buckets, milk pails, and kettles were unearthed
and sent swinging down the grass slope to the lake that lay in
glittering unconcern in the morning sunshine. Men, women, and children
worked in a way that only Irish people can work on an emergency. All
their cleverness, all their good-heartedness, and all their love of a
ruction came to the front; the screaming and the exhortations were
incessant, but so were also the buckets that flew from hand to hand up
to the loft. I hardly know how long we were at it, but there came a
time when I looked up from the yard and saw that the billows of
reddened smoke from the top of the tower were dying down, and I
bethought me of old Mrs. Knox.
I found her at the door of her room, engaged in tying up a bundle of
old clothes in a sheet; she looked as white as a corpse, but she was
not in any way quelled by the situation.
"I'd be obliged to you all the same, Major Yeates, to throw this over
the balusters," she said, as I advanced with the news that the fire had
been got under. "'Pon my honour, I don't know when I've been as vexed
as I've been this night, what with one thing and another! 'Tis a
monstrous thing to use a guest as we've used you, but what could we do?
I threw all the silver out of the dining-room window myself, and the
poor peahen that had her nest there was hurt by an entrée dish, and
half her eggs were----"
There was a curious sound not unlike a titter in Mrs. Knox's room.
"However, we can't make omelettes without breaking eggs--as they say--"
she went on rather hurriedly; "I declare I don't know what I'm saying!
My old head is confused----"
Here Mrs. Knox went abruptly into her room and shut the door.
Obviously there was nothing further to do for my hostess, and I fought
my way up the dripping back staircase to the loft. The flames had
ceased, the supply of buckets had been stopped, and Flurry, standing on
a ponderous crossbeam, was poking his head and shoulders out into the
sunlight through the hole that had been burned in the roof. Denis and
others were pouring water over charred beams, the atmosphere was still
stifling, everything was black, everything dripped with inky water.
Flurry descended from his beam and stretched himself, looking like a
drowned chimney-sweep.
"We've made a night of it, Yeates, haven't we?" he said, "but we've
bested it anyhow. We were done for only for you!" There was more
emotion about him than the occasion seemed to warrant, and his eyes had
a Christy Minstrel brightness, not wholly to be attributed to the dirt
on his face. "What's the time?--I must get home."
The time, incredible as it seemed, was half-past six. I could almost
have sworn that Flurry changed colour when I said so.
"I must be off," he said; "I had no idea it was so late."
"Why, what's the hurry?" I asked.
He stared at me, laughed foolishly, and fell to giving directions to
Denis. Five minutes afterwards he drove out of the yard and away at a
canter down the long stretch of avenue that skirted the lake, with a
troop of young horses flying on either hand. He whirled his whip round
his head and shouted at them, and was lost to sight in a clump of
trees. It is a vision of him that remains with me, and it always
carried with it the bitter smell of wet charred wood.
Reaction had begun to set in among the volunteers. The chain took to
sitting in the kitchen, cups of tea began mysteriously to circulate,
and personal narratives of the fire were already foreshadowing the
amazing legends that have since gathered round the night's adventure.
I left to Denis the task of clearing the house, and went up to change
my wet clothes, with a feeling that I had not been to bed for a year.
The ghost of a waiter who had drowned himself in a boghole would have
presented a cheerier aspect than I, as I surveyed myself in the
prehistoric mirror in my room, with the sunshine falling on my unshorn
face and begrimed shirt-front.
I made my toilet at considerable length, and, it being now nearly eight
o'clock, went downstairs to look for something to eat. I had left the
house humming with people; I found it silent as Pompeii. The sheeted
bundles containing Mrs. Knox's wardrobe were lying about the hall; a
couple of ancestors who in the first alarm had been dragged from the
walls were leaning drunkenly against the bundles; last night's dessert
was still on the dining-room table. I went out on to the hall-door
steps, and saw the entrée-dishes in a glittering heap in a nasturtium
bed, and realised that there was no breakfast for me this side of lunch
at Shreelane.
There was a sound of wheels on the avenue, and a brougham came into
view, driving fast up the long open stretch by the lake. It was the
Castle Knox brougham, driven by Norris, whom I had last seen drunk at
the athletic sports, and as it drew up at the door I saw Lady Knox
inside.
"It's all right, the fire's out," I said, advancing genially and full
of reassurance.
"What fire?" said Lady Knox, regarding me with an iron countenance.