Russian anthem on the harmonium. It will be magnificent! I'll put you
down to help with the supper, Mrs. Freyne--cake and sandwiches and
anything else. And--I'll drive you to the village, Mr. Freyne. It will
only do the stubborn pony good."
Gheena said "Splendid!" in relieved tones. Lancelot had hobbled in; he
disliked too much fresh air.
"Lancelot, you can go to the village," called his aunt loudly.
Lancelot appeared again with Naylour behind him adjusting a British
warm--a Balaclava helmet under his cap, and thick gloves completing his
entrenchment against the advance of a chill. Gheena's pony came
rattling wickedly round at the moment, poking out its stubborn head
while responding gleefully to whacks from Phil with thuds of iron
against the floor of the trap.
Lancelot advanced dubiously,
"Oh, it's Miss O'Toole who is going to take you," said Gheena. "She
says she won't mind the extra work for her pony, and you can talk about
the recitation. Don't bury Sir John Moore."
With a glance which Anne from the kitchen reported to be as bither as
weasels, Lancelot got into the inside trap.
The two girls drove off behind Topsy and turned inland, crawling along
the narrow fuchsia-bordered road which led to Dillon's Court.
"You can only see the sea from the hills there," Gheena said; "but it's
a dear old home."
The long, dull red house stood against a background of dark wood and
mountain. The wide lawn was dotted with big trees, walnuts, oaks, huge
beeches; one could hear the hoarse splutter and gurgle of the trout
stream which tore on to commit suicide in the lake. In summer, to the
left of the house, a mass of copper beeches passed to tender tinted
pinky green, to sullen splendour of coppery crimson, glowing in every
gleam of sun.
The wide hall door, standing open, was of panelled oak.
"You can see the sea from the gardens, Psyche. There's poor Darby!"
Hobbling down the four shallow steps before the door, a cripple, the
last perhaps of a long line of sportsmen, the old place which he loved
round him, a glorious frame, enclosing a defaced portrait. It was
bitter to remember how he had leapt the sunk fence there so lightly
once, swung up those copper beeches up to the topmost boughs, until he
looked through a red cloud up to spatches of blue, shining down.
Whole-limbed, disregarding torn clothes, jumping on the ponies' backs,
looking forward to life spelt with a capital L, as his father's had
been, a man's life with his son to follow him. And now--he shuffled
agilely up to meet the two--brown-skinned Gheena and the white stranger,
whose eyes were full of something which he had forgotten--admiration.
To Psyche he was the magician who made the hounds go.
"It is even more beautiful than Castle Freyne," she said, as she jumped
from the trap lightly, her eight stone of humanity perfectly balanced.
"Oh, what a dear old place!" she almost whispered. "You can see the
ghosts of other days here."
"I can," said Darby drearily, his face changing.
"And see the spirits of days to come," she said gently.
"Days I shall go dot and go one through--yes--alone!" His eyes were on
Gheena, who was romping with two sprawling joyous terrier pups.
"And the place cries for company." As lightly as the sprite they had
nicknamed her after, Psyche stepped up the shallow step wall into the
dim cool hall.
The hideous furniture of Victoria's reign had not been put into it by
the Dillon bride of that period. It was full of mellow satinwood and
darker mahogany of earlier days. Fine priceless china jostled
collections of shells in a large cabinet, and a moulting flight of
stuffed birds flaunted gaudily in another.
"My grandmother put the Worcester in the pantry to make two shelves for
her shells," grinned Darby, his stick strafing the polished floor. "My
mother then worked her artistic will in the drawing-room. She enamelled
the mantel-shelf."
A wide room, with big windows looking on the lake, with exquisite pieces
of old furniture here and there, but overshadowed by stiff strips of
fancy-work wrought on black satin, by red plush triangles hung with
china, by plates and dishes gone to ground in red velvet mounts, by
black and gold cabinets, almost smiling because they took places of
honour, while precious pieces of Chippendale were stowed into corners.
"I never altered it"--Darby looked at the big room in its ugliness--"but
there are enough old things about to make it a treasure house if anyone
bothered. I believe the marble can be cleaned. My father, I am told,
regretted there being no divorce obtainable in Ireland, and wished
himself an American citizen, when he came in and saw the Aspinall's
enamel pot. Come into my den," he said. "I never sit here."
A low room, oaken beams, the ceiling and the walls hung with old
pictures and sporting prints, tobacco and turf smoke a reminiscence in
the present.
Man's deep chairs of comfort, thick rugs for dogs to doze on and bow-wow
spectrally in pursuit of dream-rats; and here among them Darby dreamt
awake, as his terriers and big Scotch deerhound basked. Dreamt of what
he had been, and of some wondrous bone-setters who could straighten
twisted muscles, patch up broken bones, and send one Darby Dillon out
again walking evenly, no longer a shuffling cripple, but a man who would
have the right to go to the girl he cared for and offer himself to her.
Here, alone, he saw pictures in the fire and felt the ache and throb of
hopelessness.
Psyche flitted round, looking at the pictured likenesses of men who had
once sat in the room--from silken-clad cavaliers to the men painted in
the present-day tweeds.
"This boy"--Psyche swung round--"your brother?"
It was Darby, painted on the steps, a great hound by his side.
"Oh, no--myself!" he said.
"Oh, then it was an accident; you weren't born----"
Psyche stopped and became a lively poppy colour.
"I thought Gheena would have told you. It was at polo, a bad smash-up,
two ponies all rolling together with Mr. Dillon as a pivot. Don't look
distressed; that hurts. Come and see the pack."
They went out a back way, along cavernous passages, through which in
bygone days huge dishes of roasts and boiled had had to be galloped up
to the big dining-room. Darby showed a kitchen in which a range lurked
coyly in the vastness, and through which all the draughts of the world
seemed to rush.
The yards were also built for giants, from the neat square where the
coach-houses showed great black mouths, to the second stable yard, with
its endless range of boxes, a few of them modernized, and again the cow
yards full of buildings and lofts and barns.
Here Gheena, the puppies in her arms and Crabbit at her heels, joined
them.
The scratch pack were getting used to the cleanliness and internment by
now. Grandjer had abandoned as almost hopeless his desire to dig his
way out, but he still howled unmelodiously, remembering happy days of
freedom at the farm. Home Ruler had lost weight, and in consequence
could go farther. She was a vast feeder.
Psyche almost leapt through the door on to the flags as she endeavoured
to master the hounds' names.
"Grandjer, him with no tail, Miss," said little Andy. "Ye can call that
to mind. He is Beauty's son. An' Daisy here with the two sphots near
his axther."
Psyche took her hat off.
"An' Spinsther, him with one ear yelly and one white, an' Home Ruler he
is the big dog, an' Greatness that's all black one side. An' Beauty he
is nearly all yally. He is Grandjer's mother, didn't I tell ye, Miss?"
"It isn't quite as easy as playing Bridge," said Darby, listening.
"There, Andy, not any more now."
Miss Delorme was persistent. She did not leave the kennels until she
had got four hounds off by heart as she said. "So that I can call up
any of those lot," she said contentedly, "if they are near me."
"That being, of course, the usual procedure for the Field," observed
Darby with unabated gravity, "to call the hounds to them. Now there are
the nags."
Psyche revelled in a sight of sleek coats and gentle snuggling heads, of
soft muzzles nibbling at her hands. Legs Miss Delorme looked upon as
merely things which were necessary to a horse to travel on; but heads
and necks were to pet.
She tore herself away to eat mutton chops and cold pheasant off a little
table drawn close to the fire in the big dining-room, after which she
showed a distinct desire to return to the kennels and learn more about
hounds.
Instead she was driven home, leaving Darby alone on his steps, his eyes
wistful as the pony galloped off.
The silence of the big house seemed to sob to him as he went in to the
fire, his dogs at his heels, the loneliness to become something tangible
and almost evil and alive, until he got out the car and followed the two
girls to Castle Freyne.
Castle Freyne was occupied by the committee of the concert, headed by
Miss O'Toole, with Lancelot drooping sulkily alone in the library, his
foot full of twinges.
He was only a poor wounded creature, and, of course, they were right to
leave him alone and not bother about him, and he was going home next
day, he said.
Gheena's easily-pricked conscience felt the pangs of remorse; she
fetched Lancelot his tea herself, ministering to his growing weight with
honey sandwiches and heavily-buttered potato scones and chocolate cakes.
"Where he do put it all an' he never to give it a shake down with a
minnit's walk even, 'd make ye wondther," Naylour had muttered once
audibly in the door.
This was after an invalid's luncheon of beef-tea, a chop, a partridge,
and a sponge pudding, had completely disappeared from the tray.
Lancelot's foot held twinges which only nourishment could assuage.
When the subject of songs had been fully discussed and a selection,
marked by tepid affection and absence of much air, chosen by several
singers, the war, of course, swept aside even the discussion of the
music which its stern necessity was to evoke.
None of the people were really anxious about it, but they quoted
prophecies to make them thrill, fears of invasion, of submarines, tales
of spies.
"You know it really brought it home to us when dear Mrs. De Burgho Keane
was attacked by them--no, by the bees which Philip had put ready for
them. That was a dreadful scare. It is all owing, no doubt, to Mr.
Keefe's promptness"--Mrs. Brady flashed a smile which blended
appreciation with the respect due to the official in authority upon Mr.
Keefe--"that we are all sleeping in our beds now."
Darby looked at the large sofa and coughed thoughtfully.
Mr. Keefe, who was wrangling with Miss O'Toole because she thought
"Violets" rather an old song, and he was determined to sing it, looked
round nervously.
"He warned the Germans by wireless," said Darby earnestly, "that if they
dared to come here he'd be waiting on the Seals Rock with his sword
on.... He had time to gallop home for it ... and they put the Fleet's
head nor'-east-south-south-west immediately."
Mrs. Brady replied absently that it must be nice to know exactly how
they would alter things, and really now with this wireless to send
messages by--they were regularly up to date at Kildrellan.
"If it's illness," said Darby, looking severely at Psyche, who was
choking and weeping close by, "we also have a doctor, and if you're
good, I'll tell you about the bees and Dearest's nose."
Miss O'Toole's spectacles glimmered severely at Mr. Keefe.
"I say sing something new," she said, "something from an opera.
'Violets' is full of sickly sentimentality--tarity--tallity--that's it,
tallity. Now, say, 'The Honeysuckle and the Bee.'"
"They died of frostbite when I was a boy," said Darby. "Try forrard,
Miss O'Toole."
"Well, something from, say, _Betty_ or _Bric-a-Brac_--'They never
believe Me' or 'My Old Pal.'"
Mr. Keefe's underlip looked faintly obstinate, and he hummed 'Violets'
in an apologetic tenor. He meant to sing it.
George Freyne trilled the "Meynell Hunt" over the tea-cups blithely, and
with variety as to keys.
Mrs. Brady would, of course, give "The Harp that Once" in the faint echo
of a one-time tuneful little voice, and the Vicar would recite "The
Bells."
"We can put those two just about train time, can't we?" said Miss
O'Toole, "when everyone's fussy. And Mrs. Weston?"
Mrs. Weston said that she would sell programmes and violets. She was
not musical. "Unless a fiddle," she said lightly; "if anyone's got one,
I can play that."
Miss O'Toole thought that one might be found. It would be a variety, as
no one fiddled, except in the village at weddings. And the Vicar, of
course, remarked upon one being at the conflagration of Rome and waited
for his laugh expectantly.
"He has made the same jokes for years," whispered Psyche, hysterically.
"You can kind of fancy that it's always the same here, with no one
growing older or changing."
Darby looked down at his stick, stifling a quiet sigh. Lancelot Freyne
was duly taken home next day, his expression one of puffy peevishness.
Even the wielding of the sword in France had not taught him how to
advance his suit with Gheena. He left a gap which let in sunshine
behind him, but with this clearness came frost.
Dearest George grew openly disagreeable. He growled over money. He
hinted at the complete suppression of hunting.
Gheena was twenty. Five long years of dependence stretched before
her--five years, during which the horses she loved would grow stout and
shapeless upon grass, and she would fret and fume under the burden of
authority. The two-seater which she had hoped for was out of the
question now.
Mr. Freyne could be disagreeable. He could look over his wife's
accounts and growl over Gheena's new clothes. He had not the greatness
of any open aggression. To have fired off a big gun and borne the
recoil would have been beyond him. He was one of the small bird
shooters, peppering with No. 10, firing from behind hedges, nagging with
a patient smile.
Sympathetic friends learnt, from reasons which a kind stepfather
suppressed, how difficult Gheena was to get on with. She went to bed in
a room where the grate would have gleamed with cold blacklead if she had
not gone out and cut up branches and lighted a fire of wood and
turf--the turf smuggled by Phil up the back stairs.
As the English held on grimly in their ditches of frozen mud, Mr. Freyne
saw no reason to believe in the end of the war, so anticipated a poverty
which he was never likely to see. He reproved Anne's limitless kitchen
hospitality, the stout old cook sending away blind Barney
ostentatiously, and then garnishing a humble piece of cod with several
expensive things out of bottles.
Barney went no further than the harness-room, where a meal concealed in
a stable bucket was carried to him.
"The war is above in the Masther's head," said Anne pleasantly. "An' I
have all them trifles that he's so sot on emptied out over the cod, that
he hates too, but me Darby loves thim."
"He has taken to ordering me about," said Gheena a little bleakly to
Darby and Psyche--"to making things disagreeable for me. He wants to
know my plans for the day, and tells me he wants Topsy himself so as to
spare the car, and then he offers to drive me to see Lance. He wants
me"--Gheena lifted a mutinous face--"to marry Lance. He hints at it
with the subterfuge of a--a----"
"A charging bull," suggested Darby, "or a liner coming out of harbour."
His eyes watched Gheena wistfully.
"If he is not careful," said Gheena, "I'll marry just to have the place.
I'll marry----"
"Mr. Stafford, Miss," said old Naylour, opening the door.
Gheena's look of gloom deepened as she eyed the offender's grey tweed
suit.
"I came to tell you news," Stafford said. "A submarine sighted off
Cortra harbour last night, and again not far from here."
"Someone here is supplying them with petrol," said Gheena--"someone."
"There are tales of strange motor-cars seen about at night," said Darby
thoughtfully.
Psyche's grey was a little lame; she remembered it now, jumping up to
drag Darby out to know what was wrong. "Because there will be a meet
to-morrow and I want to go," she whispered.
Gheena, left alone with Stafford, remarked intelligently that the
evening was chilly.
"You are very down on me, Miss Freyne"--he looked down at her, his arm
on the old marble mantelshelf--"because I don't join the army."
Gheena said "Then why don't you?" her cheeks fiery.
"Well, at present I can't. There are the drains, and other reasons."
"To prepare potato ground for Germans," said Gheena, "ought not to be
one. As for other reasons----" Her eyes flashed.
"That's one way of referring to the drains," he said good-humouredly,
his eyes twinkling. "And I run messages to the Wireless Station and up
to the coastguards, and take out Mrs. Weston to drive. It's not all
drains."
Gheena sat silent, pulling Crabbit's ears. Her suspicions were
deepening; she grew suddenly white.
"You can't even forgive me for being a slacker, I suppose?" Basil
Stafford's eyes lost their twinkle. "Perhaps I don't approve of
fighting?"
"Of fighting Germans," snapped Gheena.
Mr. Stafford feared that she would never be taken on as a diplomatist.
He walked to the window and added that no lights were to be used now at
night near the sea; the coastguards were on the alert for offenders.
"So if the pups stray you are not to look for them with the stable
lantern," he advised.
"Or with an electric torch," said Gheena, her cheeks fiery again.
"Miss Freyne," he said gravely, rather angrily, "if a man can't help
himself----" He stopped suddenly, came back from the window, and said
irrelevantly that he was changing his car for a new one, or perhaps he
would keep both.
Psyche returned at a run to shout out that the grey horse could hunt and
they'd got the second post.
It included a letter from Miss Eva Delorme, who wrote a firmly-pointed
hand and could fill two sheets of notepaper with ease.
"A Mr. Stafford, you say, on the drainage works," she wrote. "I knew
Staffords of Old Hall in Worcestershire, very poor people, had lost
everything. Don't judge hastily; these drains may be for home defence."
Psyche gave Gheena the letter; Miss Freyne read it carefully.
"And the new car is coming--when?" she said to Basil Stafford.
"Next week, I think. What's that, Miss Delorme? Did we live at Old Hall
in Worcester? Yes, that was our place. It's let. My mother's in
London. She was in a sky-scraping flat before her operation, but now
I've taken a nice house for her, and she won't leave for any Zeps. It's
so hard to get a chauffeur, two of hers have gone. I gave her a car
last June."
Gheena's lips came together. Riches had sprung up swiftly for this
young man.
Basil Stafford left, looking tired, lines round his pleasant mouth.
The scratch pack hunted a fox with leisurely determination next day from
Green Gorse Hill and through a nice hunt. Psyche rode close to Darby.
She got in his way several times; she chattered at moments when she
should have been silent; but the small face was so rapturously happy
that he said nothing. Dearest George remonstrated fussily with his
guest.
"You must keep quiet at the checks, Mona," he said, "and let Darby
alone. He is my colleague, remember, a Master, as I am."
"He rides in front, and do you stay behind to make the lazy dogs keep
up?" asked Psyche with interest. "Is that why there are two Masters?"
Amid a clarity of silence, broken only by Darby choking, George Freyne
rode away.
"My! but that was the bither remark ye threw at him," murmured Rourke
softly, "an' he always tryin' to conceal the way he lies back. My!
but----" Mr. Rourke suddenly abandoned himself to uncontrolled laughter
while Pysche mentally pigeon-holed this new piece of knowledge. She
nearly fell off over a piece of timber; she rode straight on top of
Darby at a drop into the road, all with serene joy. They closed on
their fox, pace improved, and as they ran fast over a fair country the
glow on the girl's face was as of moonlight. The small hands clenched
on the reins, her little body swaying to the gallop; the extreme
pleasure of it was almost pain.
They put the fox to ground at the outskirts of Longfield Wood, Darby
getting off to see what the hole was like.
"To think of being you," gasped Miss Delorme, holding Darby's horse
insecurely, "to direct it all, and make those cooing noises, and to have
people get out of your way, and to whistle to them with that lovely
hunting-horn! And oh, would you change with anybody on earth?"
"With heaps of 'em," said Darby, looking into her pale face--"the
bodies, not the men. Here is my rear-guard fellow-Master coming now,
looking malignant."
"I shall hunt all my life," announced Psyche earnestly, "and over here.
I want to stay here always."
They rode down through the long wood. Darby's servants were
sufficiently Irish to produce hot cakes almost as soon as everyone got
in. The old library was warm and homelike, and Darby's dogs politely
allowed guests to occupy the hearth-rug.
Admiration is a pleasant medicine. Darby felt less lonely and out of
life than he had for months. He seemed to step from his horse with
scarcely any difficulty, and he only used his riding-whip to steady him
as he went into the house. He even forgot to look grimly at the scarred
side of his face in the glass. The stir of the gallop was still in his
blood--his horse's jumping, the movement of perfect shoulders, the
keenness of a good hunter, unfaltering, how seldom visibly tired. And
how well Grandjer, Beauty and Daisy, and the rest of them had hunted,
plodding along on relentless foes.
"It's fun, anyhow," he said gaily, watching with man's carelessness
precious Crown Derby cups being put out for tea.
Mrs. De Burgho Keane took off her gloves to pour out graciously. The
tea-table was such an excellent stronghold to hear all news from.
People had to wait for cream and sugar, and could not run away.
But it was the two girls who made tea, recklessly giving cream to
everyone, splashing in water much too late, and looking dubiously at the
straw-coloured second cups which were the result. Lancelot's mother and
sister, who had driven to-day in a pony cart, stood close to Gheena,
both looking unhappy, and presenting the expression of people who expect
to be questioned, so that Gheena hoped politely that Lance was out
walking as he was not driving.
To which his mother replied that Lance was either in bed or on the
library sofa, she could not say which, suffering from depression and
twinges.
"He does not pick up," said Lancelot's mother. "Gheena, that is only hot
water; ring for more tea. Now yesterday we had to coax him to take a
second meringue, and the roast beef he began with was not half eaten.
He is unhappy, dear Gheena, my poor wounded boy, and for a remedy..."
"Soda mints," said Gheena absently. "I see, I must keep on filling up
with hot water and not wait till it's only tea leaves. I never pour out
at home. Yes, try soda mints. It's never moving about and such a lot
to eat. I'll come to see him soon, I'll promise."
Mrs. Freyne got up, telling her daughter that Gheena was impossible and
rather rude.
Miss O'Toole worked hard at her concert. She was a person of high
ambitions, so flags of various nationalities had to be produced to
festoon above the raised stage in the schoolhouse. The walls she
decorated with anything which she could get, and the platform was such a
nest of greenery that performers had to dive in amongst it to get into
full view, and even then were hemmed in by palms and boughs. The
harmonium, clasped in the Union Jack, crouched among a nest of palms in
one corner; the piano, its back covered with the Tricolour, and a toy
lion and a bear on the top, stood out below the platform.
The performers, when finished, fell off steep wooden steps at the back,
generally noisily, so that the encores were marred by sundry rubbings of
injured limbs, Dearest George, in pink, handing the singers on and off
vaguely.