Part 5

"Oh, leave it between them, Gheena," murmured Darby wearily. "They can put it in the settlements."

Mr. Keefe, with an outburst of unwilling honesty, now drew gloomy attention to the curb.

"He has a curb," he said darkly. "It never stopped him."

"But--I thought it was a very severe bridle," said the widow vaguely, "and was two bits; and it is only wearing one at present."

"If it was a gag on his hocks it would do her," gulped Darby, when he had recovered a little and emerged from the stable he had fled into. "He wears his curb behind, Mrs. Weston, not in his mouth."

Mrs. Weston said, "What absolute nonsense!" quite huffily and patted the Commander's white nose.

"I hate a horse with a white nose, he always looks like a sheep," said Darby. "And, hello, Mrs. Delaney! How many hens has the fox eaten now?"

A little withered old woman had come into the yard, a basket in her hands.

"It is not hens I am afther, Masther Darby, but the lind of a handful of flour from Anne to save me walkin' onto the village, the Guinanes being quite run out."

But they were taking it home last night from the ship, said Gheena quickly.

"They didn't brin' it to the shop, then, Miss Gheena, an they up an' toult me they could not have it until to-morrow."

Gheena nodded carelessly.

In a flutter of dark draperies Mrs. De Burgho Keane moved to her motor-car, a luxurious Limousine.

"And you must be particular with Naylour, Matilda dear," she said. "I noticed that to-day, after years of impressing Madam upon him he had fallen back upon Ma'am. You will find him a difficult old creature," she added acidly, for just then she recalled the paucity of Naylour's wages and his great use in the house.

A malignant eye peering from behind the kitchen door revealed that old Naylour was listening.

The big car lolloped off heavily, and the butler advanced into the yard; Mrs. Freyne had gone in.

"I wondther who'll juggle the decanthers of port-wine now for her," he said bitterly. "Fine red sthuff from Macdinough's for the ladies an' the clergy, and the cellar wine for themselves an' th' experts. An' champagne the same way, with me heart broke in me, huntin' Jamesey for fear he'd make a mistake. An' in she'd wheel directly the dinner was over an' the gentlemin cleared out, makin measure in her heart's eye on the decanthers befour she'd lock them up. The gentleman had no maneness in him, poor gentleman, but herself. God save us!"

"I don't know why she ever comes here," said Gheena pettishly. "Isn't she horrid, Mr. Keefe?"

"She has the face of a fat rat on her," said Keefe briefly.

*CHAPTER V*

"How the dickens did your Dada call them up?" said Darby, eyeing the ten couple of fox-hounds' relations as they rushed joyously round his park, declining to come near anyone.

"He had a nise of his own," said Andy cautiously, "and his bugle. Maybe if ye sounded ye'res, yer honor."

Heads were thrown up at the note, to go down again, apparently regarding the sound as something of no moment to them.

"Me Dada's bugle had a grating screech on it," said Andy. "Grandjer! Grandjer! Grandjer is after a rabbit. Beauty, ye spalpeen! Beauty agragh?"

The crooked-legged old matron came to the call, wagging her long tan stern abjectly.

Darby said cheerily that it was a good thing to have one obedient. He watched Gheena galloping her grey recklessly as she endeavoured to put hounds back to him.

"D'ye hear that! Isn't Grandjer terrible swhift?" Andy's admiring note was called for by the dying scream of the rabbit as Grandjer broke it up and ate it.

"What I intended to do," said Darby, lifting his hat to cool his head, "was to take these brutes round by Leshaun and back the mountain road. It is not a bit of use taking them out if they won't follow us anywhere. Good man, Phil!"

An accurately aimed lash was driving Spinster and Doatie out of the woods.

A little more noise and violent whip-work brought the whole of the pack into view; they sat down, greeted each other as complete friends, but looked with distrust at Darby on his black mare. Their master had always been on foot.

"If ye were to borry me Dada's bugle," said Andy hopefully. "It is hangin' up at home."

"Chance the road, Phil," said Darby. "We must get to Cullane on Monday somehow."

Darby's old house stood well back from the sea, a long, rambling house, which had been pulled down by someone who objected to its original hideousness, and rebuilt with gables and wide windows. A flagged terrace, guarded with stone railings and stone urns, which in summer overflowed with scarlet geraniums, had been laid out at one side; and the usual basement, where the kitchen blinked up behind a dark alley, was made darker still by another railing of cut stone. The inevitable fuchsia hedges guarded the flower-beds, a tangle now of withering dahlias and Michaelmas daisies.

A fine old place, well kept up, and no one alive knew what battles the young owner had fought with himself there when he came back to it crippled. Battles fought for endurance, when the joys of being up again and able to shuffle in the sunshine had worn off. The very trees which he used to climb, the sunk fences which he jumped so lightly over, the ladders leading to the lofts, mocked Darby.

To get down to the trout stream meant a long weary struggle, or the bitterness of sitting in his bath-chair drawn by old Ned the donkey.

When hope of amending culminated in being able to ride, Darby knew that his days of swift life were done for ever. He snatched something from the wreck; he could shuffle on his crutch. He could shoot as straight as ever, fish from a boat or where the banks were flat.

When he ceased to rebel, he knitted up as many ravelled strands as he could, and twisted and crippled, faced his lease of life.

England called now; he could not go to her, not back to his old regiment which was fighting somewhere in France. Riding at Darby's right side, he looked straight and whole, a lean, good-looking man, with a kindly ravaged face. Coming to the other, one saw an arm tied up, a leg palpably cork, stiff and useless, an almost useless hand, and a scar, vanishing now, on the cheek-bone.

He could ride still, and shuffle back to the saddle without much difficulty after a fall, easy things to meet with in the close country, with its trappy fences and its occasional big bog drains or awkward pieces of gaps fenced by stabs of bog dale.

Black Maria sidled and snorted at the pack, which trolled along obediently enough now, believing they must really be going out hunting. Stafford said he would come to help and get them to know him. And Mr. Keefe could not come because they wanted him somewhere.

"They seem to want everyone somewhere now," said Gheena gloomily. "There are the Guinanes out fishing, and it's horribly rough."

The Guinanes' boat was bobbing actively on the back of vicious leaden waves, bobbing down almost out of sight, and the two men had their backs in it as they pulled.

"Just by Shanockheela, where there's that nasty current--they can't catch anything to-day."

"They have a new boat got for sailing," commented Andy. "An' me Mama does be thinkin' Mrs. Weston gave it to them, for they couldn't have the money nor half of it themselves."

"It is McGreery's boat that he left an' he to list," put in Phil; "thirty pound they should pay. She is above at the Quay now."

"They seem to be rowing out," said Darby, staring, "and there's a real big sea at the point. Oh, it's to meet that fishing-smack that's standing in."

They stood watching the dipping and rising of the little boat, and the pitching of the red-sailed smack, which beat in against the wind, lurching past the rowing boat.

"They've had enough," said Gheena; "they're putting the lines in. Good gracious! they'll be swamped."

The sea out there for a small boat was cruelly wild, but the men put up a rag of sail and ran down to the coast before the strong wind into the shelter of the harbour.

"There is some clather behind us," said Andy, pulling up Ratty just as Darby commented upon the bravery of fishermen. "A sight of horses, I'm thinkin'."

There were four, all ridden at a break-neck trot, with Mrs. Weston's Commander-in-Chief, very fresh and jaunty, leading the procession.

She wore a multitude of curls showing round the edge of her bowler hat, which curls, she confided to Gheena, she simply could not tuck away, and she looked fresh and young as she rode loose-reined, with the sea breeze blowing off her powder.

"For two miles," gasped George Freyne, "I've talked about tendons, and she went faster and faster."

"But if I hadn't gone so very fast, I'd simply have had to go rather fast for longer," said Mrs. Weston equably. "You were so late coming for me."

"The cutting of drains," said Basil gravely, "and the guarding of coasts. Freyne here is worn out at Home Defence, and even I had to take messages to-day right round to Clona Kratty."

"I'll be giving you all orders soon," said Keefe, mopping his pink face. "As we're all friends here. They may come and invade us." This deep note of tragedy in his voice caused the two boys to say, "Laws Almighty, d'ye say so, the haythens!" and Gheena to clutch so nervously at the grey's mouth that he reared in astonishment.

"In Heaven's name, Keefe," said George Freyne, "when are we to go to sleep in safety?"

"That's what they'll tell you," breathed Mr. Keefe mysteriously. "When they come."

"One would think you'd been talking to them," said Gheena suspiciously. "And as we have no guns and no troops, I don't see why they shouldn't."

"If we drive to the very top of the hills," said Violet Weston, hopefully hysterical, "and built eyries there, they're dreadfully short-winded and might never bother to run up after us."

"You wait until they shelled you," said Darby, "in your eyrie. Gheena looks as though she contemplated entrenching on the lawn."

"Are they beyant in the little boat?" piped Andy dolorously. "Are they, Mr. Keefe, was thim Germins?"

"Who told you, Keefe?" George Freyne showed symptoms of acute strain. "Who--is it right? Are they coming? Are they?"

"Don't get so enated," said Keefe calmly, "I can't tell you now. When they come, you know. What are you talking about, Dillon? It won't be any use when you're crucified bodies! Don't be absurd!" Staring at a ring of white faces and hands dropped limply on their horses' necks, Mr. Keefe grew irritable. "When the orders come," he said sharply, "they'll be really nearly a reality."

"To have lost all that fright for nothing," said Darby tersely. "Orders!"

"Then why in the name of Goodness did you say it was Germans?" blared Freyne furiously; "considering I have got a weak heart. You did say the Germans were coming. I say you did, sir."

"As plainly as the hills," said Mrs. Weston reproachfully. "Oh, what a fright!"

"Unless they showed playing Wagner on the road, it could not have been plainer," said Gheena huffily, "making us all fuss like that, and trying to look as if we weren't, and Phil----"

"Phil appears to have gone home to tell your mother," said George Freyne, answering.

"She won't mind a bit until you come to advise her about it, so that doesn't matter," returned Gheena. "Yes, he's gone."

"He said he was off to the Missus," said Andy, "an' ye none of ye heard him go."

"Three times I repeated: When my _orders_ come!" wailed Keefe. "And I should not have said even that, but I was just trying to break it easily to you all that there will be orders as to invasion, if there is an invasion; and when they come..."

"If you say it again, Keefe, I shall set Grandjer at your horse," said Darby loftily.

Mr. Freyne then got off his horse, and suggested learning the hounds' names, which they had come out for instead of talking nonsense. Andy knew them all. But, as in a kaleidoscope, tan and pied bodies and flapping ears and wistful eyes seemed to shift and melt before the would-be learner.

"That is Doatie, with the sphot above his tail. Call him. That is Sergeant ye called, an' his biggest sphot is on his eye."

"Didn't you call the first one a he," said Freyne heatedly, "and that other--and both?"

"Well, he--Doatie--do have pups surely," said Andy patiently; "but he has a sphot on his tail annyways, an' that is Sergeant."

Grandjer, yellow tan and tailless, was unmistakable. So was Sweetheart, who had lost an ear, and the enormous Home Ruler. The two small black hounds called respectively the Divil and the Tailor could only be mistaken for each other. They were, Andy told them, "Holy terrors to hunt, but apt to be yowlin' if a fence was very high, bein' baygles entirely."

The pack sat or rolled, greatly interested in the increasing reiteration of its names.

Beauty, being polite, thumped her tail without pause; it was really hardly worth while stopping. All the more obliging hounds shifted and oozed from side to side as they were called, and the lesson terminated at length by Darby suggesting that dinner-time would be upon them and they had better go on.

It was too late to wander into the mountains. Darby took a road which wound up to a little group of houses, and then back again to the coast, with the pack lumbering along quite placidly and the four whippers-in all repeating names behind them.

All save Gheena. Sundry visits to the meets of the foot dogs had made her familiar with most of the pack.

The Commander-in-Chief, somewhat exhausted by his burst, was now forging noisily, clicking his flat feet together fiercely, and varying this by an occasional stumble.

"Did you really think Mr. Keefe meant the Germans were coming?" Gheena found Basil Stafford riding beside her.

"And if he had meant it," he said, with a thrill in his voice. "It's a big sea to guard, Miss Freyne. Lord, if he had meant it! Spiked helmets marching along this road--oh, with their owners, if you like it, and everything seized! Promise me if they ever do come you'll run away inland," he said. "They won't go off the railway lines."

"How could they come?" Gheena looked out to sea. "You don't think they mean to try?"

"I know"--he checked himself--"I know--that it may be possible for them to try."

"I shall ride away Whitebird and lead Redbird, and lead Bluebird, and take all the dogs," said Gheena firmly.

Save for the chasing of a blameless cat, the pack got home in chastened mood, greatly depressed by an aimless promenade. George Freyne's car was at Darby's gate, and a suggestion of bed at Castle Freyne was well received.

"Keefe can lead Gheena's horse, he won't want to hurry, and Stafford can take mine, Darby, and we'll drive. Matilda may have been worried by Phil about Keefe's nonsense."

A tyre bursting delayed the motor, and the horses could cross a short way through the park, so that as they drove up the avenue they saw Stafford appearing with Gheena's grey jogging amicably beside him.

"Hello, there! Hello, you! I say, Freyne!" he called out, amazed to see the motor swerve.

"Dearest, the sunk fence!" shrilled Gheena.

For the car was suddenly left to itself as Dearest George cleared something from his face, and again, with light-hearted gaiety, the Sunbeam immediately dived off the gravel at the sunk fence.

"Hello, I say!" Gheena leaped from the car wildly.

"A bee," said Freyne, beating at the air hard, "a bee! Bees, my God!"

He switched the power off and leaped for the shelter of the laurels.

"He's mad," said Gheena. "But it is bees! All the bees!" Her dive into the undergrowth was even swifter than her stepfather's. She was followed by Darby going with long bounds off his crutch, and then by the chauffeur. A swarm of furious insects buzzed outside.

"Bees!" George Freyne wiped his forehead. "The bees have risen. I am badly stung on my nose."

"They've swarmed on the doorstep," suggested Gheena. "Look! they are in a cloud. I thought you were crazy at first, Dearest, but you're right. And the car has not gone over."

"Bees," said Darby, "don't swarm in October."

"The two hives is beyant on the steps," remarked Dayly the chauffeur, as he nursed a stung cheek drearily. "I sees them."

Basil Stafford, skirting the sunk fence, believed that they had all gone away and called out loudly. His fevered imagination even sprung to the chance of Germans having really come and being in full occupation of Castle Freyne.

"Hello--what!" He struck an insect from his nose. The bees saw new worlds to conquer. He beat his ears. It is lamentable to add that young England's manhood sprang yelling from the saddle, leaped the sunk fence, and was into the laurels on to Dearest George's body.

"Bees!" howled Stafford. "Swarms!"

"In October," wailed Freyne, dabbing his swelling nose and nursing a trampled-on leg.

"And both the horses have gone off their heads," said Gheena. "They have simply flown away. You will go at once to catch them, Dayly."

"I would be afeard, Miss," said the chauffeur simply. "They are terrible sot agin horses any times, them bays."

At this point the dining-room window was opened very cautiously.

"The first of them," quavered Phil's voice dramatically, "It was thruth. They are lurkin' in the bushes. I hears them."

Gheena said, "Listen."

Then there was a pause in conversation filled by prayer.

"It is the Masther's cyar," declaimed Anne the cook. "I'd know her in Heaven."

"They took her off him," gulped Mary Kate, the kitchenmaid, who was in the throes of Ave Marias. "He is kilt, the craythur. See the empty sate."

"An' there is some lurking outside," breathed Phil. "I can hear them in the shrubs. I tell ye wasn't it the great plan entirely to kape us safe? The poor ould Masther, the craythur."

His master's head, veiled by a flapping laurel leaf, suddenly issued from the thicket, and the voice which issued from behind it did not seem to be discussing Germans.

"God above us, did they do ye a harrum, sir?" wailed Anne from the window, putting out her kindly face for a second. "An' ye too, Bayly? God be praised for ye're lives."

"The two eyes out of me head," replied Dayly--Dearest was incoherent--"and the Masther's nose the size of two, an' Misther Stafford picked in the ear."

"The haythens!" said the voice, now again behind the blind. "The Turks an' infidels. I hear Dayly. Could the polis----" She prayed loudly.

"Prayer won't mind ye, Mary Kate," counselled Phil, sobbing. "I hear Miss Gheena bawlin'."

At this point Gheena grew hysterical. George Freyne's words became clear as he ordered Phil, as a something, something, something idiot, to get away the bees, to get help and take the dam brutes away.

The angry bees were racing up and down the avenue between the laurels and safety.

"I carried them around," said Phil soberly, out of the window, "thinkin' they'd destroy the robbers if they comes up, so I up and clapped the two carriage rugs around them, an' they neshtin' within, an' I wouldn't say we can ever get them back till it is dark entirely, sir, they bein' a trifle irritated in themselves an' all out."

The prospect of crouching in the laurels until after dark, or the alternative of squeezing through the barbed wire palings or of taking the open surrounded by a cloud of bees was now with the refugees.

The remarks which sped from the bitter smelling shade of the laurels were venomous as the disturbed honey-makers.

"Someone is talkin'," said the sober voice behind the Venetian blind. "Howld ye're whist, Mary Anne, till we listen. Would ye dhraw the Germins on us? Do not stir the blind on ye're life or they'll be in. The bees Mary Anne, not the----"

At this point Mrs. Freyne opened the hall door. It was dim behind her, and she was not perceived by the questing enemy.

"Matilda," wailed her husband, "get them away!"

"Oh, you, Dearest!" replied his wife placidly. "Dear me! I see the car nearly over the sunk fence, and I thought I heard George, but I cannot do anything until he comes--can I, Professor?--about the Germans."

A deeper note grunted from the hall. Mrs. Freyne chased a bee from her face.

"Matilda," yelped George Freyne, "send someone!"

"There are no Germans, only bees," called Dayly loudly. "An' we are all picked and bit sorryful, Ma'am."

"Bees!" Mrs. Freyne saw the hives. "Professor, someone has put two hives at the door, and Dearest George is in the bushes. Dearest, what am I to do?"

George put forth a swollen face to deliver orders, to cry for men and bee dresses. To pray that veiled rescuers should be sent to them and gauze veils--anything to escape the bees.

Mrs. Freyne, obliged to ask advice, hurried to the Professor. A stifled yell and a crash told that the enemy had gone inside, and the hall door was slammed, promises of aid being presently shrilled from the upper windows.

"We are getting transparent things, Dearest. You are sure there is no danger? My net skirt, do you think? Oh, dear!"

The enraged bees sighted new worlds to conquer as they sped out at Violet Weston and Mr. Keefe, who were riding quietly across the lawn, the result being--four gaitered legs described some circles and curves, and two people dived wildly from their saddles and ran.

"If you ask Dearest George what to do," advised Mrs. Freyne from the upper window--"he is under the laurels--he'll tell you."

Mrs. Weston crashed to covert with a shriek, followed by Mr. Keefe swearing fluently, and plucking bees from his collar; these he stamped on, but they had stung him first.

A variety of advising onlookers began to collect cautiously on the avenue, all advising at the same time.

Dayly suddenly put his coat over his head and sped blindly to comparative safety.

"An' I thinkin' it the grandest plan," said Phil, speaking now from the bushes at the other side of the drive. "Bullets they is used to, says I, an' they might resint; but innocent bees, they could blame none for, says I, an' the two maids bawlin' and prayin' within."

"There is James runnin', afther they have him kilt," wailed the housemaid wildly. "Oh, the Turks! An' the Missus cool an' aisy at the windy above." Another wild shriek echoed despairingly, followed by sobs for mercy, and Mary Kate hid her face.

Now just as James took flight, Mrs. De Burgho Keane's large car hummed to the gate, and was pulled sharply up to avoid Dayly.

Mrs. De Burgho Keane was pinched and anxious looking. Phil had dropped word as he scurried for home.

The sight of the flying figure, the murmurs from the bushes, upset her completely.

Even as Dayly escaped, Smith, her own chauffeur, suddenly let the car slap into the bushes as he beat frantically at the air. Mrs. De Burgho Keane suggested "Mines!" at the pitch of her voice, reasoning out that some hidden force must have upset the discreet Englishman. Muffled figures rushed across the drive.

"If they would take five pounds and the ham to let me go," she pattered unevenly, searching in her purse. And she got half out of the car as Dearest George, his head muffled in an old net skirt of his wife's, came tearing blindly out of the laurels, flapping at a cloud of bees. They were in the net, entangled, these furious little beings of wrath tinged and buzzed in his ears. He struck the car, and with a sob clutched Smith the chauffeur, burrowing down under the wheel for covert.

"My God! they are after you!" said Mrs. Keane heavily. "They have hurt you! Oh, the horror--of reality!"

The amazing spectacle of George Freyne veiled in net thrilled her with horror.

"Half killed me, the devils! Start the car, Smith; back her! Get her away! Get us out of this! Half killed me! One eye gone, my nose ruined! Start her, will you?"

Smith jogged the self-starter, and put in the reverse with a yell. He had just been stung. Mrs. De Burgho Keane on the avenue leaped for safety as the maddened chauffeur passed her without heed.

"Put your long veil down," yelled George Freyne; "you'll be all right if you do."