it and the dark."
Mrs. Keane muttered something incoherently; the words related to the
Tocsin and the French.
"And the mines which upset Smith," she said. "Poor Smith! What an
experience!"
When the facts of the case and Phil's strategy were fully explained to
her, Mrs. De Burgho Keane felt a sense of loss. If they were not
Germans, then everyone had behaved as though they were--well, she
sniffed up the scent of onions.
"Bees alone," she said awfully, "do not cause men to rush and scream and
hurl themselves from dark corners and take my car, and my man Smith,
and----"
"He got it on the cheek and the hand," said Stafford gloomily. "Some of
your half-dead 'uns, Freyne, in your bridal veil."
"The skirt which the cook did get me," said the Professor, "is torn
sorely, but it kept out much pain."
Mrs. Violet Weston, stung on the neck, said gruffly that it was all
absurd. Mr. Keefe, whose cheeks were engaged in swallowing his snub
nose, decided that he would not be able to do duty anywhere for a week
or more.
A chorus of voices sounded outside advising and declaiming. Presently
Mrs. De Burgho Keane, shaken and offended, made her way to her car
attended by her gloomy one-eyed host.
"And Phil"--she turned round--"what will you do to Phil, or what has
been done to him?"
George Freyne muttered the words, "Hang Phil!" viciously but
indistinctly.
To this day Mrs. De Burgho Keane believes that the truth was concealed
from her, and that an invading army of Germans are either buried in the
park or took sail again for Germany, finding Ireland useless to them.
"Bees!" she said haughtily to those whom she confided in, "the bees were
a blind for other excesses."
*CHAPTER VI*
"Wasn't it all a great upset entirely, Miss Gheena," said Phil
sympathetically. "Mary Kate isn't the bether of it yet, an' the
Masther's lost eye blinks, an' all."
Gheena remarked gravely that she thought the defence of Ireland ought to
be entrusted to Phil.
"Bein' full sure themselves was comin'," continued Phil ruefully, "an'
the Missus alone in the Great House with that Professor that's up to no
good. Sure I thought it was the great thought, an' when I heard the
nise in the bushes, I wasn't full sure they was come on us, an' I right
entirely to brin' the bees out."
Darby burst into sudden laughter, memory of those thronged moments
reaching him.
"When Dearest went off backwards in the car, and she sat down," gulped
Darby, "and the Professor danced out in the black tea-gown tied over his
head."
"If ye had it dhrawn out on one of thim twiddly picthers, wouldn't it be
the great sight?" said Phil. "But when they were afther sayin' the
Germans was comin', was I right to believe them, Mister Darby? Wouldn't
it be the price of them haythens to be picked be honest bees? But the
Masther is that peevish about it," ruminated Phil, "an' at me noon and
night. If he was one of us afther a fair or a dance, he wouldn't be
thinkin' long of a closed eye."
Darby grinned again, and looked up to see Gheena cast off her coat and
stand in close-fitting stockingette.
"It is much too cold for a bathe," he said paternally.
Gheena kicked off her shoes, and remarked that cold water was always
warmer when it wasn't really warm, as she poised for a dive.
The sea poured in just there into a deep narrow pool, hedged over about
twenty yards down by a narrow belt of rocks. Beyond that was another
pool, a small one, and there the sea seemed to dive under a ledge,
called the Bridge, where it gurgled and sucked and muttered restlessly,
until it showed again in a basin of great depth, washed into at low tide
by the waves and covered at high.
Gheena poised, balanced, disappeared. The water surged and parted,
throwing up protesting sprays and rippled as she shot up. Then she was
gone again out of sight.
"Always she does be doin' that same," said Phil, "undther the rock no
less, like a merrymaid."
Darby ran to the Bridge. A shadow showed in the green depths swimming
easily under water; next moment Gheena's merry face shot up.
"I call it my diving-bell." She trod water easily.
"It's hang dangerous going under like that; if there was a devil-fish
down there."
"Or a shark," suggested Gheena, holding on to the seaweed-hung ledge.
"There does be cobblers, anyways," put in Phil, "an' I seen a lobsther
out of that hole onst."
"I say I call it my diving-bell," Gheena laughed. "I can get out to the
Basin now, Darby. That took me ages. I used to go half way and get
frightened. And I'm waiting to find a way into the pool of Cons Cave;
there must be a passage, and it's close to this."
"You go out to the Basin!" Darby stood on the rocks, his face white and
drawn. He could hobble, he could ride, but if Gheena choked down there
he could not dive in to help her. He was twisted, crippled, useless.
She would drown before his eyes.
"I wish you wouldn't, Gheena. If you got cramp out here, if you hit the
rocks..."
"It was girls at the Coliseum," said Gheena absently "they did things
under water and I had to learn."
"There is Mister Stafford now," said Phil.
Stafford's face appeared above a ledge of rock; he clambered over and
came towards the pool.
"You'll get to know these rocks," said Darby thoughtfully.
"All systems of drainage, even that of the tide, being interesting to
me," Stafford laughed. "And, Miss Freyne, bathing in October!"
Gheena merely replying it was better than in November, climbed out and
dived skilfully; she came up to take a big breath, disappearing again.
"She will rise outside now," said Phil, fingering the rope which Matilda
Freyne insisted on being carried by him.
A minute, almost two, Darby scraped and shuffled along the rocks, his
teeth set, Stafford slipping past him easily.
"Is it this pool, Phil?" Stafford peered down beyond the Bridge.
"It is," said Phil, gathering sea-grass placidly.
Something alive had vanished under that wall of rock, down into the
sucking cold depths, something at the mercy of the sea; the men bent
over, both tense from fear.
"Phil, for God's sake! Does she do it often? Phil, come here!"
"She does so, sir, too often. I am gatherin' say-grass for the
Misthress, sir, and won't she be plazed if there isn't enough."
"Say-grass, you Phil?" The green water stirred. Cobbles scurried madly
away. Gheena's face parted the water.
"Po-oh!" She drew a long breath. "Po-oh! I got on slowly to-day
somehow." She ran back, swam up the long pool and hurried off to dress.
"That submarine business," said Darby gloomily, looking down into the
still pool.
Stafford looked up sharply.
"I don't like it," said Darby. "The slightest accident in that hole
under the rock and----"
His mouth twisted.
"She just takes her own way in everything," he went on. "Matilda will
ask the angels' advice about her wings in Heaven; she never gave an
order in her life, and Dearest George is so obsessed by his authority
that the girl never takes any notice of him. She has no business to
bathe at all in October, it's too cold; and what she meant by learning
to hold her breath."
Basil Stafford jumped lightly over the narrow pool landing with a slight
slip and stagger.
"It's ... a fine thing to have one's limbs," said Darby gently. "A very
fine thing, Stafford, to be fit and able to move as a man should."
Stafford said nothing--it was the only thing to say. The unmarred side
of Darby's face was turned towards him, lean, fine in its lines, with
cleanly-cut features--the face of a man who had power to feel and to
enjoy life.
"I'll be only one of many after this war," grunted Darby after a pause;
"but, Lord, if I could have lost myself for my country, out there!"
Basil Stafford sighed uneasily, flushing a little.
"We are going to have five-o'clock tea out here at four," announced
Gheena, appearing suddenly. "Mama has got callers--the Bradys from the
Rectory, with a right-minded cousin, and the O'Haras from Crom
Rectory,--and they are all going to knit." She flicked out her own
knitting as she spoke. "So Phil is making a fire. He always lets it go
out."
Phil was coughing patiently, his face hidden in a pungent reek of turf
smoke.
"I am afther blowin' it up, Miss Gheena, till there isn't a puff in me
two cheeks," he explained; "but someone was at our little cranny of
turf, and this same is moist on us."
To boil a kettle with bunches of heather requires constant scurryings to
and fro, outbreaks of fiery flame being varied by smouldering ashes.
Mocking songs from the kettle, followed by glum silences which it
refused to break.
Basil Stafford, his eyes full of tears, thought almost regretfully of
the tea-party at Castle Freyne, and it was Darby at last who hauled a
now stormily bubbling kettle from a roaring blaze, and was then heartily
abused because he had forgotten to heat the tea-pot.
Immediately the tea was made the turf glowed to a fiery red and the
smoke was no more.
Basil Stafford drank smoked strong tea in silence. His glasses lay
beside him, and more than once he looked through them out at the
silver-grey sea.
"Uncle Richard says they suspect bases here"--Gheena looked along the
low cliffs--"for the submarines; people supplying them with petrol. No
one would; they couldn't."
"Money," said Stafford, "tempts some people greatly. The Germans pay
well, I am told," he added a little hurriedly.
"Tom Knox got his commission yesterday." Gheena waved her tea-cup. "He
is all khaki and importance. How anyone who could go can stay!" She
looked fierily at Stafford.
"Some people cannot help themselves," he said apologetically.
Gheena said icily that they could do something, drive a car, replace
other men; then she stopped abruptly, seeing Darby's drawn face.
"The Professor," said Darby, "is making studies of rocks as usual. What
amusement he can find hammering out little pieces of stones I cannot
say."
"And he do be lookin' at thim half the night through," put in Phil. "Ye
can see his shaddy if he pulls down the blind--he forgets most
times--pokin' an' peepin', with big books in front of himself."
The Professor saw the group and waved a telegram.
"Your man was very busy, Stafford; he had forgotten some supplies, so I
offered to bring this." He held it out, beaming softly.
Basil opened it, reading with slow ease. Then he looked round at the
distant wireless station and grunted sharply.
"Of course," he said to himself. "It does make it..."
Gheena had snatched the wire, reading out a meaningless jumble of
letters and short words.
"And the news?" she asked softly.
"Oh, the war news. Everything much as usual. Great hopes and little
else," he answered coolly. "When they strew the papers with roses they
seem to forget the thorns or the stems, Miss Freyne."
Having been haughtily told he was a pessimist, Basil Stafford read his
wire again to himself.
"Mrs. Weston offered to do post-boy, too," said the Professor. "I met
her, but I wouldn't allow it. She was at your house borrowing
note-paper. Hers was out. She has gone to see Mrs. Freyne now."
Basil Stafford said "Oh!" very thoughtfully.
The party at Castle Freyne was gathered in an airless room when they got
back, heated by a large fire of wood and turf, the blend of tea and
conversation strong in the close atmosphere. The women were knitting
and the men discussing the mistakes of the war, humbly listened to by
their spouses. The Bradys' right-minded cousin--her name was
O'Toole--stabbed wool which grated harshly on the needles, and
occasionally commented shrewdly.
Gheena let a breath of soft fresh air into the room as she threw up a
window, and the visitors shivered politely.
"Going to nurse, or motor drive, or release a man?" asked the
right-minded cousin almost as she shook hands. "I'm on five committees
in Dublin."
Gheena said meekly that she was waiting to act as interpreter when the
South Coast was invaded, and Mr. O'Hara carefully explained that nearly
all Teutons spoke English fluently, so that that idea was absurd.
Gheena snubbed, closed half the window, and sighed patiently.
"Are you joining?" said Miss O'Toole to Stafford.
Mr. Stafford eyed her rancorously, merely remarking that his time was
occupied by business.
A fumble at Miss O'Toole's pocket revealed the probable presence of a
box of white feathers.
"Dearest George thinks the Germans are making all kinds of mistakes,"
said Matilda Freyne placidly. "Losing such lots of men, you know, and
making themselves so unpopular and digging so much. He thinks they will
all get rheumatism and have to go to Harrogate."
Darby suggested Marienbad and Homburg slyly. He thought the German army
invalided might congest Harrogate. Matilda looked at Dearest George,
feeling uncertain until she consulted him. George Freyne got up and
shut the window sharply. Then he remarked to Stafford that he was glad
the wireless station was now properly guarded. Anyone might have reached
it before.
"When I saw you over there yesterday, Stafford, I said to you----"
Gheena listened with such elaborate carelessness that it was impossible
to avoid nothing what she was doing.
"And, by the way, how did you get in?" added George Freyne fussily.
"I had some business there. Hanly charged my battery for me, too. Yes,
I knew the guard. I thought they'd put on men soon."
Mrs. Weston, knitting rapidly, began to talk about the hunting in
rapturous tones. It was actually going to commence next day, and she
hoped her bay horse would be as good as he looked, the darling.
"If he only gets as far as his looks go," said Darby absently.
Miss O'Toole was questioning Basil Stafford ruthlessly--as to his age,
birthplace and nationality. These items she wrote down in a small
note-book, where, she said pointedly, she kept a register of fit men.
Then quite suddenly she asked a question in laboured German.
"Hanoverian or Platt?" asked Stafford amiably. "I should like to know
which you'd understand best before I answer. When I was at Berlin I
practised both."
Then the mocking look died out of his face, which reddened slowly.
Gheena escaped from the heat to the doorstep. It was one of those
autumn nights which are as oppressive as June with none of its
lightness. The air was murkily hot, and a fog was stealing into the
hollows; through the grey haze one could hear the sea boom at the end of
the park.
Everyone began to put up their knitting. The O'Haras' wagonette, poised
haughtily high over a dejected grey cob, came round to the door, the
weary beast walking with the bitter certainty of seven miles to go and a
feed of hay at its end.
Miss O'Toole, trailing her ball of wool, came stealthily towards Gheena.
"I should ... watch him," she breathed fiercely. "Wireless here, and a
coast for submarines, and--what is he doing?"
Gheena said "Drains" a little faintly.
Miss O'Toole compared drains to trenches with a sort of disdain.
"Young--strong--active. Blurts out he's been to Berlin and blushes over
it. It's a place to watch," gulped Miss O'Toole dramatically.
Several exclamations, coupled with seven stumbles, heralded the approach
of Basil Stafford, who had spun a cocoon of wool about his legs, and was
cursing volubly in discreet undertone. His endeavour to get unwound
involving him more securely still, he demanded tartly why Miss O'Toole
played Fair Rosamund on the doorsteps; and, of course, if she could take
it off in a second he would not cut the stuff, but----
Miss O'Toole, coursing round him agilely with dives and dashes at his
gaiters, managed, as she loosed Stafford, to meet and involve the master
of the house in the tangle.
Basil Stafford said "Silkworms," and advised George to stand quite
still.
"Under, over. That's his bit. I never saw anyone dive so neatly on dry
land."
A whistle sounded clearly on the cliffs, shrill and sweet. Basil
suddenly used force, so that the wool fell from him in frayed pieces,
and slipped to the door, followed by bitter reproaches from Miss
O'Toole. In her opinion, at least two soldiers had been deprived of
mittens.
It was unkind of Dearest George to say huffily that they were jolly
lucky, for the drawing-room door opened to show him standing, wondering
with the agile danger swoop round him, and winding feverishly. Gheena
was outside.
The suspicious eyes of two blameless clergymen and their spouses fell
heavily upon George Freyne, Mrs. Weston's cheerful voice wishing to know
if it was a new game of "Now we go round the Mulberry Bush," or Kis...?
and here her host's glance stopped her, and trying to help, she involved
herself in the tangle.
"How you became so entangled," said Mrs. Brady icily, "in my niece's
wool, Mr. Freyne?"
"It was Stafford," roared Dearest.
The eight suspicious eyes looked round for Mr. Stafford and four noses
sniffed simultaneously.
"Break the stuff!" foamed Freyne. "Get me a knife! No, the other leg,
not the right, the left."
"Take Dearest George's advice," counselled Matilda; "he is sure to know
his own legs. There! you were wrong. Just lift that foot, George, and
the other at the same time. And, dear me, George!" George's answer
being curt.
"Not being a Zeppelin," said Darby thoughtfully. "Round his arm now,
Miss O'Toole, and his neck. Put your arm round it, and you too, Mrs.
Weston. It's the last strand."
Mrs. O'Hara, who had listened for quite an hour on the previous day to
accounts of the perfections of Miss O'Toole from Dublin, now decided in
awful tones that the pony could not stand for another moment, and said
"Good-bye" heavily.
"I am not evil-minded," said the clergyman's wife, "but I thought better
of Mr. Freyne, and that painted Mrs. Weston."
"Even if the girl were pretty!" said her husband. "Go on, James, home.
One could understand." Here he coughed hoarsely.
Gheena, who had run down from the sea, came back slowly; through the
still mist she could hear voices on the water--men rowing back to the
little village on the point.
Crabbit barked suspiciously at something unseen on land, ran it to
earth, and came back with Basil Stafford.
"What did you think? Who whistled to you?" said Gheena abruptly.
"War makes the world jumpy," he said coolly. "Might have been an advance
patrol of Boches, y'know, coming up to supper."
The day of the first meet of the scratch pack dawned in a grey mist,
with the sea whimpering under a shroud of white. At seven, when
everyone in Darby's yard was busy polishing and hissing, the mist
cleared to a clammy greyness, hot and still. Little Andy, extremely
resembling an active mosquito leaping from place to place, regretting as
he reached each, that he was not at the other.
He tore to the kennels, advising old Barty, calling on Beauty lovingly,
prophesying that she would folly none but himself. Telling Grandjer not
to be frettin' for his tail, because the front of him would soon show
them what he was; pouring out tales of Daisy and Greatness and their
prowess.
Barty, his new leathers covered by overalls, observed bitterly that to
be goin' out with such a pack was like what a man'd dhrame of afther he
atin' too much.
"Like a dhrame when ye'd be at a hunt an' all off, an' the horse undher
ye sthandin' sthock sthill," he ruminated sourly, "an' hounds leggin' it
over the besht of ye're counthry, or maybe a check an' ye knowin' the
line, an' the horn ye'd put to ye're mouth is a concertina, an' two
strange masthers out laffin' at ye. Save us! I am terrible for
dhramin'. Andy McInerny, terrible! The least taste extry at night and
I'll be at it. One was the worst of all, that there was a great lawn
meet at Dom Dhurres, an' I with the grey horse outside waitin', an the
crowd an' all, an' not a ridin' trouser or a boot on me, and no way to
git thim. Sometimes I'd see the sphur tacked to me bare heel, an' the
shame of it'd be through me; but I never axed even for a horse's hood."
"When I dhrames I dhrames plisint," remarked Andy simply. "I med
believe onst I had Mr. Freyne's best horse whipt off, an' he himself
dead in a ditch, cosy and quiet an away I bolted, an' Miss Gheena
watchin'."
"Plisint!" said Darby softly. He had come up behind the two.
"An' off I whipt before hounds an' all, till Misther Freyne run up,
shouting and leppin', but I travelled on. Ye're not goin' to send them
out empty, Misther Barty, are ye, the craythers?"
"In the name of God, youngster, would ye feed hounds on huntin' day, ye
omadawn?"
"It was thinkin' of kapin' the payce mid us, me Dada 'd say," murmured
little Andy. "What they kills, Mr. Darby can pay for aisy. They're apt
to catch bins, an' they hungered. It was the widow Hefferty's turkeys
onst an we never sent thim dogs out empty agin."
At this stage Barty threatened reprisals if Andy did not instantly run
away to mind his own bizness; so Andy hovered for a space, repeating
that even the least taste of food would quieten the dogs, and then
scampered back to the yards.
Darby's active, well-bred bay was being polished until he shone as a
horse-chestnut fresh from the husk. The sedate grey, which was Barty's
mount, poked a lean head from his loose box, and knew it was hunting
again. A liver chestnut, destined to carry Carty, the newly-broke-in
second whip, was doing what his rider called rings around his box,
induced by the sight of the whip which Carty had only just learnt to
crack, and which, so far, had generally hit his horse by mistake.
The chestnut preserved a too lively recollection of how often the thong
had found him out in tender places.
"Have ye e'er a polish put on the Rat?" was what Andy demanded, as he
seized a clean bridle, and zealously rubbed the bits in sand.
"Let ye put a polish on him yerself, ye pinkeen." Mike, the head groom,
raised a heated face.
"He'd clout me with his hindmost legs," remarked Andy soberly, "unless I
had a one to howld him."
"Me gran' bits that was clane an' all." Mike left the bridle for Andy,
looked at it, and hinted darkly that it was not the Rat but Andy who
would have a polish put on his hide if he did not leave his bethers to
themselves. Next moment, as Andy trailed tearfully back to the kennels,
old Mike stumped growling to the Rat's stable, directing that the pony
should be cleaned properly, so that Miss Gheena wouldn't be at them at
the meet.
The Rat was a long-tailed, powerful little beast, with the second thighs
of a big horse, no shoulder, and a lean, vicious head. If he had been
sixteen hands, he would have carried sixteen stone with ease.
He bit and kicked in the stable and ran away out of it; but few more
wonderful hunters had been foaled, and his inches made his evil efforts
to hunt futile. They had tried him in harness, to the extreme detriment
of two pony carts, and with additions to chips for lighting the fires.
If they stopped him kicking, he lay down and slumbered stolidly, but
Gheena would not part with him.
"The head of that child will open and let out his brains, the sthate he
is in," said Mike, looking after Andy. "If he has flithered up to the
kennels onst to-day he has done it twinty times, an' the eyes lightin'
out of his head. Will ye have Colleen out second, sir?"
This to Darby, who came limping and crippling across the yard.
"A second horse." Darby glared back at the kennels, and suggested that
possibly half a horse might be sufficient with the pack which he had
gathered together.
"For the huntin' they'll do it might be," said Mike, grinning; "but it
is the huntin' ye'll do yerself afther them, Misther Darby, when, maybe,
they'll make home on ye, and, sure enough, bein' used to Matt McInerny's
bugle, they'll not come to yer own. An' the teasin' they may be afther
givin' ye. Will I send Colleen to Drumeneer, sir, at one o'clock, an'
Sportsman for Barty? That grey isn't half fit."
Darby went to his breakfast and came out again before he was finished,
disturbed by the pursuit of Grandjer and Daisy round the house.
Grandjer was, in fact, hot on the line of the stable cat, which took
cover just in time, crackling like a live wireless installation from the
depths of a holly tree.
"If ye had to quieten them with a taste of mate," panted Andy, when he
had entreated Grandjer to give over and come huntin'. "If Barty had to
be said by me. 'Ware cats, ye thievin' rogue."
"Where is Barty?" Darby inquired, limping out with his hunting whip.