The Brogue

by H.H. Munro (SAKI)

　　

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The hunting season had come to an end, and theMullets had not succeeded in selling the Brogue. Therehad been a kind of tradition in the family for the pastthree or four years, a sort of fatalistic hope, that theBrogue would find a purchaser before the hunting wasover; but seasons came and went without anythinghappening to justify such ill-founded optimism. Theanimal had been named Berserker in the earlier stages ofits career; it had been rechristened the Brogue later on,in recognition of the fact that, once acquired, it wasextremely difficult to get rid of. The unkinder wits ofthe neighbourhood had been known to suggest that thefirst letter of its name was superfluous. The Brogue hadbeen variously described in sale catalogues as a light-weight hunter, a lady's hack, and, more simply, but stillwith a touch of imagination, as a useful brown gelding,standing 15.1. Toby Mullet had ridden him for fourseasons with the West Wessex; you can ride almost anysort of horse with the West Wessex as long as it is ananimal that knows the country. The Brogue knew thecountry intimately, having personally created most of thegaps that were to be met with in banks and hedges formany miles round. His manners and characteristics werenot ideal in the hunting field, but he was probablyrather safer to ride to hounds than he was as a hack oncountry roads. According to the Mullet family, he wasnot really road-shy, but there were one or two objects ofdislike that brought on sudden attacks of what Tobycalled the swerving sickness. Motors and cycles hetreated with tolerant disregard, but pigs, wheelbarrows,piles of stones by the roadside, perambulators in avillage street, gates painted too aggressively white, andsometimes, but not always, the newer kind of beehives,turned him aside from his tracks in vivid imitation ofthe zigzag course of forked lightning. If a pheasantrose noisily from the other side of a hedgerow the Broguewould spring into the air at the same moment, but thismay have been due to a desire to be companionable. TheMullet family contradicted the widely prevalent reportthat the horse was a confirmed crib-biter.It was about the third week in May that Mrs. Mullet,relict of the late Sylvester Mullet, and mother of Tobyand a bunch of daughters, assailed Clovis Sangrail on theoutskirts of the village with a breathless catalogue oflocal happenings."You know our new neighbour, Mr. Penricarde?" shevociferated; "awfully rich, owns tin mines in Cornwall,middle-aged and rather quiet. He's taken the Red Houseon a long lease and spent a lot of money on alterationsand improvements. Well, Toby's sold him the Brogue!"Clovis spent a moment or two in assimilating theastonishing news; then he broke out into unstintedcongratulation. If he had belonged to a more emotionalrace he would probably have kissed Mrs. Mullet."How wonderfully lucky to have pulled it off atlast! Now you can buy a decent animal. I've always saidthat Toby was clever. Ever so many congratulations.""Don't congratulate me. It's the most unfortunatething that could have happened!" said Mrs. Mulletdramatically.Clovis stared at her in amazement."Mr. Penricarde," said Mrs. Mullet, sinking hervoice to what she imagined to be an impressive whisper,though it rather resembled a hoarse, excited squeak, "Mr.Penricarde has just begun to pay attentions to Jessie.Slight at first, but now unmistakable. I was a fool notto have seen it sooner. Yesterday, at the Rectory gardenparty, he asked her what her favourite flowers were, andshe told him carnations, and to-day a whole stack ofcarnations has arrived, clove and malmaison and lovelydark red ones, regular exhibition blooms, and a box ofchocolates that he must have got on purpose from London.And he's asked her to go round the links with him to-morrow. And now, just at this critical moment, Toby hassold him that animal. It's a calamity!""But you've been trying to get the horse off yourhands for years," said Clovis."I've got a houseful of daughters," said Mrs.Mullet, "and I've been trying - well, not to get them offmy hands, of course, but a husband or two wouldn't beamiss among the lot of them; there are six of them, youknow.""I don't know," said Clovis, "I've never counted,but I expect you're right as to the number; mothersgenerally know these things.""And now," continued Mrs. Mullet, in her tragicwhisper, "when there's a rich husband-in-prospectimminent on the horizon Toby goes and sells him thatmiserable animal. It will probably kill him if he triesto ride it; anyway it will kill any affection he mighthave felt towards any member of our family. What is tobe done? We can't very well ask to have the horse back;you see, we praised it up like anything when we thoughtthere was a chance of his buying it, and said it was justthe animal to suit him.""Couldn't you steal it out of his stable and send itto grass at some farm miles away?" suggested Clovis;"write 'Votes for Women' on the stable door, and thething would pass for a Suffragette outrage. No one whoknew the horse could possibly suspect you of wanting toget it back again.""Every newspaper in the country would ring with theaffair," said Mrs. Mullet; "can't you imagine theheadline, 'Valuable Hunter Stolen by Suffragettes'? Thepolice would scour the countryside till they found theanimal.""Well, Jessie must try and get it back fromPenricarde on the plea that it's an old favourite. Shecan say it was only sold because the stable had to bepulled down under the terms of an old repairing lease,and that now it has been arranged that the stable is tostand for a couple of years longer.""It sounds a queer proceeding to ask for a horseback when you've just sold him," said Mrs. Mullet, "butsomething must be done, and done at once. The man is notused to horses, and I believe I told him it was as quietas a lamb. After all, lambs go kicking and twistingabout as if they were demented, don't they?""The lamb has an entirely unmerited character forsedateness," agreed Clovis.Jessie came back from the golf links next day in astate of mingled elation and concern."It's all right about the proposal," she announcedhe came out with it at the sixth hole. I said I musthave time to think it over. I accepted him at theseventh.""My dear," said her mother, "I think a little moremaidenly reserve and hesitation would have beenadvisable, as you've known him so short a time. Youmight have waited till the ninth hole.""The seventh is a very long hole," said Jessie;"besides, the tension was putting us both off our game.By the time we'd got to the ninth hole we'd settled lotsof things. The honeymoon is to be spent in Corsica, withperhaps a flying visit to Naples if we feel like it, anda week in London to wind up with. Two of his nieces areto be asked to be bridesmaids, so with our lot there willbe seven, which is rather a lucky number. You are towear your pearl grey, with any amount of Honiton lacejabbed into it. By the way, he's coming over thisevening to ask your consent to the whole affair. So farall's well, but about the Brogue it's a different matter.I told him the legend about the stable, and how keen wewere about buying the horse back, but he seems equallykeen on keeping it. He said he must have horse exercisenow that he's living in the country, and he's going tostart riding tomorrow. He's ridden a few times in theRow, on an animal that was accustomed to carryoctogenarians and people undergoing rest cures, andthat's about all his experience in the saddle - oh, andhe rode a pony once in Norfolk, when he was fifteen andthe pony twenty-four; and tomorrow he's going to ride theBrogue! I shall be a widow before I'm married, and I doso want to see what Corsica's like; it looks so silly onthe map."Clovis was sent for in haste, and the developmentsof the situation put before him."Nobody can ride that animal with any safety," saidMrs. Mullet, "except Toby, and he knows by longexperience what it is going to shy at, and manages toswerve at the same time.""I did hint to Mr. Penricarde - to Vincent, I shouldsay - that the Brogue didn't like white gates," saidJessie."White gates!" exclaimed Mrs. Mullet; "did youmention what effect a pig has on him? He'll have to gopast Lockyer's farm to get to the high road, and there'ssure to be a pig or two grunting about in the lane.""He's taken rather a dislike to turkeys lately,"said Toby."It's obvious that Penricarde mustn't be allowed togo out on that animal," said Clovis, "at least not tillJessie has married him, and tired of him. I tell youwhat: ask him to a picnic to-morrow, starting at an earlyhour; he's not the sort to go out for a ride beforebreakfast. The day after I'll get the rector to drivehim over to Crowleigh before lunch, to see the newcottage hospital they're building there. The Brogue willbe standing idle in the stable and Toby can offer toexercise it; then it can pick up a stone or something ofthe sort and go conveniently lame. If you hurry on thewedding a bit the lameness fiction can be kept up tillthe ceremony is safely over."Mrs. Mullet belonged to an emotional race, and shekissed Clovis.It was nobody's fault that the rain came down intorrents the next morning, making a picnic a fantasticimpossibility. It was also nobody's fault, but sheerill-luck, that the weather cleared up sufficiently in theafternoon to tempt Mr. Penricarde to make his first essaywith the Brogue. They did not get as far as the pigs atLockyer's farm; the rectory gate was painted a dullunobtrusive green, but it had been white a year or twoago, and the Brogue never forgot that he had been in thehabit of making a violent curtsey, a back-pedal and aswerve at this particular point of the road.Subsequently, there being apparently no further call onhis services, he broke his way into the rectory orchard,where he found a hen turkey in a coop; later visitors tothe orchard found the coop almost intact, but very littleleft of the turkey.Mr. Penricarde, a little stunned and shaken, andsuffering from a bruised knee and some minor damages,good-naturedly ascribed the accident to his owninexperience with horses and country roads, and allowedJessie to nurse him back into complete recovery and golf-fitness within something less than a week.In the list of wedding presents which the localnewspaper published a fortnight or so later appeared thefollowing item:"Brown saddle-horse, 'The Brogue,' bridegroom's giftto bride.""Which shows," said Toby Mullet, "that he knewnothing.""Or else," said Clovis, "that he has a very pleasingwit."

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