Part 2

Anyone whom he failed to dominate he disagreed with; and as Mat the old groom used to remark: "The Masther begridged even if the fox to go the way he'd like himself."

He had been out on some mysterious business, which embraced visits to the coastguards, a cryptic and reluctant silence, and a look of impatience.

Sitting down to tea, he discussed the war with Mrs. Weston, becoming deeply pessimistic when she piped out her contempt of Germany, and then having left her floundering in a red sea of doubt and despair, would immediately explain how it all could be ended in a month, provided such-and-such plans were carried out, and if instead of Lord Kitchener and General French there were a few men unencased in red tape and not stale from custom of mimic warfare--a fresh brain in fact, such as he himself might bring, to plot and hew and smash until it was over.

The two played see-saw over the cold, slim cakes, until Mrs. Weston asked Dearest George what he might think of this wild idea of Gheena's, of gathering up hounds to eat foxes, because the farmers seemed worried about losing a few chickens.

"So unpatriotic of them, grumbling, with the hay at four pounds a ton," she said blandly.

It was, in fact, this way of putting it which made Dearest George immediately favour the prospect.

He said sharply that he could not see why, if it was at all feasible, Gheena should make silly objections.

Gheena opened her mouth--and shut it--wisely.

"The claims are positively pouring in," said George Freyne irritably. "There were three women and James Macavee here to-day, all with tales of dead geese and hens."

"And even if the common herds was all they had to be pratin' over," put in Barty. "But here's one chattin' of Orpinntons, an' the next of Leggyhorns, an' another that paid tuppence apiece for eggs of the slim-mouthed Rocks, the lord liftenant an' lady havin' them all sot up an' above themselves with some schame for fancy breeds. An' the name alone bein' all that's right," added Barty, "seein' that a depot for maybe Speckledy Sussexes 'll be but twenty yards away from some woman that just keeps what she gits, an' the two flocks rootin' out in the one place. When 'twas claims for hins it could be put up with; but when it's claims for the schamers out of Dublin, then I tell you it's money."

"Barty came over about it," said Mrs. Freyne. "Did you, Barty, to ask Mr. Freyne his opinion?"

"I did not, ma'am," said Barty placidly, "nor think of such nonsense. It would be bether for ye to take the cup, Miss, an' Crabbit nosin' around it; but if we could gather even thim objecs of dogs, an' to show the red coats an' all, it might be the way it would make them think we was kapin' up the counthry, an' good in nonsense."

Gheena, now greatly excited, said that she would go the very next day to see about the hounds. Darby had old kennels at his place.

When Dearest George intimated curtly that he must take the car next day, as he had to drive to the coastguard station at the far side of the harbour, Gheena replied that she could walk. "The nearest Dayly was quite close, and even if the farthest were farther on----"

Darby said "Yes," and picked up the knitting thoughtfully.

"Well, it was, that was all. And you can come, Darby, and meet me at the cross roads below Macinerny's Public House, and drive me the rest of the way."

Violet Weston, smoking a cigarette, wanted to know if there was any real fear of anything happening, as there was so much fuss about coastguards.

"Our ships will never let anything happen," she said stoutly.

"Henry Ashleigh is gone," burst out George Freyne, "to drive a motor. I forgot to tell you. I'd go myself, but I'm too useful here."

"You haven't applied for anything yet, have you?" Gheena turned with crushing directness to Basil.

"Well, you see, I'm in the pay of the Government, and only the Government can let me go," he said quietly. "If the drainage works were shut up, all those men who bought the farms on the understanding that they would be drained for them would be cheated."

To this Miss Freyne observed freezingly that she would have thought an older man could have looked after drains, and drummed on the tea-table, laying down her knitting.

Barty raised his battered hunting cap to say good-night. As he turned he shaded his keen old eyes, and looked out at the ship of rocks just visible in the grey dusk.

"I never seen such a man as the ould Professor for beltin' around the cliffs," remarked Barty, "crackin' thim rocks with a hammer that can only be irritaytin' thim, an' off back with picks and bits that he is gropin' over till two in the mornin's, behind his specs. A tax on ile 'd be the bad one for him," said Barty slowly.

A little withered thing, he went off briskly, one leg slightly shorter than the other, one arm a little stiff. His collar-bones had grown almost weary of being mended; one thumb was bent in, and a little finger crooked, as if perpetually poised to hover politely over food. But Barty was hale and active still, and thought mournfully how much he would have liked to come out to hunt hounds again himself, a post which his broken leg and subsequent ill-health had taken from him.

He skirted the clipped laurels, passed under the vast arch, put up as a gateway in almost all old yards, and peered into the kitchen to ask the big peppery Anne, the cook, "If firin' was short, that the cakes wasn't baked above."

"Didn't I put them on for Miss Gheena, and mustn't the Missus have them out for herself?" said Anne good-humouredly. "Terrible times, Barty! To be lookin' above in the air for thim Zepherills they do talk about, and Donellan the coastguard havin' chat about the underground ships bein' about beside the coast watchin' us, till they've a chance to swhoop."

Barty then gave some lurid details as to the life on Bretham Island, where the officers dined in the cellars, sitting on the ammunition, "they were so afraid of it being struck."

"If I was to be flyin'," Anne observed, as she deposited a large leaf of pastry on a gigantic pie.

Barty said "Yes" politely. Anne weighed fourteen stone.

"I'd fly," said Anne darkly, as she opened the oven door, "where--where flyin' 'd be of use," she added. "Not hither an' over just to say there was a man here an' a gun there, but off to Berlin. An' if I didn't drop what 'd hate him up on the Kayser my name isn't Anne Dwyer. Th' ould vilyin. Isn't Paddy Hanratley's life lost be his devilment, in that retrate from Mongs? He is on to-day's paper."

Barty abstracted the _Irish Times_ from the dresser and read the news greedily. He raised his head to tell the cook, now surrounded by a halo of several attentive maids, that the land was sown with spies.

"Two holy nuns taken in Cork," said Barty. "I had it for a fact from me aunt's cousin be marriage, her nephew being husband to the landlady's dather. An' the two of thim takin' lodgin's, sayin' they was out for charity, an' God save us, didn't the little gerril carry in hot wather one mornin' without knockin', an' out she runs, for their caps was off, an' the two big faces of men above the bedclothes. Masther Darby says they beyant are going to make a shot to invade us, the vilyins, an' spies here is mappin' out the very ripples on the say, an' every turf sod in the land, so as to be ready for them."

"Me Dadda has us towlt," began Maria the between-maid, "I am slicin' the pyates, Mrs. Dwyer, ma'am, for the fryin'. Me Dadda has it they'll come frindly with no waypons on them; not another penny, then, need we pay for the land we has bought, an' the hay barns, nor nothin'."

"The Germans bein' such gran' men they can live without money," said Barty dryly. "God send ye're Dadda sinse, Maria Harty, an' something to do besides clanin' his boots markin' time on Sundays with the Volunteers."

Then Phil the groom coming in, observed: "That he'd seen a German Frollin that was maid to some at the hotel. An' bottled plums she clapped into a stew that she had leave to make. An' quare soorts of sossidges they'd get over the wather, black as the coals, Anne, an' solid."

Barty folded up the paper, sighing as he did so; then he leant forward.

"What is that ould Professor knocking chips out of the rocks for?" he whispered darkly.

Anne the cook sat down heavily, and prayed to the heavens above her to see her safe from harm, with all their talk.

"Makin' channels for submarines, he might be, with his hammer," she whispered fearfully. "Oh, good evenin' to ye, Barty. Good evenin'. There could be no good behind his black specs," went on Anne fearfully. "God betune us an' harrum; no good at all. An' there is the pie burnin', an' all the fault of that ould Kayser," she added, as she rolled with a wail to the oven to announce that the grannut ornymints she even drew out were black as a Germin's heart, and to scold everyone quite impartially and without resentment for the occurrence, they putting professors into her head.

Upstairs Mrs. Freyne was consulting Dearest as to whether the Army was really retreating, or whether it was only reported so as to deceive the Germans and bring forward recruits.

Dearest adjusted his glasses to explain pompously that going backwards was not advancing, and to illustrate with the flower-vases until one fell off never to stand upright again, and Gheena went to dress hurriedly.

Her big room looked out to the sea. It was high up, and she could see, when it was light, the restless waters beyond the point as well as the calmer stretch shown by the gap in the trees.

Leaning out, the soft dampness of the autumn air welcome after the stuffy heat of the drawing-room, Gheena thought she saw a flicker of light far away just where the cliffs were honeycombed by endless caves.

"I don't believe--in--any drains," said Gheena to the night very severely. "And I should certainly go to be a nurse if it was not for the knitting club."

Gheena's room possessed the advantage of a side door reached by a narrow flight of stairs just beneath it. Dearest showing signs of irritation at trails made by damp bathing dresses and Crabbit's paws on the polished hall, Gheena had taken over this door for herself and ran from it, in the morning generally, clad in nothing but her bathing dress, to return dripping under a light mackintosh, with Crabbit barking at her bare heels.

She bathed, too, sometimes on hot summer nights; delighting in the dripping flames which fell from her finger, and the blue fire streaks as she struck out. These night baths, when her mother reposed in a room which gave oblations to hygiene with a slightly opened window, behind which thick curtains were carefully drawn, were only known to the housemaid and the cook, who considered them outrageous, but said nothing.

"I should like to bathe to-night. Crabbit, you're snuffling. You couldn't come. And we might, after dinner, Crabbit, though it is October, after we are baked downstairs."

Dearest George disliking draughts, the library curtains were always closely drawn on still nights, and the shutters closed when a wind blew; also, there was always a fire. He sat there now, thinking; the problem of Gheena troubled George Freyne deeply. His objection to the Dower House, which lurked in a gloom of trees on the very edge of the cliff, increased hourly. A stealthy backwater came fawning to the end of the garden, casting up chill salt airs from its slowly moving waters, yet sea-like enough to expose an unsightly stretch of shingle and rock at low tide, and to sap in a mean, secretive way at the protecting wall of the garden, picking away constant gaps. Castle Freyne became Gheena's, when she married, and a nephew of George Freyne's, who combined meekness of mind, strong conceit with plump cheeks and an Irish accent, had been decided upon as Gheena's future spouse.

In fact, failing Gheena, he was the next heir following a life tenancy by Matilda Freyne, so it was only right.

This Lancelot Freyne had been considered too delicate to go to school, and had strayed to manhood in his home, tyrannized over by his too fond mother. Now having dutifully ridden to hounds, gone out shooting, and applied his mind to the courtship ordered by his mother, Lancelot had upset all calculations by immediately getting a commission from the Militia and going off to train in a camp in England.

Castle Freyne was quite large enough for everyone, but Gheena, as owner, might show a still more marked desire for open windows, unguarded by curtains or shutters, and also for various innovations which made a comfort-loving soul shiver apprehensively. In any case, it would be hers when she was twenty-five.

Gheena, coming down to dinner in white, was exceedingly good to look at, and with strangers at Dunaleen Camp Mr. Freyne grew anxious.

The night fell in a mist of grey stillness, broken by a taint whimper of little waves weeping as they broke upon the rocks.

Gheena put on a black cloak, wrapped her head in a Lusky veil and slipped away to the shore. It was cold to bathe, but she scarcely knew what she was going out to look for. Some patrol ships, coastguards tramping--anything to show her that war raged somewhere, despite the grey peace upon Ireland. Her mother had already begun to re-read the papers and ask for explanations, until her husband fell asleep; then she would fall asleep herself, until ten o'clock, when she invariably awoke with great vigour, and hoped Dearest George would not lose his figure for his bad habit of sleeping in his chair, and then read a novel until eleven, when she put out all the lamps, drank hot milk, and went to bed.

Crabbit scuttled into the undergrowth, crashing through it with little short yelps, as he scented rabbits. Gheena stepped on to where the low cliffs jutted to oppose the sea. The waters whispered, fretting, lapping, sucking through the rocks; lifted on the coming tide the fringe of brown seaweed rustled faintly as it awoke to the life of the sea. A sleeping row of sea-birds on a peak of brown rock, a blur of white just visible.

Gheena had put on tennis shoes; she moved soundlessly, sure-footed, across the still uncovered rocks, stooped at the edge of the tide, where it lapped deep and cool, to put her hands in, and see the blue drip run off her fingers back to the gleaming tide.

At this point, Crabbit, having mislaid her, uttered a yell of anguish, and hurled himself noisily across the rocks, his unerring nose down.

This onrush was stopped by something solid, which melted and slipped with sudden outcry into a fairly deep pool.

As the something rose and groped, it said aloud several things of extreme pungency, and wished to know what the--well--earthly dickens sea-serpents or wild goats were out on the rocks for at midnight, knocking people down for.

The voice bearing a distinct resemblance to Mr. Basil Stafford's, Gheena observed aloud, calmly, that it was neither a sea-serpent nor a goat.

"But only Crabbit tracking me, with you in his way." And then she wished to know why he did not come out at once.

Mr. Stafford said something rather indistinctly, and then more clearly, that it seemed to be the damn sea-urchins' pool; and everywhere he put his hands down to catch a rock, he had, so far, caught prickles and couldn't get out.

The sound of a finger noisily sucked was followed by the smell of hot metal and the flash of a dark lantern, blinding in the gloom. By its rays Basil Stafford swished through the knee-deep water and stepped out on to dry rocks.

"He took me just under the knees, like an avalanche, that dog," he said irritably. "I just jumped in time to get in on my feet. I've sand shoes on, too. What on earth," he said, "are you doing down here in the dark by this hang pool?"

"Looking for submarines," said Gheena dreamily.

Stafford thought dryly that the sea-urchins' pool would certainly be a good base, and that perhaps there might be a Dreadnought in the bathing creek. He shook his head and by the light of the lantern extracted prickles from his fingers.

"Anne Dwyer says they all fester," observed Gheena, watching with interest, "and you're breaking half of them. Here!"

She took the big brown hand in hers, extracting gently but deftly; Mr. Stafford insisting, as she said she could see no more, that he felt two of the worst just in below his first and second fingers, and the light of the lantern proving quite inadequate to illuminate them.

"And as I said, why Crabbit should have been on the rocks," said Stafford--"further down, on the fat place--and why he chose that pool."

"There isn't any fat place," said Gheena. "And why"--she raised her eyes--"why were you out?" she asked emphatically.

"It's right in the muscle, and I shall never use those fingers again. I--well--I saw--queer lights," said Stafford, after a pause. "Chaps here might start--er--smuggling again. And--oh, good Lord!" Crabbit barked at the sharp yell of anguish.

"I was only just using the pin of my brooch to burrow, as you were so sure there was a prickle there." Gheena re-pinned her brooch with hurt dignity. "Smuggle tobacco! One doesn't think of that kind of smuggling nowadays," she said bitingly. "It's smuggling German emperors and admirals and 'U' boats."

The lantern had suddenly been extinguished, and the noise of sucking, mingled with grunts of pain, came from the gloom beside her. A sound of footsteps coming cautiously could be heard on the strip of shingle at high-water mark.

"The coastguards," said Stafford. "Er--I say, hadn't you better?--they won't see us if you sit down. It's late."

Gheena replied that the last yell might even have produced the patrol ship from the point; and as she had known Matthew O'Hara and Tim Linsham all her life, she really did not see why they should not see her now, especially when they could not in that light.

So they sped lightly back across the rocks, unheard until Crabbit growled with emphasis.

Someone said "Shucks," in tones of distant alarm.

Stafford flashed the light again upon the spectacled, wondering face of Professor Machaffy of Bee-bar-oo, somewhere in New South Wales, who again said "Shucks," before he became a shadow in the gloom.

"I take a little walk almost every night," said the Professor mildly, "before I go in to sort specimens. It fills the lungs with ozone. And you! You also take a little walk." There was a distinct quiver of understanding laughter in his good-natured old voice.

"On fine nights the unseen world is very beautiful, because as a lost love, you remember all its perfections," went on the Professor. "The darkness is Zimmerian," he added blandly.

"Never quite lost the German accent, Professor?" said Basil easily. There was a pause; the Professor, judging by the shower of shingle, appeared to have kicked some of it.

"After several years' study--there," he said slowly. "It is difficult, Mr. Stafford. I'm learning, as in war they study closely," he added. "We have no such scientists in England. I bid you good-night. It is time for me to get in."

They could hear him chuckle again as he shuffled off.

One by one the lights at Castle Freyne were blinking out; Matilda Freyne was going to bed.

"And you?" said Stafford, a little anxiously to Gheena.

"I--oh!" Gheena explained her side entrance.

Mr. Stafford said if that was so, he had just found a new and vicious prickle in the palm of his hand. She could feel it--there was no need of light.

He sat down in the short, sweet grass and Gheena sat beside him, her nimble, deft fingers pressing at the spot he guided them to.

The lap and whisper of the coming tide was clear in the grey stillness.

"Crabbit--Crabbit, you are breathing hard, just in my ear," said Gheena. "Go away. I can't get the thing. Sit still, Mr. Stafford."

Stafford leant back a little to listen to the aggressive snuffle of Crabbit at his right side and some distance away.

*CHAPTER III*

"There is three of them here inside, Miss," said Mary Casey, looking round. "Doatee, Beauty, an' Colleen. Colleen had three pups, but he has them reared this long ways' back, an' one is gone to Marty, me cousin, for the sheeps. Indeed, then, I am sure an' certain, Miss, that neyther Matt nor Jim would oppose any wish ye have for the dogs, an' I'd be glad to be out of feedin' them myself. Matt is in Bedford, Miss, and Jim in Aldershot presently, an' ye can be afther writin' to them both."

Gheena asked a little feebly for the other hounds.

Young Andrew Casey, aged twelve, issued from behind a curtain of shyness to observe that these three were the besht dogs in the lot. "Colleen can enthrap a cat as well as a hare," he said proudly. "And Beauty there, when he do catch a rot, 'd bring it in to his pups an' not ate it himself."

Mrs. Casey told her son not to be gabbin' before the genthry, so Andrew withdrew again behind the haystacks, a watchful eye on his favourites.

"There is two pairs at Danny's, Miss."

"And one is not a hound at all," chimed in the now irresistible Andrew, "but a torrier. He is Dandy's pup."

Dandy, busily engaged in chasing fleas, raised a yellow head when her name was mentioned.

"Hould ye're whisht, Andy, the child is demented for them dogs, Miss. He'd ax no bether than be afther them. An' don't be mindin' him, Miss Gheena, for the torrier Doatie's pup as well, with a gran' huntin' nose on him."

Doatie, a pied hound with bandy legs, wagged a pleased tail, and threw his tongue to show his breeding.

Gheena had not found Darby waiting for her, so had taken a short cut to the Caseys', found its apparently straight way barred a boggy trench, and had had to climb up a steep hill, where slates and small quagmires lived cheek by jowl in united friendship. To step squelchily from one and slip with a sharp slaty grate into another had proved tiring. Also, Gheena, inspired by Violet Weston's blue suede shoes, had put on a pair with bright buckles, which she looked at proudly until she missed her way, and then remembered remorsefully the slighted brogues in her room at Castle Freyne. The charm of comparing her feet with the widow's had now completely evaporated.

Marty Casey's, where two more pairs of the pack could be seen, was pointed out to her, a thin trail of smoke marking its chimney.

"The road to it does be leadin' around," said Mrs. Casey; "but across the hills it is not a mile only. Would ye say the dirty piece 'd be good walkin' to-day, Andy?"

"I would not," said Andrew, appearing suddenly, holding Beauty by her forelegs. "I went down a foot in it meself yestherday," he added briefly; "an' I light, not like yerself."

"There's sphots, even if ye go discreet, that is onaisy, but I do go that way meself."

Gheena chose the road with decision. She wrote down the regiments of Jim and Matt and sighed drearily.

Several hounds were billeted in small cottages in the neighbourhood, and she meant to try to see them all. But the conciliation of the Caseys being necessary before any others could be looked at, she shook hands and tramped away.

Andrew, trotting beside her, asked wistfully if she was sot on the dogs.

"Beauty do be sleepin' with me," he said shyly. "I lets him in anonst an' me Mama aslheep."

Gheena, seeing something glimmer behind bright eyelashes, promised Andy that if they hunted, she would lend him Ratty, her Welsh pony, for every meet. This was a small mouse-coloured animal, which attacked large banks as if they were a ladder, but always got to the other side without mishap, and which could go all day. Walls were not often seen, and timber he either went over or under, in both cases generally dislodging his rider. He had a mouth of iron and the self-will of Lucifer, coupled with complete determination to get after hounds, but he was absolutely safe and neither kicked nor bucked.