H. De Vere Stacpoole

“ The meet was fixed for nine o’clock at the cross-roads, by the village of Castle Knock; and at eight you might have seen Bob Mahony, the sweep, clattering down the main street of Castle Knock in his donkey-cart, his face washed and shining, so that you would never have known he was a sweep, only for the traces of soot round the back of his ears and the nape of his neck that the towel had failed to reach.
He always turned out for a meet of the hounds. His donkey was a tiny mouse-coloured beast, the quickest and the wickedest donkey in the county. ”

“ Dicky had almost forgotten the burglar he was going to trap that night. The other business consumed most of his superfluous energy and thoughts. The readiness with which Violet Lestrange had fallen in with his views might have given a cold-blooded man of the world pause, for, once a girl begins smashing conventions, who knows where she will stop? But Mr Fanshawe, wise in his love, felt no uneasiness on this score; the thing that worried him was the fifteen Irish miles between Glen Druid and Tullagh station. ”

“ They entered the long drive that cut through the woods in the direction of Castle Knock. They had gone scarcely a quarter of a mile down it when a faint, flickering glow amidst the trees on the right became visible, and Patsy, clutching at his uncle’s coat-tail, hung back.
He had heard often enough that the witches had a habit of meeting by night in the woods here about. They would light a fire and make soup in a big pot, and whilst it was boiling they would all sit round and make jokes and tell stories, and their laughter—so the tale went—was enough to turn a man’s hair grey. ”

“ Patsy had no hand in the locking of the door. The idea of inveigling Mr Boxall out on the lawn to interview Mr Mooney was one of those flash-in-the-pan ideas constantly occurring in his harum-scarum brain; he had forgotten all about the business in the preparations for the burglar, and, had he known of Mr Boxall’s plight, he would have been the first to let him in. Of course, the excluded one could have knocked, but that would have meant explanations, so he temporised; in the midst of his indecision, the clock in the turret struck the half-hour after eleven. ”

“ The stone wall of the road was so low that the race between the donkey-cart and the “tub” could be clearly seen by the people in the waggonette.
“Why, God bless my soul!” said Uncle Molyneux, screwing his eye-glass tight in his eye and half standing up so as to get a better view, “I believe it is my nephew and niece.”
“They’ll be over!” cried Violet Lestrange, who was also half standing up. “Look! look! the pony is running away.”
“Who’s that ruffian in the donkey-cart?” cried General Grampound. “They are racing him—the pony has not run away ”

“ She gazed at the ruins before her, and took in the whole extent of the catastrophe, as did Mr Fanshawe. The position was horrible. Any moment the pursuer might arrive, and then what was to be done? He could not fight his uncle, there was nothing possible except ignominious capitulation. When you are successful in an affair of this kind you are an object of admiration to every one, especially the women. ”

“ And here, whilst Mr Fanshawe waits, let me interpolate a few lines.
When Mr Boxall left the shade of the trees and emerged into the full moonlight, the clock of Glen Druid House was striking eleven. Beneath the anger boiling in his soul lay the deep satisfaction a man experiences when he has kicked his antithesis. He made his way across the park-land and lawn, and, on tiptoe, crossed the gravel path to the front steps ”

“ Nearly every cottager boarded a dog; Mr French (a cousin of Mr O’Farrell, the Master of the Hounds) supplied most of the money requisite, and Shan Finucane was the huntsman.
Shan had been after hares for thirty years or so. He was a cadaverous-looking person with solid leather lungs, a face the colour of mahogany (almost) , an eye like a gimlet, and an old green coat with three brass buttons on it. A battered old hunting horn, and a whip with a leaden ball on the top of it completed Shan’s rig-out. ”

“ You see, uncle is like nothing so much in the world as a vicious old maid who has been crossed in love and hates to see other people happy. Violet, darling——
“Oh, bother the pigs—Yes, Selina, there were six little pigs, and one had a gun—here, play with my watch—Violet, darling, it has come to this, that both our lives will be wrecked by that old lunatic if we are not careful—the old Seagrave woman is aiding and abetting him. I have lots of money for us both, I love you, you care for me—let’s go in for a bold stroke. Look here, he’s always threatening to put you in Chancery—let’s outwit him. ”

“ Mr Murphy, shutting one eye, made out a black mass on the road ahead of them.
“It’s a cart broke down,” said he; “where there’s a smash-up there’s always pickin’s. Jay up—we’ll lind them our ’sistance.”
It was the dogcart—a horrible ruin, one wheel off and shafts broken. Patsy holding Fly-by-night (name of satire) by the bridle, Miss Lestrange seated, like a young and beautiful Niobe, in a mole-skin cloak, on the hedge bank, and Dicky Fanshawe trying to console her.
“Hulloo, hulloo,” cried Mr Murphy, as he trotted up, “what’s the truble wid ye? Why, glory be to God, it’s Mr Fanshawe!” ”

“ THE STORY OF THE PIG “Now sit down, Bob, and do try to behave yourself; Selina shall sit in my lap if she will promise to be good, and I will tell you a story—Doris, leave the poker alone—Dear me, dear me,” said Miss Lestrange, suddenly assuming a grandmotherly tone, “who’d be worried by children? Where is my snuff-box and my cane?—Well, then, sit still and count ten to yourselves all round whilst I think of a story.”
She was seated in the old broken-down nursery rocking-chair with Selina in her lap ”

“ I’m going to stroll down to the woods. Rake out a bag to put the cartridges in, and stick on a cap; I want you to follow me.”
“Right, sir,” said Patsy; then, glancing round to see that no one was listening; “I’ve got the pulley, and the screws for it, Mr Fanshawe, and the ould rope from the flagstaff, and all ready for fixing.”
“Good!” said Mr Fanshawe. “And, see here, we’ll want help; do you know any one who could be trusted?”
“Larry, the stable-man, is the chap you want, sir; he’s as strong as an ox, and for half a crown he’d be as dumb as a coffin board.” ”

“ Run, Bob Murphy, and don’t stop to pick yourself up if y’ tumble down, and give me respects to the Widdy Finnegan. Ax her to loose the dog; she has him shut in the ould pig-sty, most like. She hasn’t tumbled to the chune of the horn, for she’s as deaf as a coffin, and half moidhered in her mind. What was you axing me, Mr O’Rourke?”
The farmer repeated his question.
“Tare an’ ages!” cried Shan, letting fly his whip at a harrier that had got a rabbit-beagle down on its back and was making for a hold in its throat, “them two dogs is the Siamese twins for fighting. ”

“ Even now, though he put his leg over the sill of the window, he would not have dared to enter the room, for that would have been housebreaking; but nothing could be done to a man for simply standing at a window and “colloguing” with his nephew. If Mrs Kinsella had appeared armed with a broom he would have run like a scared rabbit; but Patsy did not know this, Patsy took his uncle on his face value, and certainly Con’s face was of more value to him in affairs of this sort than his heart, for his face was the face of a formidable and villainous-looking rogue. ”

“ Doris, whose head, according to Miss Kiligrew, was stuffed with “nonsense,” imagined castles and knights in armour and swans floating on lakes round the bend of the road; why, goodness only knows, for the man and the pig were the most commonplace figures on earth. Lord Gawdor imagined a market such as took place every month at Castle Knock; he could not imagine, nearly so well as Doris—that is to say, he could only imagine things he had seen.
When Patsy arrived with the tea-tray, Doris was seated on the hearthrug reading out of a book of Welsh Fairy Tales. ”

“ Right across the park he was coming, a dingy scarlet figure on a big brown horse.
“It’s Billy Croom, the second whip!” cried Mr Mahony, who was standing up in his cart. “Will yiz look at the face of him, white as chalk!”
The huntsman took the sunk fence dividing the great lawn from the grasslands, and, full gallop, came, scattering the crowd to right and to left till ten paces from where General Grampound, Dicky Fanshawe and Miss Lestrange were grouped he reined in, bringing the big brown mare on her haunches. ”

“ Though the beagles were good sport, and their runs sometimes attended by the “quality,” a section of the sporting community of Castle Knock turned up its nose at them.
Billy the Buck, for instance, would, so he declared, have sooner been found dead in a ditch than “runnin’ afther them baygles.” The little short runs that a hare afforded were no use to Billy: great stretches of country were the desire of his soul; besides, he was at mortal enmity with Shan.
Mr Mahony, the sweep, was also an anti-beagleite. His donkey-cart was never seen at a meet of “thim tarriers,” as he called them. ”

“ It is a much easier matter to draw the pen portrait of a Mr Mahony than of a Violet Lestrange. Dark, with violet eyes and a beautiful complexion, she had that lost touch of beauty only to be found, I think, and that very rarely, amongst the women of Ireland ”

“ It was Paddy Murphy. He was sitting on a bundle of dried ferns toasting his toes at the burning logs, his old hat without a brim was on the back of his head, and he held a big stick in his hand with which every now and then he gave the burning embers a prod.
“So you’ve brought him,” said Paddy, looking up as Con, leading his nephew by the ear, broke out of the wood into the zone of firelight; “you’ve cocht him alive-o. Faith, but it’s well he’s looking; but what’s become of his buttons and stripes?” ”

“ General Grampound was not a bad man; he was worse, he was a coldly pig-headed man. He was also a match-maker. Match-making (I do not refer to Lucifers) is an Army disease; it is caught from living in warm climates; it attacks colonels and generals, and they never recover from it.
To be a match-maker you must also be a match-breaker. In other words, if you mix and meddle in other people’s love affairs you must inevitably do mischief.
The General was determined that Violet Lestrange should marry Mr Boxall, M.P., because, from the General’s point of view, Mr Boxall, M.P., was a “good match.” ”

“ I’ll get a special licence, we’ll take the train to Dublin; you can stop at my aunt’s in Merrion Square—she’s a regular sportsman—and before they can stop us we’ll be married. I know it’s awfully sudden my proposing this, but what am I to do? Look at us—we can scarcely speak to each other, unless by strategy. And I know this, unless you do as I say, we will never be married, for you will never have strength to resist uncle; he’ll keep nagging to you till he breaks your spirit. And that beast of a Boxall—suppose he has got seven thousand a year, money isn’t happiness tied to a brute like that. ”

“ Mr Boxall was fat, and rather plain, and had a glass eye; that did not matter in the least to the General. Had you remonstrated with him, he would probably have answered you, “Dash, it, sir—the girl’s not going to marry the fellow’s glass eye! He has seven thousand a year, and a tin mine; what more do you want? He doesn’t smoke, he doesn’t play cards, he doesn’t read novels or fritter his time away in rubbish; what more do you want? He’s strong on army reform, and he’s sound on the tariff question; what more do you want? ”

“ Billy halted, dead, and looked around him upon his discomfited audience.
“O’Farrell’s hounds meet at the Big House at tin o’clock,” said Mr Stone. “I was jew be this to see Mr Moriarty’s cow. She’s swallowed a dish-clath off a hedge, bad scran to her! and can’t get shut of it—but she’ll have to wait for me attindance till afther the meet. I wouldn’t miss it for two hundred cows, for you mark me words, there’ll be things to be seen.”
“Faith,” said Mr Mullins, “I had this pair of brogues to finish be twelve, but, begorra! if I never struck another peg I’ll be wid you to see the fun.” ”

“ Next moment Patsy, Mr Murphy and Con were running through the woods, each in a different direction. Patsy could hear the terrified shouts of the others, and he stopped and held on to the trunk of a small beech tree and laughed till the tree shook.
Then he resumed his way back to the Big House at a “sweep’s trot” under the light of the moon that was just rising over the distant hills. His window was still open and the candle had burnt itself out, but the moon gave light enough to get into bed by. Still laughing and chuckling to himself, he got between the sheets. ”

“ You can’t understand an old lady of that sort, because you are not a woman. If she had heard what he said, she would have made you go off at once—I know her.”
“Why,” cried Dicky, “that was just what he was trying to ask her to do! Patsy told me he began by asking her to send me off at once, as I was conducting myself in an ungentlemanly manner, and ruining your prospects of marriage——”
“We had two enemies to our happiness,” said Violet, “Patsy has made one confound the other. What did she say to all that?”
“She said, ‘Speak louder,’” replied Mr Fanshawe with a grim chuckle. ”

“ Mr Stone, the “cow-doctor” (he doctored horses too, and sheep, but cows were his speciality) , riding by on an animal that recalled nothing so much as Wallenstein’s [2] horse, drew up.
“So Paddy’s took,” said Mr Stone.
“So we was sayin’,” replied Mr Mullins.
“What’ll he get, at all?” asked Mr Stone, of no one in particular.
“Seven year, if he gets an hour,” replied the sweep.
“Ohone!” cried Mrs Mahony, who was standing in the doorway behind her lord and master with the inevitable baby in her arms. “Sure, it’s crool to think of it, a fine figure of a man like him.” ”

“ He had cleaned the bit with sand, he was now polishing it with a chamois-leather and loving tenderness. If Larry was a living example of what horses can do for a man, the harness room was an object-lesson of what a man can do for harness. It was good to look at the glossy, nut-brown, pig-skin saddles on their rests, the suits of carriage harness, each complete and in its proper place.
“Lave down that whip, or I’ll be takin’ the butt of it to you!” cried Larry.
Patsy put the whip aside and waited, making no attempt at conversation, which he knew would be useless. ”

“ He was just half a second too late; the soot bag, swung like a club, missed Shan, and, catching Mr Boxall fair and square on the side of his face, sent him spinning like a tee-totum across the road, and head over heels in the ditch.
That was all.
A dead silence took the yelling crowd.
“He’s kilt!” came a voice.
“He isn’t; sure, his legs is wavin’.”
“Who is he?”
“He’s the Mimber of Parlyment.”
“Off wid you, Bob Mahony—you’ve kilt the Mimber of Parlyment! Run for your life, and don’t lave off runnin’ till you’re out of the county.”
“Hold your tongue!” cried General Grampound. “Boxall—hullo! ”

“ To run away with a woman is the only excuse for a man ever running away; let the woman be subtracted and the excuse is gone, and the man is an object of derision to every one—especially the women.
Miss Lestrange felt this as keenly as her companion.
“Dicky,” she cried, “I’m all right. Do something. Get the horse up. Is the dogcart quite broken?”
“Quite,” said Mr Fanshawe. He unbuckled the straps of the harness, freed the broken shafts, and got Fly-by-night on her feet with Patsy’s help.
“Patsy,” said Mr Fanshawe, “isn’t there any place round here we could get a cart?” ”

“ Shan Finucane, with Rafter at his heels, was present, and Shan never turned up for a meet of the fox-hounds on any ordinary account. Shepherd’s Cross had vomited its entire population, Tullagh had sent a big contingent; the whole population, except the pigs, the hens, and one bed-ridden individual of Castle Knock, had turned out; and even Castle Connell, a tiny hamlet seven miles away, had sent its representative to swell the crowd. ”

“ So had a lot of other people. It was a hearse with plumes, driven by a man without a head, and it was supposed to haunt the grounds of Glen Druid Park, sometimes even in daylight.
The horrible thing about it was that when the man without the head saw you, he made straight for you; and, if he overtook you, down he would get and bundle you into the vehicle and drive off, and then you were done for.
The snow on the drive, like the snow on the grass of the park, showed all sorts of little footprints. Tracks of hares and rabbits and the trail of a stoat, Patsy knew and could distinguish them all. ”

“ It popped out of his head when that sweep chap hit him. Patsy saw it on the road, and put it in his pocket.”
“Oh!” said Miss Lestrange.
“He’s sent a telegram for another one,” went on Mr Fanshawe; “Cupid’s messenger, you know—ha! ha! ha!”
Miss Lestrange did not go into the same convulsions of merriment. To a girl every man who presents himself in the guise of a suitor, whether he is acceptable or wildly impossible, is a sort of trinket, a personal possession—at the lowest, a scalp. ”

“ The children interested Patsy a lot. He had never spoken to them, but he had seen them at a distance in the park, driving in the governess-cart with their governess.
Once he had met them all quite close in the drive, and Selina had laughed and nodded to him in quite a friendly way; the other children smiled, but Miss Kiligrew frowned, and he heard her say:
“Selina, who is that dirty little boy you are nodding to? Remember that you are a lady.” ”

“ As the people in the drawing-room were seated, Lady Molyneux at the table turning over the leaves of an album, Violet Lestrange by the fire gazing at the burning logs and Lady Seagrave nodding in her easy-chair opposite Violet, Patsy entered with a tray containing coffee.
“The childer are in the nursery, miss,” said Patsy in a low tone, as he presented the tray to Violet. ”

“ A whisper would have ruined him if conveyed to the “quality” in the house; but no one whispered. Larry Lyburn, the coachman, the stable helpers, all knew what was on; yet they led out Mr Fanshawe’s horse, and a horse for General Grampound and a horse for Miss Lestrange, and did the business, deaf and dumb to everything else. Mrs Kinsella knew what was afoot, and the maids; as for Patsy, when he had brought the prisoned one some breakfast, he had brought him also another file. ”

“ He could tell the movements of a stoat from those of a rabbit. He knew every cart and carriage for miles round by the sound it made, and he knew now quite well that the thing coming along the drive was no ghost carriage, but Tim Brady’s dung-cart, for the left wheel had a squeak of its own that was quite unmistakable.
Mr Brady’s business in life was to collect manure and sell it, and as he had the habit of stopping at public-houses and places on the way home, he was often late in his peregrinations.
“Are your eyes open, Patsy?” said Mr Murphy, who still had a tight hold of the boy. ”

“ General, give your arm to Lady Molyneux. What have you two been talking so earnestly about?”
“Roses,” replied Dicky, with a side glance at Violet Lestrange, who was passing him, on the arm of Mr Boxall.
“I’m glad they’ve done jawing,” said Lord Gawdor, when the last of the guests had vanished into the dining-room; “it’ll be an hour now before the sweets are brought up.”
“Bob,” said Doris, “I believe she’s in love with him.”
“Who?”
“Miss Lestrange with Mr Fanshawe.”
“Oh, that rot,” said his lordship. “Girls are always fallin’ in love with fellows—makes me sick. Hi, Patsy!” ”

“ Ireland is an accident factory; these things could never happen in England. An Irishman creates an accident and then somehow makes events from it. Patsy doesn’t do things of a set purpose, but he takes hold of opportunity, and he can make more of an accident than most people. But the thing that is bothering me is this. Though Patsy, by means of an eau de Cologne cork, has stopped me from being summarily expelled, all the Patsys and all the eau de Cologne corks in the world won’t stop uncle from leaving and taking you away with him. ”

“ Rafferty’s Clump is a huge spinny; it forms part of the Galtee woods. There are not many trees in the Galtee woods; it is a great space of barren country, with here and there an isolated copse. The horsemen moved off down the road, following the master and the hounds, and the governess-cart and donkey-cart followed in the crush.
“Mind your manners!” cried Patsy, as the sweep’s donkey-cart jostled the “tub,” as the governess-cart was sometimes called. “There’s no hurry; they won’t be needin’ you yet awhile to frighten the fox out of the wood.” ”

“ This way, sir.”
Lady Seagrave was seated by the fire in the boudoir just as we saw her on the day Patsy Rooney made her acquaintance.
“How you have grown!” said the old lady, when she had shaken hands with her visitor and motioned him to a seat on the opposite side of the fireplace. “The last time I saw you, you were in knickerbockers and a turned-down collar. I hope you have grown in wisdom as well as in stature. You will find the house rather dull to-day, I’m afraid, but it will be more lively to-morrow, for I am expecting a house-party of quite interesting people.” ”

“ General Grampound and Mr Boxall were non-smokers, and as Mr Boxall was also a teetotaler, and the General was talking politics, Dicky Fanshawe found things rather dull in the dining-room when the ladies had withdrawn.
Things were almost as dull in the drawing-room, for Lady Seagrave was deaf, and Lady Molyneux was stupid.
I must have presented Patsy very badly if you have not discovered that he was the possessor of an “eye”—the eye of an observer. ”