His horse’s hoofs clattered hollowly over the little stone bridge; he pulled in the reins to look down for an instant at the water. The long sly shape of an old trout slid from the sunlit water into the shadow of his horse, and “Damme, what fishing I shall have here!” he exclaimed, rejoicing not only in his prospect of sport, but in his new freedom to use profane, gentlemanly oaths.
But as he leaned further over the bridle to watch the trout, the light froze in his eyes. He had caught sight of his own reflection, but never in his life could he have looked so. That grey-white face, those starting eyeballs, and all round them the water slowly reddening—what was it, then, that he had seen? His mare had caught fright from his paralysed stillness, she snorted and edged away from the side of the bridge, and as he urged her to it again, sprang forward and would not be pulled in. He was not sorry to let her have her way.
The house was of stone, ugly, solid and unpretentious, built about thirty years ago at the same time as the Jacobean mansions in England, but with none of their airs and graces. Behind it rose the grey ruin of the Norman castle which the Craigs had deserted for modern comfort—Elworthy was thankful they had saved him that trouble. There were massive grey walls rising behind it like a small township, walls of gardens, stables, courtyards. He supposed his men must be round there, and wished he had come by that way instead of riding up to the front door as if to pay a morning call. But wasn’t that the proper way to do things, the gentlemanly way? It would never do for him to come in at the back like one of his own troopers.
As he approached the curved flight of steps a servingman opened the door, two ran down the steps to take his horse, a fourth bowed before him as if to ask him to follow him.
“Take me to your master,” said Captain Elworthy very loud, so as to help the foreigner to understand.
“His honour is in the dining-room at his breakfast,” replied the servant in a low voice, and considerably purer English than Elworthy’s still slightly cockney accent. The captain felt his ears burning, a trick he thought he had long since outgrown. How on earth would he ever manage this rabble of servants—would he have to keep them all on? Another had come down a passage with a steaming dish in his hands, and an old man, obviously the butler, now advanced from the back of the hall and asked if his honour would like to wash after his ride, before presenting himself to his master.
Ought he to wash? Would these servants always despise their new master if he did not wash? No, he would not be intimidated, he was damned if he would wash; if he waited any longer for this interview he would get so nervous that he would not be able to speak at all.
“Take me to your master,” he said again, and equally forcibly, unaware of his monotony until he had spoken.
The butler opened a door at the other side of the hall. Captain Elworthy followed him into a long room where at the further end of a long table sat an elderly gentleman in a dressing-gown. Captain Elworthy had never seen so beautiful a dressing-gown. Butterflies disported themselves among flowers, birds more brilliant than jewels flew through the rose-coloured air, ladies and gentlemen in strange robes walked towards little green temples or over curved bridges, and all this was embroidered in stitches too exquisite to detect, to cover a lean, hard-faced man who was eating a nearly raw beefsteak on a porcelain plate.
Mr. Craig rose and bowed. The dressing-gown gave him an unfair advantage, for it enhanced his already considerable height—so that Elworthy felt himself short and almost square in comparison.
The words—”Captain Elworthy“—”Mr. Craig’—floated somewhere between them, he was not quite sure by whom they were uttered. Mr. Craig was speaking, a deep pleasant voice, but so confused were the captain’s thoughts that it took him some time to grasp that he was being invited to join him at breakfast.
“Oh—er—yes, thank you, sir,—that is, I had a bite before I started, but I’d be very glad, just to show there’s no ill feeling—” he stammered.
“What ill feeling should there be, sir?” replied Mr. Craig. “If you refer to the new settlement of Ireland, you are no more responsible for that than I am.”
“Well, that’s very handsome of you, sir, I’m sure, and true enough, but perhaps, now I think of it, I’d better see my sergeant. I suppose my troop have arrived—I thought it might be easier for you if I were to send them on before me, but I’d better see my sergeant, I think, if you have no objection.”
“Certainly I have no objection. Your men are round at the stables seeing to their horses—you have some fine beasts there, Captain Elworthy. One knows a good officer by his mounts.”
“That’s what old Noll always said.”
““Old Noll’?—Oh, Oliver Crom—your general.”
“Yes. We always call him old Noll—he’s a good fellow enough when you know him. It’s this Irish business that’s brought out the worst in him.”
“I have observed it to do that with most Englishmen,” replied Mr. Craig smoothly.
Captain Elworthy’s ears were undoubtedly burning. He had actually forgotten for the moment that this polished dandy, with his exquisite enunciation of every vowel and consonant, was an Irishman. He tried to blurt out the fact in a hearty way, combining compliment with apology. But Mr. Craig did not appear to perceive the compliment in being taken for an Englishman; his narrow eyes looked right through Captain Elworthy like two thin steel blades as he motioned to the footman behind him to pour out wine into a tall Venetian glass so slender that Elworthy was terrified lest he should break it.
But what was the matter with him, what should it matter if he broke it, broke up the whole place and set fire to it, since it was his now to do what he liked with? He swallowed his wine at one draught to give himself confidence, and banged the glass down on the table. Sure enough, the damned thing broke, as he had known it would. He tried to give a hearty laugh in imitation of old Noll when he was playing the fool, and said, “I’m not much good with these toys, I’m afraid—just a plain russet-coated captain, you know, that’s what the General calls us. And now—”
“For your sergeant? But, Captain Elworthy, however plain and russet-coated you be, I appeal to your charity, if not your courtesy, to allow me to finish my breakfast before I take you to him. You need be under no apprehension in feeding alone at my table. My people are sufficiently backward and uncivilized to think it not merely criminal but unlucky if I were to have you murdered in my house after eating my salt. As you have no doubt observed, we have not advanced as far as the rest of Europe in some ways; it is probably due to the disadvantage of being the most westerly country in it. Beyond us is nothing but the huge Atlantic. Everything gets pushed to the West, have you noticed, old manners, out-worn customs, unwanted people.”
The last two words echoed uncomfortably in Elworthy’s brain. Was he one of the unwanted people? There had certainly been a coolness between him and his commander since that dirty work at Drogheda. If anything happened to him, Cromwell would not take much pains to find out what it was, he was sure of that.
Mr. Craig’s voice rocked musically on: “Try one of these trout—I caught them myself this morning in the stream below the house, you will find they make delicate eating, especially if you take a potato with them. That new-fangled vegetable is making great progress in our country, the soil is admirable for it, and I should not mind prophesying that it will soon have ousted the oats.”
What could he do but eat and drink since the old boy would go on talking? The trout lay in a silver dish, crisp and brown, their firm pink flesh had the best flavour that Elworthy had ever tasted. His trout, that he would be catching in a day or two from his streams! The footman had brought him another glass, and filled it and his host’s again and again from the squat-bellied black claret bottle. Elworthy could drink more easily than eat. He envied his host’s imperturbable appetite and the way he talked fluently, delightfully, avoiding all controversial subjects, but throwing a fresh light on persons and places that Elworthy knew or wished he knew.
“Why, you know London better than I do!” he exclaimed, and—“Poor old Essex—did you know him too? He was our first general, used to come along, whenever we stopped for a rest and a drink, and tell us to “pray hard, boys—fight hard!” Always smoking a pipe, we liked that, we did.”
“So my Lord of Essex was your first general. Then you joined up with the trained bands of London?”
Ah, why had he let that out? Now everyone here would guess that he had been a prentice. But Mr. Craig’s melodious voice was running on—“No better soldiers in the world than the London regiments, one hears that everywhere.”
“You’re in the right of it, sir. Spoken like a true gentleman. What’s the matter with the world that we should be on different sides and in this difficult position?”
“What difficult position?” asked Mr. Craig, and once again Captain Elworthy seemed to see two steel blades where his eyes should be.
What the devil was he to say? All this shilly-shallying and beating about the bush was no good. They had got to get down to business some time. But what was the proper way of doing it? Was it the gentlemanly thing for him to wait for the old boy to start going? But supposing he didn’t start, supposing he just sat on there sipping his wine and chatting in his lordly way, what could Elworthy do? He had armed force on his side, but where could he begin to use it? For an instant he had a horrible vision of himself condemned to a perpetual country visit—to polite conversation, care with the crockery, and the gradually enforced necessity to wash before meals. The nightmare jogged his courage, he made a determined effort at plain speech.
“Why,” he said uncomfortably, “this damned position—me being here, and you having to go—”
“And the ruin of Ireland the one lasting achievement that your master’s memory will be able to boast,” finished Mr. Craig so softly that Captain Elworthy was not quite sure if he heard him aright.
Mr. Craig rose from the table. “I wish you had done more justice to your breakfast, Captain Elworthy, but as you have now finished it, shall we walk round to the stables for you to give your orders to your men? You will find there is comfortable stabling there for some fifty horses. My father built them before he built the house, though the castle we then lived in was if anything more insanitary than the old stables. There, you can see the tower from this window. The main building was burnt in a fire that broke out when the servants were holding a wake—we were in Italy at the time or it would not have happened. They are careless rascals but the most devoted servants in the world, the King himself could have no better.”
Now what the devil did he mean by that? Was he being offensive?—if so, Elworthy would show him—but here they were out on the steps and Elworthy had no chance to show him anything, for Mr. Craig was showing him the estate.
“We may as well go round by the fields,” he was saying. “As you see, there is excellent grazing and pasture land for as many hundred cattle as you care to keep. I have always seen to it that they graze in different ground each day of the week—you will find their condition and yield of milk far better so.”
They were walking down the steps and over the long grass towards the stream.
“This is where I fished this morning,” said Mr. Craig, “you may like to see where your trout came from. But you will find a serious rival as a fisherman in that heron, who is a cursed thief. I dare not shoot him, for my ignorant savages think it bad luck to kill a heron. But you will not be so handicapped.”
That faint flicker of irony glancing out here and there like the gleam of silver from the hidden streams in the undergrowth, made Elworthy wince from its very lightness. And suddenly, for the first time, Captain Elworthy wondered if Mr. Craig might not have some further reason for his confidence than his gentility. At that he stopped dead, looked round him and said as loudly as when he had spoken to the servants, “Where is my sergeant?”
“I am taking you to him,” said Mr. Craig. “There are the stables round to the right, but I will just show you on the way where you will get the best stand for your fishing.”
He was leading the way to the little bridge which Captain Elworthy had ridden over that morning, and now felt an odd reluctance to pass again. But what could there be to fear in this bare open expanse of country where no ambush could be hid? And certainly there could be nothing to fear from an elderly unarmed gentleman in a dressing-gown, his thin old shoulder-blades showing so plainly through the silk, while he himself walked with sword and pistols at his side. So they mounted the bridge and stood there side by side, and once again Elworthy looked down into the rippling sunlit water.
“There is a wily old trout under this arch,” said Mr. Craig, “whom I have tried to catch these ten years. I’ll bet you a hundred to one you never will either. Right under—further.”
Captain Elworthy leaned further over the bridge, searching for the grey sly shape he had seen before. He saw his reflection in the shadow of the bridge, but this time it gave him no alarm and he wondered what trick the bog water had played him last time. He saw the shadow of his companion move and draw back, and in an instant he sprang to the alarm and laid his hand on his pistol. But in that instant a long silver line rippled out across the shadowed water, the reflection of a sword whipped out from under the folds of Mr. Craig’s dressing-gown, and in that same instant Captain Elworthy’s staring, grey-white head was cut from its body and fell into the stream below, while round it the water slowly reddened.
The Doctor
“Lobster for tea,” said Dr. Jim O’Reilly quite clearly and reasonably in his dream; “haven’t I told Nancy it’s death to me, and the more so when tea was at ten o’clock!”
He was just awake enough to know that the lobster must be the reason why an old woman sat across the threshold of his dream, guarding the entrance to it with a turf-cutting spade across her knees, and filling his heart with unexplained dread and foreboding,—such deep ferocity of purpose crouched in that immobile figure of a little old woman in a black shawl.
All the time the house still shook and shouted, the doors and closed windows creaked and rattled, bursts of rain were flung against the panes in sudden scattered splashes, the chimney shrieked, the iron hood in the fireplace clanked, and a loose shutter groaned and banged in intermittent fury against the outside wall. And outside the house, through all these gusts and spasms of demoniac passion, there came the unceasing surge and thunder, the booming and the shattering of the sea.
He had slept through all this, he could still sleep through it; it was a much smaller sound that was waking him, but close in his ear; it was Nancy’s voice hissing at him, saying, “There’s someone below. I can hear steps outside.”
“Hush,” he muttered absurdly, “you’ll wake Baby,” and fell promptly into a dark pit of silence, deep as eternity. It lasted in fact just thirty seconds, and then he felt Nancy’s hand on his shoulder shaking him, and now he heard voices outside in the wind, and her whispering voice again, urgent, frightened, saying, “They’ve been at the door and now they’re under the window. What do they want?”
“Me, of course,” said O’Reilly, at once awake and leaping out of bed. “You’ll have to get accustomed to night calls, my girl.”
He spoke with brisk professional pride, for it was not so long since Nancy had been a doctor’s wife and himself a full-fledged dispensary doctor, and already with his first promotion just in front of him. He pushed the window up, and the wind, like a besieging army, rushed in and took possession of the room. It tore the cloth off the dressing-table, hurtling hair-brushes and trinket-boxes on to the floor, it sent the window-curtains flapping and sprawling round their heads, it woke Baby James, who howled and whimpered in concert with the wind.
The Doctor shut the window down again till it was only open a chink at the top, and peered down through it at two black figures who stood below, bracing themselves against the wind, gaunt and rigid with the purpose that had brought them out in the middle of this stormy night, their faces upturned to the window grey
and featureless. Behind them the black of the night had begun to turn grey, the torn clouds scurrying against it; the black rocky land swept downwards from the little house towards the angry grey glimmer of the sea.
A voice shouted up against the wind, speaking slow and deliberate in the unaccustomed English.
“Herself is terrible bad,” it was saying, “I’ve seen her through six, but never the like of this.”
The Doctor could scarcely hear him.
“Who” is it? he called back, and then in amazement: “It’s not Sweeney, surely? You never made the crossing from Inishkeera this night?”
“We did, your honour.”
“But the nurse went to Mrs. Sweeney yesterday afternoon when I had to go to Gortahawk. I told her to stay till your woman’s labour was over.”
“It’s not over yet, Doctor. Herself is being destroyed and the child not through. Nurse says it’s the will of God which way it goes, so then I knew how bad it was, and me brother and I came down and got out the curragh.”
He was right underneath the window now, and his words came up more clearly.
“You crossed this sea at night in your curragh?” O’Reilly cried incredulously.
“We did, and please God we’ll cross it again now with you.”
The Doctor was silent for a moment. Then he said casually, “All right, I won’t be a moment.” He shut the window and turned back into the dark, rather stuffy little room. “I must have a light,” he said.
The light of the candle showed him his wife’s small, brightly patterned figure standing as rigidly as those stark black forms below. She was in her new pyjamas that she had been so proud of making out of the cheap Japanese silk that could be bought free of duty at the local shop; she had swaggered and strutted in them a few hours ago, looking like a pretty little clown in the shining green-and-purple trousers, her short fair hair kept smooth and close to her head by the long setting-pins put in to keep the waves neat. Now the face on top of that gay little figure was a tragic mask, the watching eyes deep as hollows.
Bloodstock and Other Stories Page 3
