All on the Irish Shore Part 4

"If that's the way," said the ostler, "ye mightn't get her again before the winther."

f.a.n.n.y Fitz left the matter, together with a further instalment of the thirty pounds, in the hands of the sergeant of police, and went home, and, improbable as it may appear, in the course of something less than ten days she received an invoice from the local railway station, Enniscar, briefly stating: "1 horse arrd. Please remove."

Many people, most of her friends indeed, were quite unaware that f.a.n.n.y Fitz possessed a home. Beyond the fact that it supplied her with a permanent address, and a place at which she was able periodically to deposit consignments of half-worn-out clothes, f.a.n.n.y herself was not p.r.o.ne to rate the privilege very highly. Possibly, two very elderly maiden step-aunts are discouraging to the homing instinct; the fact remained that as long as the youngest Miss Fitzroy possessed the where-withal to tip a housemaid she was but rarely seen within the decorous precincts of Craffroe Lodge.

Let it not for a moment be imagined that the Connemara filly was to become a member of this household. Even f.a.n.n.y Fitz, with all her optimism, knew better than to expect that William O'Loughlin, who divided his attentions between the ancient cob and the garden, and ruled the elder Misses Fitzroy with a rod of iron, would undertake the education of anything more skittish than early potatoes. It was to the stable, or rather cow-house, of one Johnny Connolly, that the new purchase was ultimately conveyed, and it was thither that f.a.n.n.y Fitz, with apples in one pocket and sugar in the other, conducted her ally, Mr. Freddy Alexander, the master of the Craffroe Hounds. f.a.n.n.y Fitz's friends.h.i.+p with Freddy was one of long standing, and was soundly based on the fact that when she had been eighteen he had been fourteen; and though it may be admitted that this is a discrepancy that somewhat fades with time, even Freddy's mother acquitted f.a.n.n.y Fitz of any ulterior motive; and Freddy was an only son.

"She was very rejected last night afther she coming in," said Johnny Connolly, manipulating as he spoke the length of rusty chain and bit of stick that fastened the door. "I think it was lonesome she was on the thrain."

f.a.n.n.y Fitz and Mr. Alexander peered into the dark and vasty interior of the cow-house; from a remote corner they heard a heavy breath and the jingle of a training bit, but they saw nothing.

"I have the cavesson and all on her ready for ye, and I was thinking we'd take her south into Mr. Gunning's land. His finces is very good,"

continued Johnny, going cautiously in; "wait till I pull her out."

Johnny Connolly was a horse trainer who did a little farming, or a farmer who did a little horse training, and his management of young horses followed no known rules, and indeed knew none, but it was generally successful. He fed them by rule of thumb; he herded them in hustling, squabbling parties in pitch-dark sheds; he ploughed them at eighteen months; he beat them with a stick like dogs when they transgressed, and like dogs they loved him. He had what gardeners call "a lucky hand" with them, and they throve with him, and he had, moreover, that gift of winning their wayward hearts that comes neither by cultivation nor by knowledge, but is innate and unconscious. Already, after two days, he and the Connemara filly understood each other; she sniffed distantly and with profound suspicion at f.a.n.n.y and her offerings, and entirely declined to permit Mr. Alexander to estimate her height on the questionable a.s.sumption that the point of his chin represented 15'2, but she allowed Johnny to tighten or slacken every buckle in her new and unfamiliar costume without protest.

"I think she'll make a ripping good mare," said the enthusiastic Freddy, as he and f.a.n.n.y Fitz followed her out of the yard; "I don't care what Rupert Gunning says, she's any amount of quality, and I bet you'll do well over her."

"She'll make a real nice fas.h.i.+onable mare," remarked Johnny, opening the gate of a field and leading the filly in, "and she's a sweet galloper, but she's very frightful in herself. Faith, I thought she'd run up the wall from me the first time I went to feed her! Ah ha! none o' yer thricks!" as the filly, becoming enjoyably aware of the large s.p.a.ce of gra.s.s round her, let fling a kick of malevolent exuberance at the two fox-terriers who were trotting decorously in her rear.

It was soon found that, in the matter of "stone gaps," the A B C of Irish jumping, Connemara had taught the grey filly all there was to learn.

"Begor, Miss f.a.n.n.y, she's as crabbed as a mule!" said her teacher approvingly. "D'ye mind the way she soaks the hind legs up into her!

We'll give her a bank now."

At the bank, however, the trouble began. Despite the ministrations of Mr. Alexander and a long whip, despite the precept and example of Mr.

Connolly, who performed prodigies of activity in running his pupil in at the bank and leaping on to it himself the filly time after time either ran her chest against it or swerved from it at the last instant with a vigour that plucked her preceptor from off it and scattered f.a.n.n.y Fitz and the fox-terriers like leaves before the wind. These latter were divided between sycophantic and shrieking indignation with the filly for declining to jump, and a most wary attention to the sphere of influence of the whip. They were a mother and daughter, as conceited, as craven, and as wholly attractive as only the judiciously spoiled ladies of their race can be. Their hearts were divided between f.a.n.n.y Fitz and the cook, the rest of them appertained to the Misses Harriet and Rachael Fitzroy, whom they regarded with toleration tinged with boredom.

"I tell ye now, Masther Freddy, 'tis no good for us to be goin' on sourin' the mare this way. 'Tis what the fince is too steep for her.

Maybe she never seen the like in that backwards counthry she came from.

We'll give her the bank below with the ditch in front of it. 'Tisn't very big at all, and she'll be bound to lep with the sup of wather that's in it."

Thus Johnny Connolly, wiping a very heated brow.

The bank below was a broad and solid structure well padded with gra.s.s and bracken, and it had a sufficiently obvious ditch, of some three feet wide, on the nearer side. The grand effort was duly prepared for. The bank was solemnly exhibited to the filly; the dogs, who had with unerring instinct seated themselves on its most jumpable portion, were scattered with one threat of the whip to the horizon. f.a.n.n.y tore away the last bit of bracken that might prove a discouragement, and Johnny issued his final order.

"Come inside me with the whip, sir, and give her one good belt at the last."

No one knows exactly how it happened. There was a rush, a scramble, a backward sliding, a great deal of shouting, and the Connemara filly was couched in the narrow ditch at right angles to the fence, with the water oozing up through the weeds round her, like a wild duck on its nest; and at this moment Mr. Rupert Gunning appeared suddenly on the top of the bank and inspected the scene with an amus.e.m.e.nt that he made little attempt to conceal.

It took half an hour, and ropes, and a number of Rupert Gunning's haymakers, to get f.a.n.n.y Fitz's speculation on to its legs again, and Mr.

Gunning's comments during the process successfully sapped f.a.n.n.y Fitz's control of her usually equable temper, "He's a beast!" she said wrathfully to Freddy, as the party moved soberly homewards in the burning June afternoon, with the horseflies cl.u.s.tering round them, and the smell of new-mown gra.s.s wafting to them from where, a field or two away, came the rattle of Rupert Gunning's mowing-machine. "A crabbing beast! It was just like my luck that he should come up at that moment and have the supreme joy of seeing Gamble--" Gamble was the filly's rarely-used name--"wallowing in the ditch! That's the second time he's scored off me. I _pity_ poor little Maudie Spicer for having such a brother!"

In spite of this discouraging _debut_, the filly's education went on and prospered. She marched discreetly along the roads in long reins; she champed detested mouthfuls of rusty mouthing bit in the process described by Johnny Connolly as "getting her neck broke"; she trotted for treadmill half-hours in the lunge; and during and in spite of all these penances, she fattened up and thickened out until that great authority, Mr. Alexander, p.r.o.nounced it would be a sin not to send her up to the Dublin Horse Show, as she was just the mare to catch an English dealer's eye.

"But sure ye wouldn't sell her, miss?" said her faithful nurse, "and Masther Freddy afther starting the hounds and all!"

f.a.n.n.y Fitz scratched the filly softly under the jawbone, and thought of the doc.u.ment in her pocket--long, and blue, and inscribed with the too familiar notice in red ink: "An early settlement will oblige".

"I must, Johnny," she said, "worse luck!"

"Well, indeed, that's too bad, miss," said Johnny comprehendingly.

"There was a mare I had one time, and I sold her before I went to America. G.o.d knows, afther she went from me, whenever I'd look at her winkers hanging on the wall I'd have to cry. I never seen a sight of her till three years afther that, afther I coming home. I was coming out o'

the fair at Enniscar, an' I was talking to a man an' we coming down Dangan Hill, and what was in it but herself coming up in a cart! "An' I didn't look at her, good nor bad, nor know her, but sorra bit but she knew me talking, an' she turned in to me with the cart! Ho, ho, ho!'

says she, and she stuck her nose into me like she'd be kissing me. Be dam, but I had to cry. An' the world wouldn't stir her out o' that till I'd lead her on meself. As for cow nor dog nor any other thing, there's nothing would rise your heart like a horse!"

It was early in July, a hot and sunny morning, and f.a.n.n.y Fitz, seated on the flawless gra.s.splot in front of Craffroe Lodge hall-door, was engaged in was.h.i.+ng the dogs. The mother, who had been the first victim, was morosely licking herself, shuddering effectively, and coldly ignoring her oppressor's apologies. The daughter, trembling in every limb, was standing knee-deep in the bath; one paw, placed on its rim, was ready for flight if flight became practicable; her tail, rigid with anguish would have hummed like a violin-string if it were touched. f.a.n.n.y, with her s.h.i.+rt-sleeves rolled up to her elbows, scrubbed in the soap. A clipped fuchsia hedge, the pride of William O'Loughlin's heart, screened the little lawn and garden from the high road.

"Good morning, Miss f.a.n.n.y," said a voice over the hedge.

f.a.n.n.y Fitz raised a flushed face and wiped a fleck of Naldyre off her nose with her arm.

"I've just been looking at your mare," went on the voice.

"Well, I hope you liked her!" said f.a.n.n.y Fitz defiantly, for the voice was the voice of Rupert Gunning, and there was that in it that in this connection acted on Miss Fitzroy as a slogan.

"Well, 'like' is a strong word, you know!" said Mr. Gunning, moving on and standing with his arms on the top of the white gate and meeting f.a.n.n.y's glance with provoking eyes. Then, as an after-thought, "Do you think you give her enough to eat?"

"She gets a feed of oats every Sunday, and strong tea and thistles through the week," replied f.a.n.n.y Fitz in furious sarcasm.

"Yes, that's what she looks like," said Rupert Gunning thoughtfully.

"Connolly tells me you want to send her to the show--Barnum's, I suppose--as the skeleton dude?"

"I believe you want to buy her yourself," retorted f.a.n.n.y, with a vicious dab of the soap in the daughter's eye.

"Yes, she's just about up to my weight, isn't she? By-the-bye, you haven't had her backed yet, I believe?"

"I'm going to try her to-day!" said f.a.n.n.y with sudden resolve.

"Ride her yourself!" said Mr. Gunning, his eyebrows going up into the roots of his hair.

"Yes!" said f.a.n.n.y, with calm as icy as a sudden burst of struggles on the part of the daughter would admit of.

Rupert Gunning hesitated; then he said, "Well, she ought to carry a side-saddle well. Decent shoulders, and a nice long--" Perhaps he caught f.a.n.n.y Fitz's eye; at all events, he left the commendation unfinished, and went on, "I should like to look in and see the performance, if I may? I suppose you wouldn't let me try her first? No?"

He walked on.

"Puppy, _will_ you stay quiet!" said f.a.n.n.y Fitz very crossly. She even slapped the daughter's soap-sud m.u.f.fled person, for no reason that the daughter could see.

"Begorra, miss, I dunno," said Johnny Connolly dubiously when the suggestion that the filly should be ridden there and then was made to him a few minutes later; "wouldn't ye wait till I put her a few turns under the cart, or maybe threw a sack o' oats on her back?"

But f.a.n.n.y would brook no delay. Her saddle was in the harness-room: William O'Loughlin could help to put it on; she would try the filly at once.

Miss Fitzroy's riding was of the sort that makes up in pluck what it wants in knowledge. She stuck on by sheer force of character; that she sat fairly straight, and let a horse's head alone were gifts of Providence of which she was wholly unconscious. Riding, in her opinion, was just getting on to a saddle and staying there, and making the thing under it go as fast as possible. She had always ridden other people's horses, and had ridden them so straight, and looked so pretty, that--other people in this connection being usually men--such trifles as riding out a hard run minus both fore shoes, or watering her mount generously during a check, were endured with a forbearance not frequent in horse owners. Hunting people, however, do not generally mount their friends, no matter how attractive, on young and valuable horses. f.a.n.n.y Fitz's riding had been matured on well-seasoned screws, and she sallied forth to the subjugation of the Connemara filly with a self-confidence formed on experience only of the old, and the kind, and the cunning.

The filly trembled and sidled away from the garden-seat up to which Johnny Connolly had manoeuvred her. Johnny's supreme familiarity with young horses had brought him to the same point of recklessness that f.a.n.n.y had arrived at from the opposite extreme, but some lingering remnant of prudence had induced him to put on the cavesson headstall, with the long rope attached to it, over the filly's bridle. The latter bore with surprising nerve f.a.n.n.y's depositing of herself in the saddle.