Seven years of Resident Magistracy had bestowed upon me some superficial knowledge of whither all this tended. I rose from the steps, with the stereotyped statement that if there was to be a case in court I could not listen to it beforehand. I then closed the hall door, not, however, before Mrs. Brickley had a.s.sured me that I was the only gentleman, next to the Lord Almighty, in whom she had any confidence.

The next incident in the affair occurred at about a quarter to eight that evening. I was tying my tie when my wife's voice summoned me to her room in tones that presaged disaster. Philippa was standing erect, in a white and glittering garment. Her eyes shone, her cheeks glowed.

It is not given to every one to look their best when they are angry, but it undoubtedly is becoming to Philippa.

"I ask you to look at my dress," she said in a level voice.

"It looks very nice----" I said cautiously, knowing there was a trap somewhere. "I know it, don't I?"

"Know it!" replied Philippa witheringly, "did you know that it had only one sleeve?"

She extended her arms; from one depended vague and transparent films of whiteness, the other was bare to the shoulder. I rather preferred it of the two.

"Well, I can't say I did," I said helplessly, "is that a new fashion?"

There was a spectral knock at the door, and Hannah, the housemaid, slid into the room, purple of face, abject of mien.

"It's what they're afther tellin' me, ma'am," she panted. "'Twas took to sthrain the soup!"

"They took my sleeve to strain the soup!" repeated Philippa, in a crystal clarity of wrath.

"She said she got it in the press in the pa.s.sage, ma'am, and she thought you were afther throwin' it," murmured Hannah, with a glance that implored my support.

"Who are you speaking of?" demanded Philippa, looking quite six feet high.

The situation, already sufficiently acute, was here intensified by the ma.s.sive entry of Mrs. Cadogan, bearing in her hand a plate, on which was a mound of soaked brownish rag. She was blowing hard, the glare of the kitchen range at highest power lived in her face.

"There's your sleeve, ma'am!" she said, "and if I could fall down dead this minute it'd be no more than a relief to me! And as for Bridgie Brickley!" continued Mrs. Cadogan, catching her wind with a gasp, "I thravelled many genthry's kitchens, but thanks be to G.o.d, I never seen the like of her! Five weeks to-morrow she's in this house, and there isn't a day but I gave her a laceratin'! Sure the hair's droppin' out o' me head, and the skin rollin' off the soles o' me feet with the heart scald I get with her! The big, low, dirty buccaneer! And I declare to you, ma'am, and to the Major, that I have a pain switching out through me hips this minute that'd bring down a horse!"

"Oh G.o.d!" said Hannah, clapping her hand over her mouth.

My eye met Philippa's; some tremor of my inward agony declared itself, and found its fellow on her quivering lips. In the same instant, wheels rumbled in the avenue.

"Here are the Knoxes!" I exclaimed, escaping headlong from the room with my dignity as master of the house still intact.

Dinner, though somewhat delayed by these agitations, pa.s.sed off reasonably well. Its occasion was the return from the South African war of my landlord and neighbour, Mr. Florence McCarthy Knox, M.F.H., J.P., who had been serving his country in the Yeomanry for the past twelve months. The soup gave no hint of its cannibalistic origin, and was of a transparency that did infinite credit to the services of Philippa's sleeve; the pollock, chastely robed in white sauce, held no suggestion of a stormy past, nor, it need scarcely be said, did they foreshadow their influence on my future. As they made their circuit of the table I aimed a communing glance at my wife, who, serene in pale pink and conversation with Mr. Knox, remained unresponsive.

How the volcano that I knew to be raging below in the kitchen could have brought forth anything more edible than molten paving stones I was at a loss to imagine. Had Mrs. Cadogan sent up Bridget Brickley's head as an _entremet_ it would not, indeed, have surprised me. I could not know that as the gong sounded for dinner Miss Brickley had retired to her bed in strong hysterics, announcing that she was paralysed, while Mrs. Cadogan, rapt by pa.s.sion to an ecstasy of achievement, coped single-handed with the emergency.

At breakfast time next morning Philippa and I were informed that the invalid had at an early hour removed herself and her wardrobe from the house, requisitioning for the purpose my donkey-cart and the attendance of my groom, Peter Cadogan; a proceeding on which the comments of Peter's aunt, Mrs. Cadogan, left nothing to be desired.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE INVALID REMOVED HERSELF]

The affair on the strand at Hare Island ripened, with infinite complexity of summonses and cross-summonses, into an imposing Petty Sessions case. Two separate deputations presented themselves at Shreelane, equipped with black eyes and other conventional injuries, one of them armed with a creelful of live lobsters to underline the argument. To decline the bribe was of no avail: the deputation decanted them upon the floor of the hall and retired, and the lobsters spread themselves at large over the house, and to this hour remain the nightmare of the nursery.

The next Petty Sessions day was wet; the tall windows of the Court House were grey and streaming, and the reek of wet humanity ascended to the ceiling. As I took my seat on the bench I perceived with an inward groan that the services of the two most eloquent solicitors in Skebawn had been engaged. This meant that Justice would not have run its course till heaven knew what dim hour of the afternoon, and that that course would be devious and difficult.

All the pews and galleries (any Irish courthouse might, with the addition of a harmonium, pa.s.s presentably as a dissenting chapel) were full, and a line of flat-capped policemen stood like church-wardens near the door. Under the galleries, behind what might have answered to choir-stalls, the witnesses and their friends hid in darkness, which could, however, but partially conceal two resplendent young ladies, barmaids, who were to appear in a subsequent Sunday drinking case. I was a little late, and when I arrived Flurry Knox, supported by a couple of other magistrates, was in the chair, imperturbable of countenance as was his wont, his fair and delusive youthfulness of aspect unimpaired by his varied experiences during the war, his roving, subtle eye untamed by four years of matrimony.

A woman was being examined, a square and ugly country-woman, with wispy fair hair, a slow, dignified manner, and a slight and impressive stammer. I recognised her as one of the bodyguard of the lobsters.

Mr. Mooney, solicitor for the Brickleys, widely known and respected as "Roaring Jack," was in possession of that much-enduring organ, the ear of the Court.

"Now, Kate Keohane!" he thundered, "tell me what time it was when all this was going on?"

"About duskish, sir. Con Brickley was slashing the f-fish at me mother the same time. He never said a word but to take the shtick and fire me dead with it on the sthrand. He gave me plenty of blood to dhrink too," said the witness with acid decorum. She paused to permit this agreeable fact to sink in, and added, "his wife wanted to f-fashten on me the same time, an' she havin' the steer of the boat to sthrike me."

These were not precisely the facts that Mr. Murphy, as solicitor for the defence, wished to elicit.

"Would you kindly explain what you mean by the steer of the boat?" he demanded, sparring for wind in as intimidating a manner as possible.

The witness stared at him.

"Sure 'tis the shtick, like, that they pulls here and there to go in their choice place."

"We may presume that the lady is referring to the tiller," said Mr.

Mooney, with a facetious eye at the Bench. "Maybe now, ma'am, you can explain to us what sort of a boat is she?"

"She's that owld that if it wasn't for the weeds that's holding her together she'd bursht up in the deep."

"And who owns this valuable property?" pursued Mr. Mooney.

"She's between Con Brickley and me brother, an' the saine is between four, an' whatever crew does be in it should get their share, and the boat has a man's share."

I made no attempt to comprehend this, relying with well-founded confidence on Flurry Knox's grasp of such enigmas.

"Was Con Brickley fishing the same day?"

"He was not, sir. He was at Lisheen Fair; for as clever as he is, he couldn't kill two birds under one slat!"

Kate Keohane's voice moved unhurried from sentence to sentence and her slow pale eyes turned for an instant to the lair of the witnesses under the gallery.

"And you're asking the Bench to believe that this decent man left his business in Lisheen in order to slash fish at your mother?" said Mr.

Mooney truculently.

"B'lieve me, sorra much business he laves afther him wherever he'll go!" returned the witness, "himself and his wife had business enough on the sthrand when the fish was dividing, and it's then themselves put every name on me."

"Ah, what harm are names!" said Mr. Mooney, dallying elegantly with a ma.s.sive watch-chain. "Come now, ma'am! will you swear you got any ill-usage from Con Brickley or his wife?" He leaned over the front of his pew, and waited for the answer with his ma.s.sive red head on one side.

"I was givin' blood like a c-cow that ye'd shtab with a knife!" said Kate Keohane, with unshaken dignity. "If it was yourself that was in it ye'd feel the smart as well as me. My hand and word on it, ye would! The marks is on me head still, like the prints of dog-bites!"

She lifted a lock of hair from her forehead, and exhibited a sufficiently repellant injury. Flurry Knox leaned forward.

"Are you sure you haven't that since the time there was that business between yourself and the postmistress at Munig? I'm told you had the name of the office on your forehead where she struck you with the office stamp! Try now, sergeant, can you read Munig on her forehead?"

The Court, not excepting its line of church-wardens, dissolved into laughter; Kate Keohane preserved an offended silence.

"I suppose you want us to believe," resumed Mr. Mooney sarcastically, "that a fine hearty woman like you wasn't defending yourself!" Then with a turkey-c.o.c.k burst of fury, "On your oath now! What did you strike Honora Brickley with? Answer me that now! What had you in your hand?"

"I had nothing only the little rod I had afther the a.s.s," answered Miss Keohane, with childlike candour. "I done nothing to them; but as for Con Brickley he put his back to the cliff and he took the flannel wrop that he had on him, and he threwn it on the sthrand, and he said he should have Blood, Murdher, or F-Fish!"