"Yes, Kate, we are as nearly as possible 'stone broke,' as your brother
would say. The time seems to have come, my girl, when 'honour may be
deemed dishonour, loyalty be called a crime,' at any rate in Ireland;
and as we can't make our tenants pay rent, we must go."
The speaker was a massive-looking old gentleman with clean-cut,
weather-beaten features, and a heavy white moustache. He had drawn his
chair away from the breakfast table, and was still knitting his brows
over his morning letters.
Poor old Lowry, like his fathers before him, had lived out of doors
amongst his own tenantry all his life, with a joke and a half-crown for
anyone who wanted them.
Almost all the harm he had ever done was to win a heart or two which he
did not want, or drink a glass or two more than was good for him. For
forty years he had paid rates and taxes, acted conscientiously as a
magistrate, and filled several other onerous but unpaid offices for his
Queen and such as are put in authority under her; he had drunk her
health loyally every night since he first learnt to drink strong drink,
and would have "knocked sparks out of" anyone who had spoken
disrespectfully of her before him; and now the property which his
fathers had honestly earned was left at the mercy of a league of avowed
rebels, and he himself was branded as an enemy of the people. Had he
and such as he been left to defend themselves, they would long ago have
put an end to these enemies of honest men and of the State, but their
hands were tied. They were bidden to wait for help, but no help came.
Lowry was still too loyal to murmur openly against the Government which
had ruined him, but he had just realized that their name and their
loyalty were almost the only things left to him and Kate, his daughter,
who sat playing nervously with an empty envelope and gazing out blankly
and sadly upon the old park she loved until her deep blue eyes filled
unconsciously with tears.
But Kate was not the girl to indulge in tears when a difficulty had to
be met, and in ten minutes she had mastered her emotion and was walking
with her father to the stables, gravely discussing affairs with the
stalwart old man, more like one man with another than like a young girl
with her father.
"So the horses are to go up next week, Dad, are they? It is a bit of a
wrench to say good-bye to you, Val," said the girl, as she laid her
hand lovingly on the neck of a great up-standing chestnut, "but you are
good enough to find yourself a situation, my boy. Father, though, what
about Joe? We could not let him go into a cab, and he is too old for
anything better."
"True, Kate, and I can't bear to shoot the old fellow, and yet what are
_we_ to do with a pensioner now?"
"Shoot him! No, father, we'll keep the bullets for other billets. A
loyal servant and friend like Joe has as much claim on you as your
daughter has; and whilst we have bread and cheese we can find Joe in
fodder. Poor old fellow, I believe he would rather eat his litter with
us than old oats in a strange stable."
It was a pretty picture, let latter day æsthetes deny it if they
will--the tall, strong girl, natural and unaffected, not a bit angelic,
but very womanly, caressing the old horse, who lowered his head to meet
her caresses, and shoved his honest old nose against her cheek.
And Kate was right. It _is_ a hard thing that a horse who has risked
his neck a thousand times for his master, who has never known fear or
spared himself in that master's service, should be thought only fit
for a bullet when his limbs and wind begin to fail. We pension the
half-hearted human servants, we destroy the whole-hearted beasts who
have worn out their youth and strength prematurely in our employ.
"How are you going to keep Joe, if I let you try, Kate?"
"Well, father, I ought to be able to make a pound a month by
needlework, Christmas cards, and so forth; there is a bit of land at
the cottage, so that turned out on that in summer and not much worked
in winter, Joe need not cost much to keep, and I'll groom him myself."
"And what would the London aunts say to that, Kate?" laughed the
squire.
Kate put a hand trustingly on the old man's shoulder as she answered
smiling, "The London aunts say a good many things, Dad, which I don't
agree with, and you only pretend to, you know. Aunt Dorothy prefers her
carpets to sunshine, at least she keeps her rooms dark all day for fear
the sun should spoil their colours."
"I thought it was her colour which the sun spoilt, Kate?"
Kate laughed, and with a squeeze of her father's arm and a saucy nod,
flitted off to see to some member of her animal kingdom.
Luckily for the Irish, they take trouble well, and though skinning is
an unpleasant process, they soon get used to it.
* * * * *
Three months after the events recorded in the preceding paragraphs,
Kate and her father were living at what had been their agent's cottage,
a tiny house with stabling for one horse. The Lowry's agent was now
Colonel Lowry himself, and his daughter (the best and straightest lady
rider in Gonaway) had laid aside her habit as a souvenir of happier
days.
At the Hall a rich Londoner had replaced the old squire (as his
tenant), and a London young lady inflicted agony on the mouths of such
horses as she rode, and never disgraced her sex by an after-breakfast
visit to the stables.
Instead of the laughter of that tom-boy Kate, highly finished
performances on the piano frightened the blackbirds off the lawn, and
instead of jokes and half-crowns from a poor but warm-hearted native,
the peasantry now received pamphlets on market gardening and threepenny
pieces from an alien millionaire.
* * * * *
"Molly says they have just shot 'the Laurels' for the seventh time this
year, and there's not a hen pheasant left on the estate."
"Never mind, father, it won't matter to us. Mr Preece will have some
more down from Leadenhall Market or some such place next year; and,
after all, they pay our rent for us, and we couldn't live without
them."
"Pay the rent," grumbled the squire; "I could have done that myself, if
I'd sold all the game, and never given a head to man or woman on the
place."
"Then why didn't you, Dad?"
"Why didn't I, girl? Well then, it's just because I suppose I've always
belonged to 'the stupid party,' thank God for it."
Poor old Lowry was a red-hot Tory, without any Liberal instincts
whatever, a fact which sufficiently accounted for the mess he had made
of his life. And yet, somehow, the men who dared still to touch their
hats to this reprehensible old robber of the public lands, did so with
a smile in their eyes more hearty than the smirk they gave to his
successor, Mr Preece.
Since the first day we met her, a change has come over Kate. The
grey-blue eyes are just as beautiful, but there is less sparkle in
them; the lips are just as sweet, sweeter it may be, but the dimple has
gone. In the last few months she has seen more of the seamy and shabby
side of life than she had even guessed at in the twenty sunny years
which went before.
I don't think the squire has any suspicion of it, and Kate has neither
mother nor sister to tell it to, but her poor little heart has had its
stoutness tried a good deal of late. When Kate was queen at the Hall,
gallant George Vernon, somewhile captain of Hussars, and at present
master of the hounds and Kate's very distant cousin, had remembered the
tie of kinship to the bright young beauty quite as often as duty
required. Now his visits were like angel's visits in number and, to the
proud Kate, far less welcome.
George Vernon was no snob, but then Kate, the hostess at the Hall, the
reigning queen in the hunting-field, and Kate without a horse to her
name, in a cottage and out of the world altogether, were very different
persons, and George unconsciously showed that he felt the change.
Though man is fickle, perhaps George would not have allowed his
admiration for his cousin to cool so suddenly had there not been
attractions elsewhere.
Miss Preece (the daughter of the new tenant at the Hall) would have
passed as a pretty woman anywhere. If lemon-coloured locks, an abundant
fringe, bright colour, and the full, tempting figure of a young Juno,
make beauty, then Polly Preece was a belle. If reckless riding and a
smart habit make a horsewoman, Polly Preece was a very Amazon.
True she had never had a fall; true her horses cost three hundred
guineas apiece, and were clever enough to jump through hoops at a
circus, even though they had ten stone of fair humanity hung on to
their tortured mouths; and true, too, that though Polly laughed often
(and showed in doing so as dazzling a set of teeth as ever disappointed
a dentist), few people owed even a smile to any wit of hers.
But the Bruisers (as the men of the Gonaway hounds were called) voted
her a right good sort, if only she would give them a little more time
at their fences and not always pick the tenderest part of a man to jump
upon.
George Vernon did the civil at first as Master. In a week's time he was
her pilot, and in a month half a dozen of the Bruisers were sadly
afraid that he would ere long be her husband, thereby robbing them of
the greatest prize in the local market of matrimony and of the merriest
bachelor in the hunt. As for George himself, he thought honestly enough
that the Preece girl was "very good fun," but if he could have had her
dollars without her he would have been a happy man. Unfortunately,
circumstances, especially the bills connected with the maintenance of a
crack pack of fox-hounds, were beginning to impress upon him more and
more the necessity for converting Miss Preece into a connecting link
between himself and her papa's money bags.
This was, roughly, the state of affairs on Monday, November 2nd, 1885,
the first regular meet of the Bruisers for the season.
It was a time-honoured custom that the first meet should be held at the
Hall, and though the master of the house who had entertained them so
often was there no longer, still the house stood and the custom
remained.
* * * * *
"I suppose you would hardly care to go to the meet to-day, Dad?"
queried Kate at breakfast.
"Not go to the meet, girl, after keeping the old tryst so many years,
why not?"
"Oh, I don't know, only I thought you might not."
"What, because another fellow provides the sherry and is master at the
Hall? Of course I don't like it, but providing he does not give the men
Hamburg stuff, I'll go and be thankful to him for doing what I can no
longer afford to do. Put on a leather petticoat, little woman, and
we'll run with them since we can't ride."
I think the old man struck the match to light his pipe a shade more
viciously than was necessary, but he never winced, though he was
perhaps remembering another 2nd of November when the little woman was
yet unborn, and he himself on the best horse in the country was as good
a man "as ever holloaed to a hound," and in one fair woman's eyes the
best.