Satanella
"His next stride brought him on his head." (Page 133.)
Satanella. Frontispiece
Satanella
A Story of Punchestown
By
G.J. Whyte-Melville
Author of "Holmby House," "The Gladiators," "Kate Coventry," &c., &c.
Illustrated by Lucy E. Kemp-Welch
London
Ward, Lock & Co., Limited
New York and Melbourne
CONTENTS
SATANELLA
THE BLACK MARE
"She'll make a chaser annyhow!"
The speaker was a rough-looking man in a frieze coat, with wide mouth, short nose, and grey, honest Irish eyes, that twinkled with humour on occasion, though clouded for the present by disappointment, not to say disgust, and with some reason. In his hand he held a broken strap, with broad and dingy buckle; at his feet, detached from shafts and wheels, lay the body of an ungainly vehicle, neither gig, dog-cart, nor outside car, but something of each, battered and splintered in a dozen places: while "foreaninst" him, as he called it, winced and fretted a young black mare, snorting, trembling, fractious, and terrified, with ears laid back, tail tucked down to her strong cowering quarters, and an obvious determination on the slightest alarm to kick herself clear of everything once more.
At her head stood a ragged urchin of fourteen; although her eyes showed wild and red above the shabby blinkers, she rubbed her nose against the lad's waistcoat, and seemed to consider him the only friend she had left in the world.
"Get on her back, Patsy," said the man. "Faix, she's a well-lepped wan, an' we'll take a hate out of her at Punchestown, with the blessin'!—Augh! See now, here's the young Captain! Ye're welcome, Captain! It's meself was proud when I see how ye cleaned them out last week on 'Garryowen.' Ye'll come in, and welcome, Captain. Go on in front now, and I'll show you the way!"
So, while a slim, blue-eyed, young gentleman, with curled moustache, accompanied his entertainer into the house, Patsy took the mare to the stable, where he accoutred her in an ancient saddle, pulpy, weather-stained, with stirrups of most unequal length; proceeding thereafter to force a rusty snaffle into her mouth, with the tightest possible nose-band and a faded green and white front. These arrangements completed, he surveyed the whole, grinning and well-pleased.
That the newcomer could only be a subaltern of Light Dragoons, was obvious from his trim equestrian appearance, his sleek, well-cropped head, the easy sit of his garments, also, perhaps, from an air of imperturbable good-humour and self-confidence, equal to any occasion that might present itself, social, moral, or physical.
"These arrangements completed, he surveyed the whole, grinning, and well pleased."
Satanella. Page 8
Proof against "dandies of punch" and such hospitable provocatives, he soon deserted the parlour for the stable.
"And how is the mare coming on?" said he standing in the doorway of that animal's dwelling, which she shared with a little cropped jackass, a Kerry cow, and a litter of pigs. "I always said she could gallop a bit, and they're the right sort to stay. But can she jump?"
"The beautifullest ever ye see!" replied her enthusiastic owner. "She'll go whereiver a cat would follow a rat. If there's a harse in Connemara that 'ud charge on the sharp edge of a razor, there's the wan that can do't! Kick—stick and plasther! it's in their breed; and like th'ould mare before her, so long as you'd hould her, it's my belief she'd stay in the air!"
The object of these praises had now emerged from her stall, and a very likely animal she looked; poor and angular indeed, with a loose neck and somewhat long ears, but in her lengthy frame, and large clean limbs, affording promise for the future of great beauty, no less than extraordinary power and speed. Her head was exceedingly characteristic, lean and taper, showing every vein and articulation beneath the glossy skin, with a wide scarlet nostril and flashing eye, suggestive of courage and resolution, not without a considerable leavening of temper. There are horses, and women too, that stick at nothing. To a bold rider, the former are invaluable, because with these it is possible to keep their mettle under control.
"Hurry now, Patsy!" said the owner, as that little personage, diving for the stirrup, which he missed, looked imploringly to his full-grown companions for a "leg up."
But it was not in the nature of our young officer, by name John Walters, known in his regiment as "Daisy," to behold an empty saddle at any time without longing to fill it. He had altered the stirrups, cocked up his left leg for a lift, and lit fairly in his seat, before the astonished filly could make any more vigorous protest than a lurch of her great strong back and whisk of her long tail.
"Begorra! ye'll get it now!" said her owner, half to himself, half to the Kerry cow, on which discreet animal he thought it prudent to rivet his attention, distrusting alike the docility of his own filly, and the English man's equestrian skill.
Over the rough paved yard, through the stone gap by the peat-stack, not the little cropped jackass himself could have behaved more soberly. But where the spring flowers were peeping in the turf enclosure beyond, and the upright bank blazed in its golden glory of gorse-bloom, the devilry of many ancestors seemed to pass with the keen mountain-air into the filly's mettle. Her first plunge of hilarity and insubordination would have unseated half the rough-riders that ever mishandled a charger in the school.
Once—twice, she reached forward, with long, powerful plunges, shaking her ears, and dashing wildly at her bridle, till she got rein enough to stick her nose in the air, and break away at speed.
A snaffle, with or without a nose-band, is scarcely the instrument by which a violent animal can be brought on its haunches at short notice; but Daisy was a consummate horseman, firm of seat and cool of temper, with a head that never failed him, even when debarred from the proper use of his hands.
He could guide the mare, though incapable of controlling her. So he sent her at the highest place in the fence before him, and, fast as she was going, the active filly changed her stride on the bank with the accuracy of a goat, landing lightly beyond, to scour away once more like a frightened deer.
"You can jump!" said he, as she threw up the head that had been in its right place hardly an instant, while she steadied herself for the leap; "and I believe you're a flyer. But, by Jove! you're a rum one to steer!"
She was quite out of his hand again, and laid herself down to her work with the vigour of a steam-engine. The daisy-sprinkled turf fleeted like falling water beneath those long, smooth, sweeping strides.
They were careering over an open upland country, always slightly on the rise, till it grew to a bleak brown mountain far away under the western sky. The enclosures were small; but notwithstanding the many formidable banks and ditches with which it was intersected, the whole landscape wore that appearance of space and freedom so peculiar to Irish scenery, so pleasing to the sportsman's eye. "It looked like galloping," as they say, though no horse, without great jumping powers, could have gone two fields.
It took a long Irish mile, at racing pace, to bring the mare to her bridle, and nothing but her unusual activity saved the rider from half-a-dozen rattling falls during his perilous experiment. She bent her neck at last, and gave to her bit in a potato-ground; nor, if he had resolved to buy her for the sake of her speed and stamina while she was running away with him, did he like her less, we may be sure, when they arrived at that mutual understanding, which links together so mysteriously the intelligences of the horse and its rider.
Turning homewards, the pair seemed equally pleased with each other. She played gaily with the snaffle now, answering hand and heel cheerfully, desirous only of being ridden at the largest fences, a fancy in which he indulged her, nothing loth. Trotting up to four feet and a half of stone wall, round her own stable-yard, she slipped over it without an effort, and her owner, a discerning person enough, added fifty to her price on the spot.
"She's a good sort," said the soldier, patting her reeking neck, as he slid to the ground; "but she's uncommon bad to steer when her monkey's up! Sound, you say, and rising four year old? I wonder how she's bred?"
Such a question could not but entail a voluminous reply. Never, it appeared, in one strain, had been united the qualities of so many illustrious ancestors. Her pedigree seemed enriched with "all the blood of all the Howards," and her great-great-great-grandam was "Camilla by Trentham, out of Phantom, sister to Magistrate!"
"An' now ye've bought her, Captain," said our friend in frieze, "ye've taken the best iver I bred, an' the best iver I seen. Av' I'd let her out o'my sight wanst at Ballinasloe, the Lord-Liftinint 'ud have been acrass her back, while I'm tellin' ye, an' him leadin' the hunt, up in Meath, or about the Fairy House and Kilrue. The spade wasn't soldered yet that would dig a ditch to hould her; and when them sort's tired, Captain, begorra! the very breeches 'ud be wore to rags betwixt your knees! You trust her, and you trust me! Wait till I tell ye now. There's only wan thing on this mortial earth she won't do for ye!"
"And what's that?" asked the other, well pleased.
"She'll not back a bill!" was the answer; "but if iver she schames with ye, renaging[1] or such like, by this book, I'll be ashamed to look a harse, or so much as a jackass in the face again!"
So the mare was sent for; and Patsy, with a stud reduced to the donkey and the Kerry cow, shed bitter tears when she went away.