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{29} 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{30} 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{31} 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{32} 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{33} 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.{34}
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 re{35}turned, 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-{36}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,{37} 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{38} 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{39} 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,{40} 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{41} 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,{42} 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.