this was another bit of treachery, for he found that giddiness prevented
him from getting up.
"Maybe the hippodromic sirringe in his hand," he gulped, "pricked into
the nose on me face."
A voice suggested that if this was the case Dan Rooney should
immediately get up and show them how fast he could run away, Dan,
completing the crowd's good-humour by endeavouring--he was now
exceedingly drunk--to gallop on his hands and knees, and finally being
removed to an inside trap, where he swayed as a stricken pink flower and
groaned drearily.
Darby drove over to Rourke's house next day to find the owner gaily
gravelling the little path in front of the house, and whistling
cheerily. Darby had come to buy the little dun; he wanted a handy horse
and would have bought him before if he had not been afraid of his lack
of pace.
James Rourke leant upon his shovel and rubbed his chin.
"If ye like to buy him for what he is," he said slowly, "a nate plodding
fair and square little hunther, ye're welcome; but as a horse with great
speed, no, Mr. Dillon. Ye're too big a friend to trade that way."
"Then how the mischief did he beat the big bay?" was what Darby uttered
in astonishment.
James looked round cautiously. "Well, if one dun horse did not bate
him," he said, "isn't there a book says 'All's fair in love and war,'
sir--another did. The writing only said Dun, Mister Darby, there was no
name. An' if I paid two hundred, he wouldn't risk it for less, for me
cousin's little horse Custodian that won at Galway last year, and was
second in Punchestown. Didn't James Rourke's dun horse win the race?"
"You--scoundrel!" said Darby, after a pause filled by uncontrolled
laugh, he looked towards the stables.
"Oh, he went back the second next night," said James softly. "We walked
him all the ways to Cortra. Andy did, an' it dark! I borryed Andy off
Barty. I could not have lived in the place, Mr. Dillon, with all his
boastin' if I either went out, an' was doing full-back all the time to
his forward, or if I did not come out at all. An' for the twinty pound
Janey an' meself sent it to the Belgums. Since it came from cheatin'
soldiers, it is gone to thim that soldiers cheated."
An inkling of what had happened leaked out, as it was bound to, so
delighting O'Dea that the banns were immediately put up, the old man
giving Janey two extra cows because a certain young man deserved to get
on in life.
Also, when a month later Darby drove up to present the couple with a
silver sugar-basin and tea-spoons, he found Mr. Dan Rooney walking arm
in arm with James Rourke, as they discussed the terms of sale of That's
the Boy to the owner of Custodian, who realized that the bay had put in
a really fine performance in running as he did--half fit, and never
spared.
"To have been bate by that that niver could have bate me sickened me,"
said Rooney, beaming; "but to keep Custodian beltin' it for three mile,
didn't I know me bay horse was a bit of exthry?"
*CHAPTER XII*
General Brownlow returned the grey horse, accompanied by a terse letter
to his brother-in-law, couched in terms which made George Freyne feel
that he was almost lucky to have escaped a drumhead court-martial.
"Lay down with our fattest commanding officer in the barrack square,"
wrote Brownlow, "and again with a young subaltern ordered to gallop with
a message. Folds up like a deck-chair when he feels inclined, and I've
got you out of it with difficulty by trying him for another week
myself."
With a spirit chastened but not resigned, Dearest George got a cheque to
return the money, and then looked bitterly at the array of new machinery
in its shed.
The same post had brought a letter to Gheena, which simply said: "I
managed it, my dear--that particular whistle which brought him down in a
moment."
Tony Brownlow wrote again from England, telling his brother-in-law that
as he--Tony--had just got George out of a nice difficulty, he didn't
mind asking a favour. He wanted a home for his sister's child. She had
lived with him. Now he was moving about, the girl was on the coast of
Kent and he was nervous; besides, he would like her to be friends with
that splendid monkey, Gheena.
The sum offered for her board and for keeping a horse for her was
completely adequate. Her name was Mona, and she was commonly called
Psyche, the sprite.
Mona Delorme arrived almost immediately afterwards. She was a fragile
little person, reminding the imaginative of a moonbeam--pale, with
silvery yellow hair and grey-green shadowy eyes, with slender feet and
hands, and light quick movements.
Sturdy Gheena adored her fervently from the hour of meeting her at the
station, and was calling her Psyche before they reached Castle Freyne.
Mona cried out at the homely beauty of the hills, at the wild sea caught
in the long harbour, and the white spray at the point where it sprang up
free in its might.
Her father had been Irish. She took the country to her heart with its
grey lights and shadows, its kindly people, its carelessness and
consequent happiness.
"The flour is not after coming from Cortra, Miss, nor the box of
groceries from the stores," said Dillon at the station; "an' the Master
axin' for sardines these two days past--an' Anne out of flour."
"We'll borrow some from Mrs. Brady, Dillon; I daresay the mistress
forgot to write. How many of your boxes have you got, Mona? They
generally lose a few. Only one gone, Pat? Wonderful!"
"It must come on in a day or two, Miss," said Pat hopefully. "The war
has the world an' all muddled up."
Mona was welcomed by Mrs. Freyne. She was at home in ten minutes in the
old house; told to call Mrs. Freyne Auntie, and not Aunt--at all costs,
not Aunt Matilda. As their relationship was so remote as to be
non-existent Mona agreed with faint surprise.
She had been given one of the huge bedrooms looking out on the front, a
vast expanse of room, with heavy furniture solidly occupying as much
space as it conveniently could--a mighty bed, huge wardrobes in which
several spies might be hidden, an arm-chair which it took a strong man
to wheel along, and a small grate of dubiously new origin lurking in the
vast fireplace. Mr. Freyne had replaced all the old-fashioned bedroom
grates by cheap and not too economical substitutes.
Here Psyche the Sprite declared she would be lost, but peered with joy
across the expanse of tree-dotted lawn to the grey sea churning
ill-humouredly between the low cliffs.
"And you mustn't wink lights at night or we'll have Mr. Keefe up," said
Gheena. "We are dreadfully afraid of submarines down here."
Gheena, long limbed, tanned clear brown, with bright hair and deep grey
eyes, sat upon the massive arm-chair, not in it, but poised on the broad
arm, her arms clasped round her knees, and admired her guest
whole-heartedly.
"Psyche," she said; "nothing else. A sprite, Uncle Tony said. I can
hardly see you edgeways."
Mona's hands gripped the window-sill; they were slight fragile things,
with delicate bones concealed by milk-white skin. Even her eyes were
pale, grey-blue, misty and elusive.
"A man on a horse," she announced. "Yes, do call me Psyche; it's
pretty. Such a good-looking man. There were no men in Kent, only a
curate and some people with wives."
Gheena dropped off her perch to run to the window and see Darby talking
to her mother. The unmarred side of his face was towards them. There
was no hint of the twisted, shortened limb, and the seam which punctured
his right cheek.
"Oh, Darby!" said Gheena. "Poor old Darby Dillon!"
Psyche, late Mona, wished to know if this Darby had no money at all.
Gheena explained very gently that Darby was a cripple, lame and twisted.
They went down together--sunlight and moonlight, ripe chestnut and a
mistletoe berry--having, with the mysterious ease of which girlhood is
capable, become fast friends.
Darby Dillon was just hobbling across the hall. He reddened, as he
always did, when meeting strangers and the shame of his marring was
stared at by new eyes, summed up and pitied. But this girl did not seem
to look at him as though she noticed; she came up to tell him how
already she loved this grey Ireland, and to ask eager questions about
hunting and jumping, and the joys which she had only read of.
"I bought quite a lot of books and read them," she said. "A Badminton
and Jorrocks, and oh, crowds of things! But I've only ridden on the
roads, seen hunting once or twice from a motor, so I didn't understand.
You see, we lived in Scotland before mother died, and then I was abroad.
But I'm coming out here, even if I fall off."
"You won't make a hole in the ground," said Darby thoughtfully.
"You ride--like men in pictures," said Psyche.
Darby looked up sharply, his face flushing, to see if she was laughing
at the cripple, but the new experience of being admired after years of
tolerant pity made the flush deepen.
Dearest George corrected his stepdaughter several times as to her
stupidity about Miss Delorme's name.
A veritable sprite, pale, in pale-hued clothes, Psyche flitted about and
took in everyone. Her appreciation of Anne's scones was duly recorded
in the kitchen. Her close questioning of the injured Lancelot was
listened to by his mother and called impertinent. It was annoying to
meet a girl who seemed to know every town in France, every spot where
the English held the lines, and discomfiting for the hero to have to
shufflingly evade questions impossible for him to answer.
"It is my belief," observed pale Psyche to Gheena, "that he never went
beyond Boulogne."
Gheena replied quietly that she had guessed that for weeks, and
Lancelot, who played the invalid in his khaki, looked at them narrowly.
All the Freynes' friends appeared, of course accidentally, to see the
stranger, Mrs. Brady driving Mrs. Weston, who came to ask for some seeds
for her garden, things to sow in a frame, and was distressed to find
that January sowings needed great care and a skilled man. Mrs. Brady
was depressed because the news was vile and hopeless. Stafford came
merely to ask for tea. He yawned once or twice, apologizing with a
start.
"It's being up all night," he said; "no sleep."
"Who on earth did you find to play cards with here?" said Gheena icily.
Mr. Stafford said "Er!" and grinned faintly.
Lancelot Freyne absorbed Gheena's attention when he found it possible.
She must pour out his tea and put in cream and sugar. She was the only
one who could plump up and arrange his cushions. She must show him the
pictures in the _Daily Sketch_. Gheena was patiently pointing out
varieties of somewhat indefinite horrors of war, when Doctor Mahaffy, a
stout man, who did ten men's work in his big district, burst in to tell
them that one of their workmen had broken his leg.
"Nat Leary. He was coming back in the dark last night from the point,
and he tripped over something like a wire, he says. Whatever it was, it
stunned him and tilted him over the shale cliff, where he was only found
at one o'clock, half kilt."
"The steward said that he had not come to work," said Dearest George
fussily. "And Nat was an unusually sober man."
Old Mahaffy remarked gruffly that that was apparently as unusual as
usual in that way; but as he tripped something seemed to strike him and
smother him, and he woke up to find himself on the shale bank with his
leg doubled under him. He was too sick to move, or he'd have gone over
into the sea, so he bawled until someone heard him.
Something, Gheena could not have told what, made her look sharply at
Basil Stafford. He was staring at the doctor, his face tense and
strained, with an anxious look in his tired eyes.
Violet Weston rustled her noisy underskirts across the room to Gheena;
she moved trippingly, because her shoes generally hurt her feet, and
whispered in Gheena's ear.
"Up all night," she said. "He let it out. Could there be any
connection?"
The flush faded from Basil Stafford's face; he grew pale and his lips
set bitterly.
"Well, it's a job for you, Keefe," he said, "to go and investigate, and
I'll come with you. The cliffs are all overgrown above the shale bank,
but the path is clear at the edge."
"He turned in through the furry bushes to take that way to his house,"
said the doctor. "I left him grand and cosy now. I will take some tea
surely, Mrs. Freyne, for I am cold and tired. I'm getting an old man
for that two-wheeled motor of mine."
"You must have some fresh," said Mrs. Freyne; "this would be stewed.
Don't you think so, Dearest? And, besides, there isn't any. I remember
the last cup I poured out was not really there at all."
"And in the name of Goodness, Lancelot," burst out the doctor, "didn't I
tell you to use that foot and not be getting an atrophy in your leg from
pasting it up on cushions?"
Lancelot, flushing, observed haughtily that the pain was too intense,
and leant back as one who considers a matter fully discussed.
"I'd have a pain in a leg meself if I laid it up to be lookin' at it,
and it only swollen and tender," remarked Mahaffy, with brutal
frankness. "Unless it's sympathy you're after, Lancelot, and you do the
Tango in your own room so as to soon fill out and get ready for more
service."
At the thought of Lancelot in khaki gravely sitting before the
looking-glass, Mrs. Freyne said: "Oh, good gracious. Dearest George, do
you think?" and dropped three stitches of her involved muffler.
"Well, he should use it," observed the family practitioner, getting up.
"He was always nervous from the hour he came into the world, and used to
be peepin' at his bottle as if it might bite him. And now, Maria Louisa
Deane has the measles--German, too--and over there I must get before I
see roast goose to-night."
They tied pheasants on to the old fellow's bicycle and hung a basket of
grapes on the handle and sent him off.
Lancelot, in offended majesty, sat gloomily among his cushions.
Presently, when it was time to dress for dinner and get into slacks--he
would wear no civilian clothes--he suddenly put both sticks into one
hand, set his foot on the ground and collapsed against Gheena's shoulder
with a strangled groan of anguish.
"There is really no use trying if it makes you make noises like that,"
said Matilda Freyne kindly. "Is there, Dearest? Though it's probably
all nerves and really doesn't hurt a bit; and if you are going to try to
use it, Naylour and George must help you. Gheena is not strong enough."
The invalid tearfully murmured that he wanted Gheena alone. His glance
of reproach at Mrs. Freyne was a bitter one.
"He is a humbug," said Psyche, accepting Gheena's help in dressing. She
had brought no maid. "And I do not care for your big lady in silk
stockings."
When Gheena called Violet Weston a darling, Miss Delorme shook her head
vigorously.
"The only thing that's wrong with her, Darby says," went on Gheena, "is
that she wears a number eight shoe on a number ten foot and it hampers
her. They're not such big feet really, if she did not squeeze them in
those high-heeled shoes and wear such bright stockings."
When they came down again the little district inspector had just driven
back from his examination of the cliffs. There were two shale banks
along the verge, and until Leary got up again it would be impossible to
say exactly where he had turned and fallen. He had told the doctor it
was very dark, and he felt the gorse and wheeled, knowing he would find
the gate leading to the path across to his house, but the gorse grew
sixty yards from where they found him. They had looked everywhere, and
the only thing they found was a small cork which smelt faintly of
chloroform.
"We chloroformed a stray old cat last week," said Violet Weston
absently, "at least Guinane did. He took it off somewhere to the
cliffs, because I wouldn't have the poor thing done in the house."
"It's how striking a wire or a root as he turned to go in could have
tumbled the man over the cliffs is what puzzles me," said Stafford.
"The verge is several feet even from the path."
It was a matter of course that anyone coming late to Castle Freyne
stayed to dinner. The meal was always elastic, with reserves of vast
game pies and cold pheasants and other things, which Anne smilingly
"slapped up" into hot dishes at a moment's notice.
Psyche sat next to Darby and talked of horses all the time, an eager,
ill-informed but intelligent patter, which seemed to amuse him greatly.
To-morrow--no later--she would get a horse and practise jumping.
To-morrow, Darby said mildly, was a hunting day.
"But if I lean back and then forward," said Psyche excitedly, "I might
not fall off. Gheena says I am to have her Redbird to begin on, because
he's so very quiet and careful. And then I am to have a grey for my own
riding."
This was Gheena's sop to her stepfather's ill-humour, as the grey was
returned; it could thus be fed free of cost.
"And--oh!" Psyche started nervously.
"It's Crabbit snuffling and Dearest throwing an orange at him," observed
Darby. "Yes. Crabbit is now worrying the orange."
Crabbit chased the orange across the room, bit it viciously, chased it
again, and finally left it, torn open, pulpy, just beneath the feet of
the man who had thrown it at him; so that when Mr. Freyne rose
gracefully to open the door, his feet slipped on the smashed-up fruit
and he disappeared from view, feet foremost under the table,
accidentally hitting Lancelot's foot and eliciting a yowl of anguish
from his nephew.
The upheaval of Dearest George, his garments now fragrant with orange
juice, was coupled with deep threats directed against Crabbit's
life--deeper still, because that interested animal came and sniffed at
his head when he was on the ground.
"When Crabbit dies," said Gheena, calling up her red pet, "I shall marry
next day, the very next. If the Professor won't have me, Doctor Mahaffy
might; I could give him a motor to drive in."
Dearest George observed something concerning drivel, but he observed it
under his breath and recognized the threat. Crabbit was not to suffer.
So turning to Lancelot, he crushed his nephew by remarking irritably
that soldiers had no business to squeal like rabbits.
The new-comer sang to them in a thin sweet voice, which was quite
sprite-like, and she danced for them lightly and prettily, but not as
well as usual, because she told Gheena she was thinking of hunting.
The meet was at Castle Freyne itself next day. It was without exception
the worst meet on the card, with endless hunting through endless woods,
of foxes with limitations as to sound limbs.
Mr. George Freyne, with the assistance of a reticent north-country
keeper, trapped rabbits and carted them in the dawn or the dusk to the
distant stations, sending them in bags by the cart of a "boy" of
fifty-four by the name of Looney Rooney, who could keep his mouth shut
on any subject for a shilling and open it for half a crown.
This matter of the rabbits Dearest George believed to be so sacred a
secret that his amazement when a three-legger was run into and chopped
was most loudly voiced.
"Those hang fisher chaps trapped all round the cliffs, and of course
foxes strayed out."
"And I to poke into some queer-looking bags on Looney Rooney's cart two
years ago," observed Darby once. "'Rabbits, you poaching villain,' I
said to him. 'Whose rabbits?'
"'Don't be axin' me questions an' I'll tell ye no lies, Mister Darby,'
he said, with his crooked old mouth under one ear. 'Here's half a crown
to tell me whose,' I said. 'The shopman's,' he says, putting his mouth
round until I thought he would have to get someone to feed him for the
future through the back of his neck. 'Hee! Hee! the shopman's! Castle
Brand,' says the old villain, whaling his jinnet into a trot, and he was
a mile away when I realized that he had earned his half a crown."
Gheena, of course, knew nothing of this method of making money.
The scratch pack sat solemnly upon the lawn. They were now fit and in
condition, yet in their hearts probably yearning for the many
indifferent meals which they had picked up daily, instead of the one
ample portion of meal and meat. Every woman who possessed a habit and
saddle came out for the meet at Castle Freyne, and every man who could
muster a horse.
Mr. Freyne had spent an anxious hour in the cellar, looking out some
ginger cordial which had proved a failure, and which he meant to
substitute for the usual excellent liqueurs provided for the hunting
people.
"In war time they ought not to expect anything," he said fussily, as he
decanted some inferior whisky into the old cut-glass decanters.
In the morning, a clear and sunshiny one, he saw the table ready in the
hall before he went out, very important in peaked cap, to speak to the
pack, and to proffer hospitality with the extremely whole-hearted air of
the man who regrets it secretly. The offer comes quite quietly from
those who delight in seeing their substance consumed.
The farmers took little mugs of liqueur coyly, coughing and wiping their
mouths with a thanksgiving of "That's good entirely," or "Fine lightsome
sthuff, Miss Gheena. Your good health, Miss! Your good health, Ma'am!
Well now, one more, then."
Mr. Freyne watched without anxiety to see the distinct disappointment
with which they would swallow the rather tired ginger cordial; but to
his surprise, he saw Mr. Rooney cough with extra vigour, and hold out a
withered hand for another go of that gran' little sthuff.
"And Matilda would have told me it was like water," he said genially,
offering a drink to fat old O'Gorman as he pounded up upon his stout
cob, leading his wife's lean mare. "Liqueur? Only the ginger cordial,
or whisky and soda, or tea."
"Knowing Mrs. Freyne's ginger cordial, I'll have some," said O'Gorman,
wiping his forehead. "That's a great plowder when you're late, Freyne,
eight miles out of the town."
Miss Louisa O'Donnell, a coy and dark-haired damsel of uncertain years,
also gladly accepted. She had gone through life offering unstinted
admiration to mankind, hoping it might induce one of them to take it as
a permanent tonic to his life; but she remained Louisa O'Donnell
still--with a complexion which Darby said unkindly it was a good thing
the rain washed sometimes, and a lean angular figure.
"Indeed, just the littlest taste, Mr. Freyne," she said sweetly. "My!
isn't the hunting cap very becoming to a good-looking man. It will be
quite a loss when we have the Master out again."
Dearest George preened peacock-wise in the sunshine, glared down at his
white leathers and immaculate boots, and strode, spurs ringing on the
gravel, towards the hall. "Gheena, two cordials."
But Gheena was on her way to coax pretty Jane O'Dea, a giggling
bride-elect, from her horse and bring her in for some tea.
Dearest George ran up the shallow steps to note quite a crowd of men
round the table in the hall, and then to call imperiously to his wife.
Her stout, fair comeliness set off by a well-made dark habit, she was
standing talking to Stafford.
"Yes, Dearest. Naylour, two glasses."
Mr. Freyne, receiving them, noted with surprise that the hue of the
liqueur was green, and turned in amazement, giving the tray to Naylour,
who shuffled, a white-haired Ganymedes, out amongst the crowd.
"And oh, Dearest George," beamed Matilda Freyne, "I found the old
cordial which was never corked properly put out by mistake, and you were
outside, so I got out the green Chartreuse you put away when war was
declared instead. The other things were locked up, and the Chartreuse
was handy in the dining-room press. Wasn't I right, Dearest?"
Dearest George looked bleakly at the bottles of his favourite liqueur
which were being opened by Keefe; on the floor stood a degraded row of
bottles of the cordial. Green Chartreuse to the farmers! Outside he
heard O'Gorman's oily voice.
"I wouldn't mind another glassful, Naylour. I'm beat trotting the whole
way, and that's great stuff, not like ginger cordial at all now, is it?"
Mr. Freyne made curious noises in his throat.
"Never," observed Darby softly to Miss Delorme, "be economical without
your wife's knowledge. I've never known anyone so hard to corner as
Matilda. She reminds me of chasing jelly with a fork; it's always so
soft and pleasant, and always at the other end of the plate when you
think you've got it."
Darby looked at his watch, but there was no hurry. If a little piece of
Castle Freyne was left undrawn no one would grumble except George.