cap peevishly. "I said so not enough to stop him. You can't get sound
horses this year for small sums."
"They wouldn't pass him for th' army," murmured the same voice in the
background. "Twenty pound Tom Talty said, but it was his ankles, an'
not the wind."
"They have got it. Forrard on!" yelled Mr. Keefe enthusiastically.
"Forrard away!"
Beauty and Grandjer rushed to the cheer which was followed by the
thunderous advance of Darby and a heated request to the third Master to
let hounds alone when they were puzzling matters out for themselves.
"One of them threw his tongue," said Keefe snappishly.
"He did when Annette Freyne's mare kicked him. So would you," returned
Darby dryly.
"If you're anxious to hunt this for yourself," he went on, his voice
raised, "do it. You're all over the place. Get the Field up, somebody.
Get them back to the clump of trees."
George Freyne, blowing his whistle, rode backwards and forwards busily,
right over the line.
"If the Master was not in France he would be dead with the rage an' he
here to-day, annyways," said old Barty bitterly. "His breath 'd never
see him out with what's doin' here this hour past."
"Will I carry on Beauty or Grandjer?" whispered Andy, "beyant anear the
sunk fence where he must have gone over? They won't folly himself or
yerself," added Andy wisely.
Beauty's nose went down when she was clear of the crowd. With a
long-drawn ecstatic yowl she declared that their fox had gone that way.
Grandjer dashed over and spoke to it beyond, the whole pack coming
towling melodiously to do their part.
They were patient. It often took three or four hours to wear down a
hare. There was very seldom anyone to hurry or help them when they
checked, and they were used to their own leisurely ways and their own
melodious fashion of puzzling things out. They settled down to it again
now, stringing out, every hound hunting without faith or reliance on the
one in front, Home Ruler bringing up the rear, her great bulk wearing
her out speedily.
Mrs. Weston kicked her spurred heels into the tall bay and put him at
his scratchy gallop at the sunk fence, which he rose at gallantly some
three feet too soon, and then blundered on his head at the far side.
"She can ride," thought Darby approvingly, as he watched the widow pick
the horse up, digging her heels in again to reward him for his blunder
with a savage thump of her whip.
Hounds carried on across the road and swung left into some low-lying
land cut across by small deep ditches. The little Rat, his wicked head
either high in the air or stretched out almost touching the earth, hung
among the tail hounds, young Andy quite incapable of anything except
sticking limpet-like to the low shoulders in front of him. Their fox
had evidently been headed on the road, and not being hurried, had loped
off to try a gullet in the bog. Finding this stopped, he turned up
again for the covert. The ground was squelchy and holding; the edges of
the small dykes were of crumbling peaty earth. Horses bucked and
scrambled across, labouring in the deep going.
Several wise people were proceeding leisurely along the high ground to
the covert, riding an easy line of gaps.
"We will be apt to meet the Croompaun this course," said Barty to Darby,
"an' it will be ugly with all the grass above on it."
The Croompaun was a blend of bog drain and stone-faced bank, fencing the
end of the bog. It was a nasty jump coming down from the gorse, when a
horse could get fairly easily on to the bank, and what Barty called,
settle himself before he made his effort to shoot out over the wide bog
drain; but going up it took a really bold horse to get on to the bank
far enough to avoid an ugly scramble or an extremely probable topple
back.
"We are for it and it's half a mile round," said Darby philosophically.
"That bye Andy will be apt to be kilt at it," observed Barty, "on that
skelp of a pony."
Splash! The leading hounds sent up sprays of amber-hued water, and then
scrambled up the stony, treacherous bank, now overgrown with long,
coarse tufts of grass and trails of bramble.
Darby held his breath as the Rat altered the position of his lean,
pointed head, putting it straight up, and cocked his lop ears with
complete determination. Next moment he hurled his powerful little body
high in the air, landed seemingly on a mere tussock, and with the
scratch of steel on stone, was safe on the top.
"Good Begonnes!" said old Barty. "Have a care of that Home Ruler,
Misther Darby; she is undther your feet."
Darby pulled his horse together in the deep churning ground. A fall to
him was an ugly thing, but he had no thought of it as he faced the
Croompaun.
His active little horse rose with a grunt of effort, landing safely with
his hind legs well under him, just as Barty rolled actively from the
grey's back; that animal, relieved of weight, managed to get up somehow.
The chestnut settled matters by refusing honestly, ridden, it must be
owned, rather half-heartedly by Carty.
The two other black caps pulled up immediately, considerately
remembering that Hunt servants must be attended to.
"Hold him at it and I'll whip him for you," said Dearest George,
unloosing his thong.
At the sound of the swish the chestnut swerved with the swiftness of an
acrobat, and declined to be straightened again.
"It will be quicker, maybe, to go around than to be swhervin' for half
an hour," said Carty nervously. "Aisy, sir, he is in dread of a whip."
Gheena and Stafford got over side by side, and the tall bay, completely
blown, simply slipped in to cool himself, Violet Weston shooting off
with a shriek of wrath.
"I never saw a woman leather a horse so hard," said George Freyne
afterwards. "She clouted him up to the place you can land, and never
asked a soul to help her."
The few who had got over galloped on over light land, galloped and
sometimes trotted, for scent was none too good, and the scratch pack did
not mean to hurry themselves.
"Take us a long time to kill a fox at this rate, Barty," said Darby.
"Eh?"
"They'll eat him in covert if he has no wish to break out again," said
Barty; "an' that same will be no good thing this hour of the year."
"They have the thrail losht," said Andy as the rat stopped.
They had, just where Grandjer had dropped the limp remains of the cub.
He recognized his prey now pouncing at it with a growl. Darby looked at
the Field, which had short-cutted, and were just coming into view three
fields away. Gheena and Stafford, stopped by wire, were some way
behind. And the avoiders of the Croompaun were only looping the hill.
Spurs went in and bridles were shaken as Darby sent a blood-curdling
yell of triumph echoing across the still day. It seemed mixed up with
"Have it, Grandjer! Have it!" And this was followed by Barty's trained
screech and a still "Who-whoop!" from Andy.
The new pack, the foot dogs, had run into their fox handsomely in the
open.
"Yoi-i, there! Who-whoop!" Barty was dexterously removing brush marks
and pads before he held the carcass above his head in the midst of the
slightly interested hounds, Grandjer alone showing what he thought of
the matter by snapping at Barty's legs and growling savagely.
"Well done! Bravo! Just what's wanted! How they must have bustled
him!"
"Yoi-i, there! Worry! worry! worry! You would never make dacent
fox-hounds of thim," said Barty disgustedly, "so what the odds!"
"Me Dada schnaps the hares if he is up quick enough," said Andy
thoughtfully; "an' whin he is not, there is no one to be nisin', so they
are not acclimatized to what ye are bawlin' out."
"The finest thing that could happen. We may congratulate ourselves,"
gasped Freyne. "Tally ho! Tear him and eat him! Tally ho!"
"Hi, puss, puss! Hurreh! Hurreh!" chorused the arriving foot
contingent. "Yerra ate him! Hi, puss!"
"There is one fox pasht in half an hour back," added the covert keeper.
"Had ye two in front of ye, sir? Ar'n't they wondthers for what they
look like, thim dogs!"
"Dearest George, I took your advice and came across high ground,"
remarked Mrs. Freyne, ambling up. "We all saw you riding away from the
Croompaun. I should have been afraid you had fallen in, but I saw your
hunting cap going round so plainly and so sensibly."
George Freyne said nothing rather expressively. It was a little hard on
a man who had just been telling his cousin Annette the dangers which she
had escaped in the bog, and how hounds had flown down there.
"And, by the way, Annette, I thank you to buy tuppenceworth of red
ribbon for that mare's tail," put in Darby. "Home Ruler is quite lame
where you kicked her. She was last all the way."
"She is always lasht afther she is first for ten minutes," murmured
Andy. "Me Dada says it is the weight of him, and that some of his
fambly was mastiffs an' them yally saintly dogs."
The next covert was three miles off, and hounds, now learning something
of their new work, pattered in fair order along a stony road. There was
a faint diversion occasioned by Grandjer almost chopping a cat, one
which Andy explained he was near to get offin befour, she having dragged
her claws down his face onst an' got away from him.
The next covert was a straggling place, a long wood of fir and young
larch with a few dubiously rideable paths in it. It was the last place
to come to with the new pack, which enjoyed itself completely in its own
way: Some hunting rabbits; four couple solemnly towling after a hare,
and the rest disappearing in different directions. Barty viewed a fox
away, but all their looking and whistling could only produce a dribble
of hounds.
The foot people had been left behind; there was no one to drive the pack
out in time to do anything. But Greatness presently elected to get on
the line of a fox and gather some friends with her, which fox they
solemnly hunted round and round, stolidly and carefully, until Beauty
marked him in a rabbit burrow and watched Grandjer try to dig him out.
With the aid of the terrier he was bolted and killed.
The thick mist of the morning had crept up again, grey and clammy. It
hung with a stillness through which voices echoed hollowly, and great
drops began to collect on the branches.
Harold Keefe shivered in the chill, proffering apologies to Mrs. Weston
for any fancied shortcomings in the bay horse; Mrs. Weston, with her
legs very damp and her boots full of water, receiving them quite
graciously.
"Oh, I'm sure you meant him to be a dear horse!" she said
good-humouredly. "And perhaps when he's hunted more he'll have more
breath and less waist. I couldn't keep the girths tight. What a day
for Germans to land!" she added with a shiver, peering into the mist.
"What's that, Mr. Stafford? There would be nothing to stop them if they
did. You've got the wireless to call for help."
"I fancy--that before they landed that the wireless would be arranged
about," he said thoughtfully, tapping his boot. "It wouldn't do to have
the power of summoning any of the fleet, would it?"
Gheena Freyne stopped listening to the hounds and edged her horse
closer.
"A few men in their pay could account for the small guard on the
station. And if the transports once got in the men could do a lot of
harm before they went out again or were caught." He had got off his
horse and was holding one hand to his side as if something hurt him.
"They'll be all so horribly beaten by Christmas there won't be anyone to
come," declared Violet Weston optimistically. "You don't think the old
Professor is taking notes of the coast, do you, Mr. Stafford?"
"Not that I----" Stafford stopped. "They're coming past this way
again," he said. "I don't envy Darby all this time."
The fog came down so thickly that Darby gathered the pack and decided to
go home. He had at least vindicated his start by killing two foxes and
having some fun.
It was more to Andy's shrill pipe than the horn which brought hounds
out, a great many of them suspiciously red about the mouth.
"They enjoy a place like that," said Andy happily, "with rabbits
galore."
"When they get into it, Barty," said Darby as they jogged homewards,
"and keep together and get on a little faster, they might show us some
fun, after all."
"They'll show ye what noses can do," said Barty grimly. "But harriers
with a taste of tarrier an' God knows what they was whelped, and
harriers with a taste of tarrier they'll die. Wasn't that Grandjer
digging the fox out, no less?"
They would pass close to Castle Freyne. The cars came up looking for
them, and Gheena asked everyone to tea.
"I'll drive you, Gheena," Darby said, his voice muffled in the mist.
He climbed down slowly. On his horse he had been upright and good to
look at; now he limped and shuffled towards the car, catching at it to
support him.
"And you, Stafford?" he said. "Cantillon there would take your horse
back for you."
"Mr. Stafford will probably want to get back to his work as he's been
out all day," suggested Gheena frostily.
Basil Stafford observed mildly that it was undoubtedly a nice light
evening to direct drainage works on, but he thought that he would wait
until next day.
"Gheena"--Darby climbed into his car--"Gheena, the Croompaun was a very
big leap for you to-day on that new mare of yours."
"You saw her do it?" she asked.
"I generally see you do things," he answered slowly, a rasp of pain in
his voice.
Matilda Freyne had ambled homewards some two hours before. She was
watching old Naylour pack up the Klaxon when they got in, and explaining
how disappointed Mr. Freyne had been.
"If one could have an attachment to a saddle for that, Naylour," she
said, "it would make a far better noise than he ever will with his
mouth, wouldn't it? And a whistle is so undignified, is it not? And
there you all are! And you are very tired, Dearest. And will you have
your bath before your poached eggs, Dearest George, because both are
ready?"
Darby said he thought that possibly the bath might be the easier to keep
hot if it was still in the taps. He was then waylaid by Gheena at the
dining-room door, Crabbit gyrating at her feet, worrying her muddy
boots, and twisting himself into equine knots in his joy.
"Darby, I couldn't ask you. How did they kill that fox in the open like
that? Was he sitting down in the fence?"
"He was," said Darby briefly.
"An' he was a cub. An old fox went away."
The corners of Darby's mouth relaxed visibly.
"Well, Grandjer snapped a cub in the morning," he said softly, "and must
have carried it along; and when we met it, what Barty said was: 'If we
lights down and who-whoops him, sorra the sowl 'll be the wiser, but all
well playzed. Thim livin' round the covert extry so. An' Andy 'll kape
a sthill tongue.' And Andy said his own Mama wouldn't twist it out of
him in purgathory, and it didn't seem to matter what one does with that
pack; so--well, it was a great beginning."
"Oh, Darby!" said Gheena faintly.
"I doubt if the best English packs would care for me as a Master; that
is, if we write an account of it to the _Field_," whispered Darby.
"Will you send one, Gheena?"
"I would not disgrace the County," said Gheena hysterically. "Dearest
is telling them all now how he accounted for that fox."
*CHAPTER VIII*
Gheena Freyne knitted with unskilful rapidity and stared disconsolately
at a blurred and bitter afternoon. The sea whined and moaned in the
harbour, a liquid carpet of warship tint broken by peevish flakes of
white. Gheena could hear it because she had the window wide open,
cooling the hot air of the long, rather shabby room, before her
stepfather came stamping in to shut it emphatically and mutter
ill-humouredly as to violent chills.
There was a constant jar as of ill-fitting machinery in motion between
Gheena and George Freyne. His fussy love of authority frothed at Gheena
to roll back spent and broken into angry fume, her mother's complete and
somewhat elusive submission making it even more difficult to bear.
It was elusive because Mrs. Freyne having duly received Dearest George's
advice and commands, perhaps as to dinner, would amble down to the
kitchen and then take Anne's advice there to save trouble, causing such
faint shocks as pheasants for dinner, which George had ordered to be
hung for another week, or beefsteak when the economy of mutton had been
heavily counselled.
"Well, you see, we did send for mutton, Dearest, and Mullcahy--what did
he say, Naylour?"
"That the teeth in ye're head 'd be left is all he had in the shop,
Ma'am, it was that fresh."
"Exactly, Dearest. And I thought that really at a penny a pound the
dentist would soon equalize; so this is only off the sirloin we bought,
George dearest."
In the same way Matilda took the latest advice from grooms and
chauffeur. Still, it was better than Gheena, who took none at all, but
listened with her grey-green eyes glinting, preserved complete silence,
and did exactly as she thought best.
"Shut that window, Gheena--storms of rain and wind and a gale blowing
in!" Bang went the sash.
"I've admitted some oxygen," said Gheena equably. "You'd better unwind
yourself gently, Dearest; you got three strands round your ankles making
that rush."
"And the fire roaring up the chimney with coals at their present price.
Well, if it is turf and wood, there won't be wood always."
"Take one step backwards--now turn round," said Gheena. "Thank you.
Don't break it; think of the soldiers in France."
The unbroken gloom of the day had irritated her. She looked at the
grate and remembered--Gheena was too generous to recall it often--that
it was her father's money which paid for everything, and that in a few
years' time the house would be her own.
"And your insensate habit of sleeping in a gale," grumbled George
Freyne, "smashed the Chippendale table at your window last night. I met
Maria carrying it down with a leg gone. It is a valuable table."
"Was," suggested Gheena, her needles flashing. "Tom Malone put a deal
leg on."
Her stepfather eyed her a little anxiously. The question of Gheena's
future worried him. The thought of the Dower House in winter was almost
intolerable. When Gheena married, Castle Freyne would belong to her
absolutely, and if she chose an unpliable husband, it would certainly
mean turning out. The war and its burdens curtailed the savings which
Dearest George was amassing and--he had been out to the yard and found
two new and unneeded men there, taken by Gheena because they had been
dismissed, one by an economizer and one whose master had been killed in
the war.
"Instead of economizing, you and your mother are always reckless," he
burst out. "Two old men taken on, Dillon and O'Leary, useless old
dodderers, eating in the kitchen, with tea and sugar and flour at their
present prices. And oats--I have ordered nothing but black oats for the
future, Gheena, for the horses, and I sent away a man who brought
white."
"I ordered that," said Gheena, getting up, "and my horses shall not cat
black oats, Dearest, even if the heat has upset you."
"The heat?" said George Freyne, glaring at the blurred atmosphere
outside.
"And I'm going down to see Hennessy. He is sure to be at tea with
Anne," said Gheena, going out. "He got that oats for me."
The hoot of a motor-horn roused Dearest George from sombre chewing of
bitter mental cud.
Darby Dillon took his car round to the shelter of the archway and then
let himself in.
He came lumping across the polished hall and into the hot drawing-room.
George Freyne stared at him and grunted before he burst into the song of
his grievances, which were tea, sugar, oats, and two women without
mental balance.
"We had to come home from the meet," said Darby, having duly listened
without comment. "Too wild to keep hounds out and no one there but
ourselves.--I'm not listening! But I was, George. But a man may do
what he likes with his own, mayn't he? And Gheena is an heiress. It
will all be hers."
"Except a thousand a year and a cave," burst out George Freyne--"a sea
cave on the shore."
"Don't make short cuts to it, then," said Darby gravely.
Gheena, her colour still high, returned, Crabbit at her heels.
"I've sent the car to ask Mrs. Weston to tea," she said. "Dillon can
drive, and it will mean Mr. Keefe also, no doubt."
"And Stafford," said Darby. "He's the latest."
Gheena sniffed haughtily.
"Why he stays on here," she burst out--"as if drains mattered. A nice
thing if the Germans found them ready just to make their potato grounds
good for them."
Darby held his hands to the blaze, as he said quietly that all men knew
their own affairs best.
"The man may have something wrong with him," he said. "Heart disease or
heaven knows what!"
"A man who rides and shoots," said Gheena contemptuously. "I have my
eye----" Then she stopped abruptly.
Dearest George, feeling himself neglected, remarked that he would not
have the car sent on futile errands. It was a dear car, and just because
it was a wet day, and to send it with a man who might be able to drive,
or might be in the bay by noon under water, car and all. He appealed to
his wife, who came in unperturbed by bad weather, her curiously fresh
comeliness outlined in girlish blue.
"Of course, Dearest George, it will get wet as it is wet," said Matilda
Freyne sympathetically, "the tyres especially; but it is so very wet
that it won't be bad, and as old Dillon is there, it may amuse him to
wash it, and Gheena said she wanted company."
"I'll buy a small car now I've Dillon," said Gheena shortly, "one for
myself. They are back now; the wetting's over."
"These two men were going to have tea with me," giggled Violet Weston as
she came in, "so I brought them along. We were just getting the
Professor to play Bridge, so I brought him too."
"The last time I came there were the bees," said the Professor amicably,
"and the poor lady so much alarmed."
"Any news?" Darby looked at Stafford.
"The usual deadlock in mud and ice." Stafford pulled out a telegram.
"I get weary of wires nowadays. Christmas is so near, and some of us
dreamt of them having Christmas at home, and some of Christmas in
Berlin, and here we are."
Violet Weston, somewhat flauntily dressed in mauve, with expensive white
furs and shoes with diamond buckles, peeped at the wire anxiously.
"Why do you have the things in Greek?" she asked.
"One word does for three, you see," he said smiling, as he dropped the
flimsy paper into the fire.
"They are talking now of a great submarine blockade," said Darby,
"cutting off all our supplies."
"And they say there are supply bases along this very coast," puffed
Dearest George. "Matilda, why is tea late?"
"Perhaps if we asked Naylour?" Mrs. Freyne was not disposed to reply to
a direct question. "What do you think, Dearest? Perhaps that new bad
coal----"
"I beg your pardon," said Naylour at the door, "but there is two
coastguards here to have speech with the Masther."
The importance of his country's defence wiped the thoughts of tea from
Dearest George's mind; he rushed to the door and Gheena opened the
window widely.
"I have to perish you all to change the atmosphere," she said
apologetically. "What is it, Professor?"
"It is my handkerchief a silken," said the Professor anxiously. "I had
him out in the hall and with a cold in the nose----" He ambled out.
"Gheena," said Violet Weston, "I've something to say to you."
Gheena trailed her wool across the carpet to the far end of the long
room.
"Some one said--they saw submarines about," whispered Violet; "one of
the coastguards told me--a periscope just outside the bay. And also
that they're all on the watch for supplies going out from here--and that
they are afraid of people signalling. Gheena--_what_ is that Stafford
man doing here--idling?"
"He is not a German," said Gheena stoutly.
"Go on knitting, he's watching us. If a German is brought up altogether
in England he has no accent--nothing. He goes out late at night. How
do I know? I went into the garden one night to look for a cat I heard
mewing there, and he went down the next steps; they do for the
Professor's home and mine, you know. I heard him crunching off across
the beach beyond the pier."
"We'll watch him," said Gheena through clenched teeth. "I have been
watching him myself. Now you can too, and Crabbit and I will find out
where the petrol is stored."
"I've spoke to you three times," said Darby to Stafford, "and you've
never answered. Now you come out of the catalepsy with a lep."
"Why was tea late, Naylour?" Mrs. Freyne asked. "Oh, dear, here is Mrs.
Keane!"