Part 19

He stopped quite suddenly. If Gheena looked on Basil Stafford as a slacker and perhaps worse, she would never get to care for him, and hope is so strong a thing that there was always at the back of Darby's mind some vague thought of getting much better, and then in his fairy dreamland he would think that he might try to make a girl care for him. If she was gone, that dreamland would close its doors.

Then honesty came first. "He's too good a sort," said Darby gruffly, and observed also that Carrigeen Freyne, in this instance, had not Grandjer's nose.

Gheena said that Darby was very rude, and took up her gloves. They had come in to tea with Darby after a hunt. Hunting was just over now, even though here on the edge of the sea they sometimes killed a May fox. Still meadows were being closed up and fences mended, and it was only possible to hunt in the woodlands or on the mountains.

It was April now, treacherously fine, blue-skied and finely white-clouded, with all the birds singing, and spring holding out hands to early summer. Horses looked stale and dry-coated, but Darby held on. His year was over when hunting stopped, and he must hobble while Dearest George and Mr. Keefe melted opposite each other on mossy tennis lawns, and stood bravely up at the net until someone hit them.

"Mr. Freyne is so wonderful at the net," was a quotation made with bated breath by the country tennis-players.

"Just because I won't let you run away with things, you," said Darby--"you want to go without tea. I say Stafford's a good sort, Gheena, even if he won't fight or can't."

Gheena kicked the turf fire vigorously as she railed out fresh indictment. Money so suddenly obtained here, etc.

"I would write to the admirals if I knew them," said Gheena with dignity, "about--well, about things. And I did write to someone, who isn't stupid." Here she withered Darby with a glance.

Darby repeated equably that he refused to believe it. Stafford was a good sort, and he offered tea just as Psyche, a sprite even in her severe habit, came in, Dearest George, severely aloof, following her gloomily.

As he drank strong tea and ate several eggs, he spoke with feeling of his nephew Lancelot's health, and the complete arresting of his convalescence. He also talked of economy and the awful future of Great Britain's finances.

"Money," said Dearest, "being a thing which people cannot go on finding for ever; and as for horses, no one would be able to afford them, even if the war dragged on."

Darby saw Gheena's face cloud and assume an expression of one who had heard this particular form of foreboding too often.

The two girls jumped into the back of the car when they were starting, leaving Mr. Freyne to sit alone, wondering as he let in his clutch what petrol would go to and how long he would keep the car going.

"And if we were poor," stormed Gheena--"if we were, but we're not; and it's all mine, or it will be when I----"

She nodded icily to Stafford who was jogging home alone, riding rather close to Mrs. Weston and Mr. Keefe, who, with their heads almost touching, ambled in front of him through the opal twilight.

The sweetness of a spring morning was broken next day by the arrival of the motor from Cahercalla, with an urgent message saying that Mr. Lancelot was not well, and wished Miss Gheena to come over.

Gheena went without enthusiasm. It was a sunny morning, and she knew that she would find Lancelot lying down and basking in a huge arm-chair in the morning room, with an enormous fire and all the windows shut. There would be a smell of beef-tea and toast, coupled with that of a variety of tonics and cotton-wool, and Lancelot would betray the peevishness engendered by lack of exercise and too much heat.

As she had thought, she was engulfed in the pale brown morning room. Mrs. Freyne was winding wool of a lank variety, rasping it off a chair-back with dexterous fingers, Evelyn was stitching flannel night-dresses, and Lancelot was drinking Bovril and eating toast. He brightened up when Gheena, holding the door open for as long as she could, greeted him, and he at once told her how ill he felt. Mrs. Freyne went on for a time with her winding, and remarked after a time, apropos of nothing, that she had just heard from Geoffery, her second son, and that Lancelot never seemed really happy at Cahercalla, and that Geoffery would love to live there. Here she left the room to see the cook, followed in a moment by Evelyn.

Gheena found herself alone with her puffily fat cousin, who suddenly showed some interest in life.

He said it was good of her to come over. He blushed and upset his mother's work-basket, and then asked Gheena if she had been listening. Gheena asked to what, with restrained impotence in her voice.

At this point Lancelot sat up and possessed himself of Gheena's hand and asked her to marry him. It took Gheena some little time, sitting with crumpled brows, to realize what he was talking about.

Lancelot was not lacking in humbleness, nor yet in certainty of acceptance. He explained to Gheena the suitability of the matter--how he would come to live at Castle Freyne, and being such a friend of his uncle's, no changes need be made in existing arrangements. Of course, he might be again employed in the Army, even if not on active service, but war would not last for ever. And then he sat quite up and sighed with the satisfied air of a child who has repeated a lesson correctly; his next glance was at the clock.

Gheena's firm removal of her hand did not trouble him at all.

"Shall we call back mother," said Lancelot, "as it's time for my tonic, and she'd like to know?"

"Oh, she went away on purpose," said Gheena. Then with extreme candour Miss Freyne explained that she was very sorry, but she had no intention of marrying at present, and certainly not her distant cousin Lancelot.

Lancelot replied peevishly that he understood that Gheena wanted to be independent, and that why not now instead of later. Complete refusal he evidently did not understand.

Gheena looked at his plump cheeks; she conquered an intense desire to laugh heartily and she fell into thought. If she were engaged to Lancelot the wheels of everyday would no doubt be oiled, and the fever of economy be cured. But Gheena had no meanness in her.

Quite decisively this time, she told Lancelot that an engagement was as far away from her thoughts as matrimony, and that he could put the whole thing out of his head.

Lancelot plumped his cushions and quoted Uncle George feverishly. He produced a pearl ring bought for him at Cortra, and then his pocket-handkerchief. With tears of sheer temper in his eyes, he said a great many things which could not possibly further his suit.

Gheena rang the bell, a haughty look in her face. She remarked that Lancelot wanted his tonic, and endeavoured to look vacant when Lancelot made tearful mention of Prussic acid, and it was plain that his mother took in the whole situation at a glance.

The tonic, irony and bitter, was brought up solemnly to be rejected by the invalid, who even upset the bottle, declaring that health was no use to him now. After this everything was even plainer.

Luncheon with Lancelot glaring furiously at her over the hot chickens, which he wanted to eat and would not, was not a pleasant meal. When her son refused apple meringue and shook his head at a _foie gras_, Mrs. Freyne grew almost frantic, and the only conversation was a spasmodic one between Gheena and Eva.

Castle Freyne was eight miles away. Gheena had to wait to be called for by her stepfather, and the afternoon stretched hot and interminable before her.

Lancelot did not wish to go out. The prospect of sitting in the morning-room, seeing his aggrieved face outlined against the red cushions, until five or six o'clock seemed almost unendurable.

Making some vague excuse about a message, she slipped out; even a short respite was something, and once in the fresh air she considered the eight miles of road between her and home.

The avenue was a short one. She got to the gate and looked out. Her shoes were not thick and showers were coming up from the sea. Gheena wavered between the thought of hours dragged out under accusing eyes or of a two and a half hours' tramp, which would include a meeting with her stepfather.

At that moment the long grey nose of Basil Stafford's car swung round the bend in the road, and was pulled up beside her. In this she could be home in twenty minutes, get up the back avenue, and take refuge in the school-room for tea.

Very jerkily she asked to be taken home, murmuring something about offence given.

It did not take a far-seeing wit to discern the reason. A flicker of laughter curved Mr. Stafford's lips and he opened the door at the side.

Gheena flung propriety on one side. She drove back to the door and told Evelyn that she was going home, as she had forgotten to do something particular, and whispered "Go on" to the willing driver. The pace at which a high-powered car can go, even on narrow roads, was demonstrated to her in the next ten minutes, for to meet the Castle Freyne people would mean disaster. They reached the back gate safely, and Gheena, who had sat silent, could only ask her rescuer to tea, which, she explained, must be taken in the school-room, and that they must hide.

Basil Stafford accepted readily. Together they ran up the rough avenue until they reached the shelter of the large hay-barn, from which they could see if the coast was clear. Scrambling up into the fragrant hay, peering out across the wall, and then dodging quickly into the haven of the inner yard, to hear a familiar voice asking for Phil.

A variety of men grinned softly as Gheena dashed into a stable and went up the ladder to the loft at the double, followed by Stafford. Here among piled-up oats they crept forward and looked through the window down into the yard.

Mr. Freyne had come out to speak seriously to Phil--that morning traces of white oats had been observed in the mangers while Phil was out exercising. Black, and black alone, were to be used.

"And black it was," lied Phil pleasantly, "with maybe a grain or two of white getting mixed in."

Mr. Freyne looked upwards. He said that he knew exactly the quantity up there and would see if it had been depleted. Gheena drew a long breath, and remarked that she must face it, unless she went under the oats.

"And have a care of the ladder, sir," said Phil's voice below. "I was up lasht when turnin' the heaps an' two rungs broke on me. I just slipped them in somewheres, I'd say middleways."

Dearest George, checked, raved hotly at Phil for thus replacing rungs which might give way and kill a man.

"Well, I was afther meanin' to," observed Phil guilelessly; "but knowin' I would not be goin' up to the white oats maybe agin before May or June, I thought to put in a fresh laddther, that same bein' pure rotten. Would I put down a sop of hay in case ye meet the two, sir, an' they gives?"

When Dearest George spoke again it was in the yard. He told Phil several things then, as he gloomily awaited the arrival of his wife, who ambled out from the kitchen, a basket in her hands.

"Just a few things for Dayly's sick wife," she said. "I won't keep you a minute there, Dearest, because it's scarlet fever, and I'm sure you'd advise me not to and Gheena will want to come home. She always does from Cahercalla."

"This time," said Mr. Freyne, "Gheena will not wish to come home."

"If you mean she'll be engaged to Lancelot," said Matilda Freyne. "Of course, Dearest, if you think so, but I do not. He's so young and so stout, and she never liked fat men, and I'd much rather it was Darby."

Dearest ensconced himself behind the wheel and swore softly.

"He's saying 'Damn it! I should know best,'" whispered Stafford.

"At this distance you can't hear," said Gheena.

They were squeezed up together in the window, safe behind a veil of cobwebs, a friendliness unknown before between them. Gheena had forgotten war and spying. She was with someone who was protecting her.

"Shall we go out the back avenue? it's shorter," said Mr. Freyne.

Instantly Gheena's hand went out and caught Stafford's arm. They remembered the car down there.

"Mike Dundon put new sthones upon it only yesterday," said Phil stolidly. "And the off tyre is shaky, sir."

Basil Stafford felt that no half-crown had been so well earned as that which he put into Phil's hand when the car had hummed away out the front gate.

Gheena, a little shaken and upset, gave him tea in the school-room. One cannot snub a man who has hidden with you in an oat-loft. They talked and laughed with the same new friendliness, Stafford telling her of his years abroad, of Italy, of France, and then of Germany. The cloud came suddenly into Gheena's eyes.

"You were there for years, weren't you?" she said.

"For some months," he answered absently; "in Berlin. I knew some nice men there too."

"Whom you would not care to fight against now, I suppose?" Gheena muttered half to herself. "Oh, if there was only no war!" she flashed out, "and no economy, and no black oats, and wounded people and things!"

Basil said gravely that it would be a far better arrangement. He saw the cloud which had risen up.

"And--there being a war--we cannot be friends," he said slowly, coming to the mantelshelf, looking hard at Gheena.

Gheena felt a very hot flush being succeeded by pallor as she replied that one could not be friends with someone one could not understand.

Mr. Stafford said, "Or--anything else except friends," still keeping close to her.

"Gheena, a little bird whispered to me that you were home. They saw you coming, and I've news for you. Oh, Mr. Stafford!" Violet Weston pushed open the door, her golden head gleaming, her shoes of purple suede pinching her so that she limped.

"And the news?" Basil asked softly.

Violet replied, "Private news," lightly. Mrs. Weston sent Stafford out. He went to fetch his car, and she broke into excited whispers of how she'd heard that there was news of some spy about, and several other things, which could only have come from Mr. Keefe.

She sat on the edge of Gheena's chair, and was still there, one arm round the girl's shoulders, when Stafford came back to say good-bye. Gheena had already made doleful confession concerning Lancelot's proposal and the scoldings it was likely to involve her in.

Darby and Psyche had been out riding. They were just in when the unwelcome sound of a motor heralded the early return of Dearest George.

He came in quite slowly--happiness, of course, makes tripping feet, and sorrow heavy ones--and took off his motor gloves with tragic intensity.

When Darby remarked that they were back early, Mr. Freyne returned that he could not stay to watch sorrow, and particularly wounded sorrow.

"He even refused scones for tea," said Gheena's mother; "but I saw a tray on the writing-table, and he'd been having Benger's food--don't you think so, Dearest?--and plum cakes."

"He seemed quite annoyed by that question," observed Mrs. Freyne a moment later, when her spouse had quitted the room noisily.

Gheena, taken to task presently for girlish caprice, spoke out with complete honesty. She would never marry Lancelot. In her eyes he was a mere fat youth, and she had never been able to fix the halo of wounded hero about his head.

After this the hours marched to bedtime through a mental atmosphere of Cimmerian gloom.

When Darby made a cheeky remark, Dearest George quoted the casualty lists. If Psyche broke out about hunting, he said that all horses were now munitions of war. The taunting reproach in his eyes made a game of Bridge into a species of _Kriegspiel_, for, of course, Gheena cut her stepfather, and went "No trumps" after his repeated "Nos," because she said she thought he was only no-ing from bad spirits, the result of several lost shillings not improving matters.

But next morning, as Gheena and Crabbit forgot troubles among the daffodils under the trees, with the wind making the flowers as a sea of silvery gold, floating on spears of green, Mr. Freyne showed that he was in earnest.

Coming across the grass, he nodded good morning and called to his wife. Unsoftened by sheen of gold, by glimpse of blue restless sea, he scanned futurity with mental field-glasses and mapped out the following winter's campaign with precision.

He regretted it, but except Mrs. Freyne's cob--she was afraid of her weight and must ride--there would be no horses at Castle Freyne.

"And mine?" Gheena cried. "My horses, Dearest?"

Gheena's stepfather observed that there would not be anybody's horses. He reminded her coldly that until she came of age or married, she had not even an allowance.

Redbird, Whitebird, Blackbird--friends true and tried--to go to France as troopers; Redbird, little Redbird, with her fretful temper; Blackbird, fretful and excitable. Gheena heard the words pour on, catching one here and there, realizing vaguely their tone of threatening anger rather than their full sense. Then she recovered. It was nonsense! In four years she would have too much in her power. Even in war-times her stepfather would not dare to sell her horses. But four years! Forty-eight months! how many hundred days?--an age interminable!

"You don't mean it really, Dearest?" she said, smiling bravely. "Now, do you? And poverty is nonsense."

Mr. Freyne had delivered himself of much oratory; this retort snapped the thin thread of his patience.

His dark look at his stepdaughter worried her far more than any outburst of rage would have done.

"If you marry," he said smoothly, "the power will be in your own hands."

Gheena flew to her mother, who was bedewing socks with facile tears. Matilda Freyne explained that a wife must take her husband's advice, and that Dearest George had fully explained the urgency of everything.

"If you married Lancelot, darling Gheena," she said hopefully, "you could ask him about things. You see, the difficulty with you is that you are always asking yourself--and now I have dropped three stitches, and I must call Mary Anne."

Gheena refrained from bitter retort. So far the unending battle between her and her stepfather had been one of manoeuvring, firing blank shells; they had pulled in different directions, Gheena always sublimely certain of ultimate success. Now she was faced suddenly by a mobilized foe and was frightened.

"Your Dearest--that is, Dearest George--means it," said Mrs. Freyne tearfully. "And I----"

"I won't vex you, Mumsie," said Gheena gently, just as a messenger rode up with a message from Cahercalla.

It stated in the long pointed writing of Lancelot's mother that the boy was fretting and ill.

"He has had a complete set-back and refused even meringues and golden plover for dinner," wrote Mrs. Freyne. "He is now still in bed suffering from the shock of this unforeseen upset. Why, when everything was so absolutely suitable, Gheena could not. She had better come over at once before Lancelot's luncheon is due."

Gheena backed towards the door, listening to the reading of the letter. Then as Dearest was called for, she swung out hatless and raced into the wood with Crabbit at her heels, and slipped through the gardens into the stables. The swift saddling of Greybird was followed by her escape down the back avenue at a gallop and a reckless school across country until she dropped on to the road close to Darby's house.

He was out, limping among the horses, his dark face lighting as the girl rode in.

Gheena explained fully. Darby had always heard her troubles. She came into the warm old library and sat there muttering her forebodings.

"Psyche will find me," she said, looking out. "I left a note." She forgot trouble in the quiet old house. Darby talked of cheery things, of a speedy ending to the great war and of Dearest's seeing the error of his ways.

By the time the cook had, in her own language, slapped up a sweet, and lashed the phisint that was raggety-lookin' into a fricassey, Psyche had arrived upon a bicycle.

It was, of course, unfortunate that Gheena should have chosen one of the bones of contention to escape on, and that George Freyne should have, after some angry questioning, driven to Dillonscourt, looked for his lost step-daughter, and captured her out upon the lawn.

He was merely reproachful as he drove her on to Cahercalla, where Lancelot wilted in fiery heat, with untouched beef-tea, greasily tragic, by his side.

He explained very gently that he merely felt tired, but his poor mother was worried, and Doctor Malone said...

Here the old doctor upset the atmosphere of gentle pity by bursting to say he thought something must be very wrong if Lancelot couldn't eat as much as three; but with the help of a few liver pills, please God ... and then he told Lancelot to keep quiet. The memory of that visit was not a pleasant one to harassed Gheena. She was young and soft-hearted. By the time Lancelot's mother had talked to her feelingly in the vast chill drawing-room, and his sister had carried her off to the seclusion of a neat bedroom to clinch the matter, Gheena felt like a criminal, who ought to show repentance by immediately accepting the wounded hero downstairs, but she went away, leaving him sorrowful.

Two weeks of soft spring weather brought April almost to an end. It was weather almost summer-like, the sun turning it into summer and sheltered corners. The water was even warm enough for Gheena to take to swimming.

But through the woof of sunshine ran the warp of trouble. Lancelot languished. He really grew thinner and weak from hot, airless rooms and want of exercise.

The tale of his woes was told by degrees to all Dunkillen. Mrs. Keefe came to ask Gheena to change her mind because the boy was a wounded soldier. Mrs. De Burgho Keane called to say that any girl ought to be glad to find a husband now that all the men were being killed. At the end of a fortnight Mr. Freyne read the war news, and decided that the German tactics of attack were the best he could use, but he said nothing.

Gheena had had a swim. She came in glowing to dress warmly, and bask in the hot sunshine right in under the shelter of the cliffs. There was not a breath of air in her nook. The rocks caught the sun and flung it back, and in front the sea plashed calmly.

She saw Guinane's boat being pulled towards the village; it was heavily laden with stores. Another boat dashed out from the rocks, showing for a moment and then disappearing. Gheena knew it for Stafford's. She shrugged her shoulders, and felt the world in an elusive spring sunshine was not the place which it had been. The tide crept higher, bringing a cold breath with it, but Gheena could scramble out of her nook, even at high-water.

She was going to move when a snow shower of torn paper obstructed the view, falling in little scraps, some upon the water, some upon the shingle.

Crabbit cocked his ears and Gheena grew curious; steps died away on the cliff, and with quick fingers she took up most of the scraps of paper and put them in her pocket.

Stamp paper and toil helped away at least two hours in the house, until with great difficulty she read some of the letter. "Undoubtedly ... Submarines ... coast ... wait. Ba. Get the supply." Gheena raised her head. A few minutes before the note had fallen Basil Stafford's boat had shot in to shore; her eyes grew heavy.

Hunting was almost over, Darby still pursuing in big woodlands which were useless in winter, going out early, as if for cubbing. The horses, with rusty coats and looking far too fine, going with fire or spirit after their long winter. But it was something to do, and little Miss Delorme did not see why they should not hunt all summer in the mornings. She never missed a meet.