flying back through the scrum of trees and out on to the chill low
cliffs with the sea moaning below. Here, diving through a tangle of
dead bracken and unpleasantly live gorse, she came to a hole in the
ground, caught a lichen-covered slab of slaty rock and dropped out of
sight, remarking cheerily that it was pitch dark and very slippery.
The cliff ran out just there in bare slaty stone, with stunted fuchsias
clinging in the crevices, and brambles creeping along, long and thorny.
To get goatwise from slab to slab in a grey gloom of almost complete
darkness, with the touch of the stones biting numbly, was not pleasant,
but the two men followed Gheena down.
"Here is the shingle. The sea is up. Oh----"
For Stafford snapped on an electric torch and a dripping gloomy cavern
came into view. It smelt dankly salt, and cold sea-water was pouring
along the wet floor, sluicing in through inlets in the rock.
One could imagine sightless slimy fish in there living in the deep pools
in the rocks, chill weeds and noisome things. The sea echoed outside,
slushing and gurgling, and the swelling rim of water creeping in through
hidden channels was ghost-like in its grey upward movement.
"But there's no outlet," was what Hook said thoughtfully.
Stafford said it was like a nightmare, snapped off his torch and
scrambled for the entrance.
The grey dusk outside was sweet daylight after the gloom below. Hook
thanked them, and they scurried back to the house, through wisps of
white mist which were rising in the hollows..
"Your cousin is being helped in to tea." The blinds were not drawn, and
the surrounded entrance of Lancelot could be plainly seen, with a chair
being made ready for him and footstools arranged.
"He went out to fight," said Gheena sympathetically. "Whether it was a
cart or shrapnel, he did go out to try to be hit."
Basil Stafford's lips came together with a snap.
Lancelot complained of pain at tea-time. He carped at his mother and
invited Gheena to adjust his cushions. When she had done that, he asked
her for more tea, because she knew the exact quantities of cream and
sugar--and then he begged her to show him _Punch's_ Almanack.
The well of pity in which so much female reason drowns kept Gheena
attending to the invalid and forbearing to say sharp things. He had
gone out bravely and done his best.
She listened while he fretted and grumbled because now he could never do
anything; his soldier's life was over for quite a year, if not more,
when the war must be over. He talked of what he might have done, and of
the loneliness at Cahercalla.
The big dining-room table had to have a leaf put in it for dinner that
night. The Freynes had collected everyone in the village, down to the
Professor, who came in baggy evening clothes and square-toed boots.
A meal of mighty courses marched solemnly to the haven of
dessert--champagne creamed, regardless of war time, and from fine
oysters to fine brandy-veiled plum-pudding--it was indigestible
Christmas fare.
Of course everyone talked of the war, until Mrs. Freyne suddenly
remembered that Mr. Brady ought to tell the General his splendid scheme,
even down to the Kaiser's place of imprisonment in Runnymede.
Darby's "Why Runnymede?" held a note of astonishment.
Matilda Freyne said she supposed because it would always remind the
dreadful man of Magna Charta and England's might. Well, if it was Spike
Island Mr. Brady had suggested, she thought Runnymede was much more
suitable, so English all round, and everyone agreed with her gravely.
They played games afterwards, to amuse the Brady and O'Toole
children--blind man's buff and general post--in which game Mrs. Freyne
could never think of any post save London to Berlin, and as no one would
be Berlin, London got tired of hopping up vainly, and allowed poor Paris
to be caught when someone called this town.
When Mr. Keefe, the blind man, spun frantically round the room amid a
ring of mockers, Gheena took refuge in a window recess, to find General
Brownlow smoking there peacefully.
Next minute Stafford was caught and blinded. In the whirl of pulling
hands he felt one catch harder than the others, and having secured Lucy
Brady, of eleven, wondered if it was chance or design that had placed a
goose-quill in his button-hole. The Keefe children had had one to
torment their father with, but---- He took it out and put it carefully
into his pocket-book.
"If anyone did that on purpose," said Brownlow as Gheena came back to
him, "it was a dirty thing to do."
"He won't forget, though," said Gheena carelessly. "And he doesn't care.
Miss O'Toole might have done it."
"Don't you ever judge Don't-cares by appearances, young lady," he
snapped. "And don't judge that boy, because he's a good sort, or I'm no
judge myself."
Mrs. Weston, in flaming pink silk high to the throat, and wearing a
becoming feather boa because she had a cold, had disappeared from view
with Mr. Keefe. A murmur of voices from the firelit library indicated
their retreat.
Darby, by the blazing drawing-room fire, looked on. He could not romp
with the grown-up children, and no one could settle to Bridge. Some of
the sadness of any anniversary fell on him. How many Christmases had
come and gone in that old room! How many generations of white-frocked
mites, grown year by year to girls and boys, to men and women, until
they sat by the fire and tried to forget that soon they must go alone
into the unknown! The withered-handed, tottering people, with their
little pleasures of warmth, which glows as new life into their blood; of
some favourite dish; or of love for the youth crowding them out of
life--their lives are of the day; they are past looking back and dare
not look forward. So the hours of waking after fitful sleep to the time
when, tired out, they seek it again--makes each day a life to them. How
many gay brides had fluttered in new finery to their new home, wives of
the three-bottle men of old days, when shutters were shut at five and
the day old by night!--women who had no voice in life. Subservient,
early Victorian wives, advanced now to dinner at seven, putting away the
fragile lovely furniture which had delighted their forbears, filling the
room with hideous heaviness, with round tables and mirrors, and stiff
arm-chairs and clumsy cabinets. A later Victorian, Gheena's
grandmother, rejoicing in an outbreak of macrame-edged brackets, of good
china entombed in red plush mounts, of black and gold, of chenille
monkeys, and satin antimacassars worked over with rosebuds or
forget-me-nots.
An old house must be a sad thing, a looker-on at the life which comes
and goes within its portals--the birth so gladly hailed, to the solemn
tramp of heavily-laden men and the flower-smothered coffin standing in
the hall.
Darby's own house was older than Castle Freyne, and had seen more people
pass, and now he lived there alone, only son of an only son--and who
would come after him? There was a cousin, a bright boy at school, heir
if Darby never married.
The entrance of a huge bowl of punch carried in by Naylour broke up the
games. Everyone took a spoonful, coughed apologetically, and had a
little more, for it was rather a wonderfully deceitful punch, hiding its
Samson-like strength behind a mild and mingled flavour of lemons and
innocent things.
"To those in France who guard us here!" Gheena proposed a toast and
swung her glass so vigorously that she upset a large portion of her
punch over her stepfather.
"And thank goodness Christmas is over!" said Dearest George
ill-humouredly, wiping sticky punch from inside his collar.
"I'm leaving two fellows I like behind me," said old Tony Brownlow next
day, "Stafford and Dillon. All right, George; come on to the stables
before I go."
The Stephen's Day hunt at Dunkillen began with a completely illegal race
run for any stakes which could be collected, anything over four pounds
being called a present.
It was run over an S-shaped course, consisting of small slaty banks and
open ditches and two stone gaps, and they went round three times.
Darby gave a silver cup this year, so that competition was, as Phil
termed it, fierce entirely.
Dan Rooney's That's the Boy was an easy favourite from James Rourke's
dun gelding, unnamed--That's the Boy being a great over-lopped, leggy
bay, almost in the book, with a whistler's head and no bone, and the dun
a scrubby beast, hiding a certain amount of quality behind a goose rump
and a ewe neck, but with great second thighs and nine inches below the
knee. A weedy grey mare was the only other animal expected to complete
the course. There were four three-year-olds willing to go until they
fell from exhaustion, and Andy on the Rat, which he had begged leave to
enter.
"You'll never get him round the turns," was what Darby said to young
Rooney, "and you're backing the horse as if the race was over."
Mr. Rooney replied contemptuously that That's the Boy had time to run
out and back and catch what was against him, and that he hoped there'd
be no talks of this race when he pulled the horse out to win in Cork
Park.
"I'm allowing for a fall or two even," observed Rooney, as he pulled off
his coat to display a silk jacket and a pair of very baggy drab
breeches.
The dun's owner affected a flannel shirt and trousers tied in below the
knee with string, and this, with varieties of shirts and trousers, was
the fashionable and favourite get-up.
Darby, with the hounds grouped patiently in the background, was starter
and judge. He dropped the flag directly they came at all near him,
knowing the handiness of their heels, and saw them tear off in a bunch,
the Rat scuttling along in the rear and the rush of That's the Boy
knocking over one horse at the first fence.
"Bedam to himself an' his breedin'," commented the fallen jockey
bitterly. "An' me mare gone home on me for certainty, an' maybe a boy
away for the coffin before I'd be back meself."
That's the Boy's great stride carried him out with a clean lead, his
Roman-nosed head in air; he shaved two banks with nerve-shattering
carelessness, and being pulled in from the first turn, was crossed by a
three-year-old, ridden out with whip and spur, and came down handsomely.
"There's the price of him," commented the knocked-out jockey by Darby's
side.
The Field's snatched lead was easily taken back, but they had some way
to go, and Darby still prophesied that the turns would do for the great
big horse, even if he did not come down again.
The first stone gaps being scattered and shattered, the horses made for
the second inward turn. Two of the three-year-olds were now trailing,
completely done, and the little Rat, going at his ease, was close up
with the leaders.
Quick and handily, James Rourke's dun slipped over the narrow banks with
cat-like accurate ease, a complete contrast to the big horse's
slithering bounds, invariably wrongly timed; but so far as pace went,
That's the Boy had only to gallop on and win.
He tore at his head at the fences, cheeked his bit, and rushed out of
the course, the violent wrench which brought him round bringing him also
into collision with a rather awkward bank and sending him on to his
knees.
Now a variety of mistakes will blow any horse. When Dan Rooney set his
mount going again he did not meet with the same response, and the dun,
the grey and the Rat were a field ahead.
"Bet you a sovereign, Rourke," said Darby. "Gheena, a sovereign."
Gheena, of course, backed That's the Boy. Wild shrieks began to arise
from the crowd, and the local bookmaker could not issue tickets fast
enough. He had absolutely lost count of where he stood, so much that he
eyed his outside car more than once.
The grey mare, going gallantly, closed with the dun, who wore her down
and shot out. Half a field behind, That's the Boy, white with foam, was
being unmercifully flogged on. But the dun gave the last bank a
lightning-like kick, and as James Rourke wondered if he would be caught
in the run home, something slipped by him.
The Rat was clean bred, with brothers and sisters running races in
England. He had been going quite within himself, and now he stretched
his wicked little head and made for the hounds at a pace which
completely worsted the dun five-year-old.
"The divil's delight to it, but the pony has it won!" yelled someone
frantically. "The pony!"
"Andy, for the love of God!" wailed James Rourke. "An' I have three
pound on at fours. Twelve pounds, Andy, I'll be dhrawin'."
"I have a shillin' on meself," replied Andy, leaning forward
victoriously.
"Cosy in the trinches they might be the ways they is chattin'," said a
disturbed and embittered onlooker, who had backed the big horse; "an'
even the _obb_jectin' won't save us now with that Kinnat out there in
front. Someone suggested obbjectin' to both for conspiracy and colloquy.
"If we could rowl a hat or two accidental to swherve thim," suggested
another backer of the favourite, "an' let Rooney up."
Someone else declared the two were too tirened out to mind any hats, but
the big horse was coming on. James Rourke bent down and called
something out to little Andy, something emphatic.
Andy shook his head, Rourke bent again, and the next moment the Rat,
instead of passing the post, made for the waiting hounds, sailing
through the crowd dexterously.
And in a hail of hats and a hurricane of yells, the dun went past the
post at his lobbing gallop, with That's the Boy's head just at his girth
and well past him before they pulled up.
Darby declined to give the cup if there were any objections, but he went
on to Andy to demand explanation.
"Well, you see, me Mama would take the cup for the parlour, an' he
offered me two pounds of them twelve to pull out," said Andy equably;
"an' he a dacent bye that won't break his word; so I pulled out, and
that was the thraffic there was betune us."
"And such is Irish racing," said Darby thoughtfully. "You send that pony
home, Andy, and ride old Dobbin to hounds."
Basil Stafford said that if he laughed any more he knew something would
give way.
"What you see to laugh at when my pony might have had a silver cup,"
said Gheena angrily, "I cannot see. Oh, call it Irish. You don't expect
us to be Germans, do you?"
"If they could only meet you all for a little," gasped Stafford, "and
see your little methods!"
"Oh, you'd like us to meet them, would you?" said Gheena. "You seem to
know Germany well."
Stafford gasped that he wanted to see German officials encountering Phil
and Andy, or your old Anne. That is _verboten_.
"'Forbidden. Is that so, young man?'
"'_Himmel_! Haf I not said it must not be done? Schwine!'
"'One side, young man, an' kape a civil tongue in ye're head. Isn't the
right side the same as the left for th'ass a cyar if there is none in
the sthreet?' Oh, if you only knew them and their superiority and their
rages."
"Some people," said Gheena darkly, "ought to know them better at
present."
Mr. Stafford's fingers touched his pocket-book; he leant forward
suddenly.
"There is something here which you may take back some day," he said
softly--"something which you gave me, I think."
Gheena turned away, looking puzzled.
"Ivery penny he paid me," said Andy deliriously joyful; "an' isn't that
same bether than a silver cup on the table at home, Miss Gheena? An'
sure, in honour an' glory I was first as well."
They moved on presently to draw a hill from the crest of which one could
see the sea plainly.
Gheena began to talk of the submarines, wondering if the menace would
ever be carried out.
"They'll want help if they do it," returned Stafford absently--"bases
along coasts and ships to supply oil. People will do it. Money can buy
anything, Miss Freyne, even some people's honour."
Gheena grew a little pale.
Christmas Day had interfered with stopping. A fox got to ground in
covert and Darby decided to go home, glad of the chance, for hounds had
had a hard day on Christmas Eve, and Barty was riding the same horse.
Gheena rode back with Darby as far as his turn and then on with
Stafford, whose horse jogged dully and without spirit. He only kept one
hunter.
It was cold and raw. Gheena missed Phil, when having glacially invited
Stafford to tea, she slipped off in the big old yard, waving away
proffered help.
"Phil is away with the two horses, Miss, to catch the thrain at the
junction."
Gheena questioned wildly.
"With Whitebird and the Masther's Matty, Miss, the old mare. Tin year,
he called her. The General took them both for remounts."
Gheena was young. She did not care for the youngster. But to sell her
horse without her leave!
Attended by Crabbit, who was privately certain that nothing but a rat
could create such haste, Gheena stormed through the back door, slamming
it so hard that two panes of glass smashed, and Anne observed
"Bomb-shells!" from the kitchen and tore to the library. Her
stepfather, with an ugly look in his eyes which she had learnt to dread,
was reading by an enormous fire.
"Four horses," he said coolly, "at the present time was absurd and
unpatriotic." Gheena must remember that she was completely in her
mother's hands, and, in fact ... here he saw the girl's eyes and decided
that threats might not be wise.
Anyhow, the horse was gone, he said, and he had locked up the white
oats.
His stepdaughter went out of the room rather too quietly.
Gheena could not censure her mother, who was nervous, expecting it,
waiting for the girl's wrath.
"Dearest George had said the animal was not wanted, and there were some
new farm implements which were required--chaff-cutter and oats-crusher;
a new reaper for the spring. So he said you would understand, my dear."
Miss Freyne kissed her weeping mother and went into the drawing-room.
Here Lancelot begged for attention, relying on her so humbly that she
gave it ungrudgingly.
"They sold my horse when I was out," she said to Stafford. "My grey
horse! You see, until I come of age or marry, I'm a minor without an
income, and Dearest is affected by economy and wants mowing machines."
A dangerous glimmer shone in Gheena's eyes. Basil Stafford said
"Indeed!" in tones of unmixed perplexity.
"I'll marry the Professor if Dearest is not careful," said Gheena.
Then with the lack of grace which haunts woman in muddy apron habit
skirts and high boots, Gheena marched to her room, where Crabbit, very
wet indeed, was just tearing into.
Evidently sorry she had missed that rat, he had gone out to fetch her
comfort, and laid the sodden handkerchief, which he had picked up the
day before, at her feet.
"Crabbit, you horrid dog!" said Gheena, her hand on his soft brown head;
"but you meant it nicely." She held up the sopped rag, meaning to throw
it on the fire, and saw the marking.
"Heinrich V. Belstein" in neat letters, and a number torn off.
A German's handkerchief cast up on the shores. Handkerchiefs do not
float for long; even supposing it had caught in some seaweed, it was not
likely to come from a distance. No submarine had been sunk. Gheena
forgot that she was muddy and that a fire which she expected to see was
non-existent. Someone was trafficking with German submarines. Some of
the U boats must have been close in.
Gheena put her finger on the bell and kept it there, until Mary Kate,
the head housemaid, arrived at full gallop, breathlessly wanting to know
if Miss Gheena had a wakeness.
"Dropped down dead we all thought you must be, Miss, when the bell went
on whirring."
Disappointed, Mary Kate took a message dubiously. It was teemin' rain
out of the sky, she said.
"If the Masther hears it goin' out, Miss, he'll destroy us," said Mary
Kate with resignation. "So I'll find some that'll ride a bicycle."
Then Gheena lighted her own fire and waited breathlessly until Mrs.
Weston's presence was announced.
"She is waitin' on ye in the ould school-room. She would not come up,
Miss Gheena, not a step."
After Gheena had got down, an excited clacking of tongues rose so high,
that Mr. Freyne came along the passage and severely censured Maria, the
second housemaid, for having lighted an extra fire in the school-room.
As she rushed down Gheena met Stafford, and all but knocked him over.
"It's Violet; she wouldn't come up," panted Gheena, rushing on.
After quite a short time Mrs. Weston drove off again, with her usual
bright smile changed to a frown of thought and her lips pressed into a
line.
Gheena was quiet that evening. She took very little tea and she was
remotely civil to Stafford, instead of snapping at him in her wonted
fashion. Lancelot she waited on patiently.
But when the order for sixty pounds for the grey came, it was made out
in Gheena's name, and she said she would go to Cortra to cash it; there
might be difficulties otherwise.
She came back with the same quiet look in her eyes, which was anger and
mischief beaten by the whip of thought, and when asked if she had, as
desired, paid the money into her mother's account, merely said it was
all right.
But next day Mr. Freyne was called out to find Dinny, his herdsman,
joyfully unpacking a variety of brilliantly painted agricultural
machines from two carts from Cornahulty, which his master looked at
blankly.
Gheena, quietly demure, came out to listen to the comments.
"Mother told me you wanted Whitebird's price for these things, Dearest,"
she said gently. "So I went to O'Malley's, and he knew what you and
Dinny had been looking at, and he gave me discount for cash. There is
just five pounds more to pay, I think."
Dearest George opened his mouth twice, and shut it on what he wished to
articulate.
"An' the two men from Cornahulty want twenty-five shillin' for the
haulin'," said Naylour, coming in to his stormy master. "Miss Gheena
agreed to that with them, they says. God save us! but ye'd think I axed
him for his heart's blood," said Naylour, when he got back to the
kitchen; "an' he wrote the cheque like as if 'twas his own ordther for
execution. Miss Gheena said I was to give the two of ye ye're tea."
*CHAPTER XI*
Darby Dillon ceased reading about the hobnobbing of Germans and English
at Christmas-time to parley with the infuriated owner of That's the Boy,
who had ridden over to say the horse's charackther was blighted for life
not to get the race and the cup.
"Bathered and bumped an' crossed, sir, an' then to have me just
obbjection pushed down me throat the same as a dose to a horse, an' all
the neighbours at me, an' that broth of a boy Rourke won't even have a
match to show the rights of it. Him that I could thrample on an' bate
out with one stride to his two, his muddeen of a dun horse."
Andy, who was holding the blighted That's the Boy, looked up to
suggest--grinning--a match with the Rat.
"Seein' that the Rat bate ye both," said Andy, "it is me ye should be
matchin' with. Bate ye aisy, too."
"An' if ye bate him, why was ye not fust?" thundered Mr. Rooney
stormily.
Andy, becoming reserved, said that was his bizness, and lapsed into
silence.
"It would be like the likes of his birth an' breedin' to offer ye a
shillin' to pull off," said Rooney bitterly; "but I did not think ye're
father's son would do the dirty thrick to me father's, Andy Casey, for
dirty pince."
"I will take me Bible oath that he niver mentioned dirty pince," said
Andy, his face scarlet, "nor any pince."
Darby wondered how that oath would be recorded.
"Then what med ye?" Mr. Rooney scratched his chin, shaven two days
before.
"It was time for me to go back to me dogs," said Andy coldly. "An' if
Miss Gheena gives me the pony, I'll match ye around me own place an'
down Carty's Hill an' around to me uncle's, four miles across the
counthry, any day ye likes."
As the proposed course would include about twenty sharp bends to avoid
bogs, the crossing of a ravine, and a collection of completely unsafe
fences, Rooney replied: "Match where ye are," and left Andy, to again
reproach Darby.
"Bribery an' corruption the same as ye'd read off the Holy Bible," he
said sourly, "an' ye wouldn't let me spheak. I that ran fair an' honest
with two falls an' a run out--an' that's prepared to back meself for
twenty pounds for a match. There's more than a cup on it," he added,
whimpering. "There's Janey O'Dea that is wavering between us, an' his
ould father, chattin' now of the rale silver cup, an' inclined towards
Rourke."
Miss Janey O'Dea was a buxom damsel, who rode in a bright blue habit
topped by a tie which she ironed, but too plainly did not wash save on
occasions, and a bowler hat which, as Andy put it, just perched above on
her nesht of hair.