VIII
"A HORSE! A HORSE!"
PART I
"Old Jimmy Porteous!" I ejaculated, while a glow of the anciententhusiasm irradiated my bosom, "Philippa, I say! Do you see this?Jimmy Porteous is to command this District!"
"No, darling, _not_ with an egg!" replied Philippa, removing the honeyspoon from the grasp of her youngest child, just too late to avertdisaster, "we _don't_ eat honey with eggs."
The heavy hand of experience has taught me that at moments such asthese the only possible course is to lie to, head to wind, till thesquall passes, and then begin from the beginning again. I readdressedmyself to my newspaper, while the incident went, like a successfulburlesque, with a roar, sustained from the foot of the stairs to thepoint when the nursery door slammed upon it.
Philippa resumed her seat at the breakfast table.
"Yes, dear, what were you saying?" she said, yielding me the laboriousbut vague attention that is the best any husband can expect from anywife on such occasions.
I repeated my statement, and was scandalised to find that Philippa hadbut the most shadowy remembrance of Jimmy Porteous, who, in the dayswhen I first joined my regiment had been its senior subaltern, and, forme and my fellows, one of the most revered of its law-givers. As acaptain he left us, and proceeded to do something brilliant onsomebody's staff, and, what time I got my company, had moved on inradiance into a lofty existence in the War Office and newspaperparagraphs.
I recalled these things to my wife, coupling them with the informationthat she would have to call on Lady Porteous, when the door opened, andthe face of Flurry Knox, unshaven and blue, with the miserablemother-o'-pearl blueness of fair people in cold weather, appeared inthe opening.
He had looked in, he said, on his way home from the fair, to try wouldwe give him a cup of tea, and he went on to remark that the wind wascold enough to cut the horns off a cow.
I asked him if he had seen my beasts there, and if they had been sold.
"Oh, they were, they were," he said tolerantly; "it was a wonderfulgood fair. The dealers were buying all before them. There was a mansaid to me, 'If you had a little dog there, and he to be a calf, you'dhave sold him.'"
It was one of Flurry Knox's ruling principles in life to disparage thelive stock of his friends; it was always within the bounds ofpossibility that the moment might arrive when he would wish to buy them.
"I met a man from Sir Thomas Purcell's country yesterday," said Flurrypresently; "he says there's been the father and mother of a row downthere between old Sir Thomas and Hackett, that's the man has theharriers. Sir Thomas is wild because they say the soldiers are givingHackett as good a subscription as himself, and he says Hackett has allthe foxes killed."
"But surely--harriers don't hunt foxes?" said Philippa ingenuously.
Flurry looked at her for a moment in silence. "Is it Hackett'sharriers!" he said compassionately; "sure he flogs them off hares."
"Talking of soldiers, they've just sent a man who used to be in myregiment to command this district," I said, plucking my own topic fromthe tangle of inter-hunt squabbles; "a great man to hounds he used tobe, too."
"Would he buy the Dodger?" asked Flurry swiftly. "Would he give aprice?"
"I daresay he would if he liked the horse. If I got a chance I mighttell him," I said, magnanimously.
"I tell you what, Major," said Flurry, with an eye on his ally,Philippa, "you and me and Mrs. Yeates will go up and have a day withSir Thomas's hounds, and you'll say the word for me to the General!"
Looking back at it all now, I recognise that here was the moment forfirmness. I let the moment slip, and became immersed in trackingGeneral Sir James Porteous, K.C.B., through the pages of an elderlyArmy List. By the time I had located him in three separate columns, Ifound that Philippa and Flurry had arranged unalterably the details ofwhat my wife is pleased to call a ramp--_i.e._ an expedition that, asits name implies, suggests a raid made by tramps.
"--Why, my gracious! aren't they cousins of my own? They'll be onlydelighted! Sure, Sally had measles there three years ago, and 'twas asgood as a play for them!--Put us up, is it? Of course they will! Thewhole lot of us. D'ye think Sally'd stay at home?--No, you'll not takeyour own horses at all. Hire from Flavin; I'll see he does you well."
"And you know, Sinclair"--thus the other conspirator--"it would be anexcellent chance for you to meet your beloved Jimmy Porteous!"
It was not Mr. Knox's habit to let the grass grow under his feet.Before I had at all grasped the realities of the project, my wife heardfrom Mrs. Sally Knox to say that she had arranged it all with theButler-Knoxes, and that we were to stay on for a second night in orderto go to a dance at which we should meet the General. At intervalsduring the following week I said to Philippa that it was preposterousand monstrous to dump ourselves upon the Butler-Knoxes, unknown peoplewhom we had but once met at a function at the Bishop's. My remembranceof them, though something blurred by throngs of the clergy and theirwives, did not suggest the type of person who might be expected to keepopen house for stray fox-hunters. I said all this to Philippa, whoentirely agreed with me, and continued her preparations, after themanner of experienced wives.
It was raining hard one afternoon in the following week when afour-wheeled inside car--an admirable vehicle, which I wish in no wayto disparage--disgorged its burden at the door of Garden Mount House.One item of the burden was experiencing a sensation only too familiar,such a sensation as a respectable seaman might feel on being pressedinto a crew of buccaneers. The house loomed over us, large, square,and serious, in the wet moonlight of the January evening; the husky,over-fed bark of an elderly dog was incessant in the hall. If bylaying hold of the coat-tails of the leading pirate, as he got out toring the bell, I could then and there have brought the expedition to aclose, I would thankfully have done so.
The door was opened by a melancholy old gentleman with a grey moustacheand whiskers; he might have been Colonel Newcome in his decadence, butfrom the fact that he wore an evening coat and grey trousers, Igathered that he was the butler, and for any one skilled in Irishhouseholds, he at once placed the establishment--rich, godly, lowchurch, and consistently and contentedly dull. As we entered the hallthere arose from some fastness in the house a shrill clamour thatresolved itself into the first line of a hymn.
Flurry dug me in the ribs with his elbow. "They've found!" hewhispered, "you needn't look so frightened. It's only Lucy and Louisahaving the choir practice!"
To these strains Colonel Newcome ushered us into the drawing-room.There was no one in it. It was a large double drawing-room, andnothing but heavy maroon curtains now separated us from the choirpractice. The hymn continued, a loud and long-drawn proclamation, and,pending its conclusion, my wife and Mrs. Flurry Knox swiftly andstealthily circumnavigated the room, and appraised all its contents,from a priceless Battersea basket filled with dusty bulbs, to aChippendale card-table with a sewing machine clamped on to it, whileFlurry, in a stage whisper, dilated to me upon the superfluous wealththat Providence had seen fit to waste upon the Butler-Knoxes. Thehousehold, as I had gradually learnt, consisted of an elderly bachelor,Mr. Lucius Butler-Knox (commonly known as "Looshy "), his unmarriedsister, Miss Louisa, his widowed sister, Mrs. Hodnett, and a corpulent,grey-muzzled black-and-tan terrier. Their occupations were gardening,and going to what they called "the city," _i.e._ the neighbouringcounty town, to attend charitable committee meetings; they kept aspecies of philanthropic registry office for servants; their foible washospitality, disastrously coupled with the fact that they dined athalf-past six. It was one of the mysteries of kinship that Flurry Knoxand our host and hostess should possess a nearer relative in commonthan Adam. That he should have established their respectable home ashis hostelry and house of call was one of the mysteries of Flurry Knox.
The hymn ceased, the raiders hastily formed into line, the maroondrapery parted, and the ladies of the house, flushed with song, andimporting with them a potent sample of the atmosph
ere of the backdrawing-room, were upon us, loud in hospitable apologies, instant inoffers of tea; the situation opened and swallowed us up.
The half-past six o'clock dinner came all too swiftly. Glared upon byan unshaded lamp that sat like a ball of fire in the centre of thetable, we laboured in the trough of a sea of the thickest ox-tail soup;a large salmon followed; with the edge of dubious appetite alreadyturned, we saw the succeeding items of the menu spread forth on thetable like a dummy hand at bridge. The boiled turkey, with itssatellite ham, the roast saddle of mutton, with its stable companionthe stack of cutlets; the succeeding course, where a team of four wildduck struggled for the lead with an open tart and a sago pudding. LikeAgag, we went delicately, and, like Agag, it availed us nothing.
I watched my _vis-a-vis_, little Mrs. Flurry, furtively burying a slabof turkey beneath mashed potatoes as neatly as a little dog buries abone; her green kitten's eyes met mine without a change of expression,and turned to her glass, which Colonel Newcome had filled with claret."The beaded bubbles, winking at the brim," had a greyish tinge.
"Cousin Lucius!" observed Mrs. Flurry, in a silence that presentlyhappened to fall, "can you remember who painted that picture of ourgreat-grandfather--the one over the door I mean?"
Mr. Butler-Knox, a small, grey-bearded, elderly gentleman, wholly, upto the present, immersed in carving, removed the steam of the ducksfrom his eye-glasses, and concentrated them upon the picture.
"It's by Maclise, isn't it?" went on Sally, leaning forward to get anearer view.
In that moment, when all heads turned to the picture, I plainly saw herdraw the glass of claret to the verge of the table, it disappearedbeneath it and returned to its place empty. Almost simultaneously, theblack-and-tan terrier sprang from a lair near my feet, and hurried fromthe room, shaking his ears vigorously. Mrs. Flurry's eyes wavered fromthe portrait to mine, and her face became slowly and evenly pink, likean afterglow.
It was but one of the many shameless acts of my party during theage-long evening. At ten o'clock we retired to rest, for my own part,thoroughly overfed, not in the least sleepy, worn with conversation,and oppressed by the consciousness of flippant, even brutal,ingratitude.
The weather had cleared next morning to mild greyness, that softenedeven the asperity of half-past eight breakfast. I lumbered stifflydownstairs in a pair of new butcher boots, and found with thankfulnessthat our hosts, exhausted possibly by their efforts, had kept theirrooms.
Marshalled in order upon the sideboard stood the remains of all themore enduring items of last night's dinner, cold indeed, but firm andundefeated; hot dishes of ancient silver roasted before the noblebrass-mounted fireplace; there were vats of lethargic cream, a clutchof new-laid eggs, a heap of hot scones.
"It's easy seen it wasn't cracking blind nuts made Lucy Hodnett andLouisa the size they are!" remarked Flurry, as the party, feeling morepiratical than ever, embarked upon this collation. "Mrs. Yeates, doyou think I am bound to dance with the pair of them to-night? You are,Major, anyway! But I might get off with Louisa."
"Oh, Sinclair's card is full," said my wife, who was engaged in tryingto decipher the marks on the cream jug without upsetting the cream; "heand the General are plighted to one another for the evening."
"I wonder if the claret has stained the carpet!" said Mrs. Flurry,diving under the table. "It has! How awful!" Mrs. Flurry's voiceindicated the highest enjoyment. "Never mind, they'll never see it!They're too fat to get under the table!"
"If they did, it'd be the first time old Looshy's claret ever putanyone there!" said Flurry.
We have never known the precise moment in this speech at which "OldLooshy's" butler entered the room; we only know that while Mrs. Flurry,much hampered by habit and boots, was in the act of struggling frombeneath the table, he was there, melancholy and righteous, with atelegram on a salver.
It was from Flavin, the livery stableman, and its effect upon thespirits of the company was that of a puncture in a tyre.
"Regret horses not available; am trying to procure others; will send bynext train if possible."
We said that there was no answer, and we finished our breakfasts in agravity scarcely lightened by Flurry's almost religious confidence inFlavin's infallibility, and in his power of making horses out ofrushes, like the fairies, if need be.
I was, I may admit, from the first thoroughly pessimistic. I almostwent up and got into ordinary clothes; I at least talked of doing so,as a means of preparing Philippa for the worst. I said it was a merewaste of time to send the Butler-Knox coachman to the station, as hadbeen arranged, and I did my best to dissuade Flurry from his intentionof riding to the meet by way of the station to help in unboxing animalsthat could not possibly be there.
In abysmal dejection my wife and I surveyed the departing forms of Mr.and Mrs. Florence Knox; the former on the Dodger, a leggy brownfour-year-old, the planting of whom upon General Porteous had been thegerm of the expedition; while Sally skipped and sidled upon a narrow,long-tailed chestnut mare, an undefeated jumper, and up to about asmuch weight as would go by; parcel post for ninepence. There thenensued a period of total desolation, in which we looked morosely at oldphotograph books in the drawing-room, and faced the prospect of a longday with the Butler-Knoxes, while heavy footsteps overhead warned usthat our entertainers were astir, and that at any moment the day'sconversation might begin.
I was engaged, not, I fancy, for the first time, in telling Philippathat I had always said that the entire expedition was a mistake, whenColonel Newcome again entered the room.
"The Master sent me to ask you, sir, if you'd like to have thepony-phaeton to drive down to the station to meet the half-past tentrain. Flavin might be sending the horses on it, and it'd save youtime to meet them there."
We closed with the offer; at its worst, the pony-carriage could besmoked in, which the drawing-room could not; at its best, it might savehalf-an-hour in getting to the meet. We presently seated ourselves init, low down behind an obese piebald pony, with a pink nose, and a manehogged to the height of its ears. As I took up the whip it turned andregarded us with an unblinkered eye, pink-lidded and small as a pig's.
"You should go through Fir Grove, sir," said the boy who had broughtthe equipage to the door, "it's half a mile of a short cut, and that'sthe way Tom will come with the horses. It's the first gate-lodgeyou'll meet on the road."
The mud was deep, and the piebald pony plodded through it at a sullenjog. The air was mild and chilly, like an uninteresting woman; thefore-knowledge of fiasco lay heavily upon us; it hardly seemed worthwhile to beat the pony when he sank into a walk; it was the mostheart-broken forlorn hope that ever took the field.
The gate-lodge of Fir Grove fulfilled the assignation made for it bythe stable boy, and met us on the road. The gates stood wide open, andthe pony turned in as by an accustomed route, and crawled through themwith that simulation of complete exhaustion that is the gift of lazyponies. Loud narrative in a male voice proceeded from the darkinterior of the lodge, and, as we passed, a woman's voice said, inhorrified rejoinder:
"The Lord save us! She must be Anti-Christ!"
Here, apparently, the speaker became aware of our proximity, and an oldwoman looked forth. Her face was apprehensive.
"Did ye see the police, sir?" she asked.
"DID YE SEE THE POLICE?"]
We replied in the negative.
"Please God, she'll not come our way!" she said, and banged the door.
We moved on, heavily, in the deep gravel of the avenue.
"Isn't this rather awful? Shall we go on?" said Philippa.
I replied with truth that there was no room to turn. On either side ofthe narrow drive laurels and rhododendrons were crammed as thickly asthey could be planted, their dark foliage met overhead; if theinexpressible "She" referred to by the lodge-keeper did come our way,retreat would be out of the question. The tunnel ran uphill, and Idrove the pony up it as one drives a hoop, by incessant beating; had Irelaxed my effort
s he would probably, like a hoop, have lain down.Presently, and still uphill, we turned a corner, the tunnel ceased, andwe were face to face with a large pink house.
As we advanced, feeling to the full the degradation of making ashort-cut past a strange house, in tall hats and a grovellingpony-carriage, we beheld figures rushing past the windows of one of therooms on the ground floor, as if in headlong flight. Was this thefulfilment of the dark sayings of the lodge-keeper, and was "She""coming our way?" The bouncing strains of a measure, known, I believe,as "Whistling Rufus," came forth to us hilariously as we drew nearer.The problem changed, but I am not sure that the horror did not deepen.
Divining the determination of the piebald pony to die, if necessary,rather than pass a hall door without stopping at it, yet debarred bythe decencies from thrashing him past the long line of windows, Iadministered two or three rousing tugs to his wooden mouth. At thethird tug the near rein broke. The pony stopped dead. Simultaneouslythe hall door was flung open, and a young and lovely being, tall, andbeautifully dressed, fluttered out on to the steps and peered at usthrough long-handled eye-glasses.
"Oh! I thought you were the police!" exclaimed the being, withunaffected disappointment.
The position seemed, from all points, to demand an apology. Idisengaged myself from the pony-carriage and proffered it; I alsovolunteered any help that a mere man, not a policeman, might be capableof rendering.
The young lady aimed her glasses at the pie-bald, motionless in malignstupor, and replied irrelevantly:
"Why! That's the Knoxes' pony!"
I made haste to explain our disaster and the position generally,winding up with a request for a piece of string.
"You're staying at the Butler-Knoxes!" exclaimed the lady of the house."How funny that is! Do you know you're coming to our dance to-night,to meet your old friend the General! I know all about it, you see!"She advanced with a beaming yet perturbed countenance upon Philippa,"I'm so glad to meet you. Do come in! We've got an infuriated cook atbay in the kitchen, and things are rather disorganised, but I think wecan rise to a bit of string! The pony's all right--he'll sleep therefor months, he always does."
We followed her into a hall choked with the exiled furniture of thedrawing-room, and saw through an open door the whirling forms of two orthree couples of young men and maidens.
"They're polishing the floor," said our hostess, swiftly shutting thedoor, "they make a hideous noise, but it keeps them quiet--if you knowwhat I mean. It's most disastrous that my husband has gone outhunting," she pursued; "this odious cook only arrived two days ago,and----"
At this juncture a door at the end of the hall burst open, disclosing along passage and a young and crimson housemaid.
"She's coming, my lady! She's coming! Mr. Ralph's sent me on to getthe door open!" she panted.
At the same moment a loud and wrathful voice arose in the passage and amassive form, filling it from wall to wall, appeared; the capitulatingcook, moving down upon us with the leisurely and majestic truculence ofa traction-engine. As she came she chanted these words in measuredcadence:
"Lady Flora, Gets her brother To do her dirty work."
By the time this rune had been repeated three times she was in thehall, shepherded by a tall young man, obviously the brother referredto, and by the butler, the vista being filled in the rear by a waveringassortment of female domestics. As the cook tacked to weather a sofa,there was something about her that woke a vague and unpleasant chord ofmemory. Her ranging eye met mine, and the chord positively twanged asI recognised the formidable countenance of a female, technically knownas a "job-cook," who for two cyclonic weeks had terrorised ourhousehold while Mrs. Cadogan was on leave. I backed convulsively intoLady Flora, in futile and belated attempt to take cover, but even as Idid so the chanting ceased and I knew the worst had happened.
"Is that my darlin' Major Yeates?" shouted the cook, tacking again andbearing down on me full-sailed. "Thanks be to God I have the gentlemanthat'll see I get justice! And Mrs. Yeates, a noble lady, that'd neverset foot in my kitchen without she'd ask my leave! Ah, ha! AsShakespeare says, I'd know a rale lady as soon as I'd put an eye onher, if she was boiling cabbage!"
"IS THAT MY DARLIN' MAJOR YEATES?" SHOUTED THE COOK]
She caught my reluctant hand and waved it up and down, and the muffledtriumphings of "Whistling Rufus" in the drawing-room filled up theposition.
Through them came a sound of wheels on the gravel, and through thisagain a strangled whisper from behind:
"Take her out to the steps; I hear the car with the police!"
Holding the fervid hand of the job-cook, I advanced with her throughthe furniture, skew-wise, as in the visiting figure of the Lancers;there was an undoubted effort on her part to keep time to the music,and she did not cease to inform the company that Major and Mrs. Yeateswere the real old nobility, and that they would see she got her rights.
Followed closely by the shepherd and the butler, we moved forth on tothe steps. The police were not there. There was nothing there save acomplicated pattern of arcs and angles on the gravel, as of afour-wheeled vehicle that has taken an uncommonly short turn. At thebend of the avenue the pony-carriage, our link with the world without,was disappearing from view, the piebald pony heading for home at apig-like but determined gallop. The job-cook clasped her hands on myarm and announced to the landscape that she would live and die with theMajor.
Further Experiences of an Irish R.M. Page 9
