"He knows what's what!" said the "Loc.u.m."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "HE KNOWS WHAT'S WHAT!" SAID THE LOc.u.m]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ]

XII

THE WHITEBOYS

PART I

It has been said by an excellent authority that children and dogs spoil conversation. I can confidently say that had Madame de Sevigne and Dr.

Johnson joined me and my family on our wonted Sunday afternoon walk to the kennels, they would have known what it was to be ignored. This reflection bears but remotely on the matter in hand, but is, I think, worthy of record. I pa.s.s on to a certain still and steamy afternoon in late September, when my wife and I headed forth in the accustomed way, accompanied by, or (to be accurate), in pursuit of, my two sons, my two dogs, and a couple of hound puppies, to view that spectacle of not unmixed attractiveness, the feeding of the hounds.

Flurry Knox and Michael were superintending the operation when we arrived, coldly observing the gobbling line at the trough, like reporters at a public dinner. It was while the last horrid remnants of the repast were being wolfed that my wife hesitatingly addressed Mr.

Knox's First Whip and Kennel Huntsman.

"Michael," she said, lowering her voice, "you know the children's old donkey that I spoke to you about last week--I'm afraid you _had_ better----"

"Sure he's boiled, ma'am," said Michael with swift and awful brevity, "that's him in the throch now!"

Philippa hastily withdrew from the vicinity of the trough, murmuring something incoherent about cannibals or parricides, I am not sure which, and her eldest son burst into tears that were only a.s.suaged by the tactful intervention of the kennel-boy with the jawbone of a horse, used for propping open the window of the boiler-house.

"Never mind, Mrs. Yeates," said Flurry consolingly, "the new hounds that I'm getting won't be bothered with donkeys as long as there's a sheep left in the country, if the half I hear of them is true!" He turned to me. "Major, I didn't tell you I have three couple of O'Reilly's old Irish hounds bought. They're the old white breed y'know, and they say they're terrors to hunt."

"They'd steal a thing out of your eye," said Michael, evidently reverting to an interrupted discussion between himself and his master.

"There's a woman of the O'Reillys married back in the country here, and she says they killed two cows last season."

"If they kill any cows with me, I'll stop the price of them out of your wages, Michael, my lad!" said Flurry to his henchman's back. "Look here, Major, come on with me to-morrow to bring them home!"

It was, I believe, no more than fifty miles across country to the mountain fastness of the O'Reillys, and a certain chord of romance thrilled at the thought of the old Irish breed of white hounds, with their truly national qualities of talent, rebelliousness, and love of sport. Playboy was one of the same race--Playboy, over whose recapture, it may be remembered, I had considerably distinguished myself during my term of office as M.F.H.

I went. At one o'clock next day two lines of rail had done their uttermost for us, and had ceded the task of conveying us to Fahoura to the inevitable outside car. And still there remained a long flank of mountain to be climbed; the good little slave in the shafts made no complaint, but save for the honour and glory of the thing we might as well have walked; certainly of the seven Irish miles of road, thrown over the pa.s.s like a strap over a trunk, our consciences compelled us to tramp at least three. A stream, tawny and translucent as audit ale, foamed and slid among its brown boulders beside us at the side of the road; as we crawled upwards the fields became smaller, and the lonely whitewashed cottages ceased. The heather came down to the wheel marks, and a pack of grouse suddenly whizzed across the road like a shot fired across our bows to warn us off.

At the top of the pa.s.s we stood, and looked out over half a county to the pale peaks of Killarney.

"There's Fahoura now, gentlemen," said the carman, pointing downwards with his whip to a group of whitewashed farm buildings, that had gathered themselves incongruously about a square grey tower. "I'm told old Mr. O'Reilly's sick this good while."

"What ails him?" said Flurry.

"You wouldn't know," said the carman, "sure he's very old, and that 'fluenzy has the country destroyed; there's people dying now that never died before."

"That's bad," said Flurry sympathetically, "I had a letter from him a week ago, and he only said he was parting the hounds because he couldn't run with them any more."

"Ah, don't mind him!" said the carman, "it's what it is he'd sooner sell them now, than to give the nephew the satisfaction of them, after himself'd be dead."

"Is that the chap that's been hunting them for him?" said Flurry, while I, for the hundredth time, longed for Flurry's incommunicable gift of being talked to.

"It is, sir; Lukey O'Reilly--" the carman gave a short laugh. "That's the lad! They say he often thried to go to America, but he never got south of Mallow; he gets that drunk sayin' good-bye to his friends!"

"Maybe the old fellow will live a while yet, just to spite him,"

suggested Flurry.

"Well, maybe he would, faith!" agreed the carman, "didn't the docthor say to meself that maybe it's walking the road I'd be, and I to fall down dead!" he continued complacently, "but sure them docthors, when they wouldn't know what was in it, they should be saying something!"

We here turned into the lane that led to Mr. O'Reilly's house.

We pulled up at the gate of a wide farmyard, with outcrops of the brown mountain rock in it, and were a.s.sailed in the inevitable way by the inevitable mongrel collies. Blent with their vulgar abuse was the mellow baying of hounds, coming, seemingly, from the sky. The carman pointed to the tower which filled an angle of the yard, and I saw, about twenty feet from the ground, an arrow-slit, through which protruded white muzzles, uttering loud and tuneful threats.

"The kitchen door's the handiest way," said Flurry, "but I suppose for grandeur we'd better go to the front of the house."

He opened a side gate, and I followed him through a wind-swept enclosure that by virtue of two ragged rose-bushes, and a walk edged with white stones, probably took rank as a garden. At the front door we knocked; a long pause ensued, and finally bare feet thudded down a pa.s.sage, a crack of the door was opened, and an eye glistened for a moment in the crack. It was slammed again, and after a further delay it was reopened, this time by a large elderly woman with crinkled black and grey hair and one long and commanding tooth in the front of her mouth.

"Why then I wasn't looking to see ye till to-morrow, Mr. Knox!" she began, beaming upon Flurry, "but sure ye're welcome any day and all day, and the gentleman too!"

The gentleman was introduced, and felt himself being summed up in a single glance of Miss O'Reilly's nimble brown eyes. With many apologies, she asked us if we would come and see her brother in the kitchen, as he did not feel well enough to walk out to the parlour, and she couldn't keep him in the bed at all.

The kitchen differed more in size than in degree from that of the average cabin. There was the same hummocky earthen floor, the same sallow whitewashed walls, the same all-pervading turf smoke--the difference was in the master of the house. He was seated by the fire in an angular armchair, with an old horse-blanket over his knees, and a stick in his hand, and beside him lay an ancient white hound, who scarcely lifted her head at our entrance. The old man laboured to his feet, and, bent as he was, he towered over Flurry as he took his hand.

"Your father's son is welcome, Mr. Florence Knox, and your friend--"

He was short of breath, and he lowered his great frame into his chair again. "Sit down, gentlemen, sit down!" he commanded. "Joanna! These gentlemen are after having a long drive----"

The clink of gla.s.ses told that the same fact had occurred to Miss O'Reilly, and a bottle of port, and another of what looked like water, but was in effect old potheen, were immediately upon the table.

"How well ye wouldn't put down a gla.s.s for me!" thundered old O'Reilly, "I suppose it's saving it for my wake you are!"

"Or her own wedding, maybe!" said Flurry, shamelessly ogling Miss O'Reilly, "we'll see that before the wake, I'm thinking!"

"Well, well, isn't he the dead spit of his father!" said Miss O'Reilly to the rafters.

"Here, woman, give me the kettle," said her brother, "I'll drink my gla.s.s of punch with Mr. Florence Knox, the way I did with his father before him! The doctor says I might carry out six months, and I think myself I won't carry out the week, but what the divil do I care! I'm going to give Mr. Knox his pick of my hounds this day, and that's what no other man in Ireland would get, and be dam we'll wet our bargain!"

"Well, well," said Miss O'Reilly, remonstratingly, bringing the kettle, "and you that was that weak last night that if you got Ireland's crown you couldn't lift the bedclothes off your arms!"

"Them hounds are in my family, seed and breed, this hundred years and more," continued old O'Reilly, silencing his sister with one black glance from under his thick grey brows, "and if I had e'er a one that was fit to come after me they'd never leave it!" He took a gulp of the hot punch. "Did ye ever hear of my brother Phil that was huntsman to the Charlevilles long ago, Mr. Knox? Your father knew him well.

Many's the good hunt they rode together. He wasn't up to forty years when he was killed, broke his neck jumping a hurl, and when they went to bury him it's straight in over the churchyard wall they took him!

They said he never was one to go round looking for a gate!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THEM HOUNDS ARE IN MY FAMILY, SEED AND BREED, THIS HUNDRED YEARS."]

"May the Lord have mercy on him!" murmured Miss O'Reilly in the background.

"Amen!" growled the old man, taking another pull at his steaming tumbler, as if he were drinking his brother's health. "And look at me here," he went on, reddening slowly through the white stubble on his cheeks, "dying as soft as any owld cow in a boghole, and all they'll be saying afther me is asking would they get their bellyful of whisky at my wake! I tell you this--and let you be listening to me, Joanna!--what hounds Mr. Knox doesn't take, I'll not leave them afther me to be disgraced in the counthry, running rabbits on Sunday afternoons with them poaching blackguards up out of the town! No! But they'll have a stone round their neck and to be thrown below in the lough!"

I thought of the nephew Luke, whose friends had so frequently failed to see him off, and I felt very sorry for old O'Reilly.