All on the Irish Shore Part 2

The woman made no answer.

"Did you see the fox?" reiterated Freddy in still more stentorian tones.

"Can't you answer me?"

The woman continued to run without even looking behind her.

The laughter of Mr. Taylour added fuel to the fire of Freddy's wrath: he put the spurs into Mayboy, dashed after the woman, pulled his horse across the road in front of her, and shouted his question point-blank at her, coupled with a warm inquiry as to whether she had a tongue in her head.

The woman jumped backwards as if she were shot, staring in horror at Freddy's furious little face, then touched her mouth and ears and began to jabber inarticulately and talk on her fingers.

The laughter of Mr. Taylour was again plainly audible.

"Sure that's a dummy woman, sir," explained the butcher's nephew, hurrying up. "I think she's one of them tinkers that's outside the town." Then with a long screech, "Look! Look over! Tiger, have it!

Hulla, hulla, hulla!"

Tiger was already over the wall and into the demesne, neck and neck with Fly, the smith's half-bred greyhound; and in the wake of these champions clambered the Craffroe Pack, with strangled yelps of ardour, striving and squealing and fighting horribly in the endeavour to scramble up the tall smooth face of the wall.

"The gate! The gate further on!" yelled Freddy, thundering down the turfy road, with the earth flying up in lumps from his horse's hoofs.

Mr. Taylour's pony gave two most uncomfortable bucks and ran away; even Patsey Crimmeen and the black mare shared an unequal thrill of enthusiasm, as the latter, wholly out of hand, bucketed after the pony.

The afternoon was very cold, a fact thoroughly realised by Mrs.

Alexander, on the front seat of Sir George's motor-car, in spite of enveloping furs, and of Bismarck, curled like a fried whiting, in her lap. The grey road rushed smoothly backwards under the broad tyres; golden and green plover whistled in the quiet fields, starlings and huge missel thrushes burst from the wayside trees as the "Bollee," uttering that hungry whine that indicates the desire of such creatures to devour s.p.a.ce, tore past. Mrs. Alexander wondered if birds' beaks felt as cold as her nose after they had been cleaving the air for an afternoon; at all events, she reflected, they had not the consolation of tea to look forward to. Barnet was sure to have some of her best hot cakes ready for Freddy when he came home from hunting. Mrs. Alexander and Sir George had been scouring the roads since a very early lunch in search of the hounds, and her mind reposed on the thought of the hot cakes.

The front lodge gates stood wide open, the motor-car curved its flight and skimmed through. Half-way up the avenue they whizzed past three policemen, one of whom was carrying on his back a strange and wormlike thing.

"Janet," called out Sir George, "you've been caught making potheen!

They've got the worm of a still there."

"They're only making a short cut through the place from the bog; I'm delighted they've found it!" screamed back Mrs. Alexander.

The "Bollee" was at the hall door in another minute, and the mistress of the house pulled the bell with numbed fingers. There was no response.

"Better go round to the kitchen," suggested her brother. "You'll find they're talking too hard to hear the bell."

His sister took the advice, and a few minutes afterwards she opened the hall door with an extremely perturbed countenance.

"I can't find a creature anywhere," she said, "either upstairs or down--I can't understand Barnet leaving the house empty--"

"Listen!" interrupted Sir George, "isn't that the hounds?"

They listened.

"They're hunting down by the back avenue! come on, Janet!"

The motor-car took to flight again; it sped, soft-footed, through the twilight gloom of the back avenue, while a disjointed, travelling clamour of hounds came nearer and nearer through the woods. The motor-car was within a hundred yards of the back lodge, when out of the rhododendron-bush burst a spectral black-and-white dog, with floating fringes of ragged wool and hideous bald patches on its back.

"Fennessy's dog!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mrs. Alexander, falling back in her seat.

Probably Bismarck never enjoyed anything in his life as much as the all too brief moment in which, leaning from his mistress's lap in the prow of the flying "Bollee," he barked hysterically in the wake of the piebald dog, who, in all its dolorous career had never before had the awful experience of being chased by a motor-car. It darted in at the open door of the lodge; the pursuers pulled up outside. There were paraffin lamps in the windows, the open door was garlanded with evergreens; from it proceeded loud and hilarious voices and the jerky strains of a concertina. Mrs. Alexander, with all, her most cherished convictions toppling on their pedestals, stood in the open doorway and stared, unable to believe the testimony of her own eyes. Was that the immaculate Barnet seated at the head of a crowded table, in her--Mrs.

Alexander's--very best bonnet and velvet cape, with a gla.s.s of steaming potheen punch in her hand, and w.i.l.l.y Fennessy's arm round her waist?

The gla.s.s sank from the paragon's lips, the arm of Mr. Fennessy fell from her waist; the circle of servants, tinkers, and country people vainly tried to efface themselves behind each other.

"Barnet!" said Mrs. Alexander in an awful voice, and even in that moment she appreciated with an added pang the feathery beauty of a slice of Barnet's sponge-cake in the grimy fist of a tinker.

"Mrs. Fennessy, m'm, if you please," replied Barnet, with a dignity that, considering the bonnet and cape, was highly creditable to her strength of character.

At this point a hand dragged Mrs. Alexander backwards from the doorway, a barefooted woman hustled past her into the house, slammed the door in her face, and Mrs. Alexander found herself in the middle of the hounds.

"We'd give you the brush, Mrs. Alexander," said Mr. Taylour, as he flogged solidly all round him in the dusk, "but as the other lady seems to have gone to ground with the fox I suppose she'll take it!"

Mrs. Fennessy paid out of her own ample savings the fines inflicted upon her husband for potheen-making and selling drink in the Craffroe gate lodge without a licence, and she shortly afterwards took him to America.

Mrs. Alexander's friends professed themselves as being not in the least surprised to hear that she had installed the afflicted Miss Fennessy (sister to the late occupant) and her scarcely less afflicted companion, the Fairy Pig, in her back lodge. Miss Fennessy, being deaf and dumb, is not perhaps a paragon lodge-keeper, but having, like her brother, been brought up in a work-house kitchen, she has taught Patsey Crimmeen how to boil stirabout _a merveille_.

f.a.n.n.y FITZ'S GAMBLE

"Where's f.a.n.n.y Fitz?" said Captain Spicer to his wife.

They were leaning over the sea-wall in front of a little fis.h.i.+ng hotel in Connemara, idling away the interval usually vouchsafed by the Irish car-driver between the hour at which he is ordered to be ready and that at which he appears. It was a misty morning in early June, the time of all times for Connemara, did the tourist only know it. The mountains towered green and grey above the palely s.h.i.+ning sea in which they stood; the air was full of the sound of streams and the scent of wild flowers; the thin mist had in it something of the dazzle of the sunlight that was close behind it. Little Mrs. Spicer pulled down her veil: even after a fortnight's fly-fis.h.i.+ng she still retained some regard for her complexion.

"She says she can't come," she responded; "she has letters to write or something--and this is our last day!"

Mrs. Spicer evidently found the fact provoking.

"On this information the favourite receded 33 to 1," remarked Captain Spicer. "I think you may as well chuck it, my dear."

"I should like to beat them both!" said his wife, flinging a pebble into the rising tide that was very softly mouthing the seaweedy rocks below them.

"Well, here's Rupert; you can begin on him."

"Nothing would give me greater pleasure!" said Rupert's sister vindictively. "A great teasing, squabbling baby! Oh, how I hate fools!

and they are _both_ fools!--Oh, there you are, Rupert," a well-simulated blandness invading her voice; "and what's f.a.n.n.y Fitz doing?"

"She's trying to do a Mayo man over a horse-deal," replied Mr. Rupert Gunning.

"A horse-deal!" repeated Mrs. Spicer incredulously. "f.a.n.n.y buying a horse! Oh, impossible!"

"Well, I don't know about that," said Mr. Gunning, "she's trying pretty hard. I gave her my opinion--"