Produced by Suzanne Shell, Graeme Mackreth and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
Satanella
[Illustration: "His next stride brought him on his head." (Page 133.)
_Satanella._ _Frontispiece_]
Satanella
A Story of Punchestown
By
G.J. Whyte-Melville
Author of "Holmby House," "The Gladiators,"
"Kate Coventry," &c., &c.
Illustrated by Lucy E. Kemp-Welch
London
Ward, Lock & Co., Limited
New York and Melbourne
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. The Black Mare 7
II. Miss Douglas 14
III. Daisy 23
IV. Mrs. Lushington 30
V. Through the Mill 37
VI. Cutting for Partners 45
VII. Getting On 56
VIII. Insatiable 64
IX. Off and On 71
X. At Sea 80
XI. Cormac's-Town 91
XII. One too Many 102
XIII. Punchestown 116
XIV. "A Good Thing" 136
XV. Winners and Losers 146
XVI. A Garden of Eden 158
XVII. "Soldier Bill" 169
XVIII. Delilah 180
XIX. "The River's Brim" 190
XX. Taking the Collar 204
XXI. A Snake in the Grass 212
XXII. An Expert 221
XXIII. The Debt of Honour 232
XXIV. A Pertinent Question 241
XXV. A Satisfactory Answer 252
XXVI. Afternoon Tea 260
XXVII. A Hard Morsel 271
XXVIII. "Seeking Rest and Finding None" 280
XXIX. Undivided 289
XXX. The Bitter End 304
SATANELLA
CHAPTER I
THE BLACK MARE
"She'll make a chaser annyhow!"
The speaker was a rough-looking man in a frieze coat, with wide mouth,
short nose, and grey, honest Irish eyes, that twinkled with humour on
occasion, though clouded for the present by disappointment, not to say
disgust, and with some reason. In his hand he held a broken strap, with
broad and dingy buckle; at his feet, detached from shafts and wheels,
lay the body of an ungainly vehicle, neither gig, dog-cart, nor outside
car, but something of each, battered and splintered in a dozen places:
while "foreaninst" him, as he called it, winced and fretted a young
black mare, snorting, trembling, fractious, and terrified, with ears
laid back, tail tucked down to her strong cowering quarters, and an
obvious determination on the slightest alarm to kick herself clear of
everything once more.
At her head stood a ragged urchin of fourteen; although her eyes showed
wild and red above the shabby blinkers, she rubbed her nose against the
lad's waistcoat, and seemed to consider him the only friend she had
left in the world.
"Get on her back, Patsy," said the man. "Faix, she's a well-lepped
wan, an' we'll take a hate out of her at Punchestown, with the
blessin'!--Augh! See now, here's the young Captain! Ye're welcome,
Captain! It's meself was proud when I see how ye cleaned them out last
week on 'Garryowen.' Ye'll come in, and welcome, Captain. Go on in
front now, and I'll show you the way!"
So, while a slim, blue-eyed, young gentleman, with curled moustache,
accompanied his entertainer into the house, Patsy took the mare to
the stable, where he accoutred her in an ancient saddle, pulpy,
weather-stained, with stirrups of most unequal length; proceeding
thereafter to force a rusty snaffle into her mouth, with the
tightest possible nose-band and a faded green and white front.
These arrangements completed, he surveyed the whole, grinning and
well-pleased.
That the newcomer could only be a subaltern of Light Dragoons, was
obvious from his trim equestrian appearance, his sleek, well-cropped
head, the easy sit of his garments, also, perhaps, from an air of
imperturbable good-humour and self-confidence, equal to any occasion
that might present itself, social, moral, or physical.
[Illustration: "These arrangements completed, he surveyed the whole,
grinning, and well pleased."
_Satanella._ _Page 8_]
Proof against "dandies of punch" and such hospitable provocatives, he
soon deserted the parlour for the stable.
"And how is the mare coming on?" said he standing in the doorway of
that animal's dwelling, which she shared with a little cropped jackass,
a Kerry cow, and a litter of pigs. "I always said she could gallop a
bit, and they're the right sort to stay. But can she jump?"
"The beautifullest ever ye see!" replied her enthusiastic owner.
"She'll go whereiver a cat would follow a rat. If there's a harse in
Connemara that 'ud charge on the sharp edge of a razor, there's the
wan that can do't! Kick--stick _and_ plasther! it's in their breed;
and like th'ould mare before her, so long as you'd hould her, it's my
belief she'd stay in the air!"
The object of these praises had now emerged from her stall, and a very
likely animal she looked; poor and angular indeed, with a loose neck
and somewhat long ears, but in her lengthy frame, and large clean
limbs, affording promise for the future of great beauty, no less than
extraordinary power and speed. Her head was exceedingly characteristic,
lean and taper, showing every vein and articulation beneath the glossy
skin, with a wide scarlet nostril and flashing eye, suggestive of
courage and resolution, not without a considerable leavening of temper.
There are horses, and women too, that stick at nothing. To a bold
rider, the former are invaluable, because with these it is possible to
keep their mettle under control.
"Hurry now, Patsy!" said the owner, as that little personage, diving
for the stirrup, which he missed, looked imploringly to his full-grown
companions for a "leg up."
But it was not in the nature of our young officer, by name John
Walters, known in his regiment as "Daisy," to behold an empty saddle
at any time without longing to fill it. He had altered the stirrups,
cocked up his left leg for a lift, and lit fairly in his seat, before
the astonished filly could make any more vigorous protest than a lurch
of her great strong back and whisk of her long tail.
"Begorra! ye'll get it now!" said her owner, half to himself, half to
the Kerry cow, on which discreet animal he thought it prudent to rivet
his attention, distrusting alike the docility of his own filly, and the
English man's equestrian skill.
Over the rough paved yard, through the stone gap by the peat-stack, not
the little cropped jackass himself could have behaved more soberly. But
where the spring flowers were peeping in the turf enclosure beyond, and
the upright bank blazed in its golden glory of gorse-bloom, the devilry
of many ancestors seemed to pass with the keen mountain-air into the
filly's mettle. Her first plunge of hilarity and insubordination would
have unseated half the rough-riders that ever mishandled a charger in
the school.
Once--twice, she reached forward, with long, powerful plunges, shaking
her ears, and dashing wildly at her bridle, till she got rein enough
to stick her nose in the air, and break away at speed.
A snaffle, with or without a nose-band, is scarcely the instrument by
which a violent animal can be brought on its haunches at short notice;
but Daisy was a consummate horseman, firm of seat and cool of temper,
with a head that never failed him, even when debarred from the proper
use of his hands.
He could guide the mare, though incapable of controlling her. So he
sent her at the highest place in the fence before him, and, fast as she
was going, the active filly changed her stride on the bank with the
accuracy of a goat, landing lightly beyond, to scour away once more
like a frightened deer.
"You _can_ jump!" said he, as she threw up the head that had been in
its right place hardly an instant, while she steadied herself for the
leap; "and I believe you're a flyer. But, by Jove! you're a rum one to
steer!"
She was quite out of his hand again, and laid herself down to her work
with the vigour of a steam-engine. The daisy-sprinkled turf fleeted
like falling water beneath those long, smooth, sweeping strides.
They were careering over an open upland country, always slightly on
the rise, till it grew to a bleak brown mountain far away under the
western sky. The enclosures were small; but notwithstanding the many
formidable banks and ditches with which it was intersected, the whole
landscape wore that appearance of space and freedom so peculiar to
Irish scenery, so pleasing to the sportsman's eye. "It looked like
galloping," as they say, though no horse, without great jumping powers,
could have gone two fields.
It took a long Irish mile, at racing pace, to bring the mare to her
bridle, and nothing but her unusual activity saved the rider from
half-a-dozen rattling falls during his perilous experiment. She bent
her neck at last, and gave to her bit in a potato-ground; nor, if he
had resolved to buy her for the sake of her speed and stamina while
she was running away with him, did he like her less, we may be sure,
when they arrived at that mutual understanding, which links together so
mysteriously the intelligences of the horse and its rider.
Turning homewards, the pair seemed equally pleased with each other. She
played gaily with the snaffle now, answering hand and heel cheerfully,
desirous only of being ridden at the largest fences, a fancy in which
he indulged her, nothing loth. Trotting up to four feet and a half of
stone wall, round her own stable-yard, she slipped over it without an
effort, and her owner, a discerning person enough, added fifty to her
price on the spot.
"She's a good sort," said the soldier, patting her reeking neck, as he
slid to the ground; "but she's uncommon bad to steer when her monkey's
up! Sound, you say, and rising four year old? I wonder how she's bred?"
Such a question could not but entail a voluminous reply. Never, it
appeared, in one strain, had been united the qualities of so many
illustrious ancestors. Her pedigree seemed enriched with "all the blood
of all the Howards," and her great-great-great-grandam was "Camilla by
Trentham, out of Phantom, sister to Magistrate!"
"An' now ye've bought her, Captain," said our friend in frieze, "ye've
taken the best iver I bred, an' the best iver I seen. Av' I'd let her
out o'my sight wanst at Ballinasloe, the Lord-Liftinint 'ud have been
acrass her back, while I'm tellin' ye, an' him leadin' the hunt, up in
Meath, or about the Fairy House and Kilrue. The spade wasn't soldered
yet that would dig a ditch to hould her; and when them sort's tired,
Captain, begorra! the very breeches 'ud be wore to rags betwixt your
knees! You trust _her_, and you trust _me_! Wait till I tell ye now.
There's only wan thing on this mortial earth she won't do for ye!"
"And what's that?" asked the other, well pleased.
"She'll not back a bill!" was the answer; "but if iver she schames with
ye, renaging[1] or such like, by this book, I'll be ashamed to look a
harse, or so much as a jackass in the face again!"
So the mare was sent for; and Patsy, with a stud reduced to the donkey
and the Kerry cow, shed bitter tears when she went away.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Refusing.]