In Mr. Knox's Country Part 5

The gratification was brief. They pa.s.sed me without a glance, and with antic.i.p.atory cries of joy flung themselves into the field and joined in the chase of the donkey.

"They'll kill him!" exclaimed Mrs. Knox, restraining with difficulty the woolly dog; "what good is Flurry that he can't keep with his hounds!"

Galloping hoofs on the road behind us clattered a reply, accompanied by what I can only describe as imprecations on the horn, and Flurry hurtled by and swung his horse into the field over a low bank with all the dramatic fury of the hero rushing to the rescue of the leading lady. It recalled the incidents that in the palmy days of the Hippodrome gloriously ended in a plunge into deep water, amid a salvo of firearms.

In Flurry's wake came the rest of the pack, and with them Dr. Jerome Hickey. "A great morning's cubbing!" he called out, s.n.a.t.c.hing off his old velvet cap. "Thirty minutes with an old fox, and now a nice burst with a jacka.s.s!"

For the next three or four minutes shrieks, like nothing so much as forked lightning, lacerated the air, as the guilty hounds began to receive that which was their due. It seemed possible that my turn would come next; I looked about to see what the chances were of turning the car and withdrawing as soon as might be, and decided to move on down the road in search of facilities. We had proceeded perhaps a hundred yards without improving the situation, when my eye was caught by something moving swiftly through the furze-bushes that clothed a little hill on the right of the road. It was brownish red, it slid into the deep furze that crested the hill, and was gone.

Here was a heaven-sent peace-offering!

"Tally-ho!" I bellowed, rising in my place and waving my cap high in air. "Tally-ho, over!"

The forked lightning ceased.

"What way is he?" came an answering bellow from Flurry.

"This way, over the hill!"

The hounds were already coming to the holloa. I achieved some very creditable falsetto screeches; I leaped from the car, and cheered and capped them over the fence; I shouted precise directions to the Master and Whip, who were now, with the clamours proper to their calling, steeplechasing into the road and out of it again, followed by two or three of the Field, including the new District Inspector of the Royal Irish Constabulary (recently come from Meath with a high reputation as a goer). They scrambled and struggled up the hill-side, through rocks and furze (in connection with which I heard the new D.I. making some strenuous comments to his Meath hunter), the hounds streamed and screamed over the ridge of the hill, the riders shoved their puffing horses after them, topped it, and dropped behind it. The furzy skyline and the pleasant blue and white sky above it remained serene and silent.

I returned to the car, and my pa.s.senger, who, as I now realised, had remained very still during these excitements.

"That was a bit of luck!" I said happily, inflated by the sense of personal merit that is the portion of one who has viewed a fox away.

As I spoke I became aware of something fixed in Mrs. Knox's expression, something rigid, as though she were repressing emotion; a fear flashed through my mind that she was overtired, and that the cry of the hounds had brought back to her the days when she too had known what a first burst away with a fox out of Killoge Wood had felt like.

"Major Yeates," she said sepulchrally, and yet with some inward thrill in her voice, "I think the sooner we start for home the better."

I could not turn the car, but, rather than lose time, I ran it backwards towards the cross-roads; it was a branch of the art in which I had not become proficient, and as, with my head over my shoulder, I dodged the ditches, I found myself continually encountering Mrs. Knox's eye, and was startled by something in it that was both jubilant and compa.s.sionate. I also surprised her in the act of wiping her eyes. I wondered if she were becoming hysterical, and yearned for Mullins as the policeman (no doubt) yearns for the mother of the lost child.

On the road near the public-house we came upon M'Sweeny, Goggin, and Casey, obviously awaiting us. I stopped the car, not without reluctance.

"That will be all right, Goggin," said Mrs. Knox airily; "we're in a hurry to get home now."

The three protagonists looked at one another dubiously, and simultaneously cleared their throats.

"I beg your pardon, Mrs. Knox, ma'am," began Mr. Goggin very delicately. "Mr. M'Sweeny would be thankful to speak a word to you before you go."

"Well, let him speak and be quick about it," returned Mrs. Knox, who seemed to have recovered remarkably from her moment of emotion.

"You must excuse me, Major Yeates," said Mr. M'Sweeny, chivalrously selecting me as the person to whom to present the business end of the transaction, "but I'm afraid I must trouble you about that little matter of the five pounds that we arranged a while ago--I couldn't go back without it was settled----"

Mr. Goggin coughed, and looked at his boots; Stephen Casey sighed heavily.

At the same moment I thought I heard the horn.

"I'm afraid I haven't got it with me," I said, pulling out a handful of silver and a half-sovereign. "I suppose eighteen and sixpence wouldn't be any use to you?"

Mr. M'Sweeny smiled deprecatingly, as at a pa.s.sing jest, and again I heard the horn, several harsh and prolonged notes.

Mrs. Knox leaned forward and poked me in the back with some violence.

"Goggin will lend it to you," she said, with the splendid simplicity of a great mind.

It must be recorded of Goggin that he accepted this singular inversion of the position like a gentleman. We moved on to his house and he went in with an excellent show of alacrity to fetch the money wherewith I was to stop his own mouth. It was while we were waiting that a small wet collie, reddish-brown in colour, came flying across the road, and darted in at the open door of the house. Its tongue was hanging out, it was panting heavily.

"I seen her going over the hill, and the hounds after her; I thought she wouldn't go three sthretches before they'd have her cot," said M'Sweeny pleasantly. "But I declare she gave them a nice chase. When she seen the Doctor beating the hounds, that's the time she ran."

I turned feebly in my place and looked at Mrs. Knox.

"It was a very natural mistake," she said, again wiping her eyes; "I myself was taken in for a moment--but only for a moment!" she added, with abominable glee.

I gave her but one glance, laden with reproach, and turned to M'Sweeny.

"You'll get the five pounds from Goggin," I said, starting the car.

As we ran out of Killoge, at something near thirty miles an hour, I heard scald-crow laughter behind me in the shawls.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I heard scald-crow laughter behind me in the shawls."]

III

THE FRIEND OF HER YOUTH

It has come to this with me, I am not the country-house visitor that I once was. It is a sign of age, I suppose, and of growing unamiability; so, at any rate, my wife tells me. For my part, I think it indicates a power of discriminating between the things that are good enough, and the infinitely more numerous things that are the reverse.

"Do you mean to say this isn't good enough?" said Philippa, putting down the novel that, at 11 A.M., she was shamelessly reading, and indicating our surroundings with a swing of her open parasol.

It was a perfect morning in August. She and I were seated in incredible leisure, in comfortable basket chairs, on a s.p.a.ce of sward that sank in pleasant curves to the verge of the summer sea. We looked across three miles of burnished water to the Castle Ma.n.u.s hills, that showed mistily through grey veils of heat; in the middle distance a 40-ton cutter yacht drowsed at anchor; at the end of the sward a strand, theatrical in the perfection of its pale sand and dark rocks, laid itself out to attract the bather.

"I think it is very good," I replied, "but it won't last. At any minute old Derryclare will come and compel me to go out trawling, or mending nets, or cutting up bait, or mucking out the dinghey----"

"You may be thankful if he lets you off with that!" said Philippa, flitting from her first position and taking up one in advance of mine.

Following the direction of her eyes, I perceived, as it were at the back of the stage, two mysterious, shrouded figures pursuing a swift course towards the house through a shrubbery of immense hydrangea bushes. Their heads resembled monster black door-handles, round their shoulders hung flounces of black muslin; in gauntleted hands they bore trays loaded with "sections" of honey; even at a distance of fifty yards we could see their attendant _cortege_ of indignant bees.

"Taken thirty pounds this morning!" shouted the leading door-handle, speeding towards the house. "Splendid heather honey!"

"You ought to show some interest," said my wife malignly. "Go in and look at it. He's your host!"

"Not if he were all the hosts of Midian!" I said, but I felt shaken.

I rose from my chair.

"I'm going to the motor-house," I said firmly.