couple of fox-hounds' relations as they rushed joyously round his park,
declining to come near anyone.
"He had a nise of his own," said Andy cautiously, "and his bugle. Maybe
if ye sounded ye'res, yer honor."
Heads were thrown up at the note, to go down again, apparently regarding
the sound as something of no moment to them.
"Me Dada's bugle had a grating screech on it," said Andy. "Grandjer!
Grandjer! Grandjer is after a rabbit. Beauty, ye spalpeen! Beauty
agragh?"
The crooked-legged old matron came to the call, wagging her long tan
stern abjectly.
Darby said cheerily that it was a good thing to have one obedient. He
watched Gheena galloping her grey recklessly as she endeavoured to put
hounds back to him.
"D'ye hear that! Isn't Grandjer terrible swhift?" Andy's admiring note
was called for by the dying scream of the rabbit as Grandjer broke it up
and ate it.
"What I intended to do," said Darby, lifting his hat to cool his head,
"was to take these brutes round by Leshaun and back the mountain road.
It is not a bit of use taking them out if they won't follow us anywhere.
Good man, Phil!"
An accurately aimed lash was driving Spinster and Doatie out of the
woods.
A little more noise and violent whip-work brought the whole of the pack
into view; they sat down, greeted each other as complete friends, but
looked with distrust at Darby on his black mare. Their master had
always been on foot.
"If ye were to borry me Dada's bugle," said Andy hopefully. "It is
hangin' up at home."
"Chance the road, Phil," said Darby. "We must get to Cullane on Monday
somehow."
Darby's old house stood well back from the sea, a long, rambling house,
which had been pulled down by someone who objected to its original
hideousness, and rebuilt with gables and wide windows. A flagged
terrace, guarded with stone railings and stone urns, which in summer
overflowed with scarlet geraniums, had been laid out at one side; and
the usual basement, where the kitchen blinked up behind a dark alley,
was made darker still by another railing of cut stone. The inevitable
fuchsia hedges guarded the flower-beds, a tangle now of withering
dahlias and Michaelmas daisies.
A fine old place, well kept up, and no one alive knew what battles the
young owner had fought with himself there when he came back to it
crippled. Battles fought for endurance, when the joys of being up again
and able to shuffle in the sunshine had worn off. The very trees which
he used to climb, the sunk fences which he jumped so lightly over, the
ladders leading to the lofts, mocked Darby.
To get down to the trout stream meant a long weary struggle, or the
bitterness of sitting in his bath-chair drawn by old Ned the donkey.
When hope of amending culminated in being able to ride, Darby knew that
his days of swift life were done for ever. He snatched something from
the wreck; he could shuffle on his crutch. He could shoot as straight
as ever, fish from a boat or where the banks were flat.
When he ceased to rebel, he knitted up as many ravelled strands as he
could, and twisted and crippled, faced his lease of life.
England called now; he could not go to her, not back to his old regiment
which was fighting somewhere in France. Riding at Darby's right side,
he looked straight and whole, a lean, good-looking man, with a kindly
ravaged face. Coming to the other, one saw an arm tied up, a leg
palpably cork, stiff and useless, an almost useless hand, and a scar,
vanishing now, on the cheek-bone.
He could ride still, and shuffle back to the saddle without much
difficulty after a fall, easy things to meet with in the close country,
with its trappy fences and its occasional big bog drains or awkward
pieces of gaps fenced by stabs of bog dale.
Black Maria sidled and snorted at the pack, which trolled along
obediently enough now, believing they must really be going out hunting.
Stafford said he would come to help and get them to know him. And Mr.
Keefe could not come because they wanted him somewhere.
"They seem to want everyone somewhere now," said Gheena gloomily.
"There are the Guinanes out fishing, and it's horribly rough."
The Guinanes' boat was bobbing actively on the back of vicious leaden
waves, bobbing down almost out of sight, and the two men had their backs
in it as they pulled.
"Just by Shanockheela, where there's that nasty current--they can't
catch anything to-day."
"They have a new boat got for sailing," commented Andy. "An' me Mama
does be thinkin' Mrs. Weston gave it to them, for they couldn't have the
money nor half of it themselves."
"It is McGreery's boat that he left an' he to list," put in Phil;
"thirty pound they should pay. She is above at the Quay now."
"They seem to be rowing out," said Darby, staring, "and there's a real
big sea at the point. Oh, it's to meet that fishing-smack that's
standing in."
They stood watching the dipping and rising of the little boat, and the
pitching of the red-sailed smack, which beat in against the wind,
lurching past the rowing boat.
"They've had enough," said Gheena; "they're putting the lines in. Good
gracious! they'll be swamped."
The sea out there for a small boat was cruelly wild, but the men put up
a rag of sail and ran down to the coast before the strong wind into the
shelter of the harbour.
"There is some clather behind us," said Andy, pulling up Ratty just as
Darby commented upon the bravery of fishermen. "A sight of horses, I'm
thinkin'."
There were four, all ridden at a break-neck trot, with Mrs. Weston's
Commander-in-Chief, very fresh and jaunty, leading the procession.
She wore a multitude of curls showing round the edge of her bowler hat,
which curls, she confided to Gheena, she simply could not tuck away, and
she looked fresh and young as she rode loose-reined, with the sea breeze
blowing off her powder.
"For two miles," gasped George Freyne, "I've talked about tendons, and
she went faster and faster."
"But if I hadn't gone so very fast, I'd simply have had to go rather
fast for longer," said Mrs. Weston equably. "You were so late coming for
me."
"The cutting of drains," said Basil gravely, "and the guarding of
coasts. Freyne here is worn out at Home Defence, and even I had to take
messages to-day right round to Clona Kratty."
"I'll be giving you all orders soon," said Keefe, mopping his pink face.
"As we're all friends here. They may come and invade us." This deep
note of tragedy in his voice caused the two boys to say, "Laws Almighty,
d'ye say so, the haythens!" and Gheena to clutch so nervously at the
grey's mouth that he reared in astonishment.
"In Heaven's name, Keefe," said George Freyne, "when are we to go to
sleep in safety?"
"That's what they'll tell you," breathed Mr. Keefe mysteriously. "When
they come."
"One would think you'd been talking to them," said Gheena suspiciously.
"And as we have no guns and no troops, I don't see why they shouldn't."
"If we drive to the very top of the hills," said Violet Weston,
hopefully hysterical, "and built eyries there, they're dreadfully
short-winded and might never bother to run up after us."
"You wait until they shelled you," said Darby, "in your eyrie. Gheena
looks as though she contemplated entrenching on the lawn."
"Are they beyant in the little boat?" piped Andy dolorously. "Are they,
Mr. Keefe, was thim Germins?"
"Who told you, Keefe?" George Freyne showed symptoms of acute strain.
"Who--is it right? Are they coming? Are they?"
"Don't get so enated," said Keefe calmly, "I can't tell you now. When
they come, you know. What are you talking about, Dillon? It won't be
any use when you're crucified bodies! Don't be absurd!" Staring at a
ring of white faces and hands dropped limply on their horses' necks, Mr.
Keefe grew irritable. "When the orders come," he said sharply, "they'll
be really nearly a reality."
"To have lost all that fright for nothing," said Darby tersely.
"Orders!"
"Then why in the name of Goodness did you say it was Germans?" blared
Freyne furiously; "considering I have got a weak heart. You did say the
Germans were coming. I say you did, sir."
"As plainly as the hills," said Mrs. Weston reproachfully. "Oh, what a
fright!"
"Unless they showed playing Wagner on the road, it could not have been
plainer," said Gheena huffily, "making us all fuss like that, and trying
to look as if we weren't, and Phil----"
"Phil appears to have gone home to tell your mother," said George
Freyne, answering.
"She won't mind a bit until you come to advise her about it, so that
doesn't matter," returned Gheena. "Yes, he's gone."
"He said he was off to the Missus," said Andy, "an' ye none of ye heard
him go."
"Three times I repeated: When my _orders_ come!" wailed Keefe. "And I
should not have said even that, but I was just trying to break it easily
to you all that there will be orders as to invasion, if there is an
invasion; and when they come..."
"If you say it again, Keefe, I shall set Grandjer at your horse," said
Darby loftily.
Mr. Freyne then got off his horse, and suggested learning the hounds'
names, which they had come out for instead of talking nonsense. Andy
knew them all. But, as in a kaleidoscope, tan and pied bodies and
flapping ears and wistful eyes seemed to shift and melt before the
would-be learner.
"That is Doatie, with the sphot above his tail. Call him. That is
Sergeant ye called, an' his biggest sphot is on his eye."
"Didn't you call the first one a he," said Freyne heatedly, "and that
other--and both?"
"Well, he--Doatie--do have pups surely," said Andy patiently; "but he
has a sphot on his tail annyways, an' that is Sergeant."
Grandjer, yellow tan and tailless, was unmistakable. So was Sweetheart,
who had lost an ear, and the enormous Home Ruler. The two small black
hounds called respectively the Divil and the Tailor could only be
mistaken for each other. They were, Andy told them, "Holy terrors to
hunt, but apt to be yowlin' if a fence was very high, bein' baygles
entirely."
The pack sat or rolled, greatly interested in the increasing reiteration
of its names.
Beauty, being polite, thumped her tail without pause; it was really
hardly worth while stopping. All the more obliging hounds shifted and
oozed from side to side as they were called, and the lesson terminated
at length by Darby suggesting that dinner-time would be upon them and
they had better go on.
It was too late to wander into the mountains. Darby took a road which
wound up to a little group of houses, and then back again to the coast,
with the pack lumbering along quite placidly and the four whippers-in
all repeating names behind them.
All save Gheena. Sundry visits to the meets of the foot dogs had made
her familiar with most of the pack.
The Commander-in-Chief, somewhat exhausted by his burst, was now forging
noisily, clicking his flat feet together fiercely, and varying this by
an occasional stumble.
"Did you really think Mr. Keefe meant the Germans were coming?" Gheena
found Basil Stafford riding beside her.
"And if he had meant it," he said, with a thrill in his voice. "It's a
big sea to guard, Miss Freyne. Lord, if he had meant it! Spiked
helmets marching along this road--oh, with their owners, if you like it,
and everything seized! Promise me if they ever do come you'll run away
inland," he said. "They won't go off the railway lines."
"How could they come?" Gheena looked out to sea. "You don't think they
mean to try?"
"I know"--he checked himself--"I know--that it may be possible for them
to try."
"I shall ride away Whitebird and lead Redbird, and lead Bluebird, and
take all the dogs," said Gheena firmly.
Save for the chasing of a blameless cat, the pack got home in chastened
mood, greatly depressed by an aimless promenade. George Freyne's car
was at Darby's gate, and a suggestion of bed at Castle Freyne was well
received.
"Keefe can lead Gheena's horse, he won't want to hurry, and Stafford can
take mine, Darby, and we'll drive. Matilda may have been worried by Phil
about Keefe's nonsense."
A tyre bursting delayed the motor, and the horses could cross a short
way through the park, so that as they drove up the avenue they saw
Stafford appearing with Gheena's grey jogging amicably beside him.
"Hello, there! Hello, you! I say, Freyne!" he called out, amazed to
see the motor swerve.
"Dearest, the sunk fence!" shrilled Gheena.
For the car was suddenly left to itself as Dearest George cleared
something from his face, and again, with light-hearted gaiety, the
Sunbeam immediately dived off the gravel at the sunk fence.
"Hello, I say!" Gheena leaped from the car wildly.
"A bee," said Freyne, beating at the air hard, "a bee! Bees, my God!"
He switched the power off and leaped for the shelter of the laurels.
"He's mad," said Gheena. "But it is bees! All the bees!" Her dive
into the undergrowth was even swifter than her stepfather's. She was
followed by Darby going with long bounds off his crutch, and then by the
chauffeur. A swarm of furious insects buzzed outside.
"Bees!" George Freyne wiped his forehead. "The bees have risen. I am
badly stung on my nose."
"They've swarmed on the doorstep," suggested Gheena. "Look! they are in
a cloud. I thought you were crazy at first, Dearest, but you're right.
And the car has not gone over."
"Bees," said Darby, "don't swarm in October."
"The two hives is beyant on the steps," remarked Dayly the chauffeur, as
he nursed a stung cheek drearily. "I sees them."
Basil Stafford, skirting the sunk fence, believed that they had all gone
away and called out loudly. His fevered imagination even sprung to the
chance of Germans having really come and being in full occupation of
Castle Freyne.
"Hello--what!" He struck an insect from his nose. The bees saw new
worlds to conquer. He beat his ears. It is lamentable to add that young
England's manhood sprang yelling from the saddle, leaped the sunk fence,
and was into the laurels on to Dearest George's body.
"Bees!" howled Stafford. "Swarms!"
"In October," wailed Freyne, dabbing his swelling nose and nursing a
trampled-on leg.
"And both the horses have gone off their heads," said Gheena. "They
have simply flown away. You will go at once to catch them, Dayly."
"I would be afeard, Miss," said the chauffeur simply. "They are terrible
sot agin horses any times, them bays."
At this point the dining-room window was opened very cautiously.
"The first of them," quavered Phil's voice dramatically, "It was thruth.
They are lurkin' in the bushes. I hears them."
Gheena said, "Listen."
Then there was a pause in conversation filled by prayer.
"It is the Masther's cyar," declaimed Anne the cook. "I'd know her in
Heaven."
"They took her off him," gulped Mary Kate, the kitchenmaid, who was in
the throes of Ave Marias. "He is kilt, the craythur. See the empty
sate."
"An' there is some lurking outside," breathed Phil. "I can hear them in
the shrubs. I tell ye wasn't it the great plan entirely to kape us
safe? The poor ould Masther, the craythur."
His master's head, veiled by a flapping laurel leaf, suddenly issued
from the thicket, and the voice which issued from behind it did not seem
to be discussing Germans.
"God above us, did they do ye a harrum, sir?" wailed Anne from the
window, putting out her kindly face for a second. "An' ye too, Bayly?
God be praised for ye're lives."
"The two eyes out of me head," replied Dayly--Dearest was
incoherent--"and the Masther's nose the size of two, an' Misther
Stafford picked in the ear."
"The haythens!" said the voice, now again behind the blind. "The Turks
an' infidels. I hear Dayly. Could the polis----" She prayed loudly.
"Prayer won't mind ye, Mary Kate," counselled Phil, sobbing. "I hear
Miss Gheena bawlin'."
At this point Gheena grew hysterical. George Freyne's words became
clear as he ordered Phil, as a something, something, something idiot, to
get away the bees, to get help and take the dam brutes away.
The angry bees were racing up and down the avenue between the laurels
and safety.
"I carried them around," said Phil soberly, out of the window, "thinkin'
they'd destroy the robbers if they comes up, so I up and clapped the two
carriage rugs around them, an' they neshtin' within, an' I wouldn't say
we can ever get them back till it is dark entirely, sir, they bein' a
trifle irritated in themselves an' all out."
The prospect of crouching in the laurels until after dark, or the
alternative of squeezing through the barbed wire palings or of taking
the open surrounded by a cloud of bees was now with the refugees.
The remarks which sped from the bitter smelling shade of the laurels
were venomous as the disturbed honey-makers.
"Someone is talkin'," said the sober voice behind the Venetian blind.
"Howld ye're whist, Mary Anne, till we listen. Would ye dhraw the
Germins on us? Do not stir the blind on ye're life or they'll be in.
The bees Mary Anne, not the----"
At this point Mrs. Freyne opened the hall door. It was dim behind her,
and she was not perceived by the questing enemy.
"Matilda," wailed her husband, "get them away!"
"Oh, you, Dearest!" replied his wife placidly. "Dear me! I see the car
nearly over the sunk fence, and I thought I heard George, but I cannot
do anything until he comes--can I, Professor?--about the Germans."
A deeper note grunted from the hall. Mrs. Freyne chased a bee from her
face.
"Matilda," yelped George Freyne, "send someone!"
"There are no Germans, only bees," called Dayly loudly. "An' we are all
picked and bit sorryful, Ma'am."
"Bees!" Mrs. Freyne saw the hives. "Professor, someone has put two
hives at the door, and Dearest George is in the bushes. Dearest, what
am I to do?"
George put forth a swollen face to deliver orders, to cry for men and
bee dresses. To pray that veiled rescuers should be sent to them and
gauze veils--anything to escape the bees.
Mrs. Freyne, obliged to ask advice, hurried to the Professor. A stifled
yell and a crash told that the enemy had gone inside, and the hall door
was slammed, promises of aid being presently shrilled from the upper
windows.
"We are getting transparent things, Dearest. You are sure there is no
danger? My net skirt, do you think? Oh, dear!"
The enraged bees sighted new worlds to conquer as they sped out at
Violet Weston and Mr. Keefe, who were riding quietly across the lawn,
the result being--four gaitered legs described some circles and curves,
and two people dived wildly from their saddles and ran.
"If you ask Dearest George what to do," advised Mrs. Freyne from the
upper window--"he is under the laurels--he'll tell you."
Mrs. Weston crashed to covert with a shriek, followed by Mr. Keefe
swearing fluently, and plucking bees from his collar; these he stamped
on, but they had stung him first.
A variety of advising onlookers began to collect cautiously on the
avenue, all advising at the same time.
Dayly suddenly put his coat over his head and sped blindly to
comparative safety.
"An' I thinkin' it the grandest plan," said Phil, speaking now from the
bushes at the other side of the drive. "Bullets they is used to, says I,
an' they might resint; but innocent bees, they could blame none for,
says I, an' the two maids bawlin' and prayin' within."
"There is James runnin', afther they have him kilt," wailed the
housemaid wildly. "Oh, the Turks! An' the Missus cool an' aisy at the
windy above." Another wild shriek echoed despairingly, followed by sobs
for mercy, and Mary Kate hid her face.
Now just as James took flight, Mrs. De Burgho Keane's large car hummed
to the gate, and was pulled sharply up to avoid Dayly.
Mrs. De Burgho Keane was pinched and anxious looking. Phil had dropped
word as he scurried for home.
The sight of the flying figure, the murmurs from the bushes, upset her
completely.
Even as Dayly escaped, Smith, her own chauffeur, suddenly let the car
slap into the bushes as he beat frantically at the air. Mrs. De Burgho
Keane suggested "Mines!" at the pitch of her voice, reasoning out that
some hidden force must have upset the discreet Englishman. Muffled
figures rushed across the drive.
"If they would take five pounds and the ham to let me go," she pattered
unevenly, searching in her purse. And she got half out of the car as
Dearest George, his head muffled in an old net skirt of his wife's, came
tearing blindly out of the laurels, flapping at a cloud of bees. They
were in the net, entangled, these furious little beings of wrath tinged
and buzzed in his ears. He struck the car, and with a sob clutched
Smith the chauffeur, burrowing down under the wheel for covert.
"My God! they are after you!" said Mrs. Keane heavily. "They have hurt
you! Oh, the horror--of reality!"
The amazing spectacle of George Freyne veiled in net thrilled her with
horror.
"Half killed me, the devils! Start the car, Smith; back her! Get her
away! Get us out of this! Half killed me! One eye gone, my nose
ruined! Start her, will you?"
Smith jogged the self-starter, and put in the reverse with a yell. He
had just been stung. Mrs. De Burgho Keane on the avenue leaped for
safety as the maddened chauffeur passed her without heed.
"Put your long veil down," yelled George Freyne; "you'll be all right if
you do."
A variety of muffled figures now issued from the bushes. Gheena entirely
covered by art-muslin curtains, Stafford with a butterfly net over his
head and the handle wagging behind, the rescuers insecurely draped, and
the gardener in a correct bee dress and armed with a syringe and a bell.
Mrs. De Burgho Keane had sat down flat on the avenue, and she was quite
close to a collapse. Stafford stopped to help her. She was clasping
her floating lace veil across her face and she endeavoured to speak with
a German accent. She leant back against nothing and nearly
overbalanced.
Darby Dillon had driven his car over and had pulled up to watch in rare
amazement the flight of Dearest George; the spinning away of the
Limousine from its rightful owner, and her subsequent collapse.
Rocking helplessly at the wheel, he saw the Professor spin out
Dervish-wise into the open, with a black ninon skirt roped round his
neck and spreading out cape-wise over his shoulders.
"The party," said Stafford, from the butterfly net, "is now complete."
He wagged the handle at Darby.
"You are not going to lift it!" muttered Mrs. Keane heavily. "Not going
to look at me! I am really not so beautiful at all, Herr German.
Mines! So quickly! They upset Smith--Schmidt, a name homelike to
Boches. I--if five pounds, and a ham--it's all I've with me--to let me
go."
Stafford's laughter rent him for a time, then he said: "Oh, come along!"
quite kindly, and poked sufficiently behind the lacy shoulders to lift
her up.
"Mr. Stafford, how did you escape?" The stout lady got up and stood
unsteadily.
"They won't follow us into the house, but hurry," said Stafford,
choking. "Hurry, while the gardener bells them."
For Carty, loftily secure in veil and gloves, commenced to peal the
bell.
Mrs. De Burgho Keane heard and gave up with a stifled cry of the Tocsin,
then slid into Stafford's arm, her head on his shoulder, the Professor
supporting her the other side. She was not quite unconscious, but
absolutely dazed, submitting without realizing it to the support of the
nearest wheelbarrow which was half full of weeds. Darby drove swiftly
across the lawn to the yard gate, thus avoiding the bees.
When they had all assembled in the drawing-room, picked off the
remaining bees and stood uneasily, starting at every sound, Mrs. De
Burgho Keane woke up. Someone had drenched her in toilet vinegar and
left her to recover.
Mrs. Freyne consulted Dearest George as to remedies for bee stings
before, a little hurt at his reply, she fetched the blue-bags and
onions, of which the room reeked healthily.
George Freyne had apparently lost one eye; the other glared from the
shelter of a swollen nose in an outraged frenzy of pain. Stafford
rubbed his neck delicately and Gheena shook a finger regretfully.
Old Naylour, quite unshaken, had brought in comforting tea.
"Do you think, Dearest George, that tea would upset Mrs. Keane?" asked
Matilda Freyne thoughtfully. "She is opening her eyes." To which
George Freyne remarked unsympathletically that anyone was damn lucky who
had eyes to open, and Mrs. Keane sat up appalled by such callousness.
"They hurt you," she said faintly, "hurt you all. I succumbed. And
they? They spared us. I said Schmidt to placate them."