VI
PHILIPPA'S FOX-HUNT
No one can accuse Philippa and me of having married in haste. As amatter of fact, it was but little under five years from that autumnevening on the river when I had said what is called in Ireland "thehard word," to the day in August when I was led to the altar by my bestman, and was subsequently led away from it by Mrs. Sinclair Yeates.About two years out of the five had been spent by me at Shreelane inceaseless warfare with drains, eaveshoots, chimneys, pumps; all thosefundamentals, in short, that the ingenuous and improving tenant expectsto find established as a basis from which to rise to higher things. Asfar as rising to higher things went, frequent ascents to the roof tosearch for leaks summed up my achievements; in fact, I suffered sogeneral a shrinkage of my ideals that the triumph of making thehall-door bell ring blinded me to the fact that the rat-holes in thehall floor were nailed up with pieces of tin biscuit boxes, and thatthe casual visitor could, instead of leaving a card, have easilywritten his name in the damp on the walls.
Philippa, however, proved adorably callous to these and similarshortcomings. She regarded Shreelane and its floundering, founderingmenage of incapables in the light of a gigantic picnic in a foreignland; she held long conversations daily with Mrs. Cadogan, in order, asshe informed me, to acquire the language; without any ulterior domesticintention she engaged kitchen-maids because of the beauty of theireyes, and housemaids because they had such delightfully picturesque oldmothers, and she declined to correct the phraseology of theparlour-maid, whose painful habit it was to whisper "Do ye choosecherry or clarry?" when proffering the wine. Fast-days, perhaps,afforded my wife her first insight into the sterner realities of Irishhousekeeping. Philippa had what are known as High Church proclivities,and took the matter seriously.
"I don't know how we are to manage for the servants' dinner to-morrow,Sinclair," she said, coming in to my office one Thursday morning;"Julia says she 'promised God this long time that she wouldn't eat anegg on a fast-day,' and the kitchen-maid says she won't eat herrings'without they're fried with onions,' and Mrs. Cadogan says she will'not go to them extremes for servants.'"
"I should let Mrs. Cadogan settle the menu herself," I suggested.
"I asked her to do that," replied Philippa, "and she only said she'thanked God she had no appetite!'"
The lady of the house here fell away into unseasonable laughter.
I made the demoralising suggestion that, as we were going away for acouple of nights, we might safely leave them to fight it out, and theproblem was abandoned.
Philippa had been much called on by the neighbourhood in all its shadesand grades, and daily she and her trousseau frocks presented themselvesat hall-doors of varying dimensions in due acknowledgment ofcivilities. In Ireland, it may be noted, the process known in Englandas "summering and wintering" a newcomer does not obtain; sociabilityand curiosity alike forbid delay. The visit to which we owed ourescape from the intricacies of the fast-day was to the Knoxes of CastleKnox, relations in some remote and tribal way of my landlord, Mr.Flurry of that ilk. It involved a short journey by train, and mywife's longest basket-trunk; it also, which was more serious, involvedmy being lent a horse to go out cubbing the following morning.
At Castle Knox we sank into an almost forgotten environment ofdraught-proof windows and doors, of deep carpets, of silent servantsinstead of clattering belligerents. Philippa told me afterwards thatit had only been by an effort that she had restrained herself fromsnatching up the train of her wedding-gown as she paced across the widehall on little Sir Valentine's arm. After three weeks at Shreelane shefound it difficult to remember that the floor was neither damp nordusty.
I had the good fortune to be of the limited number of those who got onwith Lady Knox, chiefly, I imagine, because I was as a worm before her,and thankfully permitted her to do all the talking.
"Your wife is extremely pretty," she pronounced autocratically,surveying Philippa between the candle-shades; "does she ride?"
Lady Knox was a short square lady, with a weather-beaten face, and aneye decisive from long habit of taking her own line across country andelsewhere. She would have made a very imposing little coachman, andwould have caused her stable helpers to rue the day they had thepresumption to be born; it struck me that Sir Valentine sometimes didso.
"I'm glad you like her looks," I replied, "as I fear you will find herthoroughly despicable otherwise; for one thing, she not only can'tride, but she believes that I can!"
"Oh come, you're not as bad as all that!" my hostess was good enough tosay; "I'm going to put you up on Sorcerer to-morrow, and we'll see youat the top of the hunt--if there is one. That young Knox hasn't anotion how to draw these woods."
"Well, the best run we had last year out of this place was withFlurry's hounds," struck in Miss Sally, sole daughter of SirValentine's house and home, from her place half-way down the table. Itwas not difficult to see that she and her mother held different viewson the subject of Mr. Flurry Knox.
"I call it a criminal thing in any one's great-great-grandfather torear up a preposterous troop of sons and plant them all out in his owncountry," Lady Knox said to me with apparent irrelevance. "I detestcollaterals. Blood may be thicker than water, but it is also a greatdeal nastier. In this country I find that fifteenth cousins considerthemselves near relations if they live within twenty miles of one!"
Having before now taken in the position with regard to Flurry Knox, Itook care to accept these remarks as generalities, and turned theconversation to other themes.
"I see Mrs. Yeates is doing wonders with Mr. Hamilton," said Lady Knoxpresently, following the direction of my eyes, which had strayed awayto where Philippa was beaming upon her left-hand neighbour, amildewed-looking old clergyman, who was delivering a long dissertation,the purport of which we were happily unable to catch.
"She has always had a gift for the Church," I said.
"Not curates?" said Lady Knox, in her deep voice.
I made haste to reply that it was the elders of the Church who werevenerated by my wife.
"Well, she has her fancy in old Eustace Hamilton; he's elderly enough!"said Lady Knox. "I wonder if she'd venerate him as much if she knewthat he had fought with his sister-in-law, and they haven't spoken forthirty years! though for the matter of that," she added, "I think itshows his good sense!"
"Mrs. Knox is rather a friend of mine," I ventured.
"Is she? H'm! Well, she's not one of mine!" replied my hostess, withher usual definiteness. "I'll say one thing for her, I believe she'salways been a sportswoman. She's very rich, you know, and they say sheonly married old Badger Knox to save his hounds from being sold to payhis debts, and then she took the horn from him and hunted them herself.Has she been rude to your wife yet? No? Oh, well, she will. It's amere question of time. She hates all English people. You know thestory they tell of her? She was coming home from London, and when shewas getting her ticket the man asked if she had said a ticket for York.'No, thank God, Cork!' says Mrs. Knox."
"Well, I rather agree with her!" said I; "but why did she fight withMr. Hamilton?"
"Oh, nobody knows. I don't believe they know themselves! Whatever itwas, the old lady drives five miles to Fortwilliam every Sunday, ratherthan go to his church, just outside her own back gates," Lady Knox saidwith a laugh like a terrier's bark. "I wish I'd fought with himmyself," she said; "he gives us forty minutes every Sunday."
As I struggled into my boots the following morning, I felt that SirValentine's acid confidences on cub-hunting, bestowed on me atmidnight, did credit to his judgment. "A very moderate amusement, mydear Major," he had said, in his dry little voice; "you should stick toshooting. No one expects you to shoot before daybreak."
It was six o'clock as I crept downstairs, and found Lady Knox and MissSally at breakfast, with two lamps on the table, and a foggy daylightoozing in from under the half-raised blinds. Philippa was already inthe hall, pumping up her bicycle, in a state of excitement at theprospect of he
r first experience of hunting that would have been morecomprehensible to me had she been going to ride a strange horse, as Iwas. As I bolted my food I saw the horses being led past the windows,and a faint twang of a horn told that Flurry Knox and his hounds werenot far off.
Miss Sally jumped up.
"If I'm not on the Cockatoo before the hounds come up, I shall neverget there!" she said, hobbling out of the room in the toils of hersafety habit. Her small, alert face looked very childish under herriding-hat; the lamp-light struck sparks out of her thick coil ofgolden-red hair: I wondered how I had ever thought her like her primlittle father.
She was already on her white cob when I got to the hall-door, andFlurry Knox was riding over the glistening wet grass with his hounds,while his whip, Dr. Jerome Hickey, was having a stirring time with theyoung entry and the rabbit-holes. They moved on without stopping, up aback avenue, under tall and dripping trees, to a thick laurel covert,at some little distance from the house. Into this the hounds werethrown, and the usual period of fidgety inaction set in for the riders,of whom, all told, there were about half-a-dozen. Lady Knox, squareand solid, on her big, confidential iron-grey, was near me, and hereyes were on me and my mount; with her rubicund face and white collarshe was more than ever like a coachman.
"Sorcerer looks as if he suited you well," she said, after a fewminutes of silence, during which the hounds rustled and crackledsteadily through the laurels; "he's a little high on the leg, and soare you, you know, so you show each other off."
Sorcerer was standing like a rock, with his good-looking head in theair and his eyes fastened on the covert. His manners, so far, had beenthose of a perfect gentleman, and were in marked contrast to those ofMiss Sally's cob, who was sidling, hopping, and snatching unappeasablyat his bit. Philippa had disappeared from view down the avenue ahead.The fog was melting, and the sun threw long blades of light through thetrees; everything was quiet, and in the distance the curtained windowsof the house marked the warm repose of Sir Valentine, and those of theparty who shared his opinion of cubbing.
"Hark! hark to cry there!"
It was Flurry's voice, away at the other side of the covert. Therustling and brushing through the laurels became more vehement, thenpassed out of hearing.
"He never will leave his hounds alone," said Lady Knox disapprovingly.
Miss Sally and the Cockatoo moved away in a series of heraldic caperstowards the end of the laurel plantation, and at the same moment I sawPhilippa on her bicycle shoot into view on the drive ahead of us.
"I've seen a fox!" she screamed, white with what I believe to have beenpersonal terror, though she says it was excitement; "it passed quiteclose to me!"
"What way did he go?" bellowed a voice which I recognised as Dr.Hickey's, somewhere in the deep of the laurels.
"Down the drive!" returned Philippa, with a pea-hen quality in hertones with which I was quite unacquainted.
An electrifying screech of "Gone away!" was projected from the laurelsby Dr. Hickey.
"Gone away!" chanted Flurry's horn at the top of the covert.
"This is what he calls cubbing!" said Lady Knox, "a mere farce!" butnone the less she loosed her sedate monster into a canter.
Sorcerer got his hind-legs under him, and hardened his crest againstthe bit, as we all hustled along the drive after the flying figure ofmy wife. I knew very little about horses, but I realised that evenwith the hounds tumbling hysterically out of the covert, and theCockatoo kicking the gravel into his face, Sorcerer comported himselfwith the manners of the best society. Up a side road I saw Flurry Knoxopening half of a gate and cramming through it; in a moment we also hadcrammed through, and the turf of a pasture field was under our feet.Dr. Hickey leaned forward and took hold of his horse; I did likewise,with the trifling difference that my horse took hold of me, and Isteered for Flurry Knox with single-hearted purpose, the hounds,already a field ahead, being merely an exciting and noisy accompanimentof this endeavour. A heavy stone wall was the first occurrence ofnote. Flurry chose a place where the top was loose, and hisclumsy-looking brown mare changed feet on the rattling stones like afairy. Sorcerer came at it, tense and collected as a bow at fullstretch, and sailed steeply into the air; I saw the wall far beneathme, with an unsuspected ditch on the far side, and I felt my hatfollowing me at the full stretch of its guard as we swept over it,then, with a long slant, we descended to earth some sixteen feet fromwhere we had left it, and I was possessor of the gratifying fact that Ihad achieved a good-sized "fly," and had not perceptibly moved in mysaddle. Subsequent disillusioning experience has taught me that butfew horses jump like Sorcerer, so gallantly, so sympathetically, andwith such supreme mastery of the subject; but none the less theenthusiasm that he imparted to me has never been extinguished, and thatOctober morning ride revealed to me the unsuspected intoxication offox-hunting.
Behind me I heard the scrabbling of the Cockatoo's little hoofs amongthe loose stones, and Lady Knox, galloping on my left, jerked amaternal chin over her shoulder to mark her daughter's progress. Formy part, had there been an entire circus behind me, I was far too muchoccupied with ramming on my hat and trying to hold Sorcerer, to havelooked round, and all my spare faculties were devoted to steering forFlurry, who had taken a right-handed turn, and was at that momentsurmounting a bank of uncertain and briary aspect. I surmounted italso, with the swiftness and simplicity for which the Quaker's methodsof bank jumping had not prepared me, and two or three fields, traversedat the same steeplechase pace, brought us to a road and to an abruptcheck. There, suddenly, were the hounds, scrambling in baffled silencedown into the road from the opposite bank, to look for the line theyhad overrun, and there, amazingly, was Philippa, engaged in excitedconverse with several men with spades over their shoulders.
"Did ye see the fox, boys?" shouted Flurry, addressing the group.
"We did! we did!" cried my wife and her friends in chorus; "he ran upthe road!"
"We'd be badly off without Mrs. Yeates!" said Flurry, as he whirled hismare round and clattered up the road with a hustle of hounds after him.
It occurred to me as forcibly as any mere earthly thing can occur tothose who are wrapped in the sublimities of a run, that, for a youngwoman who had never before seen a fox out of a cage at the Zoo,Philippa was taking to hunting very kindly. Her cheeks were a mostbrilliant pink, her blue eyes shone.
"Oh, Sinclair!" she exclaimed, "they say he's going for Aussolas, andthere's a road I can ride all the way!"
"Ye can, Miss! Sure we'll show you!" chorussed her cortege.
Her foot was on the pedal ready to mount. Decidedly my wife was in noneed of assistance from me.
Up the road a hound gave a yelp of discovery, and flung himself over astile into the fields; the rest of the pack went squealing and jostlingafter him, and I followed Flurry over one of those infinitely variederections, pleasantly termed "gaps" in Ireland. On this occasion thegap was made of three razor-edged slabs of slate leaning against aniron bar, and Sorcerer conveyed to me his thorough knowledge of thematter by a lift of his hind-quarters that made me feel as if I werebeing skilfully kicked downstairs. To what extent I looked it, Icannot say, nor providentially can Philippa, as she had alreadystarted. I only know that undeserved good luck restored to me mystirrup before Sorcerer got away with me in the next field.
What followed was, I am told, a very fast fifteen minutes; for me timewas not; the empty fields rushed past uncounted, fences came and wentin a flash, while the wind sang in my ears, and the dazzle of the earlysun was in my eyes. I saw the hounds occasionally, sometimes pouringover a green bank, as the charging breaker lifts and flings itself,sometimes driving across a field, as the white tongues of foam slideracing over the sand; and always ahead of me was Flurry Knox, going asa man goes who knows his country, who knows his horse, and whose heartis wholly and absolutely in the right place.
Do what I would, Sorcerer's implacable stride carried me closer andcloser to the brown mare, till, as I thundered down the slop
e of a longfield, I was not twenty yards behind Flurry. Sorcerer had stiffenedhis neck to iron, and to slow him down was beyond me; but I fought hishead away to the right, and found myself coming hard and steady at astonefaced bank with broken ground in front of it. Flurry bore away tothe left, shouting something that I did not understand. That Sorcerershortened his stride at the right moment was entirely due to his ownjudgment; standing well away from the jump, he rose like a stag out ofthe tussocky ground, and as he swung my twelve stone six into the airthe obstacle revealed itself to him and me as consisting not of onebank but of two, and between the two lay a deep grassy lane, halfchoked with furze. I have often been asked to state the width of thebohereen, and can only reply that in my opinion it was at leasteighteen feet; Flurry Knox and Dr. Hickey, who did not jump it, saythat it is not more than five. What Sorcerer did with it I cannot say;the sensation was of a towering flight with a kick back in it, abiggish drop, and a landing on cee-springs, still on the downhillgrade. That was how one of the best horses in Ireland took one ofIreland's most ignorant riders over a very nasty place.
A sombre line of fir-wood lay ahead, rimmed with a grey wall, and inanother couple of minutes we had pulled up on the Aussolas road, andwere watching the hounds struggling over the wall into Aussolas demesne.
"No hurry now," said Flurry, turning in his saddle to watch theCockatoo jump into the road, "he's to ground in the big earth inside.Well, Major, it's well for you that's a big-jumped horse. I thoughtyou were a dead man a while ago when you faced him at the bohereen!"
I was disclaiming intention in the matter when Lady Knox and the othersjoined us.
"I thought you told me your wife was no sportswoman," she said to me,critically scanning Sorcerer's legs for cuts the while, "but when I sawher a minute ago she had abandoned her bicycle and was running acrosscountry like----"
"Look at her now!" interrupted Miss Sally. "Oh!--oh!" In the intervalbetween these exclamations my incredulous eyes beheld my wife inmid-air, hand in hand with a couple of stalwart country boys, with whomshe was leaping in unison from the top of a bank on to the road.
Every one, even the saturnine Dr. Hickey, began to laugh; I rode backto Philippa, who was exchanging compliments and congratulations withher escort.
"Oh, Sinclair!" she cried, "wasn't it splendid? I saw you jumping, andeverything! Where are they going now?"
"My dear girl," I said, with marital disapproval, "you're killingyourself. Where's your bicycle?"
"Oh, it's punctured in a sort of lane, back there. It's all right; andthen they"--she breathlessly waved her hand at her attendants--"theyshowed me the way."
"Begor! you proved very good, Miss!" said a grinning cavalier.
"Faith she did!" said another, polishing his shining brow with hiswhite flannel coat-sleeve, "she lepped like a haarse!"
"And may I ask how you propose to go home?" said I.
"I don't know and I don't care! I'm not going home!" She cast anentirely disobedient eye at me. "And your eye-glass is hanging downyour back and your tie is bulging out over your waistcoat!"
The little group of riders had begun to move away.
"We're going on into Aussolas," called out Flurry; "come on, and makemy grandmother give you some breakfast, Mrs. Yeates; she always has itat eight o'clock."
The front gates were close at hand, and we turned in under the tallbeech-trees, with the unswept leaves rustling round the horses' feet,and the lovely blue of the October morning sky filling the spacesbetween smooth grey branches and golden leaves. The woods rang withthe voices of the hounds, enjoying an untrammelled rabbit hunt, whilethe Master and the Whip, both on foot, strolled along unconcernedlywith their bridles over their arms, making themselves agreeable to mywife, an occasional touch of Flurry's horn, or a crack of Dr. Rickey'swhip, just indicating to the pack that the authorities still took afriendly interest in their doings.
Down a grassy glade in the wood a party of old Mrs. Knox's young horsessuddenly swept into view, headed by an old mare, who, with her tailover her back, stampeded ponderously past our cavalcade, shaking andswinging her handsome old head, while her youthful friends bucked andkicked and snapped at each other round her with the ferocious humour oftheir kind.
"Here, Jerome, take the horn," said Flurry to Dr. Hickey; "I'm going tosee Mrs. Yeates up to the house, the way these tomfools won't gallop ontop of her."
From this point it seems to me that Philippa's adventures are moreworthy of record than mine, and as she has favoured me with a fullaccount of them, I venture to think my version may be relied on.
Mrs. Knox was already at breakfast when Philippa was led, quaking, intoher formidable presence. My wife's acquaintance with Mrs. Knox was, sofar, limited to a state visit on either side, and she found but littlecomfort in Flurry's assurances that his grandmother wouldn't mind if hebrought all the hounds in to breakfast, coupled with the statement thatshe would put her eyes on sticks for the Major.
Whatever the truth of this may have been, Mrs. Knox received her guestwith an equanimity quite unshaken by the fact that her boots were inthe fender instead of on her feet, and that a couple of shawls ofvarying dimensions and degrees of age did not conceal the innerpresence of a magenta flannel dressing-jacket. She installed Philippaat the table and plied her with food, oblivious as to whether theneedful implements with which to eat it were forthcoming or no. Shetold Flurry where a vixen had reared her family, and she watched himride away, with some biting comments on his mare's hocks screamed afterhim from the window.
The dining-room at Aussolas Castle is one of the many rooms in Irelandin which Cromwell is said to have stabled his horse (and probably noone would have objected less than Mrs. Knox had she been consulted inthe matter). Philippa questions if the room had ever been tidied upsince, and she endorses Flurry's observation that "there wasn't a dayin the year you wouldn't get feeding for a hen and chickens on thefloor." Opposite to Philippa, on a Louis Quinze chair, sat Mrs. Knox'swoolly dog, its suspicious little eyes peering at her out of theirsetting of pink lids and dirty white wool. A couple of young horsesoutside the windows tore at the matted creepers on the walls, or thrustfaces that were half-shy, half-impudent, into the room. Portly pigeonswaddled to and fro on the broad window-sill, sometimes flying in toperch on the picture-frames, while they kept up incessantly a hoarseand pompous cooing.
Animals and children are, as a rule, alike destructive to conversation;but Mrs. Knox, when she chose, _bien entendu_, could have made herselfagreeable in a Noah's ark, and Philippa has a gift of sympatheticattention that personal experience has taught me to regard withdistrust as well as respect, while it has often made me realise theworldly wisdom of Kingsley's injunction:
"Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever."
Family prayers, declaimed by Mrs. Knox with alarming austerity,followed close on breakfast, Philippa and a vinegar-faced henchwomanforming the family. The prayers were long, and through the open windowas they progressed came distantly a whoop or two; the declamatory tonesstaggered a little, and then continued at a distinctly higher rate ofspeed.
"Ma'am! Ma'am!" whispered a small voice at the window.
Mrs. Knox made a repressive gesture and held on her way. A suddenoutcry of hounds followed, and the owner of the whisper, a small boywith a face freckled like a turkey's egg, darted from the window anddragged a donkey and bath-chair into view. Philippa admits to havinglost the thread of the discourse, but she thinks that the "Amen" thatimmediately ensued can hardly have come in its usual place. Mrs. Knoxshut the book abruptly, scrambled up from her knees, and said, "They'vefound!"
In a surprisingly short space of time she had added to her attire herboots, a fur cape, and a garden hat, and was in the bath-chair, thesmall boy stimulating the donkey with the success peculiar to hisclass, while Philippa hung on behind.
The woods of Aussolas are hilly and extensive, and on that particularmorning it seemed that they held as many foxes as hounds. In vain wasthe horn blown,
and the whips cracked, small rejoicing parties ofhounds, each with a fox of its own, scoured to and fro: every labourerin the vicinity had left his work, and was sedulously heading every foxwith yells that would have befitted a tiger hunt, and sticks and stoneswhen occasion served.
"Will I pull out as far as the big rosy-dandhrum, ma'am?" inquired thesmall boy; "I seen three of the dogs go in it, and they yowling."
"You will," said Mrs. Knox, thumping the donkey on the back with herumbrella; "here! Jeremiah Regan! Come down out of that with thatpitchfork! Do you want to kill the fox, you fool?"
"I do not, your honour, ma'am," responded Jeremiah Regan, a tall youngcountryman, emerging from a bramble brake.
"Did you see him?" said Mrs. Knox eagerly.
"I seen himself and his ten pups drinking below at the lake ereyestherday, your honour, ma'am, and he as big as a chestnut horse!"said Jeremiah.
"Faugh! Yesterday!" snorted Mrs. Knox; "go on to the rhododendrons,Johnny!"
The party, reinforced by Jeremiah and the pitchfork, progressed at ahigh rate of speed along the shrubbery path, encountering _en route_Lady Knox, stooping on to her horse's neck under the sweeping branchesof the laurels.
"Your horse is too high for my coverts, Lady Knox," said the Lady ofthe Manor, with a malicious eye at Lady Knox's flushed face and dingedhat; "I'm afraid you will be left behind like Absalom when the houndsgo away!"
"As they never do anything here but hunt rabbits," retorted herladyship, "I don't think that's likely."
Mrs. Knox gave her donkey another whack, and passed on.
"Rabbits, my dear!" she said scornfully to Philippa. "That's all sheknows about it. I declare it disgusts me to see a woman of that agemaking such a Judy of herself! Rabbits indeed!"
Down in the thicket of rhododendron everything was very quiet for atime. Philippa strained her eyes in vain to see any of the riders; thehorn blowing and the whip cracking passed on almost out of hearing.Once or twice a hound worked through the rhododendrons, glanced at theparty, and hurried on, immersed in business. All at once Johnny, thedonkey-boy, whispered excitedly:
"Look at he! Look at he!" and pointed to a boulder of grey rock thatstood out among the dark evergreens. A big yellow cub was crouching onit; he instantly slid into the shelter of the bushes, and theirrepressible Jeremiah, uttering a rending shriek, plunged into thethicket after him. Two or three hounds came rushing at the sound, andafter this Philippa says she finds some difficulty in recalling theproper order of events; chiefly, she confesses, because of the whollyridiculous tears of excitement that blurred her eyes.
"We ran," she said, "we simply tore, and the donkey galloped, and asfor that old Mrs. Knox, she was giving cracked screams to the houndsall the time, and they were screaming too; and then somehow we were allout on the road!"
What seems to have occurred was that three couple of hounds, JeremiahRegan, and Mrs. Knox's equipage, amongst them somehow hustled the cubout of Aussolas demesne and up on to a hill on the farther side of theroad. Jeremiah was sent back by his mistress to fetch Flurry, and therest of the party pursued a thrilling course along the road, parallelwith that of the hounds, who were hunting slowly through the gorse onthe hillside.
"Upon my honour and word, Mrs. Yeates, my dear, we have the hunt toourselves!" said Mrs. Knox to the panting Philippa, as they poundedalong the road. "Johnny, d'ye see the fox?"
"I do, ma'am!" shrieked Johnny, who possessed the usual field-glassvision bestowed upon his kind. "Look at him over-right us on the hillabove! Hi! The spotty dog have him! No, he's gone from him! _Gwanout o' that_!" This to the donkey, with blows that sounded like thebeating of carpets, and produced rather more dust.
They had left Aussolas some half a mile behind, when, from a strip ofwood on their right, the fox suddenly slipped over the bank on to theroad just ahead of them, ran up it for a few yards and whisked in at asmall entrance gate, with the three couple of hounds yelling on ared-hot scent, not thirty yards behind. The bath-chair party whirledin at their heels, Philippa and the donkey considerably blown, Johnnyscarlet through his freckles, but as fresh as paint, the old lady blindand deaf to all things save the chase. The hounds went raging throughthe shrubs beside the drive, and away down a grassy slope towards ashallow glen, in the bottom of which ran a little stream, and afterthem over the grass bumped the bath-chair. At the stream they turnedsharply and ran up the glen towards the avenue, which crossed it bymeans of a rough stone viaduct.
"'Pon me conscience, he's into the old culvert!" exclaimed Mrs. Knox;"there was one of my hounds choked there once, long ago! Beat on thedonkey, Johnny!"
At this juncture Philippa's narrative again becomes incoherent, not tosay breathless. She is, however, positive that it was somewhere abouthere that the upset of the bath-chair occurred, but she cannot be clearas to whether she picked up the donkey or Mrs. Knox, or whether sheherself was picked up by Johnny while Mrs. Knox picked up the donkey.From my knowledge of Mrs. Knox I should say she picked up herself andno one else. At all events, the next salient point is the palpitatingmoment when Mrs. Knox, Johnny, and Philippa successively applying aneye to the opening of the culvert by which the stream trickled underthe viaduct, while five dripping hounds bayed and leaped around them,discovered by more senses than that of sight that the fox was in it,and furthermore that one of the hounds was in it too.
"There's a sthrong grating before him at the far end," said Johnny, hishead in at the mouth of the hole, his voice sounding as if he weretalking into a jug, "the two of them's fighting in it; they'll bechoked surely!"
"Then don't stand gabbling there, you little fool, but get in and pullthe hound out!" exclaimed Mrs. Knox, who was balancing herself on astone in the stream.
"I'd be in dread, ma'am," whined Johnny.
"Balderdash!" said the implacable Mrs. Knox. "In with you!"
I understand that Philippa assisted Johnny into the culvert, andpresume that it was in so doing that she acquired the two RobinsonCrusoe bare footprints which decorated her jacket when I next met her.
"Have you got hold of him yet, Johnny?" cried Mrs. Knox up the culvert.
"I have, ma'am, by the tail," responded Johnny's voice, sepulchral inthe depths.
"Can you stir him, Johnny?"
"I cannot, ma'am, and the wather is rising in it."
"Well, please God, they'll not open the mill dam!" remarked Mrs. Knoxphilosophically to Philippa, as she caught hold of Johnny's dirtyankles. "Hold on to the tail, Johnny!"
She hauled, with, as might be expected, no appreciable result. "Run,my dear, and look for somebody, and we'll have that fox yet!"
Philippa ran, whither she knew not, pursued by fearful visions ofbursting mill-dams, and maddened foxes at bay. As she sped up theavenue she heard voices, robust male voices, in a shrubbery, and madefor them. Advancing along an embowered walk towards her was what shetook for one wild instant to be a funeral; a second glance showed herthat it was a party of clergymen of all ages, walking by twos andthrees in the dappled shade of the over-arching trees. Obviously shehad intruded her sacrilegious presence into a Clerical Meeting. Sheacknowledges that at this awe-inspiring spectacle she faltered, but thethought of Johnny, the hound, and the fox, suffocating, possiblydrowning together in the culvert, nerved her. She does not rememberwhat she said or how she said it, but I fancy she must have conveyed tothem the impression that old Mrs. Knox was being drowned, as sheimmediately found herself heading a charge of the Irish Church towardsthe scene of disaster.
Fate has not always used me well, but on this occasion it wasmercifully decreed that I and the other members of the hunt should beprivileged to arrive in time to see my wife and her rescue partyprecipitating themselves down the glen.
"Holy Biddy!" ejaculated Flurry, "is she running a paper-chase with allthe parsons? But look! For pity's sake will you look at mygrandmother and my Uncle Eustace?"
Mrs. Knox and her sworn enemy the old clergyman, whom I had met atdinner the night before, we
re standing, apparently in the stream,tugging at two bare legs that projected from a hole in the viaduct, andarguing at the top of their voices. The bath-chair lay on its sidewith the donkey grazing beside it, on the bank a stout Archdeacon wastendering advice, and the hounds danced and howled round the entiregroup.
"I tell you, Eliza, you had better let the Archdeacon try," thunderedMr. Hamilton.
"Then I tell you I will not!" vociferated Mrs. Knox, with a tug at theend of the sentence that elicited a subterranean lament from Johnny."Now who was right about the second grating? I told you so twentyyears ago!"
Exactly as Philippa and her rescue party arrived, the efforts of Mrs.Knox and her brother-in-law triumphed. The struggling, sopping form ofJohnny was slowly drawn from the hole, drenched, speechless, butclinging to the stern of a hound, who, in its turn, had its jaws fastin the hind-quarters of a limp, yellow cub.
"Oh, it's dead!" wailed Philippa, "I _did_ think I should have been intime to save it!"
"Well, if that doesn't beat all!" said Dr. Hickey.
Some Experiences of an Irish R.M. Page 6
