THE MEET OF THE BEAGLES
Directly Patsy had left the news that the “quality” were coming to the
meet and returned to the house, the crowd in front of the Castle Knock
inn thickened.
Word of the impending event went from cabin to cabin, and Mr Mahony, the
chimney sweep, put his head out of his door.
“What’s the news, Rafferty?” cried Mr Mahony.
“Mimber of Parlymint and all the quality comin’ to the meet!” cried a
ragged-looking ruffian who was running by.
“Sure, it’ll be a big day for Shan Finucane,” said Mrs Mahony, who was
standing behind her husband in the doorway with a baby in her arms.
Mr Mahony said nothing for a while, but watched the crowd in front of
the inn.
“Look at him,” said Mr Mahony, breaking out at last—“look at him in his
ould green coat! Look at him with the ould whip undher his arm, and the
boots on his feet not paid for, and him struttin’ about as if he was the
Marquis of Watherford! Holy Mary! did yiz ever see such an objick! Mr
Mullins!”
“Halloo!” replied Mr Mullins, the cobbler across the way, who, with his
window open owing to the mildness of the weather, was whaling away at a
shoe-sole, the only busy man in the village.
“Did y’ hear the news?”
“What news?”
“Shan’s going to get a new coat.”
“Faith, thin, I hope he’ll pay first for his ould shoes.”
“How much does he owe you?”
“Siven and six—bad cess to him!”
“He’ll pay you to-night, if he doesn’t drink the money first, for
there’s a Mimber of Parlymint goin’ to the meet, and he’ll most like put
a suverin in the poor box.”
Mr Mullins made no reply, but went on whaling away at his shoe, and Bob
Mahony, having stepped into his cottage for a light for his pipe, came
back and took up his post again at the door.
The crowd round the inn was growing bigger and bigger. Sneer as he
might, Mr Mahony could not but perceive that Shan was having the centre
of the stage, a worshipping audience, and free drinks.
Suddenly he turned to his offspring, who were crowding behind him, and
singling out Billy, the eldest:
“Put the dunkey to,” said Mr Mahony.
“Sure, daddy,” cried the boy in astonishment, “it’s only the tarriers.”
“Put the dunkey to!” thundered his father, “or it’s the end of me belt
I’ll be brightenin’ your intellects with.”
“There’s two bags of sut in the cart and the brushes,” said Billy, as he
made off to do as he was bidden.
“Lave them in,” said Mr Mahony; “it’s only the tarriers.”
In a few minutes the donkey, whose harness was primitive and composed
mainly of rope, was put to, and the vehicle was at the door.
“Bob!” cried his wife, as he took his seat.
“What is it?” asked Mr Mahony, taking the reins.
“Won’t you be afther givin’ your face the lick of a tow’l?”
“It’s only the tarriers,” replied Mr Mahony; “sure, I’m clane enough for
them. Come up wid you, Norah.”
Norah, the small donkey, whose ears had been cocking this way and that,
picked up her feet, and the vehicle, which was not much bigger than a
costermonger’s barrow, started.
At this moment, also, Shan and the dogs and the crowd were getting into
motion, making down the road for Glen Druid gates.
“Hulloo! hulloo! hulloo!” cried Mr Mahony, as he rattled up behind in
the cart, “where are yiz off to?”
“The meet of the baygles,” replied twenty voices; whilst Shan, who had
heard his enemy’s voice, stalked on, surrounded by his dogs, his old
battered hunting horn in one hand, and his whip under his arm.
“And where are they goin’ to meet?” asked Mr Mahony.
“Glen Druid gate,” replied the camp followers. “There’s a Mimber of
Parlymint comin’, and all the quality from the Big House.”
“Faith,” said Mr Mahony, “I thought there was somethin’ up, for, by the
look of Shan as he passed me house this mornin’, I thought he’d
swallowed the Lord Liftinant, Crown jewels and all. Hulloo! hulloo!
hulloo! make way for me carridge! Who are you crowdin’? Don’t you know
the Earl of Leinsther when y’ see him? Out of the way, or I’ll call me
futman to disparse yiz.”
Shan heard it all, but marched on. He could have killed Bob Mahony, who
was turning his triumph into a farce, but he contented himself with
letting fly with his whip amongst the dogs, and blowing a note on his
horn.
“What’s that nize?” enquired Mr Mahony, with a wink at the delighted
crowd tramping beside the donkey-cart.
“Shan’s blowin’ his harn,” yelled the rabble.
“Faith, I thought it was Widdy Finnegan’s rooster he was carryin’ in the
tail pockit of his coat,” said the humorist.
The crowd roared at this conceit, which was much more pungent and
pointed as delivered in words by Mr Mahony; but Shan, to all
appearances, was deaf.
The road opposite the park gates was broad and shadowed by huge elm
trees, which gave the spot in summer the darkness and coolness of a
cave. Here Shan halted, the crowd halted, and the donkey-cart drew up.
Mr Mahony tapped the dottle out of his pipe carefully on the rail of his
cart, filled the pipe, replaced the dottle on the top of the tobacco,
and drew a whiff.
The clock of Glen Druid House struck ten, and the notes came floating
over park and trees; not that any one heard them, for the yelping of the
dogs and the noise of the crowd filled the quiet country road with the
hubbub of a fair.
“What’s that you were axing me?” cried Mr Mahony to a supposed
interrogator in the crowd. “Is the Prince o’ Wales comin’? No, he ain’t.
I had a tellygrum from him this mornin’ sendin’ his excuzes. Will some
gintleman poke that rat-tarrier out that’s got under the wheels of me
carridge—out, you baste!” He leaned over and hit a rabbit-beagle that
had strayed under the donkey-cart a tip with his stick. The dog, though
not hurt, for Bob Mahony was much too good a sportsman to hurt an
animal, gave a yelp.
Shan turned at the sound, and his rage exploded.
“Who are yiz hittin’?” cried Shan.
“I’m larnin’ your dogs manners,” replied Bob.
The huntsman surveyed the sweep, the cart, the soot bags, and the
donkey.
“I beg your pardin’,” said he, touching his hat, “I didn’t see you at
first for the sut.”
Mr Mahony took his short pipe from his mouth, put it back upside down,
shoved his old hat further back on his head, rested his elbows on his
knees and contemplated Shan.
“But it’s glad I am,” went on Shan, “you’ve come to the meet and brought
a mimber of the family with you.”
Fate was against Bob Mahony, for at that moment Norah, scenting another
of her species in a field near by, curled her lip, stiffened her legs,
projected her head, rolled her eyes, and “let a bray out of her” that
almost drowned the howls of laughter from the exulting mob.
But Shan Finucane did not stir a muscle of his face, and Bob Mahony’s
fixed sneer did not flicker or waver.
“Don’t mention it, mum,” said Shan, taking off his old cap when the last
awful, rasping, despairing note of the bray had died down into silence.
Another howl from the onlookers, which left Mr Mahony quite unmoved.
“They get on well together,” said he, addressing an imaginary
acquaintance in the crowd. “Whisht and hould your nize, and let’s hear
what else they have to say to wan another.”
Suddenly, and before Shan Finucane could open his lips, a boy who had
been looking over the rails into the park, yelled:
“Here’s the Mimber of Parlyment—here they come—Hurroo!”
“Now, then,” said the huntsman, dropping repartee and seizing the
sweep’s donkey by the bridle, “sweep yourselves off, and don’t be
disgracin’ the hunt wid your sut-bags and your dirty faces—away wid
yiz!”
“The hunt!” yelled Mahony, with a burst of terrible laughter. “Listen to
him and his ould rat-tarriers callin’ thim a hunt! Lave go of the
dunkey!”
“Away wid yiz!”
“Lave go of the dunkey, or I’ll batter the head of you in wid me stick!
Lave go of the dunkey!”
Suddenly seizing the long flue brush beside him, and disengaging it from
the bundle of sticks with which it was bound, he let fly with the
bristle end of it at Shan, and Shan, catching his heel on a stone, went
over flat on his back in the road.
In a second he was up, whip in hand; in a second Mr Mahony was down, a
bag half filled with soot—a terrible weapon of assault—in his fist.
“Harns! harns!” yelled Mahony, mad with the spirit of battle, and
unconsciously chanting the fighting cry of long-forgotten ancestors.
“Who says cruckeder than a ram’s harn!”
“Go it, Shan!” yelled the onlookers. “Give it him, Bob—sut him in the
face—Butt-end the whip, y’ idgit—Hurroo! Hurroo! Holy Mary! he nearly
landed him then—Mind the dogs——”
Armed with the soot bag swung like a club, and the old hunting whip
butt-ended, the two combatants formed the centre of a circle of yelling
admirers.
“Look!” said Miss Lestrange, as the party from the house came in view of
the road. “Look at the crowd and the two men!”
“They’re fighting!” cried the General. “I believe the ruffians have
dared to have the impudence to start fighting!”
At this moment came the noise of wheels from behind, and the “tub,”
which had obtained permission to go to the meet, drew up, with Patsy
driving the children.
“Let the children remain here,” said the General. “You stay with them,
Violet. Come along, Boxall, till we see what these ruffians mean.”
So filled was his mind with the objects in view that he quite forgot
Dicky Fanshawe.
“You _have_ put on the short skirt,” said Dicky, who at that moment
would scarcely have turned his head twice or given a second thought had
the battle of Austerlitz been in full blast beyond the park palings.
“And my thick boots,” said Violet, pushing forward a delightful little
boot to speak for itself.
The children were so engaged watching the proceedings on the road that
they had no eyes or ears for their elders.
“Have you ever been beagling before?” asked Dicky.
“Never; but I’ve been paper-chasing.”
“You can get through a hedge?”
“Rather!”
“That’ll do,” said Dicky.
“Mr Fanshawe,” cried Lord Gawdor from the “tub,” “look at the chaps in
the road—aren’t they going for each other!”
“I see,” said Mr Fanshawe, whose back was to the road—“Violet——”
“Yes.”
“No one’s looking——”
“That doesn’t matter—_No_—not here—Dicky, if you don’t behave, I’ll get
into the tub—Gracious! what’s that?”
“He’s down!” cried Patsy, who had been standing up to see better.
“Who?” asked Mr Fanshawe.
“The Mimber of Parlyment—Misther Boxall—Bob Mahony’s grassed him——”
“They’re _all_ fighting!” cried Violet. “Come, Mr Fanshawe—Patsy——” She
started for the gates at a run.
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