Torrents of soft grey rain were falling on Fornagh Hill. The
furze-bushes were grey with it, the slatey walls gleamed darkly, the
streams rushed in yellow fury over the ledges of rock. The new red coat
of Dan O’Driscoll the huntsman (familiarly known as Danny-O) had purple
patches on it where the wet had soaked through, and, as he himself
expressed it to one of his friends, “every step he’d take, the wather
was gabblin’ in his boots.” At the time of this remark, he was on foot
in the centre of a crowd of men and boys, who had apparently risen from
the hillside to point out the precise spot where the fox had gone to
ground.
“’Tis within in the gully he is!” shouted one of them. “I heard the
dogs yowling, and whin I seen him, there wasn’t the breadth o’ yer nail
between himself and the first o’ thim.”
That which the speaker had referred to as “a gully” was a covered-in
drain that carried off the waters of a small stream beneath a road and
down the hillside, its lower opening being at this moment blocked by a
large yellow cur, whose owner was sedulously pinching its tail as a
stimulant to its reluctant advance upon the fox. A small group of riders
huddled, with turned-up collars, under the lee of a high furzy fence;
their muddy horses steamed, with the wet reins hanging loose on their
necks. One lady and four men were all that the rocks and fences of
Fornagh had left of the field. The dispensary doctor’s chestnut was
bleeding from a cut on the fetlock, Mr. James Mahony, a hard-riding
farmer, had a dark patch of mud on his shoulder, and Major Bunbury was
swearing quietly to himself as he examined an over-reach that had
stained his mare’s white pastern pink with blood. Lady Susan’s big bay
had lost a fore shoe. Lady Susan’s face was an unbecoming, diffused
pink; the rain beaded her dark eyebrows and ran down her well-shaped
nose; her hunting cravat might as well have been a wet dishclout. Under
the circumstances, perhaps, the epithets which she was applying to the
weather and the country were excusable.
“What can have become of Hughie?” she said for the twentieth time,
bending her head to let the water run out of the brim of her hat; “I
don’t remember seeing him since that place where the cow ran after us.”
“Clinkin’ good fencer she was too,” said Major Bunbury, “she went two
fields with us. Upon my soul, I don’t know what happened to Hughie. I’d
quite enough to do to look out for myself.”
“I hope he’s all right,” said Lady Susan, easily, “that horse wasn’t
going very kindly with him.”
“Oh, he’s all right. Probably he’s done for the horse, though, in this
infernal country--bleedin’ to death under a furze-bush somewhere, and no
wonder, when they make their fences out of razors and porridge.”
“Glasgow goes well,” remarked Lady Susan, in a lower voice, eying Mr.
Glasgow where he stood talking to a countryman. “I was very glad he was
there to give me a lead--_you_ weren’t much good to me, Bunny dear!”
“Would it be putting too much delay on your ladyship to send for a
tarrier?” said Danny-O, the huntsman, approaching Lady Susan; “there’s
one Dinny Hegarty that lives back on the hill here, and they say he have
a grand dog.”
Lady Susan listened in bewilderment to this request.
“Oh, certainly. I don’t know what he wants,” she continued in her
strident soprano, to Mr. Glasgow; “I wish Hugh would come and look after
his own hounds, _I_ can’t speak Irish.”
“I saw Captain French having rather a time with that young horse,” said
Mr. Glasgow suavely, “you ought to have a try at him, Lady Susan; a lady
will often make a horse go when a man can’t--at least, some ladies can.”
Lady Susan cast her dark eyes upon him and laughed.
“Oh, I say, that’s what they call blarney over here, isn’t it? We call
it humbug in England, you know!”
None the less, her opinion of Mr. Glasgow rose, and, so much is there in
the manner of saying a stupid thing, he was pleased by the approval and
did not notice the stupidity.
The emissary to the home of “the grand dog” was already on his way over
the hill, speeded by injunctions from his friends to “kick off the owld
shoes and be hirrying.” The remainder of the party applied themselves to
the agreeable device of damming, at the upper end of the drain, the
stream that flowed through it, with the object, as was explained, of
“gethering a flood,” which when released, would wash the fox out before
it.
At intervals a rider or two arrived, hot, wet, and full of explanations
of the cause of delay, but of the new Master there was no sign. Slaney
Morris was one of these later arrivals. She proffered no excuses, being
probably aware that these were made for her by her mount with an
eloquence beyond all gainsaying. Slaney had, in an unpretentious way,
ridden from her youth up, but she rode merely as a means of transit,
very much as people use omnibuses; her enthusiasms were reserved for
other pursuits. She was now seated on an elderly brown mare, whose
natural _embonpoint_ was emphasized by Uncle Charles’ humane scruples on
the subject of clipping horses. As a further tribute to his clemency,
the brown mare’s tail had passed undocked through the changing fashions
of fifteen years, and hung like a heavy black skirt, in righteous
protest against the spruce abbreviations of the French’s Court horses.
Mr. Glasgow looked at Slaney, at her old-fashioned habit, at her saddle,
horned like the moon, at the mare’s tufted fetlocks and dingy
curb-chain, and realized that Miss Morris’s most sincere admirers could
not attribute to her the sacred quality of smartness. With Mr. Glasgow,
as with most of his countrymen, smartness came next to cleanliness and
considerably in advance of godliness. He had often ridden with Slaney,
and the points he now uncomfortably noted had merely seemed an
unimportant part of the background of a life whose charm depended on
culture and not on fashion. He wished that he had not persuaded her to
come out.
The rain had turned to a thick mist; the hounds sat on the soaked grass
in solemn and disconsolate patience, looking as sapient and as silly as
only hounds can; the crowd of country boys remained as indifferent to
the weather as if it had been a summer breeze; and after what seemed to
the shivering riders a long delay, the emissary returned, breathless,
with the grand dog slinking at his bare heels. The yellow cur was
withdrawn by the tail from the lower end of the drain, and the terrier
was rammed in like a charge into a gun, its owner, a very respectable
elderly man, lying flat on his face in the mud, with his head in the
drain, bellowing encouragement. Faint squeaks from the bowels of the
earth soon testified that the combat had begun, and the owner redoubled
his bawls of “Good boy! good lad!” At this moment a shout arose from the
road above that “the flood was loosed,” in other words, that the
artificers of the dam had lost patience, and had turned the pent-up
waters of the stream once more into the drain. Dinny Hegarty arose from
the lower end to protest, but he was too late. There was a chorus of
shouts, “The dog’ll be shoked”--“The two o’ thim’ll be shoked”--“There
isn’t as much wather as’d shoke them”--“Faith, the divil himself’d be
shoked in it!”
What were the experiences of the sub-terranean combatants none could
tell; the flood burst from the lower end of the drain and ran down the
field brown with mud and redolent of fox, and the pack, without a
moment’s hesitation, pursued it hotly down the field till, amidst yells
of laughter, it escaped from them into a boghole. After a brief
interval, muffled hostilities recommenced in the drain; two spades and a
pick appeared, as if by magic, and a shaft was sunk upon the squeaks.
“Give over the spades,” shouted Danny-O, as the roofing stones of “the
gully” appeared, “the hands is the besht. Hurry now, before he’ll go
north in it from ye!”
“Arrah, what north! he haven’t room to turn in it!”
“Dom yer sowl, he’d turn in a kayhole!”
“Go get a briar!” roared another voice, “he isn’t two foot from the
hole! Twisht it in his hair now--twisht it, can’t ye, and dhraw him
out!”
The principle was that adopted by dentists in extracting the nerve from
a tooth, but the briar failed of its office. The spade and pick were
again resorted to, and observations were taken by a small boy.
“The daag have him!”
“Is it by the tail?”
“No, but in a throttlesome way!”
“Come out now,” interposed Danny-O, “till I thry could I ketch a howlt
of him.”
“Put on yer glove, Dan; take care would he bite ye.” “Sure, the gloves
is no use, only silk.” “A fox can’t bite through silk. Wrop yer hand in
silk and he can’t put a tooth through it!” Thus, and much more from the
chorus, while Dan, addressing an eye of scornful and civilized humour to
Mr. Glasgow, commanded that a “gowlogue” and a bag should be brought to
him. The young man who had been leading his horse about leaped into the
saddle and undertook the errand, and the little boy who had been
entrusted with the doctor’s wounded chestnut immediately pursued him at
an emulous canter, with his bare feet thrust into the stirrup-leathers.
Presently both returned at full gallop, one with a forked stick, the
other with a meal sack, and then, dazzled by success, proceeded to race
round the field. The hounds started once more in pursuit, and were
themselves pursued by Danny-O, while the digging party broke into
enthusiastic cheers.
Lady Susan was not at all amused. She felt much as a devout clergyman
might feel at beholding a low travesty of the Church service, and she
was almost shocked at the way in which Major Bunbury and Mr. Glasgow
laughed.
“Men will laugh at anything,” she said, turning to Slaney, “but _I_ call
this awful rot, you know. Hughie gave a lot of money for these hounds,
and this sort of nonsense should not be allowed.”
“I’m afraid you’ve got to learn a good many new things about hunting
when you come to this part of Ireland, and to forget a good many more!”
said Glasgow, looking up at her with his charming smile. It was a smile
that Slaney had often thought of when she lay awake at night, but in
none of her reveries had she ever fancied its light being shed upon Lady
Susan.
At about this moment Hugh, three miles away, was engaged in pulling down
the stones of a loosely-built wall with the handle of his whip. He was
riding a tall, powerful, young grey horse, and was holding him hard on
the curb as he leaned over and pushed at the stones. It was obvious that
horse and rider were on bad terms. Hugh’s face was white, and splashed
with mud--mud from the hoofs of the farmers’ horses--behind whom he had
galloped through dirty lanes; there was a long red scratch on the grey’s
shoulder that looked as if it had been made by a spur, and Hugh’s new
velvet cap had obviously been on the ground. The wall was reduced to two
feet high before Captain French turned his horse and put him at it. He
tried to pull him into a walk, and swore at him as he curveted and
sidled, chafing against the curb. The horse refused, whirled round, and
finally bucked over the wall, lifting his rider perceptibly in the
saddle. There was but one fence now between Hugh and the road. It was a
large bank with furze-bushes growing on it, and a small ditch in front
of it. Hugh trotted down its whole length with a sick, angry heart,
looking for a low place.
“My God!” he said to himself, “I can’t ride at it. It’s no good trying.”
One spot seemed to him a trifle lower than the rest, and setting his
teeth, he put the horse at it. The effort to command himself and not to
pull the horse’s head as he came to the jump amounted in its way to
agony; he did not know if he were glad or sorry when the grey, soured by
the day’s misadventures, swerved from the fence and bucketed round the
field, pulling hard and trying to get his head down. Hugh stopped him
and dismounted. He would not think of what he was going to do, but there
was a hard knot in his throat as he walked the grey across the field. He
tied the lash of his whip to the reins, and climbing on to the fence,
led him over it. The horse followed him as lightly and quietly as a dog,
and stood still to let him untie the lash. His hand shook, and he did it
awkwardly, while the lump in his throat grew bigger.
The events of the morning were present with him. The jovial
breakfast-table at which he had played so sorry a part; the look of the
grey horse bucking as he was led round to the door; the cold, sick
feeling when the hounds opened on the fox in covert; the look of
Glasgow’s back as he and the others disappeared over the hill, leaving
him stuck at the first fence, engaged in that half-hearted battle with
his horse that had resulted in a fall for them both. He hated them
all--Bunbury, Glasgow, the road-riding faction, who had volunteered with
horrible sympathy to show him the short cuts: he almost hated his wife
for the easy confidence in him that he knew he did not deserve.
“I’ll get over it,” he said to himself, swearing furiously and
futilely. “After all, this is pretty nearly the first time I’ve been on
a horse since that smash. Damn you, you brute, keep quiet!” This to the
grey, who was fidgeting and pulling, with his ears pricked in
expectation of anything and everything. “I’ve never had a right feel
about a horse since that time.” He pulled out his flask and took a
drink--his wife had given it to him--and as he put it back he thought,
with almost the bitterest pang of all, that she would never
understand--that he could never tell her.
The note of the horn struck on his ear, and, looking back through the
rain, he saw the hounds coming quietly along the road behind him. Lady
Susan and Mr. Glasgow were riding in front of them, and he knew that the
time had come when he would have to begin to tell lies.