look of positive surprise as he took his horse by the head and pulled
out to the right of hounds. How many years ago since he had ridden there
before, just before his wedding, with the bright girl whom he had met in
England and come over to marry--seeing her send along a half-broken
chestnut filly as if she were the possessor of three necks?
Gheena swung past him now, the same glow of delight on her young face,
her eyes as ecstatically happy; but her mount was a hunter, trained and
fit to go.
"Look out there! A drop!"
Gheena put the roan at a brake of brambles overgrowing a slimy spot with
a heavy drop outside on to a rutty cart-track. It took a clever horse
to balance on the mixture of crumbling earth and shale and slide down
without a mistake.
"One way of doing it." General Brownlow looked to his right, to see his
man on the bay sail sleepily into the air and clear even the boreen at
the landing side.
The pace had been steady enough to shake off people who wanted to look
before they leapt. The Field had thinned out. Hounds bent to the right
along a rushy, sour field when scent failed a little, and headed for the
road which wound its grey ribbon up the side of a steep hill.
On this something yellow caught the eye. Home Ruler's bolt was shot,
but Grandjer and Beauty stopped on the low bank on to the road and
looked up anxiously, thus explaining to the noisy crew behind that they
were at fault.
"He has gone right back, Darby," said Annette Freyne excitedly. "So
don't try on. He turned here. Oh, Lance, this is nice for you! So
lucky, General, for our invalid." But at this point Darby's voice
roared out immediate orders to have that car stopped. "You headed him,
you something goldfish!" yelled the man, who was rapidly growing used to
his position in life. "You canaries, chirrupping there, when no one
wants you."
"Canaries! with a wounded hero from the front," said Mr. Freyne's
mother, after a long hurt pause. "If he did see a fox, who could
object, really, Darby! And canaries!"
"I'll intern you if you don't put it out!" roared Darby.
"Put it out or I'll arrest you!" blared the General, with sudden
fierceness, to Lancelot.
"And it isn't as if she always started," wailed Annette. "They're
crossing the road lower down; he must have gone on that far," she said a
moment later, fixing baleful eyes on Darby's back. "To be so rude to
us!"
George Freyne's elder sister, who was large, and muddy as to complexion,
kept murmuring Darby's insults incessantly, so that when she said "Go
on" for a change, Annette, her daughter, told the man to start the
canary, and was accused, despite her thirty years, of impertinence to
her mother.
Beauty meantime had towled across the road, followed by Daisy, Home
Ruler and Spinster, and they carried on across a field of sodden
ploughed upland, which would have taxed the noses of the fox-hounds
sorely.
The fox had not only gone some time, but he was twisting with the ease
of the unpressed animal, looking for holes here and there, and making
for Craughwell Woods in front of him, where he hoped to find an open
earth.
In this he was mistaken. He was hunted doggedly and slowly up and down
the big woods, the long harrier note echoing among the trees, until in a
downpour of rain he broke again, slipping away for the Craughwell river,
which swelled bank-high in flood.
Now Darby knew too well that there were only two possible passages
across the stream, one by the bridge on the road, an unlikely line, and
the other a slippery ford half a mile up, where if a fox crossed, he
generally made for Ardhee Cross, about three miles off and up hill, a
line through series of small woods and high straggling hedges.
Darby galloped for the ford, a large contingent at his heels, to be
stopped by a locked gate which even his heated language could not blast
open.
Gheena flew down the long avenue to the bridge in the road, with her
stepfather, General Brownlow and a few others clattering behind her.
She found an open gate and splashed up two low-lying fields, to find
hounds at fault in a wide expanse of sown winterage dotted with sullen
little pools of water.
If Darby had been there he would have let them alone. He knew their
noses. George Freyne's moment was come; his black cap sat as a crow
upon his head, and his office as first Master was heavy on him. He
would show his brother-in-law. And just at that moment Daisy, staring
about, put a hare up out of a tussock near the hedge and towled off in
its wake by herself.
"Tally ho! One of the brutes has got it!" shouted George Freyne. "Here
the others. Tally ho! Forrard on!"
Gheena shrieked out that a small boy had viewed a hare away and that she
could hear the horn up the river.
The assistant Master, ignoring this, whistled and blew and cheered until
General Brownlow rocked on his horse.
In a moment everyone was ordered to get round hounds. Futile groans
emanated from the horn. Mrs. Freyne cantered vaguely round the pack and
asked them politely to go up to George.
Mr. O'Gorman bellowed, and a variety of youths whipped until the pack,
upset and hustled, had reached the tuft vacated by the hare.
"It's ... immense," gurgled the General, almost sobbing. "Blow again,
George! Whirrrr, and I know it's a hare! There are two hounds hunting
right-handed up-stream by the bank from which they checked!
"And I've never known a fox turn this way," wailed Gheena. "It's a part
we absolutely left to the foot dogs."
Hounds got on; they were always enthusiastic. They circled round the
next field and turned where the hare had turned up by a straggling
hedge.
"Fox never ran that way," said the General; "back again, round this
field, I believe."
Then they crossed the road and over a bog and crawled on over a steep
hill, to encounter at the bottom a vast and ragged ditch, unpleasantly
vague as to its depth and very decided as to its width. When Gheena and
the General had got over with a scramble, they found themselves
completely alone in another driving storm of rain and hounds
disappearing into grey misty distance over a high bank.
"That's the Quilty bog near the sea, utterly unrideable," said Gheena
hopelessly. "The fishermen can only go through by paths." They
floundered along the edge, keeping to the driest parts of the cart
track, which was only used in summer, with deep ruts and patches from
which the rapidly tiring horses had to wrest their limbs free, and came
to a slightly better road with a surface of loose stone, to look across
two miles of bog on one side and on to the sea at the other. Far off,
faintly, they could hear the sound of hounds hunting.
Gheena pulled up her roan, now black with bog slime and sweat, and
pointed hopelessly to the track which they must wallow over again if
they followed the line taken by the circling hare.
General Brownlow's refusal ever to go along that track again was short
but soldier-like in its decision.
"Even to catch the German Emperor," he said emphatically.
"We'll ride up here to the road, then," said Gheena dejectedly; "we pass
the Wireless Station this way." She added that it was nine miles home,
and she wondered where her young horse and Hook had got to.
"He made a good hand of that young horse," said Gheena reflectively.
"If you could leave him here for a week any time I wouldn't mind at
all."
The rain cleared off, leaving them both in the dripping stage with the
wind drying them in chilly gusts. The horses stepped carefully on the
pointed flints, cheering up as they turned on a twisty road between high
banks, with the Wireless Station close by.
Here, as they jogged on, they were astonished to see a khaki-coloured
car draw up at the door and Hook just coming out with a coastguard.
"Lost everything, sir," he explained, "and hopped into the car to look
for you. Hunt reported in this direction, so I came to inquire."
Gheena looked thoughtful. Strangers were not admitted to the portals as
a rule.
The coastguard's suggestion of fire and shelter for the horses sounded
tempting. There were sheds at the back where an old farm had stood.
Hook led the horses away, and Gheena felt gladly the scorch of cheeks
which a hot room brings after a battering in the open air.
The coastguard's room was a typical one, ornamented with large conch
shells and lumps of coral, and everything arranged with sailor's
neatness.
They only stayed for a few minutes. General Brownlow was rheumatic and
exceedingly damp, and as they watched the gate, they saw Violet Weston,
her hunting hat changed for a picturesque hood, her bright colouring
outlined in white furs and her expression one of piteous entreaty.
She had driven round to look for Gheena and her car had gone out. It
would not start without the battery, which seemed run down. If they
could put it on for half an hour she would wait. Then she saw Gheena
and repeated her piteous tale. Hook, just behind, dropped off Whitebird
and came forward. He respectfully suggested that he might start the car
or set things right.
After a few futile tugs at the handle he lifted the bonnet.
"But are you a mechanic?" said Violet; "because if you're not, please
don't mess at her. Someone did once, and I had to get a man from Dublin
afterwards."
"Someone," said Hook, "has been messing her a little, Ma'am. Poking
their noses into what doesn't concern them," he added softly, his face
hidden.
Violet Weston whispered to Gheena. The name Stafford was repeated more
than once. And, as if conjured up by it, Stafford's two-seater purred
round the bend and his brakes went on with a jar.
"Darby's wailing like Rachael, a few miles back," he said. "He had one
couple of hounds with him, and he's thirsting for someone's blood. He's
looking for hounds now. George Freyne I met at Ardhee Cross, swearing
you hunted a fox on until he lost you, and everyone who could has gone
home. I came on to take someone home if I could, and to find the
hounds."
Hook took his head out of the bonnet and swung the handle of Violet's
car again, starting it easily.
"Just a little adjustment," he said. "And if you leave your battery
here, they'll run it and I'll fetch it to-morrow, Ma'am."
"I wish to goodness I was coming out again on Monday," grunted Brownlow,
as he got into his car. "I can quite see where Dillon got so much
experience now."
As General Brownlow slithered round stiff bends with constant inquiries
as to who planned Irish roads, they came upon the drenched Master--it
was raining again--collecting his pack just outside the bog. They had
just run the hare back and eaten her.
"We'd have been up to Ardhee Cross if George had let 'em alone," he said
bitterly. "Matilda says he cast them so beautifully, so he has gone
home now, imagining himself John Peel and Ashton Smith rolled into one."
Then he whispered to Barty, who pulled a hare's pate from Daisy's jaws,
and Darby with a grin attached it to his saddle.
Castle Freyne was quite full. It was simpler after a long day for
people who were not staying to bring their clothes and not go home to
change, so the house was all bustle when they got in. Anne, in the
basement, was basking in a torrid heat, with two amateur kitchen-maids
sitting among piles of feathers in the scullery and at least three
turkeys ready to bake. Christmas was Christmas in Anne's eyes. The
discarding of sodden garments, the joys of very hot water, preceded tea
for those who had hunted. It was laid in the dining-room to-day, and
included poached eggs and fried ham.
Lancelot was ensconced by the fireplace, roasting slowly, his leg
propped on another chair and his expression one of heated misery.
"You may talk of hunting, Darby," said the second Master, bursting in
happily; "but we left you to-day, my boy. Whatever took you off up by
the ford? We struck the line just where I galloped to, guessing we
should, and I clapped them on, and we ran over the big fields."
Mr. Freyne, completely happy, bustled in to enlarge on his success. How
he had cast the hounds, and cheered them, despite some absurd blowing of
Darby's, up the river, and how they had run on after the fox.
Darby leant on his stick and grunted.
"The fox which Darby had absolutely said was a hare. Over the big
fields, running like pigeons, across Clanchy's, up Dhura Hill, fluting,
and--er--then"--George Freyne looked inquiringly at his
brother-in-law--"my mare refused--and afterwards----"
"They went on to a very large bog," said the General dryly, "and
we--Gheena and I--lost them."
Mr. Freyne sat down to enjoy his tea; lost hounds tell no tales, he said
importantly; that no doubt they were beaten there.
Darby said slowly that Beauty could never be beaten. She would run the
spectral huntsman across a glacier if she got her nose down.
"Then he got in," said George Freyne. "You got them in the road. He
got in."
"Or went out in a submarine," suggested Darby; "that bog touches the
sea."
Mr. Freyne, ignoring this, repeated accounts of various items of his own
dash and skill, of his certainty of its being the line of a fox, and how
by his determination he had shown General Brownlow sport.
"But they did not lose him in the bog." Darby limped to the table.
"They killed at the verge of the road just as I came up."
Dearest George looked up.
"And I brought you the head," said Darby, putting the hare's astounded
dead face on a plate before his host. "Daisy had it."
"The only thing to be regretted is that I may never see this hunting
again," said General Brownlow, breaking the silence which followed, his
eyes on the hare's pate lying close to the strawberry jam.
*CHAPTER X*
Christmas at Castle Freyne came in formally about ten o'clock with the
advent of the wran boys at the dining-room windows.
Gheena fumed furiously before the sacrifice of tiny feathered things,
and was ignored by her stepfather, who supported old customs principally
because no one else wished him to. Custom also dictated that everyone's
presents should repose on their plates; so that they waited in hunger to
slash string and express rapture, and the table was littered with bits
of twine and wrapping paper.
Gheena rhapsodized over a new bag of severe green leather with jail-like
clasps, then embracing her stepfather with the fervour expected of her.
She put it aside to pick up a variety of other oddments, amongst them a
cigarette-case from "V.W." with Gheena scratched across its
tortoiseshell form in silver. At the bottom of the heap she discovered
her mother's string of pearls, long coveted, and exclaimed shrilly.
Dearest George grunted gratitude over two new pipes, a tobacco jar and a
box of cigars, and a note-case for the new paper money from his wife.
Her plate was obliterated by a vast edifice in glass, destined to hold
flowers and glimmering with a dull green hideousness.
"Got it over from London, you see, Matilda," said her husband, beaming.
"Badly wanted for the drawing-room shelf to take the everlastings."
Gheena dived again, to find a big turquoise charm, with "For Luck" on
it, from Darby, and a pair of race-glasses with no name.
Hooking the charm on the pearls, where it did not look at home, Gheena
turned over everything once more to find some note about the
race-glasses, and heard Dearest George repress, with extreme difficulty,
the words which he would have used concerning a litter on the floor, if
he had not been opening the case containing Gheena's present of a pipe,
and had to say "Thank you, my dear," instead.
"I wanted race-glasses," said Gheena, "but who? Darby, you're a duck!"
Darby smiled as he hobbled to his meagre array of presents. Gheena
always gave him a box of cigarettes. There were no little mementoes from
loving girls for Darby Dillon now.
"But I say who?" said General Brownlow, picking up a little silver
matchbox. "I got Psyche's letter yesterday."
"I thought you wouldn't mind--that there'd be nothing on your plate,"
apologized Gheena shyly. "And mother sent the cigarettes. Oh!" This as
the old man kissed her rather tenderly.
The theatrical advent of Lancelot with his mother and sister guarding
his crutches, intercepted the sorting of presents. He came so plainly
expecting general sympathy, to be installed in an arm-chair with a small
table by his side, and his mother fussily superintending every mouthful
of his breakfast.
They went to church presently, where the cotton-wool texts looked brave,
if a little tired, and the usual smell of roast stove and drying
cushions pervaded the airless atmosphere. Mr. Brady completely forgot
the season when he touched upon the war. He took for his text the
writing on the wall, and forgot that too, as he plunged into metaphor as
difficult to follow as modern tactics; for in a breath he compared the
Germans with burrowing snakes and carrion-seeking eagles, both of which
expressions were listened to with rapture by his wife, and made the
General and Darby tap their heads softly. Mr. Brady then explained
smoothly how even as a God-fearing nation we wanted nothing but peace,
and the best way to get it was to go and kill every man Jack of German
traitors and treaty violators, until there were only grey-beards and
infants left. "And, of course, the prisoners," he added, regretfully.
"The Redeemer of the world," he said, "never meant an army which warred
on women and children to dominate humanity, and to-day, in the words of
the Bible, it 'was to us to go forth and kill.'"
If he had not got on to the National Anthem very quickly someone would
have cheered.
"Even if we are fighting, the texts will never do for next year," said
Mrs. Keefe in the doorway. "So what would you think, Mrs. Freyne, of
stuffing pillows for the troops with them now while the wool is fairly
dry."
A fine rain was falling outside, and the gleam of wintry sunshine
somewhere behind it; the day was very cold.
The heavy appetite engendered by church made George Freyne fidget, when
Gheena delayed him by rushing off with Violet Weston. Mrs. Weston was
brilliant in rather crude mauve, with sky-blue silk stockings on, and
held Gheena's arm very affectionately as they whispered together.
The old Professor beamed at them all, a beam with sadness in it.
"In Germany they love Christmas so," he said gently. "The Gretchens and
the Annas romp like children over their presents; they all over-eat
themselves and everywhere is the smell of pine needles and candles which
have burnt themselves out--the 'Tannen-baum.' The women are as bad as
the men, you say, Mr. Freyne, because they look now as ever, when they
are told to look. They clap their poor hands now for war as they did
for the beauty of the Christmas-tree. Christmas, with empty chairs near
the fire--is it not sad for all?"
"How you can say one word for the brutes who lamed my Lancelot," said
Mrs. Augustus Freyne, "I do not know, Professor."
The Professor said humbly that he only spoke for humanity and
Christmastide.
"We are astonished to hear the dreadful people ever mentioned," said
Mrs. De Burgho Keane heavily. "After all, if there were no dreadful fat
mothers there would be no brutal sons to run about murdering and
rapining." Here Mrs. Keane stopped to consider if that was quite the
right word, especially in the churchyard path, because the Professor
chuckled softly and Darby grinned. Changing the conversation, Mrs.
Keane objected to last year's texts as disrespectful to the season.
Mrs. Brady uneasily remarked that the cotton-wool was to make pillows,
and it will all look quite nice with the lights up this evening.
Mrs. De Burgho Keane replied energetically that the evening would not
concern her. She passed on to interrogate Lancelot as he hopped to the
motor, and wished to know if the brutal Germans really laughed when they
wounded people, or if that was a newspaper lie.
Lancelot replied vaguely, the tail of his eye on the General. It was a
secret carefully preserved that he had not gone beyond Boulogne. His
foot was badly crushed, and he was not likely to see service again.
Then came the heaviness of Christmas luncheon. A meal which was always
faintly neglected by Anne, who had dinner upon her mind, to say nothing
of roast beef and plum pudding backed up by cheap sherry in the kitchen.
When it was over George Freyne helped Lancelot his nephew to his study,
where he talked to him long and seriously.
A wounded man possessed the privilege of sympathy. Now was the hour to
lay siege to Gheena's heart. Lancelot was not at all averse to life at
Castle Freyne on a large income. The fear which he felt for his cousin
Gheena now would easily turn to sulky authority when he found his
position secure. A boy who had been indulged for his twenty-three
years, was not likely to be a very pleasant companion through life.
Dearest George, moving his mind on its narrow ledge of cunning, decided
that a new regime of petty tyranny would make his stepdaughter inclined
to take her liberty at all costs, and Lancelot had promised faithfully
that the Dower House would never be his father-in-law's position.
Gheena, through the soft cold which was turning to frost outside,
wandered off by the sea. It shimmered in steely restlessness, mouthing
white-toothed at the brown rocks. Cold held the world in its grip, the
brown world looked icy, the shingle as though its touch would hurt in
its chill.
"And out in the North Sea they keep watch," said a voice behind Gheena,
"with the wind we find here cutting, there as a knife, and spray
freezing on their eyelashes, and constant anxiety."
"And those dreadful submarines," said Gheena, turning to see Stafford,
who had come up quietly over the grass.
"Which they threaten to blockade us with in the early spring."
"And--you believe there are bases here--men who help them?" said Gheena.
Mr. Stafford said dreamily that money would do anything.
"You have wanted it badly?" said Gheena.
Basil Stafford shot a swift look at Gheena as he answered that he had
once wanted it so badly that he would have sold a limb to get it.
"I suppose," said Gheena, walking on, "that you won't keep to the drains
after the winter here. You'll join something."
"You're not thinking of putting a white feather in my mince-pie for
dinner, are you?" he said gravely. "There are other ways of helping
besides wearing khaki, Miss Gheena, helping on war."
Gheena repeated "Helping on war" with sarcastic emphasis, and told
Crabbit not to chase seagulls.
Crabbit leapt forth in swift pursuit of an elusive bird, a stately gull,
which sailed off and then bobbed down into the icy sea, floating there
gracefully, Crabbit immediately putting his paws into the water, trying
to pretend that he had only come down to take the temperature. Then he
pounced on something in the line of flotsam, and galloped back to Gheena
to lay the offering at her feet.
It was a pocket-handkerchief of large size.
Gheena said "Crabbit, you beast!" turning away; but Stafford bent down
and picked the sodden rag up; then dropped it again with a sharp
exclamation and looked out to sea.
"We'll go back." Gheena walked towards the house. The kitchen chimney
was absolutely pouring out smoke, heaving against the evening light.
"After all," said Stafford, "if there had been no war someone else would
have been employed for the drainage, and I should never have come here."
Gheena, nose in air, considered the evening sky.
He laughed slightly bitterly.
"And it doesn't much matter when I go away again, I suppose," he said.
"There is the Professor on the cliffs. He must have sampled every rock
in the place by now."
"And also Hook, coming back." Gheena stopped to look at the General's
man. "He seems to do everything except look after his master, that man
of the General's."
Hook and the Professor met upon the cliffs and spoke. Then the valet
overtook them.
"Been right away to the point, sir," he said to Stafford. "Regular nest
of caves and holes, this coast."
"There are some that one can see the water going into, but are quite
hidden," said Gheena. "I believe there are entrances from the land. I
know of a way down to one of those caves. My old nurse, who came from
the village out there, said there were two or three others, but she
never showed them to me."
Hook stroked his chin thoughtfully.
"One is curious. It's just over there, if you'd like to see it, with
the tide coming in its ease."