Sherston's Progress by Siegfried Sassoon

Author:Siegfried Sassoon [Sassoon, Siegfried]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literature & Fiction, Classics, Genre Fiction, War, Literary, Literary Fiction
ISBN: 0143107178
Amazon: B00AEDDSUM
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 2013-05-28T05:00:00+00:00

On my last day in Ireland I went out in soft sunshiny weather for a final half-day with the hounds. The meet was twelve miles off and I’d got to catch the 4.30 train to Dublin, so I had to keep a sharp eye on my watch. The Mister was mournful about my departure, and anathematized the Egyptians wholeheartedly, for he couldn’t get rid of his notion that it was they who were requiring my services as a soldier. I felt a bit mournful myself as my eyes took in the country with its distant villages and gleams of water, its green fields and white cottages, and the hazy transparent hills on the horizon – sometimes silver-grey and sometimes that deep azure which I’d seen nowhere but in Ireland.

We had a scrambling hunt over a rough country, and I had all the fun I could find, but every stone wall I jumped felt like good-bye for ever to ‘this happy breed of men, this little world’, in other words the Limerick Hunt, which had restored my faith in my capacity to be heedlessly happy. How kind they were, those friendly fox-hunters, and how I hated leaving them.

At half-past two The Mister and I began to look for Clancy’s car, which contained his groom and was to take us home. But the car was on the wrong side of a big covert, and while we were following it, it was following us. Much flustered, we at last succeeded in encountering it, and Clancy drove us back to Mrs. O’Donnell’s in a wild enthusiastic spurt.

Mrs. O’Donnell had a woodcock ready for my tea, and I consumed it in record time. Then there was a mad rush to the station, where my baggage was awaiting me, plus a group of Fusilier friends. The Assistant-Adjutant was at his post, assuring the engine driver that he must on no account start without me, mail-train or no mail-train. With thirty seconds to spare I achieved my undesirable object, and the next thing I knew was that I was leaning out of the carriage window and waving good-bye to them all – waving good-bye to warm-hearted Mrs. O’Donnell – waving good-bye to the dear old Mister.

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