Part 14

Darby was familiar with matches. He wrote out that Mr. D. Rooney's That's the Boy, five years, by Barcol Lise, would be matched against Mr. J. Rourke's--here he lifted his pen.

"I have no right name for him," said Jamesey vaguely; "put me little dun horse, sir, five years."

"Dun horse, five years," wrote on Darby, "twenty pounds a side--over a natural course of three miles."

"An' let all have good coats on to keep warm waitin' for Rourke here," sneered Rooney.

"Yerself an' ye're dirty boastin'," returned Rourke, without the animosity which seemed natural.

"Will ye bet me five pounds I'm not in five minnits before ye cross the last fince?" stormed Rooney.

"I will so," said Jamesey firmly, pulling out some greasy notes which he handed to Darby.

Darby had a great deal to say to the match, and saw Janey, who was racked by doubt and fears.

"For he'd be the slithery class of a husband, that Dan," she said fretfully; "one that does no credit to the good bit he'd get, an' he takes drink terrible. An' Jamesey cannot win, an' yet he has a smilin' face on him; an' he ordthered two new cushions for his side-car at Carey's yesterday to drive home from chapel on. He says he'd stand me three days in Dublin straight away if I'd fancy it, too. An' he without a chance!"

The date of the match was fixed for the second Thursday in January at one o'clock, until Rooney wrote to say that he must go to the big town, and could not get back until three, so it must be run then.

Now the hours after three early in January begin to get chill and dark, but it had to be.

Everyone related to the Rourkes and Rooneys poured in from all sides to see the match; the hillside was black with cars and carts; there was even a stall laden with glutinous leathery buns dotted with pink sugar, and surreptitious porter sold and consumed behind a flapping tent. The one bookmaker had returned, to close almost immediately up That's the Boy and take all he could get for Rourke's dun.

At a quarter-past three Rourke trotted up, his mount veiled in a brand-new American rug of superlative smartness, and bandaged all round with linen bandages.

"If it's racin' I am, it's racin' I may as well look," he said good-humouredly when chaffed.

Old Mr. O'Dea, who was stout and slow of movement, came up to say querulously that he heard it was childthers' nonsense putting out that dun at all. And that now maybe they'd hear no more boasting and chat.

James replied that with luck he might not, looking fixedly at the flushed countenance of his opponent.

Janey's father, coming to superintend, remarked to Rourke that if it was an accident his taking the cup, there was no call to make so much boast of it afther Mass, Janey listening with tears in her eyes.

Here Mr. Rooney broke in with, "An' he not able to win until Miss Gheena's pony had to be pulled off. An' the gibin' before all with 'Where was ye're racehorse?' or 'Will ye have a drink out of silver?'"

James Rourke's complete good-humour as he stood by the sheeted dun roused his opponent to further eloquence. Bitterly he informed the interested listeners that when Cup-winner James inquired where was the racehorse to-day, it was gone home, they could tell him, if any friends waited on in the could to see the thrickster come in.

Here Darby thought that if the matter was to be put to the proof, it might be better to start while there was a little light, and he looked thoughtfully at Rourke's reserved smile.

When Dan Rooney emerged from the chrysalis of his coat, as a butterfly in a pink jacket, dirty breeches and papery boots, his glitter wrought a groan of admiration from the crowd.

Old O'Dea, falling back to admire, suggested that he was the Boyo himself, the fine figure of a man, what there was of him. When James, quietly arrayed in his hunting kit, slipped the rug from his horse, leaving on the bandages, and it was observed that its tail was plaited up, fresh pleasantries broke forth.

Someone wished to know if Rourke imagined he owned The Tetrarch. A large Rooney cousin asked hilariously if Danny thought maybe that if he foxed the horse he was a racehorse he'd run faster, to which James replied pleasantly that he might, and backed himself for another pound.

Darby had laid out a fair course, over easy banks, and presenting no difficulties for a striding horse.

That's the Boy looked overtrained and tucked up. He lashed out irritably when mounted.

From the start Rooney adopted the hurricane-like tactics which he meant to win with. He tore away at racing pace, taking the first fence in his stride.

There were no horses to confuse the big youngster. He fled along at a pace which no one could possibly hope the dun to keep up with.

"All over," said Darby, putting up a pair of totally useless glasses, for it was growing quite dusk. "Poor Rourke won't see the way the other is going in half a mile."

But to everyone's astonishment the dun horse and quietly-dressed rider clung obstinately close to the comet-like flash of Dan Rooney's pink jacket. The rider of That's the Boy shook up the big horse to a pace which set him sprawling, and all but resulted in disaster at a bank. Sobered by this, he looked back angrily and pulled his horse together; he was a fine rider. Still going quite easily and slugging hard against his bit, the dun was close behind. Rooney sat forward, using as much jockey fashion as he could master, bumping uncomfortably at his jumps.

"Did ye dhrug him?" hurled Rooney over an irate shoulder, "that I can hear him so long?"

"Three gallons of whisky. Was it cloryform yours got?" was Rourke's reply, his tone preoccupied, for they were nearing the nasty little scramble in and out of the boreen.

Gheena and Darby had cut the two racers off at this point, and listened, smiling, to them.

"But I never saw Rooney adopt Tod Sloan's style before," said Darby; "and if he can't get the horse together, he'll fall at the boreen."

That's the Boy, consummately handled, dropped in and out just without a fall; the dun struck the far fence hard, grunted, and bundled somehow into the far field, shooting his rider off. With the boreen behind him and Rourke down, Rooney cheered as he galloped on.

But the fall took little more time than a clean jump would have done. James Rourke was up again as soon as his horse and sat back suddenly.

"Be dam to where the weight is! How can he win if it is not there at all!" he stormed as he changed his seat.

Next moment, in the fast falling dusk, the spectators roared to see the despised dun closing the gap, fighting his way to the big horse's quarters, to his girth, forging ahead.

At this stage Jane O'Dea fell upon her father's neck, clasping him closely as she wailed, "It was no boastin', Pappy, it was no boastin'," into the displeased ear of a man who had invested five pounds at evens on Rooney, and who thirsted for liberty of action to get something speedily on the other.

"If he wasn't boastin', then wasn't he lyin', to pretend to let the Rat up lasht time?" roared O'Dea, when his proffered crown on the dun had been promptly refused.

An enthusiastic cousin of Rooney's offered an even crown, hotly declaring, "It's cantherin' the man is, so as to make a race of it, and shame the other."

"If he is, he is beltin'," shrilled Janey, letting her parent go. "Beltin'!"

"He has the sphur out too," grunted her progenitor. "I'll make the crown double, if ye like, Tom Rooney."

The big, bewildered youngster sprang forward to the drub of the stick and the bite of the steel in his flanks. He gave of his best, but the little dun was a length ahead, striding along, pulling double, and his rider had not moved.

They landed over the last fence, the bay closed the gap, the dun surged forward. The crowd swayed and roared, leaping into traps which gave way and upset them, hurling up hats, jumping to get a better view. The one bookmaker, seeing the dun ahead, wondered if he had got straight to Heaven through the laxity of the authorities, and looked at his book with breath held hard. As they dashed up the long slope, Rooney dropped his reins a little, so that just at the post the bay closed upon him, and the dun's head was barely half a length in front.

"It was one of them hippodromic sirringes," gasped Rooney, dropping his tired right hand. "Nothin' less. Ye dam thraitor of a spy!" He rolled off, panting. "I protest, Mister Dillon. He has an artificial horse med with one of them hippodromic doses, an' it was near out of him an' he finishing."

There was no weighing in, catch-weights had been the order. Little Andy led off the panting dun, and Darby himself saw to the exhausted That's the Boy. A few more gruellings of this type would break any horse's spirit.

Mr. Rooney, bewildered, took consolation in liquid form, agreed with several people that he was hardly treated, then his pink coat gleaming in the dusk, he squared up to Mr. James Rourke to demand satisfaction.

"I'll show ye, ye Germin thraitor," he said bitterly, rolling the word on his tongue. "I'll show ye to drug horses!"

"Will some friend counsel Dan Rooney not to put up a fight?" said Rourke with reserve. "Seein' that he has more dhrink taken than I have meself, an' that his faytures will be concayled on him for a week if he thries it on."

Further pleasantries concerning the fact that James was afraid, and a rider to the effect that "Perhaps if Daniel Rooney's present features were hidden he would look all the better" from Rourke being exchanged, Rooney broke loose from restraining friends and rushed forward, his arms going like windmills and his face aflame. Rourke shortened matters by knocking him down scientifically.

From behind an enlarging nose Mr. Rooney, on the ground, considered that 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.