item. They had opened with a piece on the piano, the doctor's daughter
clawing out concerted airs of the nations, and quite forgetting to omit
Germany's which was somewhere in the middle, so that the General
commanding in Cortra entered to the strains of the "Watch on the Rhine"
and sat down extremely surprised as it changed to "Deutschland ueber
Alles." Joan Flynne could not in any case read German, and had learnt
the piece at school. The first song was then given by Mr. O'Gorman, its
opening bars being interfered with by his nervous wonder as to what on
earth was crawling down the back of his neck.
"'Steadily, shoulder to shoulder'"--Mr. O'Gorman moved and a second palm
spike tickled his ear--"'Steadily'"--he caught at the ear, dropped his
music and missed a bar--"'blade--by----' We're out, Miss O'Toole.
What!" Miss O'Toole was looking up and almost wailing "Palm
fronds"--"'blade--by----' Damn the things!"
Mr. O'Gorman wheeled and clutched.
"Palm fronds!" shrieked Miss O'Toole.
Mr. O'Gorman nodded happily, the bars were successfully adjusted, and
the "Old Brigade" marched to a tuneful ending.
When everyone encored and a response was being made, Mr. O'Hara could be
heard at the side.
"Right! I'll give 'em 'Toreador.' 'Toreador,' Miss O'Toole. Sorry I
put you out, but in a place like this no one knows, does one? A sash
on? Good gracious! why should I dress up like a bull?"
"Get on with it. Now then."
Mr. O'Gorman was nervous but a favourite. He swayed a stout body
energetically, and his last magnificent effort of "a-do-or" was faintly
marred by an audible "Damn!" and a clasp at his ear as a palm frond got
him again.
Certain young ladies then warbled of loves and kisses, sweetly and
fairly audibly.
Gheena sang the "Recruiting Song" with extreme energy, fixing her eyes
alternately upon Mr. Stafford and a local butcher, who sometimes spoke
vaguely of "giving them Germans a 'slice' with his chopper, th' ould
divils."
The General commanding the district was still upset by his musical
reception, and sat by his pretty wife listening absently, even to
Gheena's appeal for recruits, her hands outstretched as if to gather up
men.
There was a pause after this, Miss Freyne fleeing from an encore. The
stage was empty until the thrilling strains of the Russian National
Anthem were beaten from the harmonium, and some of the audience who
recognized it shot to their feet because they thought they ought to, the
rest following suit and wondering why.
To this massed enthusiasm Lancelot Freyne, upon crutches, made entry
alone, bowing gracefully to an outburst of cheers and honours. Miss
O'Toole pounded more anthem, everyone sat down, and George Freyne, with
a whisky and soda in his hand, rushed in tardily to announce the
item--"The Charge of the Light Brigade."
"'Half a league, half a league,'" said Lancelot casually, then
proceeding with the "Charge of the Light Brigade."
The General commanding the district rubbed his head hard.
"But why--for this--the Russian anthem?" he whispered. "For this!"
"'Cossack and Russian reeled from the sabre's stroke--shattered and
sundered,'" said Lancelot pleasantly, Miss O'Toole continuing the music
with the soft pedal down, and just a boom when big drums were mentioned.
"Why?" remarked the General hopelessly. "And the beginning when I came
in!" Then--he had a sense of humour--he looked at his wife, and the
rest of his evening was spent in laudable endeavours to check unseemly
laughter and to subdue his wife's.
"'Into the valley of Hell, into the mouth of Death,'" said Lancelot, and
paused to look for his sister at the wings--"that is--'mouth of Hell.'"
She was prompting.
Boom! went chords in the bass.
"It's the damn piano puts one out!" murmured Lancelot over his shoulder
to his sister. "What's next?"
"Make some action," hissed his prompter.
The General buried his face in his pocket-handkerchief, overcome, as
Mrs. De Burgho Keane said.
"'They rode back again, but not--not the six hundred,'" remarked
Lancelot casually, and waved one crutch swiftly. The principal effect of
the belated action was to upset the lion on to Miss O'Toole and make her
last piece of Russian anthem a discord.
Lancelot hobbled off amid loud clapping of hands, and his mother thought
with rapture of how he would look if he did it in London.
Mr. Keefe and Mrs. Keane were both upset by the fall of the lion,
considering it to be a bad omen for the war.
The interval for sandwiches and liquid refreshment proved a brilliant
success. Mrs. Weston showed a bag full of silver collected for
programmes. She had charged all the men a shilling for programmes.
"And it was worth it," said Darby, "with such a lot thrown in--the
'Watch on the Rhine' and Lancelot's recitation."
"I would not," observed the General, "have missed it for a fiver,
especially if the second half is as good and as funny and as er ...
patriotic as to tunes."
Lancelot's mother wandered up and down for plaudits for her boy,
discussing the "Charge."
"No exaggerations," she said, "no undue emphasizing, just the beauty of
the thing--the one swing of the crutch when they were all killed, and my
wounded boy doing it."
Sir Abel replied that he had never in his life been so touched by a
recitation.
Just then Mrs. Freyne took off her gloves and made nervous way to the
piano.
She played the prelude to "John Peel" loudly, lifting her hands then to
endeavour to follow her husband on his devious paths.
He had put on his velvet cap.
"'D'ye ken John Peel?'" roared Dearest George, and found it was too
high.
"'D'ye ken John Peel?'" he boomed loudly.
Mrs. Freyne struck a chord softly, and without hope. The General, who
was musical, grew quite anxious.
But by the time he had got to the "Break of day," George Freyne was, so
to speak, in his stride, with his wife following delicately, afraid to
show marked preference to any key.
Having been loudly encored, Mr. Freyne asked his wife to play the tune
and give him some help, and gave the "Meynell Hunt" with as much
variety, as Darby said, as if the pack was in full cry.
A song and dance by Miss Delorme made the audience wonder if it was
quite right for them to be there, for Psyche in costume gave them a song
about the moon, and her dancing was as if a sprite floated over earth.
By this time all the men were yelling "Encore!" and Mrs. Keane wished
audibly that she had left Estelle and Maria at home.
Psyche was back again to give "A Little Bit of String," out of the
_Circus Girl_, and another dance of fairy-like lightness. Then Mr.
Keefe, pink and moist, was bustled on after his song had been given out.
Miss O'Toole played a prelude emphatically, unnoticed by the nervous
performer.
"'Every morning I bring thee violets,'" trilled Mr. Keefe, with the
piano vamping "My Old Pal" loudly.
"'Every morning I bring thee'---- Oh, look here, hang it!" said Mr.
Keefe. "I can't bring them to that music, Miss O'Toole. I told you so.
I said----"
Mrs. Weston threw a bunch on to the stage.
When there was a possibility of hearing him, and Miss O'Toole had
changed her music gloomily, Mr. Keefe brought violets very irately, and
flounced off in obvious ill-humour, declining his encore.
"To start like that when I told her time after time," he said, as he
sought solace in a whisky and soda.
Then, fetched by the M.C., Violet Weston went on to the platform; very
brilliant stockings gleamed under her white skirt. She was somewhat
garishly handsome as she stood in the light; but as she took up the
violin her expression changed. She cuddled it down, her fingers loving
on the strings; she bent to Miss O'Toole, who shook her head hopelessly,
as she looked at the score.
Matilda Freyne was called on; she listened, and took up the music.
Next moment the violin was rippling out wild Hungarian dances, spirits
of elves, patter of breathless witches, rustle of feet on dead leaves,
on polished boards, evil in merriment--they were all in the elfish
music. Only two people in the audience realized what a master hand
played to them--the General from Cortra leaning forward entranced, and
another listener, the old Professor, sitting hidden in a corner.
With a sigh as of tired dancers it ended.
The Professor leaned forward listening. He leant back frowning,
searching for something half forgotten. When had he heard this rendered
before, with the same skill, the same feeling? The memory brought with
it recollection of crowds, of a town.
He left his corner to waddle to the platform where Mrs. Weston was
giving now a selection of Irish airs to vociferous applause.
"I have to thank you," he said simply, holding out his hand.
"Music--music is all to me. But ... somewhere ... once I have heard
someone else play that just as you do."
"Everyone plays it much the same, I should think," said Violet Weston, a
little abruptly, moving away.
Miss O'Toole made seven pounds clear and had given, as she said, a
wonderful musical treat to everyone. In fact Sir Abel Huntley had
assured her that if it was a choice between another concert in
Kildrellan and one at the Queen's Hall, he would come to hers.
*CHAPTER XIV*
"Not tired again, Violet?" said Gheena reproachfully. "And we began a
mile on to-day?"
Mrs. Weston explained that she had twisted her ankle coming down the
stony little lane, and she really could not go on. She said acidly that
they had come miles, and one could see all the caves on the shore, and
she did not believe anyone could hide things in them.
"There are one or two ledges," said Gheena thoughtfully, "and I've heard
the water gurgling inside the rocks. I shall go on looking with Crabbit
if you can't come."
They were close to the little fishing village of Leeshane. It crouched
in the hollow of a shingly bay with the rocks poking out on either side,
the cliffs gradually rising to the point, where ships swung into the
calm water of the harbour.
They had been along the cliffs quite often, searching through the gorse
bushes and trails of bramble and stunted fuchsias, until Violet Weston
grew tired; high-heeled shoes soon caused twinges of pain on the rough
ground.
March had come in weeping to brighten to a promise of spring. Primroses
shone pale gold in more than one sheltered hollow; the wild anemones
were blue in the woods; green grass was nosing through the rusty fronds
of yesteryear. The catkins danced over the banks of the little trout
stream.
In France, men wearying of bitter cold, welcomed the first warmth of the
spring, for there they had frost in their very bones, and the cold chill
of mud had clung to them as day by day they held on doggedly and waited
for the advance which they were told was to be. The wild interest in
the day's papers had died to a dull endurance. People got fewer wires.
While the great monster War went on drinking blood and swelling
hideously, March would see the end of the hunting, and a dreary summer
only enlivened by constant hopes that something must happen to end it
all would be before them.
Gheena generally went away from home. This year her friends were
fighting or in mourning, and she meant to stay at Castle Freyne.
"Well, if you can't go any further," said Gheena, "I'll come out
myself."
"When?"
Gheena said that she did not know, because she meant to search by
herself or with Psyche the sprite.
"I'll look down here now," said Gheena, dropping over the cliff.
Mrs. Weston, left alone, kicked off one shoe and rubbed her brilliant
foot ill-humouredly. Then she sketched idly on a small block, a neat
little sketch absolutely devoid of any claim except that of neatness;
and she put that away and yawned and moved her released toes.
Gheena and Crabbit were scrambling in and out of caves, swinging along
the cliff, with the tide nosing in sluggishly close to high-water mark.
The sea was silvery grey under a silver sky, lapping and gurgling
calmly. When a voice close by remarked that it was "airly to be lookin'
for, say, birds' eggs," she turned to see Guinane, a particularly
intelligent-looking youth, with bright blue eyes and a cunning mouth.
Gheena said briefly that it was. "But you never know in war times what
a bird might do. It must upset them greatly, Mike, when they find
they're roosting on a submarine instead of swimming," she said gravely.
Mike Guinane observed that he saw a submarine above in the big harbour,
and it looked like a ship and nothin' else. Himself he doubted their
powers of running down undther the wather, and thought it was mostly
chat.
In fact, after a brief pause, he thought that all the war was mostly
newspaper chat entirely, and got up too, to make labour scarce and dear.
Mr. Mike Guinane, Gheena noticed, was dressed in a new and completely
unsuitable bewaisted blue serge suit, and sported a watch and silver
chain. Evidently he was paid well.
"Supposing you stay here for a bit, Violet?" Gheena saw Mrs. Weston
hobbling on over the rough ground. "I'll get on past the village."
Mrs. Weston looked at her feet and sighed.
"If I was not so dreadfully vain!" she said cheerfully. "Let's look at
the Dower House instead, Gheena."
Gheena immediately thought of something brilliant. The neglected gardens
of the Dower House stretched in melancholy confusion down to the water's
edge. Box trees endeavoured to look forest-like as they stretched in
unclipped luxuriance; spring bulbs made patches of colour here and there
on the edges of the walks. The shuttered windows blinked blindly at the
sunshiny world. They would have tea at Girtnamurragh--send Guinane to
the village for provisions and have a picnic.
"I told Dearest that I could not be back to entertain Lance, because I
was obliged to attend a meeting at the school-house," said Gheena
thoughtfully. "He'll never know. And Psyche said that she was coming
with me, and she slipped out the back avenue for a ride. Dearest is so
cross nowadays. Then we might get a car somehow to take us home."
Mrs. Weston considered it an excellent plan. She begged Gheena to come
back from the cliffs. It would take ages to get beyond the village, and
if they went up to the road they might find a boy to take a message to
Darby or Mr. Keefe--or even see someone.
Gheena paused irresolutely on the cliffs, which in summer would be
fragrant with wild thyme and bright with trailing trefoil and sea-pinks.
Now the gorse bushes dotted them and the air blew chilly.
The little fishing village crouched in the hollow, men shaking out nets
to dry, tarring boats and getting ready for the summer.
War seemed a vague thing, far off and almost impossible.
They went in to the flat garden with its high hedges of fuchsia planted
for shelter. It was a gloomy place. A thick belt of yew trees looking
down at the drawing-room windows, had been planted for further shelter;
the house was squat and inornate and built of weeping stone, oozing
clammily in damp weather.
Stone men, battered and peevish from neglect, guarded either side of the
wide entire garden walk, their faces pimpled with green patches.
At the back the usual vastness of old yards stood grass-grown and half
ruinous.
A short avenue ran to the twisty lane coming down to Girtnamurragh, a
lane bordered by low banks and gorse bushes, sprinkled with gold and
sweetness.
Up this, abandoning her quest for caves, Gheena walked. Mrs. Weston
hobbled, abusing the ruts and stones.
They reached the narrow ribbon of the coast road, to find its only
occupants at the moment Looney Rooney and his ass car, and an old man
going to the village for provisions.
Looney Rooney stopped to listen while Gheena spoke to Flaherty, who was
pleased to talk of the sad state of affairs.
"Sugar risin', Miss, an' flour. All cakes, I suppose, the soldjers ates
beyant near Mons, an' it terrible hard to live, but gran' times for
shops. Hasn't Guinane taken over Rooney's old house next to this own to
store all the supplies he brings in? Faix, the aisy time he has with
yourself, Ma'am."
"Not looking after my cabbages," said Violet, sitting down and again
kicking off one shoe.
"A big slhated house for all his supplies, no less. God save us, Mr.
Stafford, but you were there as silent as a Roosian!"
Basil Stafford had appeared suddenly, coming over a gap on to the road.
"A slated house he's taken, has he?" he said to old Flaherty. "Are you
hunting for submarines, Miss Freyne?"
Violet Weston said that she was, personally, hunting for a drive home,
and must get it somehow, as her shoes were hurting her.
She grew radiant when Stafford pointed out the long grey nose of his new
car, standing in the shelter of the hedge some way down the road.
Return being made simple, they must ask Stafford to the picnic tea, and
Gheena did so lamely just as hoofs sounded and Miss Delorme took a
narrow bank on to the road with complete confidence and loose reins.
"Over ye'll be, Miss, if ye will not lay a howlt to his head," said
Phil's voice warningly.
"Also, if Looney Rooney had been at his own side of the road, you would
have jumped upon him and his ass," said Darby mildly.
Mrs. Weston remarked that it was quite a party now, and someone must get
more bread and butter from the village. Rooney volunteered obligingly
for a bribe of sixpence.
Psyche jumped off; she was riding in her everyday tweed skirt, having
been afraid to put on a habit, and Phil led the horses down the lane,
receiving promises of rugs from Stafford.
The wind was cold; they were all gathered in the shelter of the hedges
when the clip-clop of a horse sounded coming down from Castle Freyne.
The bright sunshine flickered on a white horse's coat.
"It's Dearest!" Gheena leapt through the gap off the road. "He's coming
here. He must see us if he passes before we have time to hide behind
that gorse, and he'll never forgive me. Hide the horses. Darby, get
up; call back Phil!"
Darby said hastily that Mr. Freyne might be going to the village. "And,
in any case, he can see over the low bank, and there's no time to get to
the yard," he added hopefully.
They all crouched closely in the warm spring sunshine, Gheena leaning
against the bank, peeping over.
"And I told him I could not come to look over trout-flies, because I had
business," said Darby. "And he's here, so I'm caught too."
Dearest George rode along airily, at peace with the world and secure in
a good track, the white horse walking quickly.
"My horse," said Psyche.
"You couldn't flash a foot at him and blind him, I suppose?" suggested
Darby, looking at Mrs. Weston's green stockings.
Gheena raised her head. Mr. Freyne was not going to the village, he was
turning down to the Dower House to see how many stalls must be replaced
after the winter's wind. Shrilly and decidedly Gheena whistled the
quick "One--two--three" which Whitebird had learnt so thoroughly.
He cocked his ears and turned his big docile head. The whistle rang
again.
Then just on the edge of the turn where it was muddy, the white horse
folded up and died obediently, pinning his rider's foot quite securely
under him.
The yell which reft the air did not disturb him in the least. He died,
got up again, and saluted at his own time.
With a rush on hands and knees, Gheena explaining as they fled, the
crouchers scrambled past the open gap, and round behind a thick clump of
gorse on the hill in the field, from which they could get through a gate
and into the yard, or be hidden where they were.
"You--something--something brute! You German!" came in staccato from
the road.
"Do you think he's hurt?" whispered Stafford in Gheena's ear. They were
crouched close together under the prickly shelter.
Gheena replied briefly that she was not going to see.
"He's up," hissed Darby, "and quite annoyed."
The white horse arose and saluted, looked for a rewarding carrot, and
saw instead a threatening whip, so backed faster towards home, wondering
what he had done wrong.
"You Hun! You Hindenburg!" foamed Dearest George, scraping off the mud.
"You stand still, will you?"
The white horse retreated solemnly at a jog, now pursued by a lame and
irate man.
"He'll go home in any case now to Mumsie," said Gheena composedly.
"He's all muddy. It was the only thing I could think of. Now we'll
have tea."
"Resourceful but heartless," said Stafford quietly. "Supposing he'd been
hurt?"
"He folds up so gently, that horse," replied Gheena equably.
The getting into Girtnamurragh by opening a window--there were heaps of
panes broken--proved quite simple. The long dark room gushed damp at
them, so that they moved hurriedly to the kitchen, where turf and wood
soon blazed hotly and the usual difficulties of pioneering commenced.
The pump would not pump for ages--they had forgotten to send for a
teapot. But the afternoon was long, and they all laughed over rebuffs,
until mounds of buttered toast and well-smoked tea stood ready on the
wooden table.
"I thought of smugglers," said the Professor mildly, peeping in, "so I
came up."
"You were out along the cliffs, Professor," said Stafford a little
sharply.
"Upon the rocks. I saw you upon the cliffs," said the Professor
affably. "Now that one may see a periscope on the sea, it is
interesting."
Mike Guinane and Phil hung upon the outskirts of the tea-party, getting
fresh water and toasting more bread, until Phil declared the horses 'd
get their deaths and almost ordered a start.
"I am going out again in a day or two," Gheena remarked, as they drove
home--"off far away on the cliffs."
"Keep off the cliffs"--Stafford had packed them both in his two-seater
and Gheena was close to him--"keep off them." There was a ring of
authority in his voice.
"Oh, no doubt you'd like me to," said Gheena icily.
She felt rather than heard a quick sharp sigh and the new car swerved a
little.
They found Mr. Freyne, immersed in ill-humour, resting in the library
with one foot in an old slipper.
With voluble anger he poured out his story--the horse tripping and
falling quite suddenly and running away for a mile and more, and the
mud, and his severe pain. Lancelot, pale and unsympathized with, was
sitting in a corner without even a cushion for his foot.
"Someone whistled just as I fell," stormed Mr. Freyne, "but no one came
to my assistance. Oh, doubtless some ruffian using the stables at
Girtnamurragh and whistling warning."
"Horrid trick to play you!" said Stafford sympathetically.
At the word "trick" Dearest George looked thoughtful.
"It is just possible," he said, "but he only does that old trick for a
signal. Gheena knows it. But she was at the school-house this
afternoon."
Gheena and Mrs. Weston stood together in the doorway, talking earnestly.
"Why is he always upon those cliffs?" said Gheena. "Why always out
alone?"
"These are things which make one thoughtful," said Violet. "But I can't
believe in much real mischief down here. It's so out of the way."
The spring slipped on before Gheena went out again to the cliffs. She
hurt her foot out hunting, knocking it against a gate, and was too lame
to scramble over rough ground.
Psyche had learnt to sit on at her jumps now, but custom brought no
abatement of her joy in the chase.
She still glowed and cried out, and still as a shadow followed the
Master.
He got used to the little white face close behind him, to shining eyes
filled with admiration.
"It's so wonderful! You just blew the horn and squiggled them along and
they bow-wowed again," was one of Psyche's happy remarks.
"Gave tongue," said Darby politely.
Psyche replied unabashed that it was all the same noise, and glowed
again.
She had learnt how to steady her horse at a fence, how to hold him
together galloping.
"And I want to hunt ever and always," she said--"always. I'll never live
in Kent again."
There had been unguarded moments when Darby, riding home with his
never-weary follower, had even told her how he felt his crippling.
"I had dreamt," he said one evening, "of a different life, little
sprite, of someone that I cared for being with me--through it."
Psyche knew--the white glow faded a little and her eyes darkened.
"If one cared," she began, "nothing would matter."
"But that is it. She was too young, too. And now it's not my place to
try to make her care. Go alone for all time, Psyche. I've thought that
Stafford----" he added after a long pause.
"She thinks him a spy," said Psyche slowly, "and despises him for not
joining."
"In the name of God, Grandjer--the foxy Tom that I lambasted ye for this
morning--Grandjer, howld on!"
Little Andy darted after the disappearing Grandjer, cracking a whip, as
a comet-like streak of red dashed through the hedge.
"The Widow Casey's Tom," said Andy, returning, "an' I only just to save
the craythur. There is some sort of a purry sthrain in him, an' she
sets the divil's sthore by him for it."
Psyche suggested Persian, and Andy replied that it was maybe "Purry
Shan," and patted the erring Grandjer fondly.
Confidences were broken off, and crippled Darby said good-bye at the
next cross-roads.