"Lyney's a tough dog!"
"There might be men as good as him in Poundlick!" said an ugly little black-muzzled fellow, suddenly and offensively, "and horses too! As good as any he'll throw his leg over!"
Dr. Fraser's patient stood up abruptly.
"Oh, oh, oh!" said the man with the bushy whiskers, placing himself in front of the invalid. "Let you be said by the lady, Danny, and go home! Have behaviour now, Peter Lynch!"
The matter hung for a moment; a bell began to ring in the middle of the course, and the onlookers flung the situation from them like a squeezed lemon, and swept en masse towards the summons, bearing with them the invalid.
"Off the stage I have never seen people clear out so fast," remarked Andrew. "Now that we've seen Dr. Fraser's Lightning Cure, I suppose we may as well go too."
His eyes, by a singular coincidence, met those of Miss Longmuir, which were very pretty eyes, dark and soft.
"I must go and hunt up our pony," she said, with a very businesslike air; "we've entered her for the third race, you know."
She put back her hair as it blew across her forehead, and the gold in it glinted in the sun.
"How sporting of you!" we heard Andrew say, as they walked away together.
My wife and Dr. Fraser and I turned as one man, and went in the opposite direction.
We steered for an island of furze and grey boulders that had been flung into the valley like a vedette from the fortified hill-side, and was placed, considerately, at the apex of the oval course. Half a dozen men were already grouped upon the boulders, like cormorants. We clambered to a higher étage, and there spread forth ourselves and our belongings upon the warm slabs. The sun was hot, yet not too hot, the smell of trodden turf was pleasant in the air, the river sparkled and gurgled beside us; the chimneys of Poundlick sent up languid spires of blue smoke; its yellow and pink and white houses became poetic in the September haze. The first delicate pangs of hunger were stealing upon us, and I felt reasonably certain that nothing necessary to our welfare had been forgotten. I lit a cigarette and pulled my cap over my eyes, and listened to a lark, spiring, like the smoke, into the blue, while my wife clattered in the luncheon basket. It was a moment of entire well-being, overshadowed only by the prospect of having to take an interest in the racing.
I said as much to Dr. Fraser, who was dismembering a cold chicken with almost awful surgical dexterity.
"You must wake up for our race," she said. "I'll call you in time."
"Must I? I hope you're going to ride."
"Heaven forfend!" replied Dr. Fraser. "Nothing more spirited than a weight-carrying bicycle! I'm not in the least horsey. Meg was dying to ride, but as we bought the pony from the great Lyney, and he had won any number of races on her, he was distinctly indicated."
"Quite right too," I said, with dowager-like propriety. "And I should wish it to be clearly understood that if, at the last moment, your friend Mr. Lyney should be too drunk to ride, I will not take his place."
"He doesn't drink," said Dr. Fraser, who has an unsympathetic way of keeping to the point. "He's been a great friend of mine ever since I mended a broken finger for him."
There was a stir among the cormorants on the lower tier of boulders, a shot was fired at the far end of the course, every one began to shout, and an irregularly shaped mass was detached from the crowd, and resolved itself into a group of seven horses, pounding towards us at a lumbering canter. One of the riders had a green jacket, the others were in shirt sleeves, with coloured scarves over their shoulders; all were bareheaded. As they neared the first jump, I found myself on my feet on my boulder, with two unknown men hanging on to me to steady themselves.
"That's no throuble to them!" shouted one of my attachés, as each horse in turn galloped over or through the barrier of furze in the gap.
"Which is Lyney Garrett?" I asked.
"That's him on the chestnut mare—the jock that have the dhress on him." He pointed to the wearer of the green jacket.
"Ah ha! Lyney's the boy! Look at him now, how he'll stoop and leave the horse to go for herself! He'll easy the horse, and he'll easy himself!"
"That Rambling Katty he's riding's a nice loose mare—she has a good fly in her," said another.
"Lyney's built for it. If there's any sort of a spring in a horse at all, he'll make him do it."
"He'd make a donkey plough!" flung in another enthusiast.
As they neared the flags at the turn of the oval—and an uncommonly sharp turn it was—the pace improved, each man trying to get the inside station; I could already see, written on the countenance of a large young grey horse, his determination to pursue an undeviating course of his own.
"Now, Lyney! Spare him in the angle!" shouted my neighbour, hanging on to my sleeve and rocking perilously.
Lyney, a square-shouldered young man, pale and long-jawed, bored determinedly on to the first flag, hit it with his right knee, wrenched Rambling Katty round the second flag, and got away for the water-jump three lengths ahead of anyone else.
"Look at that for ye—how he goes round the corner on one leg!" roared his supporter. "He'd not stop for the Lord Leftenant!"
The remaining riders fought their way round the flags, with strange tangents and interlacing curves; all, that is to say, save the grey horse, who held on unswervingly and made straight for the river. The spectators, seated on the low bank at its edge, left their seats with singular unanimity. The majority fled, a little boy turned a somersault backwards into the water, but three or four hardier spirits tore off their coats, swung them like flails in front of the grey, and threw their caps in his face, with a wealth of objurgation that I have rarely heard equalled.
"The speed was in him and he couldn't turn," explained one of my neighbours, at the top of his voice, as the grey, yielding to public opinion, returned to the course and resumed the race.
"That horse is no good," said a dapper young priest, who had joined our crowd on the rock. "Look at his great flat feet! You'd bake a cake on each of them!"
"Well, that's the case indeed, Father," replied a grizzled old farmer, "but he's a fine cool horse, and a great farming horse for ever. Be gance! He'd plough the rocks!"
"Well, he'll get a nice view of the race, anyway," said the young priest, "he has it all before him."
"They don't seem to be getting any delay with the water-jump," said some one else regretfully.
"Ah, what's in it but the full of a few tin cans!" said my adherent.
"Well, for all, it knocked a good lep out o' Rambling Katty: she went mountains over it!"
"Look south! Look south! They're coming on again, and only five o' them in it——"
The cheering was hotter this time, and it was entirely characteristic that it was the riders who were shouted for and not the horses.
"They'll win now this turn—there's three o' them very thick, that's a nice tidy race," said the old farmer.
"Good boy, Kenny! Go on, Kenny!" bellowed some one on a lower ledge.
"Who's second, coming up to the flag now?" panted Philippa, who was hanging on to the collar of my coat and trying to see over my shoulder.
"That's Jimmy Kenny," responded the man below, turning a black-muzzled face up towards us, his light eyes gleaming between their black lashes in the sunshine, like aquamarines. I recognised Peter Lynch, whom we had met earlier in the day.
"It's young Kenny out of the shop," explained the old farmer to me; "he rides very nate."
No one was found to endorse his opinion. The horses came on, sweating and blowing, the riders, by this time very red in the face, already taking to their whips. By some intricate process of jostling, young Kenny got the inside place at the first flag.
"Now is he nate! What was I saying!" exulted the old farmer.
"Lyney! Lyney!" roared the faithful gallery, as the leaders hustled round the second flag and went away up the course.
"Up, Kenny!" replied the raucous tenor of Peter Lynch in solitary defiance.
Last of all, the grey horse, who would plough the rocks, came on indomitably, and made, as before, a bee-line for the river. Here, however, he was confronted by a demonstration hurriedly arranged by his friends, who advanced upon him waving tall furze-bushes, with which they beat him in the face. The grey horse changed his mind with such celerity that he burst his girths; some one caught him by the head, while his rider hung precariously upon his neck; some one else dragged off the saddle, replanted his jockey upon his broad bare back, and speeded him on his way by bringing the saddle down upon his hind-quarters with an all-embracing thump.
"It's only the age he wants," said a partisan. "If they'd keep him up to the practice, he'd be a sweeper yet!"
Tumult at the end of the course, and a pistol-shot, here announced that the race was over.
"Lyney have it!" shouted some men, standing on the fence by the water-jump.
"What happened Kenny?" bawled Peter Lynch.
"He was passing the flag and he got clung in the pole, and the next man knocked him down out of the pole!" shouted back the Field Telegraph.
"Oh pity!" said the old farmer.
"He didn't get fair play!" vociferated Peter Lynch, glowering up at the adherents of Lyney with a very green light in his eye.
The young priest made a slight and repressive gesture with his hand. "That'll do now, Peter," he said, and turned to the old farmer. "Well, Rambling Katty's a hardy bit of stuff," he went on, brushing the rock-lichen from his black coat.
"She is that, Father," responded my late adherent, who, to my considerable relief, had now ceased to adhere. "And nothing in her but a fistful of bran!"
"She's the dryest horse that came in," said the young priest, descending actively from the rock.
With the knowledge that the Committee would allow an hour at least for the effects of a race to pass off before launching another, we climbed to the summit of the island, and began upon the luncheon basket; and, as vultures drop from the blue empyrean, so did Andrew and Miss Longmuir arrive from nowhere and settle upon the sandwiches.
"Oh, I can't eat our own game, can I?" said the latter, with a slight shudder, as I placed the chicken before her. "No—really—not even for your sake!" She regarded me very pleasingly, but I notice that it is only since my hair began to turn grey over my ears that these things are openly said to me. "I had to feed four dozen of the brutes before we started this morning, and I shall have to do it all over again when we get home!"
"I don't know how you stand it, I should let 'em starve," said Andrew, his eyes travelling from her white forehead to her brown hands. "I don't consider it is work for ladies."
"You can come and help the ladies if you like," said Miss Longmuir, glancing at him as she drove her white teeth into a sandwich.
"Do you mean that?" said Andrew in a low voice.
"She's blown him to pieces before he's left the covert," I said to myself, and immediately withdrew into blameless conversation with my wife and Dr. Fraser.
We had gone pretty well down through the luncheon basket, and had arrived at a second and even more balmy—being well-fed—period of peace, before it occurred to Miss Longmuir to look at her watch, and to spoil the best cigarette of the day with agitations concerning the non-appearance of her pony. I suggested that she and Captain Larpent should go in search of it, and for a brief interval the disturbing element was eliminated. It returned, with added agitation, in a quarter of an hour.
"Cathie! I can't find Nancy anywhere! We've been all round the course," cried Miss Longmuir from below. "And John Sullivan is nowhere to be found either, and I can't get near Lyney, he's riding in the Trotting Race."
"You'll find the pony is somewhere about all right," I said, with the optimism of combined indolence and indifference.
"That seems probable," said Andrew, "but the point is, she's somewhere where we're not."
"The point is, she ought to be here," said Miss Longmuir, with a very bright colour in her cheeks as she looked up at us.
"Heavens! They're very angry!" I murmured to Dr. Fraser.
"Well, what do you want us to do?" enquired Dr. Fraser lethargically.
"You might take some faint shadow of interest in the fact that Nancy is lost," replied Miss Longmuir.
"I think we'd better organise a search-party," said Philippa (who does not smoke).
We rose stiffly, descended from our sun-warmed boulders, and took up the White Man's Burden.
A sweeping movement was inaugurated, whose objects were to find the pony or her attendant, John Sullivan, or Lyney.
"Should you know the pony if you saw her?" I said confidentially to Dr. Fraser, as she and I set forth together.
"We've not had it very long," she replied dubiously. "Luckily it's an easy colour. John Sullivan calls it maroan—a sort of mixture of roan and maroon."
We advanced from field to field, driving like twin darning-needles through the groups of people, but neither John Sullivan nor the maroan pony transpired.
"Come on, come on! The Stepping Match is starting!" shouted some one.
Dr. Fraser and I were caught in the tightening mesh of the crowd, as in the intricacies of a trammel net; an irregular thumping of hoofs, and a row of bare and bobbing heads, passing above the heads of the crowd, indicated that the Stepping Match was under way. Lyney's dour face and green jacket were in the lead, and, as before, had he been Diana of the Ephesians, he could not have been more passionately called upon. As it was obviously useless for us to do so at this juncture, we climbed on to a bank near the winning post, and watched the race. Lyney was riding a long-backed yellow animal with a face as cross as his own, and a step as fast as the tick of a watch.
"Anny other man than Lyney wouldn't carry that old pony round," said one man.
"She has a score o' years surely, but she's as wicked as a bee," said another.
"Lyney's very knacky; he couldn't be bate," said the first man.
"Well, well, look at Jimmy Kenny and his father, and the two o' them riding!" went on the commentator. "Faith, I'd give the father the sway. Jimmy's riding uneven. When the nag is rising, he's falling."
"Sure he has his two elbows into his ears! Go on, Lyney boy!"
The horses pounded past, splashing through the shallow flood of the water-jump, and trampling over such furze-bushes as had withstood the vicissitudes of the steeplechase. They passed from our view, and Dr. Fraser and I agreed that we should be justified in staying where we were till the finish. Three times they passed us, enveloped in a travelling roar of encouragements, and with each passing the supporters of Lyney and Kenny bayed and howled more emulously. The competitors, now, to all practical intent, reduced to the Kennys, père et fils, and Lyney, again disappeared on their last round, and the volleys of incitement became a dropping fire of criticism.
"Kenny's mare is the one, the others is too crippled."
"She'll not bate Lyney! Divil blast the bate she have in her! she's too dropped and too narra!"
"What horse is first?"
"I d'know; only one, I think."
"Look at young Kenny coming up on the father now!"
"Ah, there's more in the owld fella, never fear him!"
"Come on, Lyney! Come on, Kenny! Lyney! Lyney!"
Lyney won. The bee-like wickedness of the yellow mare apparently served her as well as youth, and despite the fact that she was but little over fourteen hands and was carrying twelve stone, she finished a dozen lengths in front. The interest of the race was at once transferred to the struggle for second place between the Kennys.
"Come on, Tom! Come on, Jimmy! Begor' the father have it!" yelled the crowd, as Kenny père, flourishing his whip over his grey head, finished half a length in front of his son.
"Them two tight wheels at the corner, 'twas there he squeezed the advantage on the son."
"No, but the father had a drop taken, 'twas that that gave him the heart."
Dr. Fraser and I got off our fence and steered for Lyney.
He was in the act of throwing the reins on the pony's neck and himself off her back as we arrived.
"Here!" he said to the owner, "take your old skin!"—he tossed his whip on to the ground—"and your old whip too!"
The owner took the "old skin" by her drooping and dripping head, and picked up the whip, in reverential submission, and the ring of admirers evidently accepted this mood of the hero as entirely befitting his dignity.
Dr. Fraser advanced through them with the effortless impressiveness of a big woman, and made her enquiries about the pony. Lyney dropped the hero manner.
"I don't at all doubt but John Sullivan's gone up to Lynch's for her, Doctor; you needn't be uneasy at all," he said, with a respect that must have greatly enhanced our position in the eyes of the crowd. "I told him he shouldn't bring her too soon for fear she'd sour on us. We have an hour yet."
Soothed by this assurance we moved on, and even, in this moment of unexpected leisure, dallied with the roulette table. I had, in fact, lost ninepence, when the remainder of the search-party bore down upon us at speed.
"The pony is not here!" said Miss Longmuir, regarding our outspread coppers with an eye of burning indignation, "and Sullivan's brother doesn't know where he is—says he went up to the town two hours ago. I'm going up to look for him, but of course if you'd rather stay and play roulette—" Her voice shook. I need hardly say that we went.
On our arrival at the town of Poundlick we found it to be exclusively inhabited by grandmothers. Lynch's public-house was garrisoned by a very competent member of the force, who emerged from the kitchen with an infant in her arms, and another attached to her clothing. She knew nothing of the pony, she knew nothing of John Sullivan. There was certainly a young lad that came in, and he having drink taken, and wherever he got it, it wasn't in this house, and what did he do but to commence jumping the counter, you'd think he'd jump the house. She paused, and I murmured to Dr. Fraser that she was like a Holbein, and Dr. Fraser replied that she did not believe one word she said, which was rather my own idea, only more so. It appeared that her son Peter had, an hour ago, expelled the young lad from the house (lest its fair fame should be sullied), and as for Peter, the dear knew where he was, she didn't see him since.
Miss Longmuir and Andrew here left the shop, very purposefully; we pursued, and saw them open the gate of Lynch's yard and stride in. The yard was a small one, littered with cases of bottles, and congested by the outside cars and carts of race-goers; such level spaces as it possessed had been dug out of the side of the hill, and slatternly stables and outhouses were perched on the different levels. Through a low-browed doorway might be seen the horses of race-goers, standing "ready dight," like the steeds of Branksome Hall, with heads hanging, in resigned depression, before empty ranks and mangers. But of the maroan pony there was no sign.
Fierce as terriers on a rat-hunt, Miss Longmuir and Andrew dashed in and out of the dark sheds and outhouses, till there remained unexplored but one hovel, whose open door revealed only semi-darkness, edged with fern-litter. None the less, the leading terrier determined to make good the ground. A sharp yelp told of a find, and Miss Longmuir emerged, holding aloft a new check horse-sheet, with the initials "M.L." large upon it.
"They must have taken her down to the race-course, after all—" I began.
"Thoughtless of them to take her without her saddle or bridle," said Andrew bitingly. "Here they are behind the door!"
The silence that followed this discovery was broken by Philippa.
"I hear some one snoring!" she said in a conspirator's whisper. "Do come away. I'm sure it's a drunken man."
"Quite so," said Andrew, who had been pursuing his researches. "Allow me to introduce Mr. John Sullivan."
In the dark corner behind the door lay a stout youth, comfortably extended, with his flushed face half hidden in the dry and tawny bracken, and his open mouth framing long and quiet snores. He was obviously at peace with all the world.
Some heartless assaults on the part of Captain Larpent had no appreciable result, so inveterate was the peace, so potent the means by which it had been invoked. The ladies had retired during the interview, and, as we rejoined them in the yard, we all became aware of muffled and thunderous sounds near at hand; they were suggestive of a ponderous and chaotic clog-dance, and proceeded from an outhouse, built against the bank that formed the upper side of the yard, with its gable askew to the other buildings.
"'Lots of things is coor'us,' as Anthony said when I told him about Jonah and the Whale," remarked Philippa, who, throughout, had not taken the affair as seriously as it deserved. "I suppose the party that John Sullivan was at is going on up there."
Miss Longmuir darted round the gable of the house, a wild and summoning cry followed, the call of the terrier who has run his rat to ground.
We found her at the foot of a low flight of irregular stone steps (in telling the story I have formed the habit of saying that there were ten of them) that led to a doorway in a loft. In the doorway, with a cabbage leaf in her mouth, was the maroan pony, looking down at us with an expression of mild surprise.
We all said unanimously, and with equal futility, "How—on—earth——?"
After which Andrew, who dislikes miracles, arranged that she had, of course, got into the loft from the back, where the ground was high. Unfortunately the theory did not work, an inspection of the loft revealing nothing but four walls, a large store of dried bracken, and a donkey-panier filled with cabbages.
"These mountainy ponies climb like monkeys," said Philippa, with her inevitable effort to shelter the discomfited, as Andrew returned with the ruins of his theory, "she must have walked up the steps!"
Miss Longmuir, snatching out her watch, said she didn't care how the pony got there, the point was to get her down as quickly as possible. "If people would only do something and not talk!" she added, under her breath.
"If she walked up she can walk down," said Andrew firmly.
He mounted the steps and took the pony by the halter. The pony immediately backed thunderously out of sight, taking Andrew with her. Miss Longmuir flew up the steps to his assistance, and unseen sarabands pummelled the floor of the loft.
"Go up and help them, you great lazy thing!" said Philippa to me.
"There's no room for any one else," I protested.
Here the combatants reappeared in the doorway, gradually, with endearments on one side, and suspicious snortings on the other. The steps were broad and not too intimidating; the pony advanced almost to the sill, repented in haste, and in her retreat flung Andrew against the panier of cabbages. A donkey's panier is made to resist shocks; in this case it apparently gave more than it took; Andrew said nothing, but he dragged the basket over the sill and hurled it down the steps with considerable emotion. I joined the party in the loft, and Philippa collected the cabbages, and laid them in rows upon the steps as if it were a harvest festival, in the hope of luring the pony to the descent. The lure was rejected with indignation, and I proceeded to offer a few plain truths. That the floor would come down before the mare did. That it would take six men, and planks, and cartloads of straw, to get her out. Finally, that her race was due to start in twenty minutes.
"We're done," said Miss Longmuir tragically, addressing Philippa and Dr. Fraser from the top of the steps, as if they were a stage mob. "These brutes have beaten us! Don't you remember that Lyney's father said, 'Let ye keep out from them lads in Poundlick'? And after all our trouble, and the training, and everything—" She turned abruptly away from the door.
Dr. Fraser stood still, with her hand to her forehead, as though she were trying to remember something. Then she too came up into the loft. The pony had now backed into the pile of bracken; Andrew, whose back teeth were evidently set tight, was tugging at her halter, and she was responding by throwing her nose in the air and showing the whites of her eyes.
"Meg," said Dr. Fraser, at the doorway, "I've remembered something that I was once told—" She peered into the darkness of the loft. "May I try?" she said, advancing quietly to the pony's head.
"By all means," said Andrew, as chillingly as was possible for a man who was very red in the face and was draped with cobwebs.
Looking back now to the affair, I cannot remember that Dr. Fraser did anything in the least remarkable. She took hold of the halter with one hand and with the other patted the pony's neck, high up, near the ears. She also spoke to it, the sort of things anyone might say. For the life of me I could not see that she did more than anyone else had done, but Nancy lowered her head and put her ears forward.
Dr. Fraser gave the halter a gentle pull, and said, "Come on, old girl!" and the pony started forward with a little run.
At the doorway she stopped. We held our breaths. Dr. Fraser patted her again and placidly descended the first step; the maroan pony placed a trembling foot upon the threshold, steadied herself, poked her nose forward, and dropped her forefeet on to the second step.
"She'll come down on top of her!" said Andrew, starting forward.
"Don't touch her!" exclaimed Miss Longmuir, grasping his arm.
With the tense caution of an old dog, the pony let herself down from step to step, planting her little hoofs cunningly on the rough-set stones, bracing herself with the skill learned on the rocky staircases of her native hills. Dr. Fraser kept a step in advance of her. Thus, with slow clattering, and in deep gravity, they joined Philippa in the yard.
Five people cannot advantageously collaborate in putting a saddle and bridle on a pony, but we tried, and in the grim hustle that resulted no one asked questions or made comments. Amongst us the thing was done, and there were still seven minutes in hand when Andrew shot out of the yard on her back. Hard on her heels followed Philippa and Miss Longmuir, with scarcely inferior velocity. I returned to the remaining member of the party and found that she had seated herself on the steps.
She said she was tired, and she looked it.
"I daresay getting that beast down the steps was rather a strain?" I said, spreading the pony's rug for her to sit on.
"Oh, that was nothing. Please don't wait for me."
I said in my best ironic manner that doctors were of course impervious to fatigue, and indeed superior to all human ills.
She laughed. "I admit that I was rather nervous that the thing wouldn't work, or would break down half-way."
"What thing?" I demanded. "The pony?"
"No. The secret. It is a secret, you know. My grandfather gave Rarey thirty pounds for it. I've never had much to say to horses, but I have started a jibbing hansom horse in Oxford Street with it." She laughed again, apologetically.
"You needn't believe it unless you like. I must say I was afraid it mightn't include a flight of steps!" She paused and put back her abundant fair hair. "How hot it was up in that loft! I wonder if you could get me a glass of water?"
I told her that I was old enough to believe anything, but added that after what she had told me I would get a second glass of water, with sal volatile in it, for myself.
The Holbein grandmother was standing at the back door of the house, with the baby still on her arm. She and the baby fetched the glass of water. She said wasn't the pony a Fright for ever after the way he came down them steps, but why wouldn't the lady take him out through the other door into the field above?
I made no reply, but while Dr. Fraser was drinking the water, I went up into the loft, and cleared away the bracken that had been piled in front of the "door into the field above." I opened the door, and walked out into the field, and viewed the small hoof-prints that led to the door of the loft.
I returned to Dr. Fraser, and very gently broke the news to her.
*****
Of course Lyney and the maroan pony won the race. Had this not been a foregone conclusion it is possible that John Sullivan might have scored less heavily in the matter of free drinks.
As I was conducting my exhausted but triumphant party off the course, the Poundlick Sergeant of Police met me and asked me if I would sign a few summonses for him, as he was after taking some parties into custody for fighting.
"Drunk, I suppose?"
The Sergeant admitted it, and said the dispute had arisen between the Kennys and the Lynches on the one side, and the partisans of Lyney Garrett on the other, out of "circumstances connected with the last race." The Sergeant's eye rested for an instant, with what may be described as a respectful twinkle, upon Miss Longmuir.
"It was mostly heavy offers and small blows, Major," he concluded.
"Look here, Sergeant," I said oracularly, "take them all to the water-jump. Build up the furze in front of it. Make them jump it. Anyone that gets over it may be considered sober. Anyone that falls in will be sober enough when he gets out."
I have not, in my judicial career, delivered a judgment that gave more satisfaction to the public.
VI
MAJOR APOLLO RIGGS
PART I
The leave of Captain Andrew Larpent, R.E., was expiring, dying hard, "in rings of strenuous flight," (and my motor) on the road between Shreelane and Licknavar, which is the home of the Chicken Farmers. Philippa, who regards a flirtation with an enthusiasm that is as disinterested as it is inexplicable, assured me that the state of affairs was perfectly unmistakable. She further said that the male determination to deny and ignore these things was partly sympathetic secretiveness, partly the affectation of despising gossip, and mainly stupidity. She took a long breath after all this, and, seeing Andrew approaching along the garden path in apparently romantic meditation, enjoined me to be nice to the poor thing, and departed.
The sun was bright, with the shallow brightness of early October, and the Virginian creeper made a conflagration on the weather-slated end of the house. The poor thing deposited himself beside me on the garden seat. I noticed that his eye rested upon a white chicken with a brilliant scarlet comb; it was one of several, purchased from the Chicken Farmers. I would not for worlds have admitted it to Philippa, but there was undoubtedly sentiment in the glance.
"I hear they're having beastly weather at the Curragh," he said, leaning back and looking gloomily up into the melting blue sky. "Stunning that red stuff looks on the house!" He surveyed it, and sighed; then, suddenly, sentiment faded from his glance. "D'you know, old boy, that chimney up there is well out of the perpendicular. It'll be down about your ears some day."
I replied that it had maintained that angle for the seven years of my tenancy.
"It won't do it much longer," returned my guest. "Look at that crack in the plaster!"
"Which crack?" I said coldly. (Mr. Flurry Knox is my landlord, and it is my misfortune to have a repairing lease.)
"Take your choice," said Andrew, scanning the chimneys with the alert and pitiful eye of the Royal Engineer. "My money's on the northern one, under the jackdaw."
"Oh, confound you and the jackdaws!" I said pettishly. "The chimney draws all right."
But the matter did not end there. Before luncheon, Andrew and I had made a tour of the roof, and he had demonstrated unanswerably, and with appalling examples from barracks that he had repaired in Central India, and built in Wei-hai-Wei, that nothing but habit and family feeling induced any one of the chimney stacks to stand up.
At luncheon he told Philippa that he hoped she would insure the children before the next westerly gale. Philippa replied by asking if he, or anyone else, had ever heard of a chimney falling, unless it had been struck by lightning, in which case it wouldn't matter if it were straight or crooked; and though this was manifestly worthless as an argument, neither Andrew nor I could remember an instance in support of our case. That the case had now become mine as well as Andrew's was the logical result of illogical opposition, and at Philippa's door I deposit the responsibility for a winter of as varied discomforts as it has been our lot to endure.
The matter matured rapidly. In the mellow moment that comes with coffee and cigarettes, I began, almost pleasurably, to lay out the campaign.
"I can't see any point in wasting money on a contractor," said Andrew airily. "Any of your local masons could do it if I explained the job to him. A fortnight ought to see it through."
It was at this point that I should have sat heavily upon Andrew. I was not without experience of the local mason and his fortnights; what could Andrew know of such? I had a brief and warning vision of Captain Larpent, seated at an office table adorned with sheets of perfect ground-plans and elevations, issuing instructions to a tensely intelligent Sapper Sergeant. I saw the Sergeant, supreme in scientific skill (and invariably sober), passing on the orders to a scarcely less skilled company of prompt subordinates—but my "worser angel" obliterated it. And that very afternoon, on our way to Aussolas, we chanced to meet upon the road the local mason himself, William Shanahan, better known to fame as "Walkin' Aisy." He was progressing at a rate of speed that accorded with his sub-title, and, as I approached him, a line of half-forgotten verse came back:
"Entreat her not, her eyes are full of dreams."
Nevertheless, I stopped the car.
