Further Experiences of an Irish R.M.

by E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

  IX

  "A HORSE! A HORSE!"

  PART II

  A quarter of an hour later Philippa and I stood in the high road, withthe sense of deliverance throbbing in every grateful nerve, and viewedthe car, with the job-cook and the policeman, swing heavily awaytowards the railway station.

  Mine was the strategy that had brought about our escape, mine were theattractions that had lured the cook to mount the policeman's car withme, and still more inalienably mine was the searing moment when, stillarm-in-arm with the cook, we drove away from the deeply appreciativeparty on the doorsteps. Philippa and a policeman were on the oppositeside of the car; the second policeman, very considerately, walked.

  We were close to the station, the cook had sung herself to sleep, andPhilippa and I had relapsed into the depths of abysmal despondency,when our incredulous eyes beheld the Butler-Knoxes' coachman comingtowards us at a trot, riding a bay horse and leading a grey, on whichwas a side-saddle. Flavin, the horse dealer, had, after all, been asgood as Flurry's word--the hirelings were here, and all was right withthe world.

  The car slackened to a walk, we slid from it silently, and it and itsburden passed into that place of shadows to which all extraneousaffairs of life betake themselves on a hunting morning, when the houris come, and the horse.

  Looshy's coachman delivered to me the bay horse, a large andnotable-looking animal, with a Roman nose adorned with a crooked blaze,a tranquil eye, and two white stockings. In his left hand he held acompact iron-grey mare, hogged and docked, who came up to the bank bythe roadside, to be mounted, as neatly as a man-o'-war boat comesalongside. Hirelings of so superior a class it had never before beenmy privilege to meet, and I made up my mind that they were eitherincurably vicious or broken winded.

  "It's easy known that this mare's carried a lady before, sir," said thecoachman, a young man with a soul for higher things than driving theButler-Knox covered car, "and the big horse is the best I ever seencome out of Flavin's! He's in grand condition, he's as slick as amouse! Only for Mr. Flurry being there we'd hardly have got them," hecontinued, while he lengthened my stirrup-leathers, "the chap Flavinsent with them had drink taken, and the porters had the box shunted andhimself in it, stretched, and the bottle of whisky with him!"

  Flavin's man and his bottle of whisky were now negligible incidents forme. Philippa was already under way, and the time was short. The bayhorse, arching his neck and reaching pleasantly at his bit, went awayat a rhythmic and easy trot, the grey mare flitted beside him withequal precision; it was, perhaps, rather fast for riding to a meet, butwe were late, and were they not hirelings?

  We followed our guides, the telegraph posts, for some four miles oflevel road; they dropped down a deepening valley to a grey and brimmingriver, and presently came slate roofs and white-washed houses, staringat each other across an empty village street. We had arrived atKilbarron, the scene of the meet, and the meet was not.

  "They've gone on! they've gone on!" screamed an old woman from adoorway, "away up over the hill!"

  Evidently every other live thing had followed the hunt, and we did notspare Mr. Flavin's horses in doing the same. We reached the top of thelong hill in a remarkably brief space of time, and, having done so,realised that we were not too late. A couple of fields away a row offigures, standing like palings along the top of a bank, with theirbacks to us, told that the hounds were still in view; even as wesighted them, the palings plunged _en masse_ from their standpoint withthat composite yell that in Ireland denotes the breaking (andfrequently the heading) of a fox, and vanished. Whatever washappening, it was not coming our way. I turned my hireling at the bankby the roadside, he came round with a responsive swing, and in twolarge and orderly bounds he was over. Before I had time to look round,the grey mare, with the faintest hint of a buck, galloped emulouslypast me.

  "Perfection!" panted Philippa, putting her hat straight.

  As we came up on to the next bank, recently vacated by its humanpalisade, we found that fortune had smiled upon us. Just below, on ourright, was a long strip of gorse covert; three big fields beyond it,gliding from us like a flock of seagulls, were the clamouring hounds,and in the space between us and them bucketed the hunt, in the firstfine frenzy of getting away. Flavin's bay immediately caught hold, notimplacably, but with the firmness of superior knowledge; the grey mare,having ascertained that Philippa was not going to interfere, thoughtbetter of going on alone, and took the time from her stable companion.The field was already sorting itself into the usual divisions of theforward, the cunning, and the useless; our luck stood to us; theforward division, carried away by the enthusiasm of a good start and asympathetic fall of ground, succeeded in less than a quarter of a milein hustling the hounds over the line, and brought about a check. Wejoined the rearguard, and worked our way towards the front,unobtrusively, because Sir Thomas Purcell's comments on the situationwere circling like a stock-whip among the guilty, and were not sparingthe innocent. At this moment we found Flurry Knox beside us.

  "Sir Thomas is giving the soldiers their tea in a mug!" he said; "andthey were in the want of it! How are those horses doing with you?" hewent on, looking our steeds up and down. "They look up to yourweights, anyhow! I suppose you didn't see your friend, the General?He was at the meet in a motor."

  "In a motor!" repeated Philippa. "I thought he was such a wonderfulrider."

  "He knows how to get a motor along, anyhow," replied Flurry, hisattentive eyes following the operations of the hounds; "maybe he hasthe gout. You'd say he had by the colour of his face. Hullo! Boys!They're away again! Come on, Mrs. Yeates! Knock your two guineas'worth out of Flavin!"

  Short as it was, the burst had been long enough to tranquillise myanxieties as to our hirelings' wind, and when we started again we foundthem almost excessively ready for the stone-faced bank that confrontedus at the end of the field. Some twenty of us, including the chidden,but wholly unabashed soldiers, went at it in line, and, after themanner of stone-faced banks, it grew very tall as we approached it.Flavin's bay strode unfalteringly over it; it was as though he graspedit and flung it behind him. The grey mare, full of jealousy andvain-glory, had a hard try to fly the whole thing, but retainedsufficient self-control to change feet at the last possible instant;with or without a scramble or a peck, we all arrived somehow in thenext field, and saw, topping the succeeding fence, the bulky chestnutquarters of Sir Thomas Purcell's horse and the square scarlet back ofSir Thomas. Away to the left, on an assortment of astute crocks, threeof the Misses Purcell followed the First Whip, at as considerable adistance from their parent as was consistent with a good place. Theirvoices came confusedly to us; apparently each was telling the others toget out of her way.

  For a quarter of an hour the hounds ran hard over the cleanpasture-land, whose curves rose before us and glided astern like thelong rollers under an Atlantic liner. Innocent of rocks or pitfalls,unimpeachable as to surface, it was a page of fair print as comparedwith the black letter manuscript to which the country of Mr. FlurryKnox's hounds might be likened. Never before have I crossed fences assound, as seductive, it was like jumping large and well-upholsteredChesterfield sofas; Chesterfieldian also were the manners of Flavin'sbay. I found myself in the magnificent position of giving a lead toFlurry and the Dodger, of giving several leads to the soldiery; once,when a wide and boggy stream occurred, the Misses Purcell and thecrocks looked to me as their pioneer. The hustle and the hurry neverrelaxed; the hounds had fastened on the line and were running it asthough it were a footpath; but for the check at the start, no fox couldhave held his lead for so long at such a pace, and whatever the pace,the tails of the horses of Sir Thomas and the First Whip never failedto disappear over the bank just ahead.

  For me, in the unwonted glory of heading the desperadoes of the firstflight, life and the future were contained in the question of how muchlonger I could count on my hireling. I was just able to spare a hastythought or two to Philippa and the grey, and I remember that it wasafter
a heavy drop into a road that I noticed, with the just andimpotent wrath of a husband, that her hair was beginning to come down.

  It was just then that I first saw the motor. The fox had run the roadfor some little distance; we clattered and splashed along it, until anintimidating roar from Sir Thomas and the sight of his right arm in theair, brought us, bumping and tugging, to a standstill. The hounds werefor a moment at fault, swarming, with their heads down, over every inchof the road, and beyond them, about a hundred yards from us, was aresplendent scarlet motor, whose nearer approach was summarilyinterdicted by the First Whip. I am short-sighted, but I caught animpression of two elderly gentlemen, one of whom, wearing a whitemoustache and a tall hat, was responding warmly to the fulminations ofSir Thomas. If this were my ancient brother-in-arms, Jimmy Porteous,following hounds in a motor, times were indeed changed. I dismissedthe possibility from my mind. Just then I caught sight of Flurry'sface; it had in it the fearful joy of a schoolboy who has seen a squibput into the tail pocket of the schoolmaster, and awaits the result.Mrs. Flurry, in the heroic act of plucking a hairpin from her ownunshaken golden-red plaits, and yielding it to Philippa, met his eyewith a glance that was so expressionless as to amount to a dangersignal.

  At this moment the hounds jostled over the wall with a clatter offalling stones; they spread themselves in the field like the opening ofa fan, they narrowed to the recovered line like the closing of one; SirThomas's chestnut hoisted himself and his fifteen-stone burden out ofthe road with the heave of an earthquake. The riders shoved after him,and we were swept again into the current of the hunt.

  As we thundered away up the field threatening shouts from the checkedmotorists followed us; apparently, after the manner of their kind, theyhad not a moment to spare, and the delay had annoyed them. The nextfence arrived, and they, and all else, were forgotten.

  There was a wood ahead of us, cresting a long upland, and for it thehounds were making, at a pace that brutally ignored the rise of ground,and the fact that in these higher levels the fields were smaller, andthe fences had to be faced up a hill that momently grew steeper.

  "Hold on, Mrs. Yeates, till I take down that pole for you!" Flurry'svoice followed us up the hill, and there was that in it that told hewas making heavy weather of it. He was leading the dripping Dodger,and I have seldom seen a redder face than his as he laboured pastPhilippa and dragged away the shaft of a cart that barred a gap. "Badluck to this for a close country!" he puffed. "You're not off onefence before you're on top of the next!" Flavin's horses werecertainly lathering pretty freely, but were otherwise making no remarkon the situation, and neither of them had so far made a mistake of anykind. I saw the First Whip regard the bay with obvious respect, andturn with a confidential comment to the nearest Miss Purcell. Ithall-marked my achievements.

  Philippa and I were among the first into the wood; even Flurry had beenleft three fields behind, and the glory of our position radiated fromus, as we stood at the end of the main ride, sublimely surveying thearrival of the rest of the streaming hunt. Sir Thomas and the houndshad dived out of sight into the recesses of the wood; a period ofinaction ensued, and for a few balmy minutes peace with honour was ours.

  Balmy, however, as were the minutes, there crept into them an anxietyas to what the hounds were doing. A great and complete silence hadfallen as far as they and Sir Thomas were concerned, and Philippa andI, conscious of our high estate as leaders of the hunt, melted awayfrom the crowd to investigate matters. We followed a path that took usacross the wood, and the deeper we went the deeper was the silence, andthe more acute became our fears that we had been left behind. SirThomas had an evil reputation for slipping his field and getting awayalone.

  "There's the horn!" cried Philippa. "It's outside the wood! They_have_ gone away. Hurry!"

  We were squeezing along the farther edge of the covert, looking for away out, and I, too, heard the note, faint, yet commanding. I hurried.That is to say, with my hat over my eyes, and my cheek laid against thebay's neck, I followed my wife up an alley that was barely wide enoughfor a woodcock.

  On our left was an impassable hedge of small trees, crowning a heavydrop into the field outside the wood; our faces were rowelled by thebranches of young spruce firs. It was all very well for Philippa,riding nearly two hands lower than I, to twist her way in and outthrough them like a squirrel, but for me, on a 16.2 horse, resolved onfollowing his stable companion through a keyhole if necessary, it wasanything but well. My eyes were tightly shut, my arm was in front ofthem, and my eye-glass was hanging down my back, when I felt the baystop.

  "Here's a way out," said my wife's voice, apparently from the middle ofa fir tree, "there's a sort of a cattle track here."

  There followed a scramble and a slide, then Philippa's voice again,enjoining me to keep to the right.

  She has since explained that she really meant the left, and that, inany case, I might have known that she always said right when she meantleft; be that as it may, when the bay and I had committed ourselves tothe steep descent--half water-course, half cattle track--I was smittenin the face by a holly branch. Before I had recovered from its impact,a stout beechen bough, that it had masked, met me violently across thewaistcoat and held me in mid-air, as the gorilla is reputed to graspand hold the traveller, while my horse moved firmly downward frombeneath me. After a moment of suspense, mental and physical, I fell toearth, like the arrow in the song, I knew not where, and tobogganedpainfully down something steep and stony, with briers in it.

  As I rose to my feet, the mellow note of the horn that had beguiled usfrom the wood, again sounded; nearer now, and with a harsher cadence,and I perceived, at the farther end of the field in which I hadarrived, a bullock, with his head over a gate, sending a long andlamentable bugle note to the companions from whom he had beenseparated. Simultaneously the hounds opened far back in the woodbehind me, and I knew that the flood-tide of luck had turned against us.

  Flavin's bay had not waited for me. He was already well away, goingwith head and tail high held, a gentleman at large, seeking forentertainment at a lively and irresponsible trot. Pursuing him, withmore zeal than discretion, was Philippa on the grey mare; he broke intoa canter, and I had the pleasure of seeing them both swing through agateway and proceed at a round gallop across the next field. Ifollowed them at the best imitation of the same pace that my bootspermitted, and squelched through the mire of the gateway in time to seethe bay horse jump a tall bank, and drop with a clatter into a road.At the same moment the drumming and hooting of a motor-car broke uponmy ear, and three heads, one of them wearing a tall hat, slid at highspeed along the line of the fence. At sight of this apparition the bayhorse gave a massive buck, and fled at full speed up a lane. To mysurprise and gratification, the motor-car instantly stopped, and one ofits occupants--the wearer of the tall hat--sprang out and gave chase tomy horse.

  My attention was here abruptly transferred to my wife, who, havingfollowed the chase, whether by her own wish or that of the grey mare Ihave never been able to discover, was now combating the desire of thelatter to jump the bank at the exact spot calculated to land them bothin the lap of the motor-car. The dispute ended in a slanting andcrab-like rush at a place twenty yards lower down, and it was then thatthe figure of our host, Mr. Lucius Butler-Knox, rose, amazingly, in themotor-car, making semaphore gestures of warning.

  The mare jumped crookedly on to the bank, hung there for half a second,and launched herself into space, the launch being followed,appropriately, by a mighty splash. Neither she nor Philippa reappeared.

  Throughout these events I had not ceased to run, and the next thing Ican distinctly recall is scrambling, thoroughly blown, on to the fence,whence a moving scene presented itself to me. The grey mare andPhilippa had, with singular ingenuity, selected between them the oneplace in the fence where disaster was inevitable; and I now beheld mywife prone in two feet of yellow water, the overflow of a flooded ditchthat had turned a hollow by the roadside into a sufficien
tly imposingpond. Mr. Butler-Knox and the chauffeur were already rendering all theassistance possible, short of wetting their feet, and were hauling herashore; while the grey mare, recumbent in deeper water, surveyed theoperation with composure, and made no attempt to move. When I joinedthe party--a process involving a wide circuit of the flood--Philippahad sunk, dripping, upon a heap of stones by the roadside, in laughteras inexplicable as it was unsuitable. There was, at all events, noneed to ask if she were hurt.

  "The most appalling thing that you ever knew in your life hashappened!" she wailed, and instantly fell again into unseemlyconvulsions.

  Whatever the jest might be, it did not appeal to the chauffeur, whowithdrew in silence to his motor, coldly wiping the vicarious duckweedfrom his knees with a silk pocket-handkerchief. Still less did itappeal to me. Any fair-minded person will admit that I had cause to beexcessively angry with Philippa. That a grown woman, the mother of twochildren, should mistake the bellow of a bullock for the note of a hornwas bad enough; but that when, having caused a serious accident by notknowing her right hand from her left, and having, by furtherinsanities, driven one valuable horse adrift into the country, probablybroken the back of another, laid the seeds of heart disease in herhusband from shock and over-exertion, and of rheumatic fever inherself; when, I repeat, after all these outrages, she should sit in asoaking heap by the roadside, laughing like a maniac, I feel that thesympathy of the public will not be withheld from me.

  The mystery of Mr. Butler-Knox's appearance in the motor-car passed byme like a feather in a whirlwind; I strode without a word into theyellow flood in which the mare was lying, and got hold of her reinswith the handle of my crop; I might as well have tried to draw outBehemoth with a hook. Her hind-quarters were well fixed in the hiddenditch, she made not the slightest effort to stir, and continued torecline, contentedly, not to say defiantly.

  "That's a great sign of fine weather," said a voice behind me inaffable comment, "when a horse will lie down in wather that way."

  "THAT'S A GREAT SIGN OF FINE WEATHER WHEN A HORSE WILLLIE DOWN IN WATHER THAT WAY"]

  I turned upon my consoler, and saw a young countryman with a fur-linedcoat hanging upon his arm.

  "I got this thrown in the bohireen above," he said, "the othergentleman, that's follying the bay horse, stripped it off him, and Godknows it's itself that's weighty!"

  "My dear Major!" began Looshy, addressing me agitatedly from the bank,as a hen might address a refractory duckling, "there has been a mostunfortunate mistake."

  "There has! There has! It's all Flurry's fault!" gasped Philippa,staggering towards me like a drunken woman.

  "I fear the General is terribly annoyed," continued Looshy, wiping hisgrey beard and mopping his collar to remove the muddy imprint ofPhilippa's arm; "he rushed into Garden Mount in search of his horseswhen he found they were not at the meet nor at the station--he leftLady Porteous with my sisters and took me to identify you; I mentionedyour name, but he did not seem to grasp it--indeed his languagewas--er--was such that I thought it unwise to press the point."

  I dropped the reins and began, slowly, to wade out of the pool.

  "I understand he has but just paid L300 for these horses--it was anunpardonable mistake of Flurry's," went on Looshy, "he found theGeneral's horses at the station and thought that they were Flavin's."

  "Dear Flurry!" sobbed Philippa, shamelessly, reeling against me andclutching my arm.

  "Begor' he have the horse!" said the young countryman, looking up thehill.

  A stout figure in a red coat and tall hat was approaching by way of thebohireen, followed by a man leading a limping horse.

  "I think," said Looshy nervously, "that Mrs. Yeates had better have myseat in the motor-car and hurry home. I will walk--I should reallyprefer it. The General will be quite happy now that he has found hishorses and his old friend."

  "I WILL WALK--I SHOULD REALLY PREFER IT"]

  The chauffeur, plying a long-necked oil-can, smiled sardonically.