But now she could hear the hunt as well, and she smiled when she heard the cry of the hounds and the thud of half a hundred horses. Then her smile turned to a laugh because she knew exactly where they would be by now and she knew she had timed her move to perfection. In her mind’s eye she could see the fox in full flight running parallel to the wall probably about twenty yards or so from the ten foot drop, and not far behind it now would be the pursuing hounds, say fifty yards and closing in for the kill.
Emily could also picture her father, just where he always was, up there right at the head of affairs, galloping hard, tucked in at the tail of his homebred pack.
A few more strides and they would be at the big wall with its unseen drop, the wall high enough and the drop steep enough to hide from the blind side a whole hunt going by. Now they were there, her pursuer and she, side by side, their horses locked neck and neck which was the moment Emily chose to look, not at the man’s face but to make sure he was shortening up ready to jump, and the instant she saw him gather the reins back towards him Emily pulled hard on her own right rein and shifted her weight. There was no doubt now her pursuer was committed to jump, this handsome stranger who had dared take Emily on across country she considered her own, but she was not about to follow him over. In fact she had checked and turned Theo away just in time, in that split second making it look for all the world as if her horse had refused, or worse, as if she herself had funked it.
Judging from the whoop of triumph her pursuer gave as his horse cleared the wall it was obvious to Emily he was assuming the latter. But all Emily did was laugh out loud as she put Theo at a gap in another wall, a much lower one which ran away at right angles to the one her pursuer had just flown.
And which landed her neatly at the head of the field which was running full out no more than twenty yards behind the Master and his huntsmen.
A hundred yards ahead of them her pursuer had landed almost exactly where Emily had intended him to land but not quite, for instead of coming to ground right in front of her father as she had hoped the stranger had landed slap in front of the pack, scattering the leading hounds and disconcerting the others to such an extent that their heads came up and the fox was gone, bolted down an old earth dug on the side of the hill.
Lord Oughterard pulled his horse up and raised one gloved hand, a gesture immediately replicated by the field master and his huntsmen. Behind them the first followers to arrive on the scene, seeing the signals, clattered to a halt, soon to be joined by the rest of the field and finally the stragglers. The Master of the Blazers waited until all those still mounted and running had pulled up and he had complete silence, never for a moment taking his eyes off the young man in front of him who was still trying desperately to steady his over-excited and sweat-lathered mount.
‘Sir,’ Lord Oughterard began. Both he and his horse were now as still as the rocks all around them, as miraculously was the stranger’s. ‘In all my long years of hunting I have never witnessed such a breach of etiquette. I have seen my share of bad manners, I have seen my share of reckless behaviour, and I have on occasion I regret to say seen my hounds overrun. But never once, sir, in all my time in the field have I seen behaviour such as yours, for in one action you have managed to combine all three of these quite unforgivable misdemeanours, namely bad manners, recklessness and overrunning hounds. But to compound your dreadful conduct, sir, you managed to commit your atrocities at the precise moment we were about to account for the fox, something which I have to say I never thought I would live to see. You will therefore kindly go home at once, having given the field master your name, and there you will stay, sir, for the rest of the season. I trust I make myself clear. I do not wish to see you out again, not this season, not next season, and very probably never. Because I assure you, sir, that should you wish to hunt with the Blazers again you would have to show me the very best of reasons. As for the rest of you ladies and gentlemen’ – Lord Oughterard wheeled his horse round to face the field spread out and around behind him – ‘I regret to say that because of the behaviour of this gentleman I am ordering hounds home this minute. Naturally I am loth to do such a thing because this was without doubt a red letter day. But there it is. There you have it. Goodnight to you all.’
With that Lord Oughterard turned his horse for home, his red doeskin coat with hardly a speck of mud on it, his horse with hardly a bead of sweat, so sure was he of his country and so fit his horses. After a short but stunned silence the rest of the field did likewise, followed by the huntsmen and the hounds. But not by the tall stranger on his dark grey who hung behind since he had no desire to ride back in disgrace alongside those whose sport he had just ruined.
Nor was his lordship followed yet by his daughter, who was now riddled with guilt about the whole silly affair, which she had intended entirely in fun. So she considered it only right that she should offer the poor man a qualified apology.
‘But it was just as much your fault as mine, you know,’ she said with a not very successful attempt at indifference, for the stranger was looking at her with a pair of the largest and darkest eyes Emily had ever seen. ‘You sillied me, so I thought you needed yassoping.’
‘I sillied you, did I?’ the stranger said in a soft deep voice. ‘I had no idea there was a verb to silly now.’
‘Whether there is or there isn’t is beside the point. It’s just a family expression for taking someone on, and although I am sorry for what happened, it was after all by way of being your fault too,’ Emily replied, pretending to unravel a non-existent knot in her reins in order to break the look between them. ‘To be quite exact, to “silly” someone is to catch them out, to make an eejit out of them.’
‘And to yassop?’ the stranger enquired, his large dark eyes widening. ‘That I could not even begin to make a guess at.’
Emily looked up and at once regretted doing so, for she found what was meant to be only a passing glance now held by the stranger’s look.
‘Never mind what to yassop is or maybe isn’t,’ she said, feigning impatience to cover the moment. ‘The point is I shouldn’t have done what I did and there’s an end to it.’
‘All you did was ride as perfect a line as a man’s ever seen,’ the stranger replied. ‘Perfect that is except for your refusing.’
‘Theo didn’t refuse!’ Emily retorted. ‘Theodore has never refused in his life! I put yous into that wall deliberately! I did that quite deliberately and on purpose!’
‘Ah ha!’ The stranger threw back his head and laughed. ‘Now I have what it is to be yassoped!’
‘So you should! You should never have tried to silly me the way you did! I don’t like thrusters – and I don’t like people who silly out hunting either! I lost my best horse two seasons back to a fool of a thruster and I won’t have it happen again! If that’s the reason why you come hunting then it’s for the good of us all you’ve been banned!’
‘Ah but that isn’t my reason for coming hunting, do you see.’ The stranger tipped off his hat and wiped a line of sweat from his brow with the side of his thumb. ‘My reason for coming out hunting was to meet you.’
This time there was no smile on his face, just that look in his eyes, and the moment she saw it again Emily shortened her rein and wheeled her horse round.
‘Garn, Theo!’ she commanded her grey. ‘I’d say we’re done with apologizing!’
The stranger watched her canter off to rejoin the ever patient Mikey. He waited until she was out of his sight, then he turned his own horse about and rode away in the opposite direction, away into the faint winter mist that had now started to rise from the bog.
* * *
‘He was a pilchard, Mikey,’ Emily said, sitting herself closer to the glowing stove. ‘I mean the cheek of it.’
‘Be that as it may,’ Mikey replied, ‘but from the sound of it ’twas a grand spat the pair of yous was having.’
Despite being sent home early it was dusk by the time Emily and her groom had turned in the gates of Glend
arven and it had also started to rain, heavily enough to soak them both through to their skins. But seeing her father’s horses already rugged up and in their stalls Emily knew she’d been beaten to the best of the bath water by now and so had settled for drying herself out under a couple of blankets in the warmth of Mikey’s snug, the compartment at the end of the tack room which had long been one of Emily’s favourite haunts. Here after hunting there was always a good fire burning in the stove and a kettle boiling on the top of it, so rather than waste time trying to thaw out in the vast underheated rooms of the house itself while waiting, if luck was not on your side and you had arrived home last, to plunge in and out of two inches of tepid bath water before being vigorously dried by your maid in front of a tiny peat fire – Emily would invariably make for the smoky comfort of the snug and dry out there.
As indeed would her three younger sisters, none of whom had been allowed out for days since they were all suffering from endless colds. So it was only Emily for whom Mikey brewed tea that evening and opposite whom he now sat down, with his own mug of steaming tea clasped between his chapped and calloused hands.
‘Would you know who that stranger was then, Mikey?’ Emily asked, turning her back to the heat of the stove to dry out her other side. ‘You know I can’t remember seeing him out before this season.’
‘And ye wouldn’t have, Lady Emmie,’ Mikey replied. ‘For hasn’t he only just arrived and from Cork as I understand it. Where wasn’t he attending the famous university.’
‘Ah then you do know who he is, I thought as much,’ Emily murmured, sipping her tea. ‘I am only curious, mind, because although it stiffs me to say it he can ride half decently, I will say that for him, university or no university.’
‘Of course I knows who he is, for didn’t I fall in wit’ his groom,’ Mikey said, placing his tea on top of the stove and fetching his pipe and his tobacco down off the shelf above the fire. ‘And since it’s of interest to ye, the gentleman’s name is Mr O’Connor. Mr Rory O’Connor of the very same name as the last High King of this great country which must mean that he would be a recent descendant of the same, and hasn’t he taken up residence at Rock House, Ballinasloe.’
‘Let’s hope it’s not just for the hunting, Mikey,’ Emily replied. ‘For if so and thanks to me, he will have to pay a cap much further afield after today, poor fellow.’
‘No ’tis not just for the hunting, Lady Emmie, which is all to the good. For aren’t the people saying he intends to live here all the year.’
‘All the year?’ Emily exclaimed. ‘The man must be a total goose. No-one but gooses live here all the year round.’
‘There’ll be some sense in what you’re saying, Lady Emmie,’ Mikey said, nodding in agreement. ‘For they tell me that not content with being sent home from the field, what Mr O’Connor does with the rest of his time is to write boocks.’
‘In that case the man must be quite definitely a goose,’ Emily concluded.
The next time Emily saw Mr O’Connor was to be quite by chance. Prior to this occasion she had tried deliberately to make their paths cross by getting Mikey to drive the dogcart carrying herself and Fanny the maid on several occasions through the little town of Ballinasloe and one fine November afternoon even backwards and forwards in front of Rock House itself, which was clearly visible from the road. But she had met with no luck. There had never been sight of him on the main street of the town nor any sign of life in his house on the afternoon Mikey drove her by. Quite what Emily was expecting might happen if she had caught sight of him she had no idea. All she knew was that she simply had to see him again, if just to make sure he was as oddly handsome as she remembered him to be.
Her eldest sister Elisabeth wanted to know precisely what Emily meant by ‘oddly handsome’. To Elisabeth, who was as prosaic as Emily was fanciful, a man was either handsome, dashing, good looking or just plain. Oddly handsome was after all nothing more than a direct contradiction in terms.
‘Very well then, I shall tell you, although you do not deserve that I do,’ Emily sighed one cold Sunday afternoon as the two of them sat huddled by the fire in the study while Cecilia and Constance their other two sisters lay still confined to bed with their colds. ‘Not that it will make a wit’s difference because you still won’t know what I mean, but what I mean by oddly handsome is that although every bit of the fizzog might seem to be wrong, that is were you ever to draw a nose like this—’
Emily turned to a fresh page in her notebook in which she had been idly sketching her pretty sixteen-year-old sister and drew an aquiline nose.
‘If you were to take a nose like that,’ she repeated, ‘a mouth like this—’
Carefully she drew the stranger’s mouth from the side as she remembered it, with the lower lip protruding just enough to give the mouth a look of wilfulness.
‘A chin like this—’
The chin was neither square nor jutting, but nowhere near as classical as the delicately Roman nose.
‘A good forehead. High without being over-domed like some goosy professor,’ Emily recalled as she drew, ‘but with bags of room—’
‘What’s bags-of mean, Emmy?’ her sister interrupted.
‘Lots,’ Emily said. ‘I made it up. You put things in bags, do you not? And if you put them in bags it must mean you have lots of them, hence bags-of. Pretty obvious, I would have said. Anyway, that’s himself’s forehead. With bags-of room for the grey matter—’
‘Pretty obvious, grey matter.’ Elisabeth sighed. ‘Pappa’s quite right to keep reprimanding you, Emily. You will never get anyone to offer to marry you talking the way you do.’
‘Fiddlesticks,’ Emily retorted. ‘I shall marry whosoever I like, and certainly not someone who wants to marry me simply because I talk as if I was reading from a dictionary. Now – the eyes. If I can get the eyes right, if I can – you’ll see exactly what I mean.’
The eyes were the hardest. Emily’s first two attempts were more like owl eyes than a man’s. But then she got them exactly, with their heavy upper lids, long lashes and big dark orbs.
‘Et puis!’ Emily had cut the various portions of facial anatomy out of her notebook and was assembling them into shape on a fresh page. ‘Et puis nous puts them all together comme ça – in a face with long cheeks comme ça, and dark curling hair – and if that is not oddly handsome then I’ll be a two-headed dunnock.’
‘He looks like somebody from a book,’ Elisabeth said after a minute of staring thoughtfully over her sister’s shoulder at the face she’d made. ‘Or like one of the mad Irish who are forever coming down from the misty mountains or out of the sea to claim their true love.’
Emily could only agree that her stranger certainly looked heroic. In fact the more she stared at her caricature and the more she remembered the tall stranger with the handsome face and the dark eyes the more she realized that rather than some Celtic mythical figure descending from the hills he was more in the mould of a real hero, her mother’s and her own particular favourite, right down to the frown on his forehead and the long Celtic upper lip. He was almost the twin of the picture which hung in her mother’s boudoir, a contemporary engraving given to her by her uncle of that most popular of popular heroes, the bold Robert Emmet.
So it was that when she next encountered the face she had just pieced together, it was entirely by chance. Needing material for her Christmas dress, her mother had taken her two eldest daughters with her for company into Galway town. It was a typically damp December day, with a mist hanging so still and so low it seemed the country had become one with the sea. Ahead of their carriage what might have been bowlfuls of water cascaded onto the road from overhanging branches while in the sodden fields lonely cattle stood by hedges gazing mournfully ahead through the low mists that curtained their vision.
‘’Tis as if the very mountains are full, children,’ Lady Oughterard sighed, looking out of her window. ‘’Tis as if the very mountains have filled to their brims and are slowly drenching the land
.’
Yet five miles from the city limits a breeze picked up from out in the bay and easing slowly in gradually lifted the curtaining mist, so that by the time the Oughterard carriage had pulled up in Eyre Square a wintry sun had eased the greyness away and was shining down on the fine and famous city with its Spanish arch and its fighting history.
By that time also both Emily and Elisabeth had managed in between their mother’s daydreams and reveries to persuade her that they too needed something new to wear for Christmas, so the three of them alighted from the carriage and made their way into Langan’s haberdashery where they spent the best part of an hour choosing materials for dresses to be made up at home.
All four Persse sisters were as different from each other as cake from biscuits, and this was particularly true of Emily and Elisabeth for while Elisabeth was always somewhat embarrassed to go shopping with her mother Emily loved it distractedly, for even had Lady Oughterard not been as well known as she was in the city she would instantly have attracted everyone’s attention the moment they laid eyes on her, not only because of her exceptionally tall stature, standing as she did half an inch over six feet in her stockinged feet, but by her extraordinary beauty and the manner of her dressing, a style which was entirely of her own design, consisting in the main of the sporting of huge-brimmed and extravagantly plumed hats, and the wearing of lavishly embroidered dresses and wonderfully romantic, copious cloaks.
She was also uncorseted and therefore she walked differently from other fashionable women with an easy swinging stride, a gait of which Emily was most jealous and which she simply longed to be able to emulate one day. But being as yet young and unmarried it was not proper, according to Miss Hannington their governess, for her to go unstayed, and so every morning she and her next two sisters had to suffer the indignity and discomfort of Fanny’s lacing them tightly into their steel-boned straitjackets. Nor any more did they dare beseech the maid to lace them up less strictly, not since Miss Hannington, having suspected this might be the case, detected the felony and as a punishment had ordered all three girls to remain corseted day and night for the subsequent month.
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