Satanella: A Story of Punchestown

by G. J. Whyte-Melville

"He did, sur," answered the waiter, with a pleasant grin. "Sure he brought a harse for the master to see. Five years old, Captain. A clane-bred one, like what ye ride yerself. There's not the aqual of him, they do be braggin', for leppin', in Westmeath an' thim parts where he was trained."

Now Daisy wanted a horse no more than he wanted an alligator. He could neither afford to buy nor keep one, and had two or three of his own that it was indispensable to sell, yet his eye brightened, his spirits rose, with the bare possibility of a deal. He might see the animal, at any rate, he thought, perhaps ride it—there would be others probably to show; he could spend a few pleasant hours in examining their points, discussing their merits, and interchanging with Mr. Sullivan those brief and pithy remarks, intelligible only to the initiated, which he esteemed the essence of pleasant conversation. Like many other young men, Daisy was bitten with hippomania. He thoroughly enjoyed the humours of a dealer's yard. The horses interested, the owners amused him. He liked the selection, the bargaining, the running up and down, the speculation, and the slang. To use his own words—"He never could resist the rattle of a hat!"

It is no wonder then that "the Captain," as Mr. Sullivan called him, spent his whole afternoon at a snug little place within an easy drive of Dublin, where that worthy, though not by way of being in the profession, inhabited a clean whitewashed house, with a few acres of marvellously green paddock, and three or four loose boxes, containing horses of various qualities, good, bad, and indifferent. Here, after flying for an hour or two over the adjoining fields and fences, Daisy, with considerable difficulty, resisted the purchase (on credit) of a worn-out black, a roan with heavy shoulders, and a three-year-old engaged in the following autumn at the Curragh, but afforded their owner perfect satisfaction by the encomiums he passed on their merits, no less than by the masterly manner in which he handled them, at the formidable fences that bordered Mr. Sullivan's domain.

"An' ye'll take nothing away with ye but a fishing-rod," said the latter, pressing on his visitor the refreshment of whiskey, with or without water. "Ye're welcome to't, anny how—more by token that ye'll bring it back again when ye done with it, Captain, and proud I'll be to get another visit from ye, when ye're travelling the country, to or from Dublin, at anny time. May be in the back end of the year I'll have wan to show ye in thim boxes that ye niver seen the likes of him for lep-racin'. Whisper now. He's bet the Black Baron in a trial; and for Shaneen, him that wan the race off your mare at Punchestown,—wait till I tell ye,—at even weights, he'd go and lose little Shaneen in two miles!"

Promising to return at a future time for inspection of this paragon, and disposing the borrowed fishing-rod carefully on an outside car he had chartered for his expedition, Daisy returned to Dublin, ate a good dinner, drank a bottle of dry champagne, and went to sleep in the comfortable bedroom of his comfortable hotel, as if he had not a care nor a debt in the world.

Towards morning his lighter slumbers may have been visited by dreams, and if so it is probable that fancy clothed her visions in a similitude of Norah Macormac. Certainly his first thought on waking was for that young lady, as his opening eyes rested on the fishing-rod, which he had borrowed chiefly on her account.

In truth, Daisy felt inclined to put off as long as possible the exile—for he could think of it in no more favourable light—that he had brought on himself in the Roscommon mountains.

Mr. Sullivan, when the sport of fly-fishing came in his way, was no mean disciple of the gentle art. Observing a salmon-rod in that worthy's sitting-room, of which apartment, indeed, with two foxes' brushes and a barometer it constituted the principal furniture, Daisy bethought him that on one of his visits to Cormac's-town its hospitable owner had given him leave and licence to fish the Dabble whenever he pleased, whether staying at the Castle or not. The skies were cloudy—as usual in Ireland, there was no lack of rain—surely this would be a proper occasion to take advantage of Macormac's kindness, protract his stay in Dublin, and run down daily by the train to fish, so long as favourable weather lasted and his own funds held out.

We are mostly self-deceivers though there exists something within each of us that is not to be hoodwinked nor imposed upon by the most specious of fallacies.

It is probable Daisy never confessed to himself how the fish he really wanted to angle for was already more than half-hooked: how it was less the attraction of a salmon than a mermaid that drew him to the margin of the Dabble; and how he cared very little that the sun shone bright or the river waned so as he might but hear the light step of Norah Macormac on the shingle, look in the fair face that turned so pale and sad when he went away, that would smile and blush its welcome so kindly when he came again.