extremely hot, her feet ached in the buckled shoes, and she eyed the
winding brown ribbon of road turning towards the left towards Marty
Casey's house with bitter dislike.
It was a road advancing without apparent method, turning up to the
right, then finding that scenery dull, and running off to the left
again, climbing steep hills which it apparently might have avoided, and
avoiding others which would have shortened its way by miles, its
surface, two ruts and gravelly stones, and its edges inhospitable
ditches of boggy water.
It was only the prospect of telling Darby of his slackness which made
Gheena draw a long breath and look toward the road with gloomy
determination. Perhaps Marty Casey had a trap or a cart which he could
drive her back to the town in.
The tuff-tuff of a motor made her look round hopefully; a long grey nose
glided round the sharp corner where the roads branched to the right, and
Basil Stafford put down his foot-brake with a jar.
"I was out at Cloony Point, and I thought that I might find you and
Dillon seeing the hounds," he said.
Gheena greeted him ill-humouredly. His grey tweed suit was so
completely unlike khaki, and she was in the mood to be jarred.
She wished to know irrelevantly, "Why roads could not go straight to
places? Up and down, and round about," said Gheena, with a note of
hysterical over-fatigue in her voice, "and everywhere, as if they were
playing 'Round the Mulberry Bush' instead of going to Marty Casey's. You
make drains. Why don't they go straight?"
Stafford thought apologetically that perhaps it was because there were
several places to go to. In the still soft air little trails of
blue-brown smoke showed where houses stood.
When Gheena merely snorted, unconvinced, he also explained that in
places road-builders found boggy spots or solid rock, and it was more
expedient to go round these obstacles to avoid expense.
"People with sense," said Gheena witheringly, "make flat roads. I only
thought you might have known. Of course, drains are so simple."
Here Mr. Stafford very humbly offered her a lift, and asked about the
hounds.
"Crooked-legged, splay-footed beagles," said Gheena "and Dandys and
sheep-dogs. But we could ride after them," she said, brightening up;
"they would hunt."
"A Dandy Dinmont," said Stafford absently, "wouldn't hunt far."
Gheena replied icily that she had never mentioned Dandy Dinmonts. Even
the Dunkillen people did not hunt over Scotch terriers, and there was no
wit in being absurd.
"I--you mentioned Dandies." Stafford's cheeks were a little red.
"Shall I drive you on?"
"I can walk," said Gheena coldly. To drive with Basil Stafford would be
to tacitly condone his shortcomings.
"Oh, very well. I'm sorry." A sly start sent the grey car throbbing
into life; she began to back for the turn home.
Gheena was very tired; she grew white, and the stately hills seemed to
gain in size; before her stretched the interminable badly laid-out
mountain road.
"And you'd much better drive," said Stafford, humbly again. "It's quite
a long way--if you want to see those hounds. It's important."
Gheena got in slowly.
"Or--er--see Dandies," he added as he put in the clutch.
"Dandy was the mother," said Gheena impatiently, "Dandy the terrier.
And the pup is some kind of hound one side. I said Dandy, not Dandies."
Stafford stopped the car suddenly. He was sorry to disturb her, but he
had forgotten to put in petrol.
Far below them lay the sea, dimpling and flashing in the sunlight,
greeny dark by the cliffs, grey blue in the long neck of the harbour, a
great carpet of diamond points outside. Leeshane rose its long grey
hump from the flash; Innisfail was vaguely purple. Here and there on
the great splashing water-way a red sail glinted, or a smudge of smoke
hung darkly as some steamer thrashed its uneasy way to harbour.
Gheena sat on the step of the car, looking out. Just behind these hills
and across the harbour they hunted. It was hilly and boggy; there were
woods and lakes, but patches of grass gave them short glimpses of
gallops, and when one got used to it there was joy in the scramble: in
hounds hunting over the heathery hills and the ever-constant fear of
losing them when they vanished into a glen, or one of the thick little
pine woods which were set as dark emeralds in the grey hill-sides. Joy
in the perfection of those bursts over grass fields with low banks to
jump. And quite far inland, if their fox was kind enough to avoid a
chain of lakes and a big bog, there was quite a stretch of good country.
It was fox-hunting with its hopes and fears, its joys and sorrows, its
mystery of uncertainty. The little field down there was as keen
watching hounds run as though they rode in far-famed Leicestershire, and
crossed the fox-hunting paradise in Limerick.
Peace hung over the land; the withering heather gave tinge of purple
still; the sun caught the slate beds on the hills, making them gleam
dull red and brown, and below there was the wonder of the sea.
"One cannot realize it--here," almost whispered Gheena. "Dust and the
pound of feet, and the rattle of guns, and men out to kill each other in
this quiet world."
"France was as quiet as this--two months ago," Basil said quietly.
"Rows of poplars, long white roads, sluggish rivers, great patches of
yellowing corn, grapes growing purple. I've been at a big camp," he
said, "and seen and heard the rattle and the tramp and the men's faces
come out of the cloud of yellow dust--kindly, merry faces, all so keen
for war--and now all fighting...."
"For us," said Gheena very deliberately--"fighting."
"For--us," he said after a pause, looking straight at her. It was
Gheena who flushed; except when speared on by patriotism, she was
naturally polite and averse to hurting people's feelings.
Something in the flash in Stafford's eye made her look away for quite a
long time at the nearest smudge of smoke.
An answering flash hidden from him rose in her own eyes. One could
serve one's country by other ways than the knitting of stockings. When
she turned, she had smoothed accusation from her expression and even
smiled.
"It is almost impossible to realize," she said dreamily, and with a
clarified innocence of having meant anything by that emphasized "is."
Basil Stafford eyed her suspiciously, until a sudden smile made him
quite good-looking. He took out a pair of glasses.
"That's a liner," he said. "See the far-off steamer, and those are two
tramps with food for us. What if the Germans fulfil the threat they are
whispering of already and cut off our supplies? It would be reality
then, Miss Freyne, over here."
"We could burn turf and eat chickens," said Gheena briefly, "and catch
fish. We need never starve here. And is that petrol in yet? I told
Darby Malachi's public house, and I waited there and left a message."
"You said McInerny's," said Stafford, screwing down the tank. "Not
Malachi's."
"McInerny's--no. Ask Darby."
Gheena found people who contradicted her extremely tiresome. She
flashed an awe-inspiring glance at her pilot and repeated "Malachi's"
angrily. Lancelot never dared to contradict her; he might disagree
vaguely, but he only did it in his mind and not aloud; or to his mother
afterwards, who would say, sighing, that heiresses were always
wrong-minded; but that, after all, once there was money nothing
mattered, and that it was only in small houses with one sitting-room
that quarrelling was really objectionable. Lancelot had been duly
instructed that he was to marry his cousin Gheena.
"Well, if I said McInerny's I meant Malachi's, and Darby might know the
other would be quite out of my way, unless I went to fetch the letters,
and it was too early for that," said Gheena, unruffled. "Is--there--any
news to-day?"
Basil stopped the car to pull out a telegram, one crisply short.
"We are retreating. They are close to Paris," he said quietly. "The
roses in the papers are red roses out yonder, Miss Freyne. No break in
our line. Retreating in perfect order. Kaiser's time-table wrong.
Germans fed on beet. The nonsense of it all absorbed with boiled eggs
at breakfast. Eggs put up by the war too."
"This car," said Gheena, offended at the mating of war news and boiled
eggs, "came up Lishna Hill quite quickly. Did she do it on second?"
"Well, no--on top," said Stafford apologetically. "No load, you see."
"She must be a very powerful car," said Gheena suspiciously. "A twenty,
is she?"
"Well, yes," said Stafford meekly, suppressing the extra twenty-five.
"Yes, I--was given her, you see, by the----"
He stopped short at the word to swing in a narrow gate, while Gheena,
leaning back, wondered darkly why a humble inspector or overseer of
drainage works should own so powerful a two-seater. Her active mind was
so full of conjectures that she awoke with a start to their stoppage in
a small field fenced by banks topped with slates, and was greeted by a
small woman with ill-tempered eyes.
The prospects of getting rid of four useless hounds appeared to appeal
to her instantly.
"There bein' no one to hunt afther them now, an' blow Jim's bugle, and
yellow male up to the height of Hiven."
The four hounds, now produced, lounged out for inspection from happy
slumber on roasting slates, stretching themselves and yawning.
Daisy, Bridgie, Grandjer and Greatness were of much the same breed as
the four first seen. Daisy was a dog hound, names being irrelevant,
with some strain of foxhound in him; the others were not particular as
to ancestry, but they could all hunt. Grandjer was black and tan, with
a docked tail, because, old Casey explained, Jim thought from the colour
of him that he was likely to be a torrier.
This was clearly young Dandy.
This Mrs. Casey proffered tea. It was laid in the best parlour, a room
of leaden atmosphere, with a great deal of fancy-work about. The grate,
instead of cascades of sooty paper, was genteelly hidden by a painted
fire-screen, covered with crimson daffodils with purple leaves, and a
stork, greatly disturbed at his surroundings, flapping over them. This,
they were informed, was the work of Anastasia Casey above at the
convent.
Tea was welcome, but oppressed by fashion; appearing on a japanned tray,
with slices of baker's bread cut neatly, and pats of butter to apply to
it.
Gheena yearned for soda cake, hot--she had seen one in the kitchen--but
ate the crumbling papery-crusted slices with resignation, while Mrs.
Casey hoped it wasn't too stale entirely, and discussed the war as
something one saw in the papers.
"There was talk of Tom Guinane's goin'," she said, pouring out more tea.
"Would ye have a neg with it, Miss Gheena, or a taste of jam? The
appetite's lavin' ye--but he said he couldn't lave the boat. I would
not thrust them Guinanes, anyways," added Mrs. Casey. "There's too much
politics in them, spachin' an' chattin' instead of working steady, an'
then laying the blame on the King if there isn't the price of a pint in
ye're pocket; that's the soort them Guinanes are, Miss."
Gheena nodded. Tom Guinane was a Sinn Feiner, blackly opposed, it would
sometimes appear, to everything except all land for nothing, taxes paid
by England, free carriage of all fish. These, when he was really
brought to bay, were the limits he advanced.
"They are a bad lot out there on Lishannon," said Gheena thoughtfully.
"And in a bad place for a bad lot," put in Basil, "On the point."
Darby Dillon's crutch banged open the door, and he came in, wanting to
know why he was left for several hours--in fact, until he drove up and
saw Gheena's mother--waiting, in the wrong place.
"If I said McInerny's I meant Malachi's," repeated Gheena impenitently.
"And you must have known, Darby, I wasn't likely to want to walk across
the shingle to McInerny's in these shoes."
"Not having been there to put them on," said Darby placidly, and
avoiding Basil's eye; "but, of course, I might have known, after the
fair Violet's yesterday. I'll have hot cake, Mary; I saw some outside."
"If I hadn't been afraid of offending her," said Gheena, thinking
regretfully of two dry slices swallowed languidly.
"You were talking of Lishannon and the lot there," said Darby. "There
was a chap round last year lodging there, and I'd say a lot of someone's
money stayed behind him. There's queer talk down there in the dusk, I
tell you."
"What could them foreigners do here an' they not havin' the English to
back them?" said Mrs. Casey contemptuously. "Father Dan gave out from
the althar that there was no fear of any Germans here, and he should
know, for he was at a mission in China for three years."
"So he'd know all about heathens," said Darby gravely.
"He does so," said Mrs. Casey.
"I hears that young widdy below does be takin' Tom Guinane an' looking
for mackerels," she said, "an' payin' him five shillin' a day, and none
to tell her the robbery. That Tom is the broth of a rogue. Will I lave
in the dogs to the back of yere stheam carriage, Misther Darby?"
"You will not," said Darby firmly, "unless Miss Gheena comes to hold
them in."
"They might all be aisy but Grandjer. An' a cat couldn't show its
whiskers on the road but he'd lep out an' up as if it 'twas an air
balloon," Mrs. Casey said thoughtfully. "Bether to throttle them up and
let one of the boys carry them to the great house."
Basil Stafford hastily interfered to say that they did not want the
hounds dead, and was told sharply by Darby that throttlin' was merely an
expression signifying roping up.
"If Mrs. De Burgho Keane wasn't coming to tea to-morrow," said Gheena,
walking stiffly, with footsore feet, "I'd go to look at the kennels,
Darby. There are about ten other things called hounds about, and they
could be collected late when they heard from the Master."
"If he vetoes it," said Darby, "thinking we'll spoil his foxes by making
them run too slow, we'll hunt something, Gheena, if it's only a herring.
Crabbit is outside thinking of fighting with Grandjer."
Crabbit was disputing the entrance to a rat-hole, every hair on his red
body bristling, with Grandjer unabashed, gurgling out defiance beside
him.
Crabbit, removing himself with reluctance, got into the long, low
two-seater and brooded in the wrongs of life. Gheena limped to Darby's
car.
"I saw Mrs. Weston with Keefe out on the coast road," said Basil, "and
the Ford appeared to be stuck. They were at her for half an hour."
"And--you never helped her?" Gheena swung round.
"Oh, well, I saw them from Dunleep Hill, you see," he said
apologetically. "I was just looking down at the road, and saw. One
watches the sea these days," he added, hesitating a little.
"What she sees in that pink peony, Keefe?" said Darby. "A smart little
woman."
Basil said "Taking" absently. "I'm dining there to-night," he went on,
"to hold cards. Not to play Bridge, because only two of us know how,
and if we get against the other two, they upset us so much we invariably
lose, and if we cut them they upset us still more, and I get to bed with
my brain very like a piano in a damp climate. The old Professor makes
the fourth."
"To-night, then, I make a fifth," said Gheena. "Crabbit and I are
walking over at nine. What! It's not safe out so late alone, Mr.
Stafford? Do crabs and jelly-fish attack one, or coastguards looking
out for nothing on earth?"
Darby's small car bounced down the hill with the energy, over ruts, due
to her short wheel base. She took hills with a grunt of effort, and was
unpleasantly opposed to the gliding of Stafford's two-seater.
Mrs. Weston, seated on a bench outside her cottage, with very brilliant
orange suede shoes liberally displayed, ran across to stop them, and to
inquire eagerly about the hounds. She had already written about a
saddle, and that kindly Mr. Keefe was looking out for a horse for her.
Darby said mildly that it would be well if she looked out herself, and
smiled softly. Harold Keefe had already gone in for some horse-coping.
In the matter of horses, it was evident that Violet Weston was
distressingly feminine. She chattered about light-weights and the
easiness of finding hunters for a lady as if Queen Victoria still
reigned.
"Mr. Keefe advises a side-saddle," she said, "as he's afraid Mrs. De
Burgho Keane doesn't like innovations. But neither do I, so I am going
to risk riding my own way."
There was something very taking in Violet Weston's bright eyes and
slightly squeaky voice.
Darby said so as they drove on.
"Only they seem to be a decade behind the times in Australia," he said,
as he swung in the wide iron gates where two stone animals snarled
indefinitely at either side.
Darby found George Freyne on the steps, examining the butcher's book by
the failing light, and raving at the cost of war. Matilda, his wife,
was sitting down--she never stood up for long--and blandly suggesting
that it did not matter, as one could eat chickens and game, and herrings
would be coming in, that is. Didn't Dearest George think so?
"And lobsters, if Gheena would get Phil to set out the baskets."
Dearest produced a pencil, with which he commenced to write down
suggestions for economies.
Less cakes for tea; there were baskets of eggs used up every week; less
bacon for breakfast; a rigid allowance in the kitchen.
"Didn't you sell your bullocks for more than you expected?" Darby asked,
as he put a warm cloak over the Darracq's bonnet. "And if Reedy pays
you more, you must pay Reedy more, mustn't you?"
This philosophy proving distasteful, Darby took out nis crutch and
shuffled nimbly up the steps.
Gheena had stopped to talk to a fair-haired boy who, when you looked
closer, appeared to have been a man for years.
The young man, Phil said, was coughing slightly.
"But she'd ate all before her," said Phil cheerily. "What's that, Ma'am?
I'm to set out lobster pots, mate bein' up."
"Them Guinanes do be goin' on at me when I sets out the pots," he
whispered to Gheena. "Bitther as horse-chestnuts. But if ye give me a
couple of shillin's, Miss Gheena, I'll buy two lobsters from them, an'
no one wiser."
This part of the regime of war economy having been disposed of
satisfactorily, the news was talked of, picture papers, their
illustrations almost aquiver with contempt for Germany, looked at, and
the situation discussed heatedly.
"Some people, or people who know, tell me that there is a regular nest
of spies all along the coast, ready for months," said Darby, as he ate
portions of the sirloin of beef which his host carved with manifest
care. "Bases for submarines, with oil for them, and even wireless
installations. Those little houses out there on the cliff could use
those nicely, couldn't they?"
Gheena was very thoughtful when she set out to Seaview, the intensely
obvious name of so many seaside lodges. She was going across the beach,
so Darby did not offer to go with her. He stood leaning on his crutch,
watching her disappear into the shadows, and his sigh as he turned to go
in and play picquet was tinged with impatience. It is hard to stand
still in life while others walk easily.
One side showed scant trace of injury, the other so twisted and
crippled. The doctor who had patched him together had told him that in
time the crushed limbs might grow stronger, a broader hope of activity
came to him. But the leg dragged heavily now as he hobbled up the
shallow steps.
Gheena begged Crabbit to let rabbits sleep, and swung down on to the
beach; she could see the lights of a ship at the quay, one which came in
a few times a year with supplies for the villagers. Someone was pushing
a boat off; she heard the scrape on the shingle.
Crabbit resented the intrusion on his foreshore, and a man's voice,
sounding uneasily, told him to go home. A stone whizzed, its impact
changing the red dog's note to one of such swift anger that Gheena could
see someone leaping for sanctuary into the boat.
"It is Miss Gheena. Call him off, Miss; he'll ate us."
The moon chose this moment to illuminate the shore, and to show one man
just scuffling over the side of the boat, and a second ensconcing
himself behind some barrels.
"If you hadn't thrown rocks at him, Tom Guinane," said Gheena angrily,
"he wouldn't get cross."
Tom Guinane, visibly nervous, swore by the God above him that it was but
a handful of shingle that wouldn't crush a sherrimp, an' only thrun
funnin', he not bein' sure whose dog it was.
Crabbit came to heel, master of the situation, with one white tooth
bared for inspection, and Gheena watched the loading of the boat.
"Bits of flour an' things," Guinane told her, "for the shop outside, an'
cruel dear now, Miss, thanks to the war. Not havin' much time in the
light since I went to Mrs. Weston, I must do me work be night."
He spoke ill-humouredly, with a perpetual note of being wronged by life.
The boat was pushed off, passing from inertness to life as she swam in
the shallow water. Gheena could see an array of barrels standing on a
rock, waiting to be loaded. She climbed the cliff path to Seaview with
the ease of good wind and practice, to find the three waiting for her at
the card-table, and Mrs. Weston's old Swiss nurse just going out to meet
her.
"We thought the gate to the sea path might have been locked," said
Violet Weston. "Old Berthe loves keys and safety. She entreats me
unceasingly to go to Switzerland as the only safe and proper place
during the war."
Berthe, who wore ample skirts and rather represented a feminine barrel
crowned with a black cap, came in with syphons and decanters. She
returned with sandwiches clumsily cut, bade them _Bon nuit_ in a
villainously Swiss accent, and hobbled out.
"Mrs. De Burgho Keane wanted to know if she could be a German in
disguise," giggled Violet, "because the old thing of course talks both
languages. And Berthe has no sympathy with fighting. Poor old soul!
she has some relations hard at it in France--two, I think."
Mr. Harold Keefe was mildly in love--sufficiently so as to occasionally
forget to make declarations as he stared at Mrs. Weston, but not
sufficiently to forget common-sense and to try to obtain all suitable
information concerning Paul Weston, deceased, his circumstances in life,
and his last testament. Gheena knitted when she was dummy, and talked
incessantly of the Bobbery pack without.
Horses must now be made fit, no one had bothered so far. Mumsie's
saddle was not even newly stuffed, and Dearest's two horses were on hay
and bran.
Mrs. Weston decided to put hers on straw and looked surprised because
Stafford and Gheena laughed immoderately, and Keefe choked politely.
"With all this talk of horses," said the Professor patiently, "I wait to
play."
When it was decided that he had not gone three diamonds over Basil's
three clubs, because when pressed he offered to show that of diamonds he
had but one, the game proceeded, some umbrage being taken to Gheena the
Professor's partner, leading the ace of diamonds and then another.
"But she might have, in any case," said Violet Weston easily. "Mr.
Keefe, what shade is my new horse?"
Keefe, who was standing out, said: "Bay, blood bay, with black points."
"Then it's Casey's with the foreleg, I suppose. We're down two," said
Basil.
"It is not," said Keefe, with deepening complexion.
"Slattery's, then. It had such a cold, the remount man wouldn't look at
it. They're are the only two bays."
"I will double them," said the Professor viciously, and was almost put
out, holding five spades, to find that he had not heard correctly.
Basil Stafford offered to see Gheena home.
It was nearly full-tide; the harbour gleamed under the moonlight, with
the shadows black as ink.
The ceaseless voices of the sea whispered through the calm--the distant
creak of a boat at anchor, the lap and suck of the tide, the cry of
sleepless birds.
Oars plashed, leaving a trail of phosphorescent light, low voices
echoed.
"The Guinanes come back for a second load," said Gheena. "Good night.
I'll go up from the bathing pool."
She heard his footsteps as he went away, not back to the village, but
down along the beach. She saw him light a cigarette for a moment, and
then disappear into the black shadows of the cliff.
The hall door at Castle Freyne was still open, a yellow gash of light in
the darkened house. Darby Dillon leant on his crutch, waiting for her.
Gheena grew hilarious as she discussed the Bridge and the two bays and
the Professor's still too well-preserved German accent.
"Stafford saw you home?"