It has been said by an excellent authority that children and dogs spoil
conversation. I can confidently say that had Madame de Sévigné and Dr.
Johnson joined me and my family on our wonted Sunday afternoon walk to
the kennels, they would have known what it was to be ignored. This
reflection bears but remotely on the matter in hand, but is, I think,
worthy of record. I pass on to a certain still and steamy afternoon in
late September, when my wife and I headed forth in the accustomed way,
accompanied by, or (to be accurate), in pursuit of, my two sons, my two
dogs, and a couple of hound puppies, to view that spectacle of not
unmixed attractiveness, the feeding of the hounds.
Flurry Knox and Michael were superintending the operation when we
arrived, coldly observing the gobbling line at the trough, like
reporters at a public dinner. It was while the last horrid remnants of
the repast were being wolfed that my wife hesitatingly addressed Mr.
Knox's First Whip and Kennel Huntsman.
"Michael," she said, lowering her voice, "you know the children's old
donkey that I spoke to you about last week--I'm afraid you _had_
better----"
"Sure he's boiled, ma'am," said Michael with swift and awful brevity,
"that's him in the throch now!"
Philippa hastily withdrew from the vicinity of the trough, murmuring
something incoherent about cannibals or parricides, I am not sure
which, and her eldest son burst into tears that were only assuaged by
the tactful intervention of the kennel-boy with the jawbone of a horse,
used for propping open the window of the boiler-house.
"Never mind, Mrs. Yeates," said Flurry consolingly, "the new hounds
that I'm getting won't be bothered with donkeys as long as there's a
sheep left in the country, if the half I hear of them is true!" He
turned to me. "Major, I didn't tell you I have three couple of
O'Reilly's old Irish hounds bought. They're the old white breed
y'know, and they say they're terrors to hunt."
"They'd steal a thing out of your eye," said Michael, evidently
reverting to an interrupted discussion between himself and his master.
"There's a woman of the O'Reillys married back in the country here, and
she says they killed two cows last season."
"If they kill any cows with me, I'll stop the price of them out of your
wages, Michael, my lad!" said Flurry to his henchman's back. "Look
here, Major, come on with me to-morrow to bring them home!"
It was, I believe, no more than fifty miles across country to the
mountain fastness of the O'Reillys, and a certain chord of romance
thrilled at the thought of the old Irish breed of white hounds, with
their truly national qualities of talent, rebelliousness, and love of
sport. Playboy was one of the same race--Playboy, over whose
recapture, it may be remembered, I had considerably distinguished
myself during my term of office as M.F.H.
I went. At one o'clock next day two lines of rail had done their
uttermost for us, and had ceded the task of conveying us to Fahoura to
the inevitable outside car. And still there remained a long flank of
mountain to be climbed; the good little slave in the shafts made no
complaint, but save for the honour and glory of the thing we might as
well have walked; certainly of the seven Irish miles of road, thrown
over the pass like a strap over a trunk, our consciences compelled us
to tramp at least three. A stream, tawny and translucent as audit ale,
foamed and slid among its brown boulders beside us at the side of the
road; as we crawled upwards the fields became smaller, and the lonely
whitewashed cottages ceased. The heather came down to the wheel marks,
and a pack of grouse suddenly whizzed across the road like a shot fired
across our bows to warn us off.
At the top of the pass we stood, and looked out over half a county to
the pale peaks of Killarney.
"There's Fahoura now, gentlemen," said the carman, pointing downwards
with his whip to a group of whitewashed farm buildings, that had
gathered themselves incongruously about a square grey tower. "I'm told
old Mr. O'Reilly's sick this good while."
"What ails him?" said Flurry.
"You wouldn't know," said the carman, "sure he's very old, and that
'fluenzy has the country destroyed; there's people dying now that never
died before."
"That's bad," said Flurry sympathetically, "I had a letter from him a
week ago, and he only said he was parting the hounds because he
couldn't run with them any more."
"Ah, don't mind him!" said the carman, "it's what it is he'd sooner
sell them now, than to give the nephew the satisfaction of them, after
himself'd be dead."
"Is that the chap that's been hunting them for him?" said Flurry, while
I, for the hundredth time, longed for Flurry's incommunicable gift of
being talked to.
"It is, sir; Lukey O'Reilly--" the carman gave a short laugh. "That's
the lad! They say he often thried to go to America, but he never got
south of Mallow; he gets that drunk sayin' good-bye to his friends!"
"Maybe the old fellow will live a while yet, just to spite him,"
suggested Flurry.
"Well, maybe he would, faith!" agreed the carman, "didn't the docthor
say to meself that maybe it's walking the road I'd be, and I to fall
down dead!" he continued complacently, "but sure them docthors, when
they wouldn't know what was in it, they should be saying something!"
We here turned into the lane that led to Mr. O'Reilly's house.
We pulled up at the gate of a wide farmyard, with outcrops of the brown
mountain rock in it, and were assailed in the inevitable way by the
inevitable mongrel collies. Blent with their vulgar abuse was the
mellow baying of hounds, coming, seemingly, from the sky. The carman
pointed to the tower which filled an angle of the yard, and I saw,
about twenty feet from the ground, an arrow-slit, through which
protruded white muzzles, uttering loud and tuneful threats.
"The kitchen door's the handiest way," said Flurry, "but I suppose for
grandeur we'd better go to the front of the house."
He opened a side gate, and I followed him through a wind-swept
enclosure that by virtue of two ragged rose-bushes, and a walk edged
with white stones, probably took rank as a garden. At the front door
we knocked; a long pause ensued, and finally bare feet thudded down a
passage, a crack of the door was opened, and an eye glistened for a
moment in the crack. It was slammed again, and after a further delay
it was reopened, this time by a large elderly woman with crinkled black
and grey hair and one long and commanding tooth in the front of her
mouth.
"Why then I wasn't looking to see ye till to-morrow, Mr. Knox!" she
began, beaming upon Flurry, "but sure ye're welcome any day and all
day, and the gentleman too!"
The gentleman was introduced, and felt himself being summed up in a
single glance of Miss O'Reilly's nimble brown eyes. With many
apologies, she asked us if we would come and see her brother in the
kitchen, as he did not feel well enough to walk out to the parlour, and
she couldn't keep him in the bed at all.
The kitchen differed more in size than in degree from that of the
average cabin. There was the same hummocky earthen floor, the same
sallow whitewashed walls, the same all-pervading turf smoke--the
difference was in the master of the house. He was seated by the fire
in an angular armchair, with an old horse-blanket over his knees, and a
stick in his hand, and beside him lay an ancient white hound, who
scarcely lifted her head at our entrance. The old man laboured to his
feet, and, bent as he was, he towered over Flurry as he took his hand.
"Your father's son is welcome, Mr. Florence Knox, and your friend--"
He was short of breath, and he lowered his great frame into his chair
again. "Sit down, gentlemen, sit down!" he commanded. "Joanna! These
gentlemen are after having a long drive----"
The clink of glasses told that the same fact had occurred to Miss
O'Reilly, and a bottle of port, and another of what looked like water,
but was in effect old potheen, were immediately upon the table.
"How well ye wouldn't put down a glass for me!" thundered old O'Reilly,
"I suppose it's saving it for my wake you are!"
"Or her own wedding, maybe!" said Flurry, shamelessly ogling Miss
O'Reilly, "we'll see that before the wake, I'm thinking!"
"Well, well, isn't he the dead spit of his father!" said Miss O'Reilly
to the rafters.
"Here, woman, give me the kettle," said her brother, "I'll drink my
glass of punch with Mr. Florence Knox, the way I did with his father
before him! The doctor says I might carry out six months, and I think
myself I won't carry out the week, but what the divil do I care! I'm
going to give Mr. Knox his pick of my hounds this day, and that's what
no other man in Ireland would get, and be dam we'll wet our bargain!"
"Well, well," said Miss O'Reilly, remonstratingly, bringing the kettle,
"and you that was that weak last night that if you got Ireland's crown
you couldn't lift the bedclothes off your arms!"
"Them hounds are in my family, seed and breed, this hundred years and
more," continued old O'Reilly, silencing his sister with one black
glance from under his thick grey brows, "and if I had e'er a one that
was fit to come after me they'd never leave it!" He took a gulp of the
hot punch. "Did ye ever hear of my brother Phil that was huntsman to
the Charlevilles long ago, Mr. Knox? Your father knew him well.
Many's the good hunt they rode together. He wasn't up to forty years
when he was killed, broke his neck jumping a hurl, and when they went
to bury him it's straight in over the churchyard wall they took him!
They said he never was one to go round looking for a gate!"
[Illustration: "THEM HOUNDS ARE IN MY FAMILY, SEED AND BREED, THIS
HUNDRED YEARS."]
"May the Lord have mercy on him!" murmured Miss O'Reilly in the
background.
"Amen!" growled the old man, taking another pull at his steaming
tumbler, as if he were drinking his brother's health. "And look at me
here," he went on, reddening slowly through the white stubble on his
cheeks, "dying as soft as any owld cow in a boghole, and all they'll be
saying afther me is asking would they get their bellyful of whisky at
my wake! I tell you this--and let you be listening to me,
Joanna!--what hounds Mr. Knox doesn't take, I'll not leave them afther
me to be disgraced in the counthry, running rabbits on Sunday
afternoons with them poaching blackguards up out of the town! No! But
they'll have a stone round their neck and to be thrown below in the
lough!"
I thought of the nephew Luke, whose friends had so frequently failed to
see him off, and I felt very sorry for old O'Reilly.
"They will, they will, to be sure!" said Miss O'Reilly soothingly, "and
look at you now, the way you are! Didn't I know well you had no call
to be drinking punch, you that was coughing all night. On the face of
God's earth, Mr. Knox, I never heard such a cough! 'Tis like a sheep's
cough! I declare it's like the sound of the beating of the drum!"
"Well, Mr. O'Reilly," said Flurry, ignoring these remarkable symptoms,
but none the less playing to her lead, "I suppose we might have a look
at the hounds now."
"Go, tell Tom to open the tower door," said old O'Reilly to his sister,
after a moment's silence. He handed her a key. "And shut the gate
you."
As soon as she had gone he got on to his feet. "Mr. Knox, sir," he
said, "might I put as much trouble on you as to move out this chair to
the door? I'll sit there the way I can see them. Maybe the other
gentleman would reach me down the horn that's up on the wall. He's
near as tall as meself."
Flurry did as he asked, and helped him across the room.
"Close out the half door if you please, Mr. Knox, and give me the old
rug that's there, my feet is destroyed with the rheumatics."
He dropped groaningly into his chair, and I handed him the horn, an old
brass one, bent and dinted.
Already the clamour of the hounds in the tower had broken out like
bells in a steeple, as they heard the footsteps of their jailor on the
stone steps of their prison.
Then Tom's voice, shouting at them in Irish to stand back, and then
through the narrow door of the tower the hounds themselves, a striving
torrent of white flecked with pale yellow, like one of their own
mountain streams. There were about seven couples of them, and in a
moment they overran the yard like spilt quicksilver.
"Look at them now, Mr. Knox!" said their owner, "they'd take a line
over the hob of hell this minute!"
Pending this feat they took a very good line into what was apparently
the hen-house, judging by the hysterics that proceeded from within.
Almost immediately one of them reappeared with an egg in his mouth.
Old O'Reilly gave a laugh and an attempt at a holloa. "Ah ha! That's
Whiteboy! The rogue!" he said, and putting the horn to his lips he
blew a thin and broken note, that was cut short by a cough.
Speechlessly he handed the horn to Flurry, but no further summons was
needed; the hounds had heard him. They converged upon the doorway with
a rush, and Flurry and I were put to it to keep them from jumping in
over the half-door.
I had never seen hounds like them before. One or two were pure white,
but most had some touch of faded yellow or pale grey about them; they
were something smaller than the average foxhound, and were strongly
built, and active as terriers. Their heads were broad, their ears
unrounded, and their legs and feet were far from complying with the
prescribed bedpost standard; but wherein, to the un-professional eye,
they chiefly differed from the established pattern, was in the human
lawlessness of their expression. The old hound by the fire had
struggled up at the note of the horn, and stood staring in perplexity
at her master, and growling, with all the arrogance of the favourite,
at her descendants, who yelped, and clawed, and strove, and thrust
their muzzles over the half-door.
Flurry regarded them in silence.
"There's not a straight one among them," he whispered in my ear through
the din.
"There they are for you now, Mr. Knox," said old O'Reilly, still
panting after his fit of coughing. "There isn't another man in Ireland
would get them but yourself, and you've got them, as I might say, a
present!"
Flurry and I went out into the yard, and the door was closed behind us.
The examination--I may say the cross-examination--of the hounds that
followed, was conducted by Flurry and Michael to the accompaniment of a
saga from Tom, setting forth their miraculous merits and achievements,
to which, at suitable points, the carman shouted "Selah," or words to
that effect, through the bars of the gate. At the end of half-an-hour
Flurry had sorted out six of them; these were then coupled, and by dint
of the exertions of all present, were bestowed in a cart with sides
like a crate, in which pigs went to the fair.
We did not see our host again. His sister told us that he had gone to
bed and wasn't fit to see any one, but he wished Mr. Knox luck with his
bargain, and he sent him this for a luck-penny. She handed Flurry the
dinted horn.
"I'm thinking it's fretting after the hounds he is," she said, turning
her head away to hide the tears in her brown eyes. I have never until
then known Flurry completely at a loss for an answer.