Part 6

A variety of muffled figures now issued from the bushes. Gheena entirely covered by art-muslin curtains, Stafford with a butterfly net over his head and the handle wagging behind, the rescuers insecurely draped, and the gardener in a correct bee dress and armed with a syringe and a bell.

Mrs. De Burgho Keane had sat down flat on the avenue, and she was quite close to a collapse. Stafford stopped to help her. She was clasping her floating lace veil across her face and she endeavoured to speak with a German accent. She leant back against nothing and nearly overbalanced.

Darby Dillon had driven his car over and had pulled up to watch in rare amazement the flight of Dearest George; the spinning away of the Limousine from its rightful owner, and her subsequent collapse.

Rocking helplessly at the wheel, he saw the Professor spin out Dervish-wise into the open, with a black ninon skirt roped round his neck and spreading out cape-wise over his shoulders.

"The party," said Stafford, from the butterfly net, "is now complete." He wagged the handle at Darby.

"You are not going to lift it!" muttered Mrs. Keane heavily. "Not going to look at me! I am really not so beautiful at all, Herr German. Mines! So quickly! They upset Smith--Schmidt, a name homelike to Boches. I--if five pounds, and a ham--it's all I've with me--to let me go."

Stafford's laughter rent him for a time, then he said: "Oh, come along!" quite kindly, and poked sufficiently behind the lacy shoulders to lift her up.

"Mr. Stafford, how did you escape?" The stout lady got up and stood unsteadily.

"They won't follow us into the house, but hurry," said Stafford, choking. "Hurry, while the gardener bells them."

For Carty, loftily secure in veil and gloves, commenced to peal the bell.

Mrs. De Burgho Keane heard and gave up with a stifled cry of the Tocsin, then slid into Stafford's arm, her head on his shoulder, the Professor supporting her the other side. She was not quite unconscious, but absolutely dazed, submitting without realizing it to the support of the nearest wheelbarrow which was half full of weeds. Darby drove swiftly across the lawn to the yard gate, thus avoiding the bees.

When they had all assembled in the drawing-room, picked off the remaining bees and stood uneasily, starting at every sound, Mrs. De Burgho Keane woke up. Someone had drenched her in toilet vinegar and left her to recover.

Mrs. Freyne consulted Dearest George as to remedies for bee stings before, a little hurt at his reply, she fetched the blue-bags and onions, of which the room reeked healthily.

George Freyne had apparently lost one eye; the other glared from the shelter of a swollen nose in an outraged frenzy of pain. Stafford rubbed his neck delicately and Gheena shook a finger regretfully.

Old Naylour, quite unshaken, had brought in comforting tea.

"Do you think, Dearest George, that tea would upset Mrs. Keane?" asked Matilda Freyne thoughtfully. "She is opening her eyes." To which George Freyne remarked unsympathletically that anyone was damn lucky who had eyes to open, and Mrs. Keane sat up appalled by such callousness.

"They hurt you," she said faintly, "hurt you all. I succumbed. And they? They spared us. I said Schmidt to placate them."

"They are nearly all in now," said Stafford, looking out. "The bell did it and the dark."

Mrs. Keane muttered something incoherently; the words related to the Tocsin and the French.

"And the mines which upset Smith," she said. "Poor Smith! What an experience!"

When the facts of the case and Phil's strategy were fully explained to her, Mrs. De Burgho Keane felt a sense of loss. If they were not Germans, then everyone had behaved as though they were--well, she sniffed up the scent of onions.

"Bees alone," she said awfully, "do not cause men to rush and scream and hurl themselves from dark corners and take my car, and my man Smith, and----"

"He got it on the cheek and the hand," said Stafford gloomily. "Some of your half-dead 'uns, Freyne, in your bridal veil."

"The skirt which the cook did get me," said the Professor, "is torn sorely, but it kept out much pain."

Mrs. Violet Weston, stung on the neck, said gruffly that it was all absurd. Mr. Keefe, whose cheeks were engaged in swallowing his snub nose, decided that he would not be able to do duty anywhere for a week or more.

A chorus of voices sounded outside advising and declaiming. Presently Mrs. De Burgho Keane, shaken and offended, made her way to her car attended by her gloomy one-eyed host.

"And Phil"--she turned round--"what will you do to Phil, or what has been done to him?"

George Freyne muttered the words, "Hang Phil!" viciously but indistinctly.

To this day Mrs. De Burgho Keane believes that the truth was concealed from her, and that an invading army of Germans are either buried in the park or took sail again for Germany, finding Ireland useless to them.

"Bees!" she said haughtily to those whom she confided in, "the bees were a blind for other excesses."

*CHAPTER VI*

"Wasn't it all a great upset entirely, Miss Gheena," said Phil sympathetically. "Mary Kate isn't the bether of it yet, an' the Masther's lost eye blinks, an' all."

Gheena remarked gravely that she thought the defence of Ireland ought to be entrusted to Phil.

"Bein' full sure themselves was comin'," continued Phil ruefully, "an' the Missus alone in the Great House with that Professor that's up to no good. Sure I thought it was the great thought, an' when I heard the nise in the bushes, I wasn't full sure they was come on us, an' I right entirely to brin' the bees out."

Darby burst into sudden laughter, memory of those thronged moments reaching him.

"When Dearest went off backwards in the car, and she sat down," gulped Darby, "and the Professor danced out in the black tea-gown tied over his head."

"If ye had it dhrawn out on one of thim twiddly picthers, wouldn't it be the great sight?" said Phil. "But when they were afther sayin' the Germans was comin', was I right to believe them, Mister Darby? Wouldn't it be the price of them haythens to be picked be honest bees? But the Masther is that peevish about it," ruminated Phil, "an' at me noon and night. If he was one of us afther a fair or a dance, he wouldn't be thinkin' long of a closed eye."

Darby grinned again, and looked up to see Gheena cast off her coat and stand in close-fitting stockingette.

"It is much too cold for a bathe," he said paternally.

Gheena kicked off her shoes, and remarked that cold water was always warmer when it wasn't really warm, as she poised for a dive.

The sea poured in just there into a deep narrow pool, hedged over about twenty yards down by a narrow belt of rocks. Beyond that was another pool, a small one, and there the sea seemed to dive under a ledge, called the Bridge, where it gurgled and sucked and muttered restlessly, until it showed again in a basin of great depth, washed into at low tide by the waves and covered at high.

Gheena poised, balanced, disappeared. The water surged and parted, throwing up protesting sprays and rippled as she shot up. Then she was gone again out of sight.

"Always she does be doin' that same," said Phil, "undther the rock no less, like a merrymaid."

Darby ran to the Bridge. A shadow showed in the green depths swimming easily under water; next moment Gheena's merry face shot up.

"I call it my diving-bell." She trod water easily.

"It's hang dangerous going under like that; if there was a devil-fish down there."

"Or a shark," suggested Gheena, holding on to the seaweed-hung ledge.

"There does be cobblers, anyways," put in Phil, "an' I seen a lobsther out of that hole onst."

"I say I call it my diving-bell," Gheena laughed. "I can get out to the Basin now, Darby. That took me ages. I used to go half way and get frightened. And I'm waiting to find a way into the pool of Cons Cave; there must be a passage, and it's close to this."

"You go out to the Basin!" Darby stood on the rocks, his face white and drawn. He could hobble, he could ride, but if Gheena choked down there he could not dive in to help her. He was twisted, crippled, useless. She would drown before his eyes.

"I wish you wouldn't, Gheena. If you got cramp out here, if you hit the rocks..."

"It was girls at the Coliseum," said Gheena absently "they did things under water and I had to learn."

"There is Mister Stafford now," said Phil.

Stafford's face appeared above a ledge of rock; he clambered over and came towards the pool.

"You'll get to know these rocks," said Darby thoughtfully.

"All systems of drainage, even that of the tide, being interesting to me," Stafford laughed. "And, Miss Freyne, bathing in October!"

Gheena merely replying it was better than in November, climbed out and dived skilfully; she came up to take a big breath, disappearing again.

"She will rise outside now," said Phil, fingering the rope which Matilda Freyne insisted on being carried by him.

A minute, almost two, Darby scraped and shuffled along the rocks, his teeth set, Stafford slipping past him easily.

"Is it this pool, Phil?" Stafford peered down beyond the Bridge.

"It is," said Phil, gathering sea-grass placidly.

Something alive had vanished under that wall of rock, down into the sucking cold depths, something at the mercy of the sea; the men bent over, both tense from fear.

"Phil, for God's sake! Does she do it often? Phil, come here!"

"She does so, sir, too often. I am gatherin' say-grass for the Misthress, sir, and won't she be plazed if there isn't enough."

"Say-grass, you Phil?" The green water stirred. Cobbles scurried madly away. Gheena's face parted the water.

"Po-oh!" She drew a long breath. "Po-oh! I got on slowly to-day somehow." She ran back, swam up the long pool and hurried off to dress.

"That submarine business," said Darby gloomily, looking down into the still pool.

Stafford looked up sharply.

"I don't like it," said Darby. "The slightest accident in that hole under the rock and----"

His mouth twisted.

"She just takes her own way in everything," he went on. "Matilda will ask the angels' advice about her wings in Heaven; she never gave an order in her life, and Dearest George is so obsessed by his authority that the girl never takes any notice of him. She has no business to bathe at all in October, it's too cold; and what she meant by learning to hold her breath."

Basil Stafford jumped lightly over the narrow pool landing with a slight slip and stagger.

"It's ... a fine thing to have one's limbs," said Darby gently. "A very fine thing, Stafford, to be fit and able to move as a man should."

Stafford said nothing--it was the only thing to say. The unmarred side of Darby's face was turned towards him, lean, fine in its lines, with cleanly-cut features--the face of a man who had power to feel and to enjoy life.

"I'll be only one of many after this war," grunted Darby after a pause; "but, Lord, if I could have lost myself for my country, out there!"

Basil Stafford sighed uneasily, flushing a little.

"We are going to have five-o'clock tea out here at four," announced Gheena, appearing suddenly. "Mama has got callers--the Bradys from the Rectory, with a right-minded cousin, and the O'Haras from Crom Rectory,--and they are all going to knit." She flicked out her own knitting as she spoke. "So Phil is making a fire. He always lets it go out."

Phil was coughing patiently, his face hidden in a pungent reek of turf smoke.

"I am afther blowin' it up, Miss Gheena, till there isn't a puff in me two cheeks," he explained; "but someone was at our little cranny of turf, and this same is moist on us."

To boil a kettle with bunches of heather requires constant scurryings to and fro, outbreaks of fiery flame being varied by smouldering ashes. Mocking songs from the kettle, followed by glum silences which it refused to break.

Basil Stafford, his eyes full of tears, thought almost regretfully of the tea-party at Castle Freyne, and it was Darby at last who hauled a now stormily bubbling kettle from a roaring blaze, and was then heartily abused because he had forgotten to heat the tea-pot.

Immediately the tea was made the turf glowed to a fiery red and the smoke was no more.

Basil Stafford drank smoked strong tea in silence. His glasses lay beside him, and more than once he looked through them out at the silver-grey sea.

"Uncle Richard says they suspect bases here"--Gheena looked along the low cliffs--"for the submarines; people supplying them with petrol. No one would; they couldn't."

"Money," said Stafford, "tempts some people greatly. The Germans pay well, I am told," he added a little hurriedly.

"Tom Knox got his commission yesterday." Gheena waved her tea-cup. "He is all khaki and importance. How anyone who could go can stay!" She looked fierily at Stafford.

"Some people cannot help themselves," he said apologetically.

Gheena said icily that they could do something, drive a car, replace other men; then she stopped abruptly, seeing Darby's drawn face.

"The Professor," said Darby, "is making studies of rocks as usual. What amusement he can find hammering out little pieces of stones I cannot say."

"And he do be lookin' at thim half the night through," put in Phil. "Ye can see his shaddy if he pulls down the blind--he forgets most times--pokin' an' peepin', with big books in front of himself."

The Professor saw the group and waved a telegram.

"Your man was very busy, Stafford; he had forgotten some supplies, so I offered to bring this." He held it out, beaming softly.

Basil opened it, reading with slow ease. Then he looked round at the distant wireless station and grunted sharply.

"Of course," he said to himself. "It does make it..."

Gheena had snatched the wire, reading out a meaningless jumble of letters and short words.

"And the news?" she asked softly.

"Oh, the war news. Everything much as usual. Great hopes and little else," he answered coolly. "When they strew the papers with roses they seem to forget the thorns or the stems, Miss Freyne."

Having been haughtily told he was a pessimist, Basil Stafford read his wire again to himself.

"Mrs. Weston offered to do post-boy, too," said the Professor. "I met her, but I wouldn't allow it. She was at your house borrowing note-paper. Hers was out. She has gone to see Mrs. Freyne now."

Basil Stafford said "Oh!" very thoughtfully.

The party at Castle Freyne was gathered in an airless room when they got back, heated by a large fire of wood and turf, the blend of tea and conversation strong in the close atmosphere. The women were knitting and the men discussing the mistakes of the war, humbly listened to by their spouses. The Bradys' right-minded cousin--her name was O'Toole--stabbed wool which grated harshly on the needles, and occasionally commented shrewdly.

Gheena let a breath of soft fresh air into the room as she threw up a window, and the visitors shivered politely.

"Going to nurse, or motor drive, or release a man?" asked the right-minded cousin almost as she shook hands. "I'm on five committees in Dublin."

Gheena said meekly that she was waiting to act as interpreter when the South Coast was invaded, and Mr. O'Hara carefully explained that nearly all Teutons spoke English fluently, so that that idea was absurd.

Gheena snubbed, closed half the window, and sighed patiently.

"Are you joining?" said Miss O'Toole to Stafford.

Mr. Stafford eyed her rancorously, merely remarking that his time was occupied by business.

A fumble at Miss O'Toole's pocket revealed the probable presence of a box of white feathers.

"Dearest George thinks the Germans are making all kinds of mistakes," said Matilda Freyne placidly. "Losing such lots of men, you know, and making themselves so unpopular and digging so much. He thinks they will all get rheumatism and have to go to Harrogate."

Darby suggested Marienbad and Homburg slyly. He thought the German army invalided might congest Harrogate. Matilda looked at Dearest George, feeling uncertain until she consulted him. George Freyne got up and shut the window sharply. Then he remarked to Stafford that he was glad the wireless station was now properly guarded. Anyone might have reached it before.

"When I saw you over there yesterday, Stafford, I said to you----"

Gheena listened with such elaborate carelessness that it was impossible to avoid nothing what she was doing.

"And, by the way, how did you get in?" added George Freyne fussily.

"I had some business there. Hanly charged my battery for me, too. Yes, I knew the guard. I thought they'd put on men soon."

Mrs. Weston, knitting rapidly, began to talk about the hunting in rapturous tones. It was actually going to commence next day, and she hoped her bay horse would be as good as he looked, the darling.

"If he only gets as far as his looks go," said Darby absently.

Miss O'Toole was questioning Basil Stafford ruthlessly--as to his age, birthplace and nationality. These items she wrote down in a small note-book, where, she said pointedly, she kept a register of fit men. Then quite suddenly she asked a question in laboured German.

"Hanoverian or Platt?" asked Stafford amiably. "I should like to know which you'd understand best before I answer. When I was at Berlin I practised both."

Then the mocking look died out of his face, which reddened slowly.

Gheena escaped from the heat to the doorstep. It was one of those autumn nights which are as oppressive as June with none of its lightness. The air was murkily hot, and a fog was stealing into the hollows; through the grey haze one could hear the sea boom at the end of the park.

Everyone began to put up their knitting. The O'Haras' wagonette, poised haughtily high over a dejected grey cob, came round to the door, the weary beast walking with the bitter certainty of seven miles to go and a feed of hay at its end.

Miss O'Toole, trailing her ball of wool, came stealthily towards Gheena.

"I should ... watch him," she breathed fiercely. "Wireless here, and a coast for submarines, and--what is he doing?"

Gheena said "Drains" a little faintly.

Miss O'Toole compared drains to trenches with a sort of disdain.

"Young--strong--active. Blurts out he's been to Berlin and blushes over it. It's a place to watch," gulped Miss O'Toole dramatically.

Several exclamations, coupled with seven stumbles, heralded the approach of Basil Stafford, who had spun a cocoon of wool about his legs, and was cursing volubly in discreet undertone. His endeavour to get unwound involving him more securely still, he demanded tartly why Miss O'Toole played Fair Rosamund on the doorsteps; and, of course, if she could take it off in a second he would not cut the stuff, but----

Miss O'Toole, coursing round him agilely with dives and dashes at his gaiters, managed, as she loosed Stafford, to meet and involve the master of the house in the tangle.

Basil Stafford said "Silkworms," and advised George to stand quite still.

"Under, over. That's his bit. I never saw anyone dive so neatly on dry land."

A whistle sounded clearly on the cliffs, shrill and sweet. Basil suddenly used force, so that the wool fell from him in frayed pieces, and slipped to the door, followed by bitter reproaches from Miss O'Toole. In her opinion, at least two soldiers had been deprived of mittens.

It was unkind of Dearest George to say huffily that they were jolly lucky, for the drawing-room door opened to show him standing, wondering with the agile danger swoop round him, and winding feverishly. Gheena was outside.

The suspicious eyes of two blameless clergymen and their spouses fell heavily upon George Freyne, Mrs. Weston's cheerful voice wishing to know if it was a new game of "Now we go round the Mulberry Bush," or Kis...? and here her host's glance stopped her, and trying to help, she involved herself in the tangle.

"How you became so entangled," said Mrs. Brady icily, "in my niece's wool, Mr. Freyne?"

"It was Stafford," roared Dearest.

The eight suspicious eyes looked round for Mr. Stafford and four noses sniffed simultaneously.

"Break the stuff!" foamed Freyne. "Get me a knife! No, the other leg, not the right, the left."

"Take Dearest George's advice," counselled Matilda; "he is sure to know his own legs. There! you were wrong. Just lift that foot, George, and the other at the same time. And, dear me, George!" George's answer being curt.

"Not being a Zeppelin," said Darby thoughtfully. "Round his arm now, Miss O'Toole, and his neck. Put your arm round it, and you too, Mrs. Weston. It's the last strand."

Mrs. O'Hara, who had listened for quite an hour on the previous day to accounts of the perfections of Miss O'Toole from Dublin, now decided in awful tones that the pony could not stand for another moment, and said "Good-bye" heavily.

"I am not evil-minded," said the clergyman's wife, "but I thought better of Mr. Freyne, and that painted Mrs. Weston."

"Even if the girl were pretty!" said her husband. "Go on, James, home. One could understand." Here he coughed hoarsely.

Gheena, who had run down from the sea, came back slowly; through the still mist she could hear voices on the water--men rowing back to the little village on the point.

Crabbit barked suspiciously at something unseen on land, ran it to earth, and came back with Basil Stafford.

"What did you think? Who whistled to you?" said Gheena abruptly.

"War makes the world jumpy," he said coolly. "Might have been an advance patrol of Boches, y'know, coming up to supper."

The day of the first meet of the scratch pack dawned in a grey mist, with the sea whimpering under a shroud of white. At seven, when everyone in Darby's yard was busy polishing and hissing, the mist cleared to a clammy greyness, hot and still. Little Andy, extremely resembling an active mosquito leaping from place to place, regretting as he reached each, that he was not at the other.

He tore to the kennels, advising old Barty, calling on Beauty lovingly, prophesying that she would folly none but himself. Telling Grandjer not to be frettin' for his tail, because the front of him would soon show them what he was; pouring out tales of Daisy and Greatness and their prowess.

Barty, his new leathers covered by overalls, observed bitterly that to be goin' out with such a pack was like what a man'd dhrame of afther he atin' too much.

"Like a dhrame when ye'd be at a hunt an' all off, an' the horse undher ye sthandin' sthock sthill," he ruminated sourly, "an' hounds leggin' it over the besht of ye're counthry, or maybe a check an' ye knowin' the line, an' the horn ye'd put to ye're mouth is a concertina, an' two strange masthers out laffin' at ye. Save us! I am terrible for dhramin'. Andy McInerny, terrible! The least taste extry at night and I'll be at it. One was the worst of all, that there was a great lawn meet at Dom Dhurres, an' I with the grey horse outside waitin', an the crowd an' all, an' not a ridin' trouser or a boot on me, and no way to git thim. Sometimes I'd see the sphur tacked to me bare heel, an' the shame of it'd be through me; but I never axed even for a horse's hood."

"When I dhrames I dhrames plisint," remarked Andy simply. "I med believe onst I had Mr. Freyne's best horse whipt off, an' he himself dead in a ditch, cosy and quiet an away I bolted, an' Miss Gheena watchin'."

"Plisint!" said Darby softly. He had come up behind the two.

"An' off I whipt before hounds an' all, till Misther Freyne run up, shouting and leppin', but I travelled on. Ye're not goin' to send them out empty, Misther Barty, are ye, the craythers?"

"In the name of God, youngster, would ye feed hounds on huntin' day, ye omadawn?"