Part 18

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.

To ride on with the pain of his loneliness biting him hard--his way was to the emptiness of his big house, to the long dull evening, with the paper to read over and over and the fire to stare into, with the pictured Dillon men, vigorous and whole-limbed, staring down at him contemptuously. There were girls, perhaps, who might marry him for his place and his income, but Darby knew that he would never ask them.

Directly her foot mended, Gheena asked Darby to drive her to the cliffs beyond the village.

"I don't want to take Violet any more," she said decidedly. "Her shoes begin to pinch after a mile or so, and I want to explore for holes and caves. You can wait for me," she said, seeing him look at his leg. "It's quite warm, and we'll get tea from old Maria Delaney."

Darby came obediently, waiting outside the gates, because Gheena found that it was better to do all things secretly and not get scolded. Hints of Lancelot coming to spend the afternoon or of being driven to see him made her rush blithely through the wood, Crabbit at her heels. Fast as she went, lighter feet pursued and caught her--Psyche Delorme, hatless and breathless.

"Gheena, Dearest is looking for you, and your mother is asking his advice as to where you are likely to be, and I don't want to drive in the car with them."

Gheena looked hard at the blue wash of waves seen through the tree-trunks, then she swore Psyche to silence and they ran on together.

"The sprite followed me," Gheena explained to Darby. "She has got no hat. Do drive on, Darby, because Dearest has got the car at the door, and he might come down to see if I'd walked to Cassidy's."

The car swept along the narrow road, bordered by a screen of fuchsias along the edge of the cliffs. They tore down the slope into Leeshane, scattering dogs and hens, took the steep ascent, and were out on the exposed road, which wound round eventually by the open sea.

It ran between low banks, never going down close to the cliffs, but Darby knew of a tortuous lane, which he dived into fearlessly, scraping the sides with his mudguards, bumping and crawling, until he reached an open close-turfed plateau with the sea growling just beyond it.

Gheena swung away, diving in and out among the clumps of gorse, peering behind boulders, looking down rabbit holes.

She noticed how in one spot the ground was trampled, and a path led away towards the road, then slipped over the verge and climbed among the rocks. The cliffs were honeycombed by caves--then irregular cavities, their mouths choked by fern and fuchsia, a reek of fox coming from them, showed high up, dark fuchsias below them. Some of them, narrow-mouthed, forbade entrance; others could be climbed into and explored.

They were damp places, barely innocent of concealed petrol. Gheena clambered on until Psyche grew tired and went back to where Darby sat in a sheltered nook, warm in the spring sunshine, his pipe between his teeth. He looked desolate then, his eyes following the active figure flying over the rocks.

"Petrol on the brain," he said patiently to Psyche.

Presently Gheena came to a deep channel running up to a rather large cave. The tide was flowing and the water lapping up at the big slimy boulders in the mouth of the dark place.

To go in might mean getting wet, but Gheena risked it, slipping and sliding over the stormy rocks. Crabbit grew excited, barking and growling, sniffing at the walls.

Something kept Gheena lingering until she had to take off her shoes and stockings and wade out. Outside a deep fissure led into another cave, an opening with a black sense of hollowness behind it, but no room for a man to pass in.

Crabbit was into the blackness in a moment. Gheena could hear him snuffling inside and even growling, then leaping up, trying to get out.

Sudden fear gripped Gheena, her dog might be entombed in there with walls too slippery for him to scramble up. He appeared quite suddenly, hooking on with his strong paws and coming out looking ruffled. There was a strip of shale just beyond this and no dark cave mouths showing. It was not far from the opening of the harbour. So Gheena scrambled up to the top of the cliff to find it thick with gorse, some of it cut down and piled up to dry for firewood, and shook her head sadly.

It was quite hot in the shelter of the cliffs, with the sun shining. The air was full of the scent of the gorse and the tang of salt.

Leaping down on to a little shingly beach, Gheena all but fell over the Professor basking in the sun, his hammer in his hand. Crabbit wagged his tail. He liked the Professor, and Gheena said it was a long way to walk from Dunkillen.

The Professor, blinking sleepily, asked if Gheena was out for birds' eggs or submarines, and Gheena hovered close to confidence before she thought better of it.

"Exploring caves," she said with strict truth, then inviting him to Mrs. Maloney's tea.

As they climbed to the verge and stood on the short sweet grass, they saw a dark figure some way off swinging along the edge of the open sea.

"It is Mr. Stafford. He walks that way to get to the Wireless Station. Exercise is good for the young," said the Professor dryly. "Perhaps he, too, is looking for submarines. I will follow you, Miss Freyne."

Gheena sat down for a few minutes in the nook which Darby had chosen for himself.

"I was not much help, Gheena," Darby said a little drearily.

Something in his voice touched Gheena. She remembered how years before Darby had scrambled with her over the rocks, and not sat looking on crutches by his side.

"But you're always a help, Darby," she said quickly.

Little Psyche, her hands round her knees, bunched into a bundle, said nothing.

"Always someone who wants help," he answered laughingly.

"Not out hunting," snapped Psyche resentfully.

They took tea in Mrs. Maloney's cottage. Its complete absence of windows flavoured the meal with turf smoke, which oozed out of one of the two doors ventilating the house, one facing to the sea where a land breeze blew, one to the land where the wind roared in from the sea.

But the little place was spotless despite the smoke, the brass candlesticks shining, the blue china on the dresser polished--a big home-baked cake appearing, delightfully indigestible, from the three-legged oven, and Maria's half a pound of butter used recklessly.

Boiled eggs and whisky were also proffered but refused.

"I couldn't get any butter from Anne to bring out," said Gheena, when they were coming away. "So I must tell Maria to get some at Guinanes'. That's the way we manage. She gives me her things and I return them. She wouldn't take money. Dearest counts the pounds of butter now when the churning is done, so Anne is going to put away cream, because she says 'It's orkard on her, an' people comin' to tay, an' the Masther axin' where the butter do be goin' to.' You must stop at Guinanes', Darby; I've told Maria to get a parcel from them."

As they bumped out of the lane, the whining purr of a high-powered car sounded outside it, and the long grey nose of Stafford's Daimler swung aside to avoid them. He had left his car evidently on the road.

"We found the Professor out rocking, and we are taking him home," said Darby.

"Oh!" said Basil Stafford quietly. He looked worried and out of humour.

"News--up there?" queried Darby.

"Not pretty news," Stafford answered grimly. "The submarines will do some harm in time." He sighed a little. "And you were all out on the cliffs," he added, staring at nothing.

"Miss Freyne was out upon the cliffs," said Darby, "I was not."

"Let those cliffs alone," said Stafford sharply. "I wish you would, Miss Freyne, in war times."

He laughed a little bitterly as Gheena looked at him.

It was still early, and a complete distaste for her own home made Gheena say that she would go to see Mrs. Weston.

They stopped at Guinanes' on their way back to order a parcel for their old hostess.

A stout woman at the counter was making complaint as to damp flour.

"Soggen and weighty, Mrs. Guinane, an' it near to swheep the life from Thomas Martin with the pain it gev him. 'The centher of me is on fire, Ma,' he cried out, an' it twelve at night--'an' I will surely die.'"

Mrs. Guinane, apologizing profusely, looked darkly towards the door which led to the kitchen.

"Mike, are ye there? He was there a minnit ago. I towlt him not to take the flour out of where 'twas always, to put it in that new house he has, for flour, says I, will not do unless there is a fire, says I, an' not one of us will he let in to put a fire there, but in an' out for himself always. Mikey, will ye bring back the flour ye have destroyed with ye're obstinacy, an' not be spilin' good food?"

Mrs. Weston's man put his shrewd blue-eyed face round the edge of the door and muttered something half aloud.

"Or will Mary Kate folly ye now with an apern full of turf," said his mother, conciliating him, "till we airs that new sthore ye have?"

Mike said "She will not" shortly, merely promising to bring back the flour bags to dry quarters.

"An', Mike, we are out of washin' soda. An' it locked up with him inside."

Mrs. Guinane then announced hotly that she was scalded from the new store, and turned to Gheena.

"Thim Germans has the poor ruined, Miss," she said, as she took the order. "Heapin' pince on everythin'."

Mrs. Weston, yawning profusely, was at home in a tobacco-scented atmosphere. Ends of cigarettes were littered about and feet cased in green silk were hurriedly removed from a comfortable rest on the mantelpiece and thrust into tight shoes. The old Swiss maid hobbled past the visitors out of the oven-hot room, curtsying as she met them.

Gheena only left a message from her mother. She could not have stayed long in the close room. But before she went she whispered one or two things to her friend. Mrs. Weston was not pleased to hear that Gheena had gone alone to the cliffs.

"Even if my shoes were too tight," she said. "And you found nothing?"

"Nothing at all," said Gheena absently, because at the moment she was thinking of the curious cave with the channel running into it, and of some sound which had not struck her at the time, but which came back to her now.

They found George Freyne accumulating chill and bad-humour upon the doorstep, looking out for his step-daughter.

"If you had told me that you actually wanted me to go for a drive," said Gheena patiently; "but you were not sure, Dearest, so I went for a walk and Darby drove us home. I--I wasn't spending money on anything, driving the car or being extravagant."

"Dearest has been quite put out," Mrs. Freyne confided. "Lancelot was driven over, lying back on cushions, Gheena, and looking as if he thought he was ill; he's very stout. And you were not there, and they asked us all back to dinner, which would have meant, Dearest said, no dinner here, so he's put out, Gheena darling, and says he'll sell another horse."

"If--he--dares to sell mine!" said Gheena with a queer little gulp.

*CHAPTER XV*

Darby Dillon refused emphatically to believe "a word of it." He listened to Gheena and his expression leant towards rudeness.

"Not one word," he said. "He's too good a----"