CHAPTER XIX TH’ OULD SCUT.

I HAVE made mention of the fact that during the haying season horses were difficult to get. We generally relied on Bert, but he was not always able to supply us with a means of conveyance to town. I had counted on him to bring Miss Paxton up, but I had neglected to say anything to him about it and our telepathic communication was out of kilter, for he never felt my desire, and so it fell out that when at four o’clock of Saturday afternoon I realized this and Ethel and I went down to his father’s to get him to harness up, we learned that he and his father were over in the “east lot” getting in some valuable hay—the weather threatening thunder storms—and that we could not possibly have either of the horses.

Here was a pretty how-de-do.

It was ten minutes after four and the train came to Egerton, three miles away, at 4:58. We might walk down and hire a livery team but even at that it would require speed.

In my dilemma Bert’s mother suggested that we try Pat Casey.

“He lives in the little red house beyond the ruins of the old church,” said she, “and you may be able to hire his horse.”

Across the fields to the little red house we hurried. A short, lithe, nimble-footed man was tossing hay in front of his house. We climbed the last fence and stood before him.

He looked up and greeted us pleasantly, his eyes twinkling with what looked like suppressed mischief.

“Is this Mr. Casey?”

“I’m Pat Casey. Divil a hair I care about the Misther,” said he, leaning on his rake and bobbing his head at us.

“Well,” said I, hurriedly, “We want to go down to Egerton to meet a friend who is coming on the 4:58. Can you let us hire your team?”

He threw back his head and laughed.

“Is it hire? Divil a hire. If ye dare trust your legs in me caart you’re welkim to use me ould scut of a harse—bad scran to her.”

The “bad scran” was delivered with a laugh that robbed it of all animosity and setting his rake against a tree he led the way to a tumble down barn that sheltered a more tumble down dirt cart, and a yet more tumble down horse. It certainly was an “ould scut,” whatever that is. It was blind in one eye; its back seemed trying to show Hogarth’s line of beauty in the form of a deep curve, and its four legs stood not under its body but at obtuse angles to it, as if it had been staggering with a heavy weight long enough and was now about to break in two in the middle.

And yet when Pat slapped the animal on the flank and spoke a word or two to it the horse whinnied and pricked up its ears and looked intelligently out of its only seeing eye, and I judged that it would not be cruelty to animals to take it.

But when I saw the harness, which was eked out by strings and ropes, when I saw that the cart was literally a dirt cart and that we would have to sit in hay, I decided that we would use the horse only to get us down there

“Th’ ould Scut.”

and that I would then hire a livery team to bring Cherry up and would pay Pat to go back in it and get his horse.

“You’re sure the horse will be able to pull us down?” said I to Pat.

“Hell, yes,” said he, genially, looking at Ethel as he spoke. “Sure ’tis gentle as a kitten. Ther’ wife there’d make a pet of um if she had him. Not afred of the trolley caars. Egorry when he was a colt there was not wan finer annywhere. He’d be a hell of a fine harse now, sorr, on’y fer a shlight weakness in his back. He’s the bye’ll carry you down on time. Don’t be afraid of the whip, on’y let him see it before you use it an’ thin he’ll know what to expect.”

All the time he was talking he was harnessing the “scut,” as he chose to designate it, and I, to save time, ran the cart out.

“Don’t you want to go back, Ethel?”

“No, it’ll be loads of fun to go down this way,” laughed Ethel, and immediately Pat gave her an encouraging nod of the head and said, “Me leddy, take life as it comes. It’s a dam site betther’n flndin’ fault.”

I would have resented these strong words addressed to Mrs. Vernon if he had been somebody else, but his oaths were as harmless and void of offense as the ejaculations of a sunny tempered child. I am not sure that he would have understood the nature of an oath.

He helped Ethel in with Irish politeness, handed me the dreadful looking reins, and taking off his hat he said:

“Don’t spare um. He’s strarng as a—as a harse, th’ould scut.”

Then he slapped the horse again on the flank and with a “To hell wid ye,” addressed to the animal, he went back to his haying and we started on our journey to town.

The horse could go but I soon learned that he did not regard the whip as anything at all. I showed it to him before using and he pricked his ears each time I showed it, but that was merely as much as to say, “I understand what you mean, but I’m doing my best as it is.”

The cart was not easy, but Ethel was out for a lark and she considered our passage in this vehicle in the nature of a lark. For my part I was ashamed of the rig.

“Remember that you are to dress for dinner,” said she.

“Does this look like dressing for dinner?” said I with a look at the impossible beast in front of me.

“Well, but Cherry won’t see him, and I am sure that she is always used to seeing men dressed for dinner.”

“If I know Cherry Paxton at all she will be glad to be free from all conventions for a short time. I will take her into our room and I will show her my suit all laid out on the bed and I’ll ask her to try to realize how I’d look if I wore it, and I will be comfortable in an outing shirt and sack coat as usual.”

Further conversation along these lines was stopped at that moment because the beast stepped on its foot, or did something equally absurd, that caused it to limp along on three legs for a few yards and then stop.

I got out and looked at its hoof—somewhat gingerly, for I am not used to horses. It did not seem to be suffering pain but it looked at me out of its well eye and seemed to say, “This is where I stop.”

I climbed into the cart and I tightened the reins and clucked and applied the whip, but to no purpose. The horse looked around at me in a languid way, but he refused to budge.

“Nice,” said I, looking at my watch. “Quarter to five, and we’ve got at least two miles to go yet. I wonder how Pat starts him.”

“He used languages,” said Ethel suggestively.

“Thanks. So he did.”

Once more I pulled on the reins, clucked and plupped and whipped (not viciously, but ticklingly) and once more the horse did not move.

“To hell wid ye,” said I suddenly, and it worked like a charm. The old beast took up his ungraceful trot, and we jolted along to the station.

I had meant to hitch the horse on the outskirts of Egerton and walk up to the station in style, but as we neared the Congregational Church I saw that it lacked but two minutes of train time, and so setting aside pride, in my anxiety to meet our guest, I whipped him up the incline that leads to the station, and just as we drove up to the platform the train pulled in, and out of the drawing-room car came Cherry, pretty and pink and smiling. She waved to us and then, when she saw our equipage, she shook her own hands in a manner indicative of delight, and not waiting for me to come and help her, she ran down the steps of the car and hastened over to us.

“How lovely,” said she, kissing Ethel, but refraining from kissing me. “Are we to go up in it?”

“Hell, yes,” said I, thinking of Pat.

Ethel frowned at me and explained to Cherry the bad influence under which we had been.

“No, we’re going to get a team to take us up. We only took this because we would have missed the train if we had walked.”

“Don’t do any such thing,” said Cherry. “It will be perfectly delicious to ride up in a cart, and in that lovely new-mown hay. Mmh, how sweet it smells.”

“No evening clothes for me,” thought I, and I was right. Cherry had come up to have a good time and to forget that such a place as New York and its exactions ever existed, and when she had settled herself in the hay with her traps all about her and her trunk for her to lean her back against, we started out for the return trip, while Ethel told her of our good luck with the piano.

I will confess that the inhabitants of Egerton eyed us curiously, for Ethel did not look like a carter, and Cherry was very modish, and I was not in the costume of a teamster. And we had to stop at the grocery store to get lemons and things.

Altogether these were not pleasant moments, and I was glad when we turned our backs on Egerton and began the ascent of the hills.

“Th’ ould scut” was a good walker and he went up the hills as if he smelt his dinner ahead of him.

“Think of it,” said Ethel. “The harness hasn’t broken yet!”

“How perfectly delicious to think of it,” said Cherry. “It really looks as if each moment would be its next. How was he ever ingenious enough to tie it all together in that fascinating way? He must be a character. I do wish the horse would stop. So you could start him again.”

“No, you mustn’t wish that, for my profanity is really wicked, while Pat’s is as natural to him as leaves are to trees. It’s part of his growth. I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll go down and hear him swear after dinner.”

We had come to a level place about a quarter of a mile in extent. The view of the town from which we had left was well worth looking at, and I was just on the point of stopping the horse that we might see the little city perched on the side of a hill and surrounded by green farms and wide expanses of woodland, when “th’ ould scut” stopped of its own accord, began to tremble violently and then broke into a gallop. So quickly did he start that we were all pitched out. By great good fortune not one of us was seriously hurt, although Ethel scraped her wrist, and Cherry bumped her head. I escaped unscathed, and telling the others to follow I started after the horse.

I soon gave up the chase, however, and sitting down on a bank I waited for the others.

“What shall we do? Go back and get a team, or walk. It’s a mile or more,” said I, when they came up.

“Oh, it’s perfectly lovely to walk,” said Cherry, and as Ethel said she felt able, walk we did.

We had gone perhaps two-thirds of the way, looking at every turn for a wrecked cart and a broken legged horse, when we heard the rattle of wheels and saw the horse coming back after us, guided by Pat, himself.

“Oh, ’tis the devil’s own pity, sure it is,” said he when he saw us. “Sure, he had the blind staggers. Why didn’t ye bleed him?” said he.

“How could I bleed him when he ran away?”

“Oh, well, that’s arl he needed,” said Pat. “He come runnin’ in the door yaard, an’ me woman says, ‘they’re kilt,’ says she. And I whips out me knife an’ cuts his mout’, an’ he’s arl right. Ye’d oughter have bled him. Ah, it’s a hell of a bad job that it happened ye. Were ye hurrted?”

We assured him that it was all right, and would have continued on foot, but he said the horse had needed bleeding and that she was as fresh as a colt now, and he helped the ladies in, gave me the reins, slapped the animal’s flanks as before, with the same command as to his destination, and we drove home in triumph, leaving him to walk.