Part 11

Darby looked feverishly for his hounds. Then he heard them coming.

"Get away on them, ye set of schamers," shrilled Andy's voice. "Get on to bed. Shame on ye, Grandjer an' Daisy, shame!"

"Wild as hawks they was," confided old Barty, who looked hot. "Here, there and elsewhere, an' ready to be at the clouds if they'd run along the bog for them."

Darby considered this possible.

"One cat they cot anonst to her," said Barty. "The chestnut is latherin' all over with the fear of Carty's lash, an' even the Rat is sober from chasin'."

General Brownlow removed a cigarette and said "My God!" to himself twice as he looked at the pack.

Home Ruler always led them, the relationship to a boar-hound never being quite concealed by a fox-hound's stern, with the tailless and aggressive Grandjer just behind.

The General prayed again, lifted his hat a little as if to admit air to his hair and looked at George Freyne.

"You mean to say they hunt," he jerked out. "You bought a hunting cap for this lot, George. And someone else has one, too. Three of you Masters, and, I say, Hook! _Hook!_"

For the General's man, riding up, also looked at the pack, and gave vent to an outburst of hideously clear laughter, which he made worse by putting up his hand to hide, as he rocked and backed away.

"Something I thought of, sir," he gulped at last respectfully. "Er--a tale--they told me."

"Move on, Barty," said Darby shortly; "it's twelve o'clock."

The way into the gorse cover lay past a stretch of bog-land which was thick with hares; then the black caps lined up behind the pack.

Daisy and Greatness broke away, throwing their tongues.

"Whip them off that hare, Barty. Get round them, Carty."

Darby was finding himself as a Master of Hounds; he no longer gave orders dubiously, but with a pointed bitterness of decision.

"It is no use to be larrupin' them for what they were used to," said Barty philosophically, as he rode the aggrieved Greatness off the line with a polo-player's skill.

"Home to bed, Greatness!" shrieked young Andy reproachfully. "Home to bed, ye schamer, ye! There is foxes beyant an' ye're wantin' yere nise on little better than rabbits."

"Lord above us! to be brought out for this," said Brownlow. "For this! Look at them! Hook, look out, man!"

The bay horse got his feet on the grass for the first time. Three mighty bucks carried him well on to the soft ground, where he stretched his head out and began to kick.

Mr. Hook, proving himself a horseman, if no butler, gave the big snaffle bit three jags, which took the youngster's head up, and bringing down his crop on the sleek bay quarters, got the big humped back up straight, and set the great brute going in the deep ground before he knew where he was. The bad example brought forth a series of squeals and light-hearted bounds from more sedate hunters, Gheena's roan compassing three excellent plunges, and Dearest George's old bay kicking his master on to his neck.

"If mine begins," said Matilda nervously.

"Oh, take him into the soft and he'll never lift you," suggested the General absently. "I hope that man won't be hurt. He's valuable. Well over!"

This, as the youngster swept a fair-sized bog trench with a snort of wrath.

Hounds went into covert now without requiring to be personally conducted. They had scarcely vanished when Home Ruler's great bay sounded sonorously, followed by Grandjer's short yap.

"Overture to the Valkyrie," said Brownlow thoughtfully; "full orchestra."

Darby cheered them quickly, his familiar cry being followed to-day by a bellow from his fellow Master George, in which "Forrard!" or "Tally ho!" and "Good boys!" seemed to be blended, but not satisfactorily mixed.

Beauty, in fact, climbed on the bank with an inquiring expression on her pale face.

"For Heaven's sake, George! You'll get their heads up! And Keefe squeaking the 'Gloria' at the other end! Well, if it isn't that, it's something out of tune. He'll go soon. They're rattling him, but be quiet."

Darby leant forward, twisted useless limbs forgotten now. He was on a horse's back, his grip firm there. He could ride as well as men who had never known pain. There was the prospect of a gallop over these small green fields, and of watching his hounds hunt--terriers, harriers, what you will, yet his hounds, and keen for blood.

"Yow--ow--ow!" the long harrier note towled out, soft and musical.

Mr. Freyne, greatly put out, rode away murmuring "Tally ho's!" to himself, so that onlookers should see that he was doing his part.

"There he goes!" An old dog fox, dark in colour and with a white tag to his brush, whisked out over the bank, looked back for a moment, and loped off straight through a patch of bog towards the pasture land.

"The best line. Give 'em time, will you! Easy, O'Gorman.... Steady there! Easy, George! You're the worst of the lot, nesting under your peaked cap, selling your country, man! Steady, will you!"

It took time to get the hounds on to the line, to get them settled down and cup on. Traitor and Sweetie and Spinster were given to hunting solemnly on in covert.

"Forrard! Away! Away! Away!" Barty's screech equalled that of John Peel.

Long and thrilling it rang out, echoed by soprano efforts from little Andy, blissfully waiting for the Rat to run away, and with throaty notes from Carty at the lower side of the gorse.

"Get away on forrard!" sang out George Freyne energetically to the crowd round him. There was only one good track across the bog. This permission sent several people ambling along it, wondering if the hounds would soon join them.

Mr. Keefe's effort--he had to do something for a General--was "Yoicks! Tally ho!" which he kept trying from C in alt. down to the bass G, to see which note suited his voice.

"Pretty nonsensical our leaving all the Master's work to Dillon," he muttered, and tried his part again, the lower key completely startling Miss Carrie Hourigan that she dropped her whip so that she might get to her beads under her habit.

"Thinking it was a gun out of a Zeppelin," she said pallidly. "Will you pick the whip up, Mr. Keefe, like a love, now?"

"Sorry, a Master," bustled Keefe; "this way, Mrs. Weston. Keep the track." He did it again on the high note.

"You'll certainly break something if you try so high," said Violet. "And you're distracting Mr. Dillon, so do stop."

Hounds were on now. They towled away, Home Ruler leading over the springy tussocks, every hound hunting, every tongue thrown.

The General's man sobered the young horse by pulling him straight at the spongiest piece of ground, through which they laboured and heaved, and the bay was in hand as they jumped an ugly bog drain and landed on sound grass.

The pace was fair, hounds running steadily over light springy land, fenced by small narrow-topped banks.

"It's hunting, after all." Brownlow's hatchety severe face relaxed to a look of positive surprise as he took his horse by the head and pulled out to the right of hounds. How many years ago since he had ridden there before, just before his wedding, with the bright girl whom he had met in England and come over to marry--seeing her send along a half-broken chestnut filly as if she were the possessor of three necks?

Gheena swung past him now, the same glow of delight on her young face, her eyes as ecstatically happy; but her mount was a hunter, trained and fit to go.

"Look out there! A drop!"

Gheena put the roan at a brake of brambles overgrowing a slimy spot with a heavy drop outside on to a rutty cart-track. It took a clever horse to balance on the mixture of crumbling earth and shale and slide down without a mistake.

"One way of doing it." General Brownlow looked to his right, to see his man on the bay sail sleepily into the air and clear even the boreen at the landing side.

The pace had been steady enough to shake off people who wanted to look before they leapt. The Field had thinned out. Hounds bent to the right along a rushy, sour field when scent failed a little, and headed for the road which wound its grey ribbon up the side of a steep hill.

On this something yellow caught the eye. Home Ruler's bolt was shot, but Grandjer and Beauty stopped on the low bank on to the road and looked up anxiously, thus explaining to the noisy crew behind that they were at fault.

"He has gone right back, Darby," said Annette Freyne excitedly. "So don't try on. He turned here. Oh, Lance, this is nice for you! So lucky, General, for our invalid." But at this point Darby's voice roared out immediate orders to have that car stopped. "You headed him, you something goldfish!" yelled the man, who was rapidly growing used to his position in life. "You canaries, chirrupping there, when no one wants you."

"Canaries! with a wounded hero from the front," said Mr. Freyne's mother, after a long hurt pause. "If he did see a fox, who could object, really, Darby! And canaries!"

"I'll intern you if you don't put it out!" roared Darby.

"Put it out or I'll arrest you!" blared the General, with sudden fierceness, to Lancelot.

"And it isn't as if she always started," wailed Annette. "They're crossing the road lower down; he must have gone on that far," she said a moment later, fixing baleful eyes on Darby's back. "To be so rude to us!"

George Freyne's elder sister, who was large, and muddy as to complexion, kept murmuring Darby's insults incessantly, so that when she said "Go on" for a change, Annette, her daughter, told the man to start the canary, and was accused, despite her thirty years, of impertinence to her mother.

Beauty meantime had towled across the road, followed by Daisy, Home Ruler and Spinster, and they carried on across a field of sodden ploughed upland, which would have taxed the noses of the fox-hounds sorely.

The fox had not only gone some time, but he was twisting with the ease of the unpressed animal, looking for holes here and there, and making for Craughwell Woods in front of him, where he hoped to find an open earth.

In this he was mistaken. He was hunted doggedly and slowly up and down the big woods, the long harrier note echoing among the trees, until in a downpour of rain he broke again, slipping away for the Craughwell river, which swelled bank-high in flood.

Now Darby knew too well that there were only two possible passages across the stream, one by the bridge on the road, an unlikely line, and the other a slippery ford half a mile up, where if a fox crossed, he generally made for Ardhee Cross, about three miles off and up hill, a line through series of small woods and high straggling hedges.

Darby galloped for the ford, a large contingent at his heels, to be stopped by a locked gate which even his heated language could not blast open.

Gheena flew down the long avenue to the bridge in the road, with her stepfather, General Brownlow and a few others clattering behind her. She found an open gate and splashed up two low-lying fields, to find hounds at fault in a wide expanse of sown winterage dotted with sullen little pools of water.

If Darby had been there he would have let them alone. He knew their noses. George Freyne's moment was come; his black cap sat as a crow upon his head, and his office as first Master was heavy on him. He would show his brother-in-law. And just at that moment Daisy, staring about, put a hare up out of a tussock near the hedge and towled off in its wake by herself.

"Tally ho! One of the brutes has got it!" shouted George Freyne. "Here the others. Tally ho! Forrard on!"

Gheena shrieked out that a small boy had viewed a hare away and that she could hear the horn up the river.

The assistant Master, ignoring this, whistled and blew and cheered until General Brownlow rocked on his horse.

In a moment everyone was ordered to get round hounds. Futile groans emanated from the horn. Mrs. Freyne cantered vaguely round the pack and asked them politely to go up to George.

Mr. O'Gorman bellowed, and a variety of youths whipped until the pack, upset and hustled, had reached the tuft vacated by the hare.

"It's ... immense," gurgled the General, almost sobbing. "Blow again, George! Whirrrr, and I know it's a hare! There are two hounds hunting right-handed up-stream by the bank from which they checked!

"And I've never known a fox turn this way," wailed Gheena. "It's a part we absolutely left to the foot dogs."

Hounds got on; they were always enthusiastic. They circled round the next field and turned where the hare had turned up by a straggling hedge.

"Fox never ran that way," said the General; "back again, round this field, I believe."

Then they crossed the road and over a bog and crawled on over a steep hill, to encounter at the bottom a vast and ragged ditch, unpleasantly vague as to its depth and very decided as to its width. When Gheena and the General had got over with a scramble, they found themselves completely alone in another driving storm of rain and hounds disappearing into grey misty distance over a high bank.

"That's the Quilty bog near the sea, utterly unrideable," said Gheena hopelessly. "The fishermen can only go through by paths." They floundered along the edge, keeping to the driest parts of the cart track, which was only used in summer, with deep ruts and patches from which the rapidly tiring horses had to wrest their limbs free, and came to a slightly better road with a surface of loose stone, to look across two miles of bog on one side and on to the sea at the other. Far off, faintly, they could hear the sound of hounds hunting.

Gheena pulled up her roan, now black with bog slime and sweat, and pointed hopelessly to the track which they must wallow over again if they followed the line taken by the circling hare.

General Brownlow's refusal ever to go along that track again was short but soldier-like in its decision.

"Even to catch the German Emperor," he said emphatically.

"We'll ride up here to the road, then," said Gheena dejectedly; "we pass the Wireless Station this way." She added that it was nine miles home, and she wondered where her young horse and Hook had got to.

"He made a good hand of that young horse," said Gheena reflectively. "If you could leave him here for a week any time I wouldn't mind at all."

The rain cleared off, leaving them both in the dripping stage with the wind drying them in chilly gusts. The horses stepped carefully on the pointed flints, cheering up as they turned on a twisty road between high banks, with the Wireless Station close by.

Here, as they jogged on, they were astonished to see a khaki-coloured car draw up at the door and Hook just coming out with a coastguard.

"Lost everything, sir," he explained, "and hopped into the car to look for you. Hunt reported in this direction, so I came to inquire."

Gheena looked thoughtful. Strangers were not admitted to the portals as a rule.

The coastguard's suggestion of fire and shelter for the horses sounded tempting. There were sheds at the back where an old farm had stood. Hook led the horses away, and Gheena felt gladly the scorch of cheeks which a hot room brings after a battering in the open air.

The coastguard's room was a typical one, ornamented with large conch shells and lumps of coral, and everything arranged with sailor's neatness.

They only stayed for a few minutes. General Brownlow was rheumatic and exceedingly damp, and as they watched the gate, they saw Violet Weston, her hunting hat changed for a picturesque hood, her bright colouring outlined in white furs and her expression one of piteous entreaty.

She had driven round to look for Gheena and her car had gone out. It would not start without the battery, which seemed run down. If they could put it on for half an hour she would wait. Then she saw Gheena and repeated her piteous tale. Hook, just behind, dropped off Whitebird and came forward. He respectfully suggested that he might start the car or set things right.

After a few futile tugs at the handle he lifted the bonnet.

"But are you a mechanic?" said Violet; "because if you're not, please don't mess at her. Someone did once, and I had to get a man from Dublin afterwards."

"Someone," said Hook, "has been messing her a little, Ma'am. Poking their noses into what doesn't concern them," he added softly, his face hidden.

Violet Weston whispered to Gheena. The name Stafford was repeated more than once. And, as if conjured up by it, Stafford's two-seater purred round the bend and his brakes went on with a jar.

"Darby's wailing like Rachael, a few miles back," he said. "He had one couple of hounds with him, and he's thirsting for someone's blood. He's looking for hounds now. George Freyne I met at Ardhee Cross, swearing you hunted a fox on until he lost you, and everyone who could has gone home. I came on to take someone home if I could, and to find the hounds."

Hook took his head out of the bonnet and swung the handle of Violet's car again, starting it easily.

"Just a little adjustment," he said. "And if you leave your battery here, they'll run it and I'll fetch it to-morrow, Ma'am."

"I wish to goodness I was coming out again on Monday," grunted Brownlow, as he got into his car. "I can quite see where Dillon got so much experience now."

As General Brownlow slithered round stiff bends with constant inquiries as to who planned Irish roads, they came upon the drenched Master--it was raining again--collecting his pack just outside the bog. They had just run the hare back and eaten her.

"We'd have been up to Ardhee Cross if George had let 'em alone," he said bitterly. "Matilda says he cast them so beautifully, so he has gone home now, imagining himself John Peel and Ashton Smith rolled into one." Then he whispered to Barty, who pulled a hare's pate from Daisy's jaws, and Darby with a grin attached it to his saddle.

Castle Freyne was quite full. It was simpler after a long day for people who were not staying to bring their clothes and not go home to change, so the house was all bustle when they got in. Anne, in the basement, was basking in a torrid heat, with two amateur kitchen-maids sitting among piles of feathers in the scullery and at least three turkeys ready to bake. Christmas was Christmas in Anne's eyes. The discarding of sodden garments, the joys of very hot water, preceded tea for those who had hunted. It was laid in the dining-room to-day, and included poached eggs and fried ham.

Lancelot was ensconced by the fireplace, roasting slowly, his leg propped on another chair and his expression one of heated misery.

"You may talk of hunting, Darby," said the second Master, bursting in happily; "but we left you to-day, my boy. Whatever took you off up by the ford? We struck the line just where I galloped to, guessing we should, and I clapped them on, and we ran over the big fields."

Mr. Freyne, completely happy, bustled in to enlarge on his success. How he had cast the hounds, and cheered them, despite some absurd blowing of Darby's, up the river, and how they had run on after the fox.

Darby leant on his stick and grunted.

"The fox which Darby had absolutely said was a hare. Over the big fields, running like pigeons, across Clanchy's, up Dhura Hill, fluting, and--er--then"--George Freyne looked inquiringly at his brother-in-law--"my mare refused--and afterwards----"

"They went on to a very large bog," said the General dryly, "and we--Gheena and I--lost them."

Mr. Freyne sat down to enjoy his tea; lost hounds tell no tales, he said importantly; that no doubt they were beaten there.

Darby said slowly that Beauty could never be beaten. She would run the spectral huntsman across a glacier if she got her nose down.

"Then he got in," said George Freyne. "You got them in the road. He got in."

"Or went out in a submarine," suggested Darby; "that bog touches the sea."

Mr. Freyne, ignoring this, repeated accounts of various items of his own dash and skill, of his certainty of its being the line of a fox, and how by his determination he had shown General Brownlow sport.

"But they did not lose him in the bog." Darby limped to the table. "They killed at the verge of the road just as I came up."

Dearest George looked up.

"And I brought you the head," said Darby, putting the hare's astounded dead face on a plate before his host. "Daisy had it."

"The only thing to be regretted is that I may never see this hunting again," said General Brownlow, breaking the silence which followed, his eyes on the hare's pate lying close to the strawberry jam.

*CHAPTER X*

Christmas at Castle Freyne came in formally about ten o'clock with the advent of the wran boys at the dining-room windows.

Gheena fumed furiously before the sacrifice of tiny feathered things, and was ignored by her stepfather, who supported old customs principally because no one else wished him to. Custom also dictated that everyone's presents should repose on their plates; so that they waited in hunger to slash string and express rapture, and the table was littered with bits of twine and wrapping paper.

Gheena rhapsodized over a new bag of severe green leather with jail-like clasps, then embracing her stepfather with the fervour expected of her. She put it aside to pick up a variety of other oddments, amongst them a cigarette-case from "V.W." with Gheena scratched across its tortoiseshell form in silver. At the bottom of the heap she discovered her mother's string of pearls, long coveted, and exclaimed shrilly.

Dearest George grunted gratitude over two new pipes, a tobacco jar and a box of cigars, and a note-case for the new paper money from his wife.

Her plate was obliterated by a vast edifice in glass, destined to hold flowers and glimmering with a dull green hideousness.

"Got it over from London, you see, Matilda," said her husband, beaming. "Badly wanted for the drawing-room shelf to take the everlastings."

Gheena dived again, to find a big turquoise charm, with "For Luck" on it, from Darby, and a pair of race-glasses with no name.

Hooking the charm on the pearls, where it did not look at home, Gheena turned over everything once more to find some note about the race-glasses, and heard Dearest George repress, with extreme difficulty, the words which he would have used concerning a litter on the floor, if he had not been opening the case containing Gheena's present of a pipe, and had to say "Thank you, my dear," instead.

"I wanted race-glasses," said Gheena, "but who? Darby, you're a duck!"

Darby smiled as he hobbled to his meagre array of presents. Gheena always gave him a box of cigarettes. There were no little mementoes from loving girls for Darby Dillon now.

"But I say who?" said General Brownlow, picking up a little silver matchbox. "I got Psyche's letter yesterday."

"I thought you wouldn't mind--that there'd be nothing on your plate," apologized Gheena shyly. "And mother sent the cigarettes. Oh!" This as the old man kissed her rather tenderly.

The theatrical advent of Lancelot with his mother and sister guarding his crutches, intercepted the sorting of presents. He came so plainly expecting general sympathy, to be installed in an arm-chair with a small table by his side, and his mother fussily superintending every mouthful of his breakfast.