Bruno said with dignity that he did think so. Clearly not averse to showing off a little, he rode out into the horse paddock where three hurdles had been set up. He put the sorrel at them and flew over very elegantly. Ricky, with misgivings, felt his mount tittupping under him. “You shut up,” he muttered to it. Julia, who had come alongside, leaned toward him, her face alive with entertainment.
“Ricky!” she said, “are you feeling precarious?”
“Precarious!” he shouted, “I’m terror-stricken. And now you’re going to laugh at me,” he added, hearing the preliminary splutter.
“If you fall off, I’ll try not to. But you’re sitting him like a rock.”
“Not true, alas.”
“Nearly true. Good God! He’s at it again!”
Mr. Harkness had broken out into the familiar roar, but this time his target was Bruno. The horse paddock sloped downhill toward a field from which it was separated by a dense and pretty high blackthorn hedge. Bruno had turned the sorrel to face a gap in the hedge and the creature, Ricky saw, was going through the mettlesome antics that manifest an equine desire to jump over something.
“No, stop! You can’t! Here! Come back!” Mr. Harkness roared. And to Jasper: “Call that kid back. He’ll break his neck. He’ll ruin the mare. Stop him!”
The Pharamonds shouted but Bruno dug in his heels and put the sorrel at the gap. It rose, its quarters flashed up, it was gone and there was no time, or a lifetime, before they heard an earthy thump and a diminishing thud of hooves.
Mr. Harkness was running down the horse paddock. Jasper had ridden past him when, on the slope beyond the hedge, Bruno appeared, checking his dancing mount. Farther away, on the hillside, a solitary horse reared, plunged, and galloped idiotically up and down a distant hedge. Ricky thought he recognized the wall-eyed Mungo.
Bruno waved, vaingloriously.
Julia had ridden alongside Ricky. “Horrid, showing-off little brute,” said Julia. “Wait till I get at him.” And she began shakily to laugh.
Mr. Harkness bawled infuriated directions to Bruno about how to rejoin them by way of gates and a lane. The Pharamonds collected round Julia and Ricky.
“I am ashamed of Bruno,” said Jasper.
“What’s it like,” Carlotta asked, “on the other side?”
“A sheer drop to an extremely deep and impossibly wide ditch. The mare’s all Harkness said she was to clear it.”
“Bruno’s good, though,” said Julia.
“He’s given you a fright and he’s shown like a mountebank.”
Julia said: “Never mind!” and leaned along her horse’s neck to touch her husband’s hand. Ricky suddenly felt quite desolate.
The Pharamonds waited ominously for the return of the errant Bruno while Mr. Harkness enlarged upon the prowess of Sorrel Lass, which was the stable name of the talented mare. He also issued a number of dark hints as to what steps he would have taken if she had broken a leg and had to be destroyed.
In the middle of all this, and just as Bruno, smiling uneasily, rode his mount into the stable yard, Miss Harkness, forgotten by all, burst into eloquence.
She was “discovered” leering over the lower half-door of an empty loose-box. With the riding crop, from which she appeared never to be parted, she beat on the half-door and screamed in triumph.
“Yar! Yar! Yar!” Miss Harkness screamed, “Old Bloody Unk! She’s bloody done it, so sucks boo to rotten old you.”
Her uncle glared at her but made no reply. Jasper, Carlotta, and Louis were administering a severe if inaudible wigging to Bruno, who had unwillingly dismounted. Syd Jones had disappeared.
Julia said to Ricky: “We ought to bring Bruno and Dulcie together, they seem to have something in common, don’t you feel? What have you lot been saying to him?” she asked her husband who had come across to her.
“I’ve asked for another mount for him.”
“Darling!”
“He’s got to learn, sweetie. And in any case Harkness doesn’t like the idea of him riding her. After that performance.”
“But he rode her beautifully. We must admit.”
“He was told not to put her at the hedge.”
Syd Jones came out and led away the sorrel. Presently he reappeared with something that looked like an elderly polo pony upon which Bruno gazed with eyident disgust.
The scene petered out. Miss Harkness emerged from the loose-box, strode past her uncle, shook hands violently with the sulking Bruno, and continued into the house, banging the door behind her.
Mr. Harkness said: “Dulcie gets a bit excitable.”
Julia said: “She’s a high-spirited girl, isn’t she? Carlotta, darling, don’t you think we ought to hit the trail? Come along, boys. We’re off.”
There was, however, one more surprise to come. Mr. Harkness approached Julia with a curious, almost sheepish smile and handed up an envelope.
“Just a little thing of my own,” he said. “See you this evening. Have a good day.”
When they reached the end of the drive Julia said, “What can it be?”
“Not the bill,” Carlotta said. “Not when he introduced it like that.”
“Oh, I don’t know. The bill, after all, would be a little thing of his own.”
Julia had drawn what appeared to be a pamphlet from the envelope. She began to read. “Not true!” she said, and looked up, wide-eyed, at her audience. “Not true,” she repeated.
“What isn’t?” Carlotta asked crossly. “Don’t go on like that, Julia.”
Julia handed the pamphlet to Ricky. “You read it,” she said. “Aloud.”
“DO YOU KNOW,” Ricky read, “that you are in danger of HELLFIRE?
“DO YOU KNOW, that the DAY of JUDGMENT is AT HAND!
“WOE! WOE! WOE!!! cries the Prophet—”
“Obviously,” Julia interrupted, “Mr. Harkness is the author.”
“Why?”
“Such very horsey language. ”Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!”
“He seems to run on in the same vein for a long time,” Ricky said, turning the page. “It’s all about the last trump and one’s sins lying bitter in one’s belly. Wait a bit. Listen.”
“What?”
“Regular gatherings of the Inner Brethren at Leathers on Sunday evenings at 7:30 to which you are Cordially Invited. Bro. Cuthbert (Cuth) Harkness will lead. Discourse and Discussion. Light Supper. Gents 50p. Ladies a basket. All welcome.”
“Well,” said Jasper after a pause, “that explains everything. Or does it?”
“I suppose it does,” said Julia doubtfully. “Mr. Harkness, whom we must learn to call Cuth, even if it sounds as if one had lost a tooth—”
“How do you mean, Julia?”
“Don’t interrupt. ‘Cuspid,’ ” Julia said hurriedly. “Clearly, he’s a religious fanatic and that’s why he’s taken Miss Harkness’s pregnancy so hard.”
“Of course. Evidently they’re extremely strict,” Jasper agreed.
“I wonder what they do at their parties. Would it be fun—”
“No, Julia,” said Louis, “It would not be fun, ladies a basket or no.”
Carlotta said: “Do let’s move on. We can discuss Mr. Harkness later. There’s a perfect green lane round the corner.”
So all the Pharamonds and Ricky rode up the hill. They showed for some moments on the skyline, elegant against important clouds. Then the lane dipped into a valley and they followed it and disappeared.
iii
The little pub at Bon Accord on the extreme northern tip of the island proved to be satisfactory. It was called the Fisherman’s Rest and was indeed full of guernseys, gumboots, and the smell of fish. The landlord turned out to be a cousin of Bob Maistre at the Cod-and-Bottle.
Jasper stood drinks all around and Julia captivated the men by asking about the finer points of deep-sea fishing. From here she led the conversation to Mr. Harkness, evoking a good deal of what Louis afterwards referred to as bucolic merriment.