"You'll let me help?" said Bobby.
"Of course I'll let you help. And so it was Susie Gallagher brought the news?"
"Yes," said Miss Grimshaw, "I told old Mrs. Moriarty—you remember that day you took me to see her?—well, I told her to let me know if she heard of any mischief. I guess she kept her ears open, for I gave her a shilling, and promised her five if she got any information. You'll have to pay that."
French chuckled.
"Ever since you've entered the house," said he, "you've been putting things straight, and saving us all from ourselves. Look here, now," said Mr. French, resting his elbow on the table and checking off the items with the index finger of his right hand on the fingers of his left. "You've helped to fix the bailiff. That's Number 1."
Mr. Dashwood applauded, and Mr. French continued.
"You put old Kate Moriarty on the scent of these scoundrels. That's Number 2. You put Effie on her legs, and you've freed the house of Dick Giveen. That's Number 3. And you put into my head what to do about Garryowen. That's Number 4."
"And now," said Miss Grimshaw, "I'm going to bed, and to leave you two to your pipes. And that's Number 5. I suppose you will sit up to catch this person?"
"We will," said French.
Miss Grimshaw's room was situated at the back of the house, overlooking the kitchen garden. Any sound from the stable-yard would reach it, and she determined to lie awake and listen. Moriarty's description of the expected desperado, "over six fut and as black as a flue-brush," seemed to promise developments. Like most women, she had a horror of fighting, and, like most women, fighting had a fascination for her. She had no fear of the result. Mr. French, Mr. Dashwood, Moriarty, and the stable helper, not to mention Andy, formed a combination bad to beat, even against a dozen Black Larrys.
All the same, there was a certain heart-catching excitement about the business not altogether unpleasurable, and never did the silence of the great old house seem more freighted with the voices of the past, never did the ticking of the huge old clock on the landing outside seem more pronounced than just now as, lying in bed with a candle burning on the table by her side and "Tartarin of Tarascon" open in her hand, she listened.
The bed she was lying in was the bed that once had supported Dan O'Connell's portly person. The tent-like curtains had been removed, so that one could breathe in it, but the pillars remained, and the headpiece and the carvings. It was less a bed than a coign of history, and more conducive to thought than sleep.
From this bed and its suggestions, from Drumgool, from Ireland, the delightful Tartarin led Miss Grimshaw to the land of plane-trees and blue sky. Mock heroics are the finest antidote for tragic thoughts, and they fitted the situation now, had she known it, to a charm.
Now she was at Tarascon. Tartarin, leaving his house in the moonlight, armed to the teeth against imaginary foes, led her down the white road, past the little gardens, odorous as bouquets, to the house of Mme. Bézuguet, whence issued the voices of Costecalde, the gunmaker, and the tinkling of the Nimes piano.
Now she was seated beside him, and his guns and implements of the chase, in the old dusty African stage coach, bound for Blidah, listening to the old coach's complaining voice.
"Ah! my good Monsieur Tartarin, I did not come out here of my own free will, I assure you. Once the railway to Beaucaire was finished, I was of no more use there, and they packed me off to Africa."
Miss Grimshaw paused in her reading. Was that a shout from the night outside? The clock on the landing, gathering itself up for the business of striking with a deep humming sound, began to strike. It struck twelve, and at the last leisurely and sledge-hammer stroke resumed its monotonous ticking. The faint boom of the sea filled the night, but all else was silence, and the old stage-coach continued her complaint.
"And now I have to sleep in the open air, in the courtyard of a caravanserai, exposed to all the winds of heaven. At night jackals and hyenas come sniffinground my boxes, and tramps, who fear the evening dew, seek refuge in my compartments. Such is the life I lead, my worthy friend, and I suppose it will continue till the day when, blistered by the sun and rotted by the damp, I shall fall to pieces, a useless heap, on some bit of road, when the Arabs will make use of the remains of my old carcase to boil their kousskouss."
"Blidah! Blidah!" shouted the conductor as he opened the door.
* * * * *
Miss Grimshaw awoke. The candle had burnt itself out, and a ray of early morning sunlight was peeping in through the blinds.
She could still hear the clank of the old stage-coach—or was it imagination? She rubbed her eyes.
Yes, there it came again. The window was half open, and the sound came from the kitchen garden below—a metallic sound that had broken through her sleep, filling her dreams with pictures of the Blidah coach and the illustrious Tartarin, with his guns, hunting-knives, and powder-horns.
She sprang out of bed, went to the window, pulled aside the curtains, and looked out.
In the kitchen garden down below she saw an object that had once been a man—more desperate even than the immortal Tartarin. The once-man was on all-fours; he could not get on his feet because his ankles were hobbled together with a piece of rope. He could not untie the rope because on each of his hands was firmly tied a boxing-glove. Try to untie a knot with your hands encased in boxing-gloves, if you wish torealise nightmare helplessness in its acutest form. A tin stable bucket was tied down over the head of the figure, and, as a last artistic touch one of old Ryan's cow's tails was tied to a band round the waist and hung down behind.
The creature was trying to get out of the kitchen garden. Miss Grimshaw could not help thinking of the blind and hopeless antics of an insect imprisoned under a wine-glass as she watched. The garden, strongly railed in, formed a sort of pound hopelessly ungetoutable.
The whole thing seemed so like a joke that the girl at the window for a moment did not connect it with the obvious. Opening the window more, she leaned further out.
"Hi!" cried Miss Grimshaw. "What are you doing there?"
The thing rose up on its knees, the boxing-gloves, like great paws, seized the bucket on either side, in a frantic endeavour to wrench it off, failed, and then from the bucket broke a volume of language that caused the listener to draw hastily in and shut the window.
She guessed.
At this moment eight o'clock struck from the landing, and Norah knocked at the door with hot water.
For a moment she thought of asking the servant the meaning of it all. Then she decided not.
Half an hour later she entered the dining-room, where breakfast was laid. Mr. French and Mr. Dashwood were already there, both spick and span andlooking like people who had enjoyed an undisturbed night's rest. But there was a jubilant look in Mr. Dashwood's face and a twinkle in Mr. French's eye such as seldom appears on the face or in the eye of man before breakfast.
During the meal the conversation turned upon indifferent matters. Mr. Dashwood had several attacks of choking, but Mr. French seemed quite unmoved.
When the meal was over, and cigarettes were lit, Mr. French, who had been scanning through his letters, stretched out his hand to the bell-pull which was close to him.
"Norah," said Mr. French when that damsel appeared, "go down to the stable and send up Moriarty."
He lit a cigarette, and Miss Grimshaw, who had been preparing to leave the room, waited.
A few minutes passed; then came a knock at the door, and Moriarty, cap in hand, stood before his master.
"Moriarty," said Mr. French, "there's a pig got into the kitchen garden."
"A pig, sorr!"
"Yes, it's escaped down here from Cloyne. At least I'm going to send it back to Cloyne. Get the cart."
"Yes, sorr."
"And a pig-net. Get it into the cart with the net over it and take it to Cloyne. I don't know who it belongs to, so just dump it in the market-place. This is market-day, so there'll be some one to claim it, or it will find its way home."
"Yes, sorr."
"And, see here, bring the cart round to the door before you start."
"Yes, sorr."
Moriarty departed.
"Now," said Mr. French, "let's talk business. Miss Grimshaw, we're leaving Ireland to-morrow—you and I and Effie and Garryowen, the servants, and all. I've got a place——"
"To train Garryowen?"
"Yes, and here's the man that's got me it. It's in Sussex, down at a place called Crowsnest. There are too many pigs in Ireland, poking their noses into my affairs, to do any good with the business here."
"Good!" said Miss Grimshaw, with a rising colour. To escape from the rain, and the awful loneliness of Drumgool had been the chief desire of her heart for days past. She knew Sussex, and loved the country, and a great feeling of gratitude towards Mr. Dashwood, the provider of this means of escape, welled up in her heart.
"So," said Mr. French, "we'll find our work cut out to pack and all before eleven o'clock to-morrow morning. I'm sending Andy and the horses on by this night's train to Dublin; he'll put up with them at Bourke's livery stables. I'm leaving only Buck Slane and Doolan behind to look after the house. Janes, my agent, will pay them their wages. I'm not even telling Janes where I'm going. I want to make a clean sweep. I'm safe till the debt to Lewis becomes due. If that beast of a Giveen knew my address he'd put Lewis' man on to me the minute he came here claiming themoney. I must cut myself off as completely from the place as if I were dead."
"Well, there's one thing," said the girl. "If you can get away from here without any one knowing where you are going to, they'll never dream of looking for you in Sussex. I shouldn't think they know the name of the place here. But can you?"
"How do you mean?"
"Well, you must take tickets at the station here. You must take tickets to Dublin, first of all. Well, that's a clue to where you are going."
"I've thought of that," said Mr. French, with a chuckle. "I'm going to take our tickets to Tullagh; that's half way. The express stops at Tullagh, and I'll hop out of the train there and book on to Dublin. Mr. Dashwood here is going on with the horses to-night, and then on to Crowsnest to have the house ready. Faith, I never can thank him for what he's done or what he's going to do."
"Bless my soul!" said Dashwood, "I don't want thanks. It's the greatest lark I ever came across. I wouldn't have lost last night for a thousand pounds. I mean, you know, it's tremendous fun; beats a comic opera to fits."
"Please, sir," came Norah's voice at the door, "the cart's round and waiting."
Mr. French rose to his feet and led the way from the room, followed by the others.
At the hall door steps a manure cart was drawn up. In the cart was something covered with a pig-net. Doolan, whip in hand, was standing at the horse's head.
"Let up!" came a voice from the cart. "What are yiz doin' wid me? Where am I, at all, at all? Oh, but I'll pay yiz out for this! I'll have the laa on yiz—and—and—yer sowls!"
"Shut your ears," said Mr. French to the girl; then he took Doolan's whip, and with the butt of it prodded the thing in the cart. What seemed a great tin snout resented this treatment. Then the cart moved off, Doolan at the horse's head, and disappeared down the drive.
"Did you see what was in the cart?" asked Mr. French when Miss Grimshaw uncovered her ears.
"Yes," she replied, "and I saw it in the garden this morning, and I spoke to it, and asked it what it was doing, and—well, I don't wonder at your wanting to leave Ireland."
"Not while there's things like that in it," said the master of Drumgool, following Doolan and his charge with his eyes till they disappeared from sight. "And now, let's get to work."
The sunlight of the early morning had vanished, and almost as the cart and its contents turned from the avenue drive into the road the rain began to come down again in great sheets—thunderous pourings, as if to make up for lost time. But it was a merry rain, at least in the ears of the girl. "You're going, you're going!" The rain beat a tattoo to the words on the zinc roof of outhouse and window-pane. "To-morrow," slobbered the overflowing water-butts, and "Sussex" hissed the schoolroom fire, as the raindrops down the chimney hit the burning coals.
No one but a woman knows the things to be done in a sudden disruption of a household like this. "Everything must be covered up, and everything must be turned over," is a broad axiom that only just covers the situation when a house is to be left uninhabited for a number of months. That is to say, carpets must be taken up, beaten, and folded, pictures and looking-glasses taken down, covered in brown paper, and placed on the floor. A sort of spring cleaning, petrified half-way through and left in a state of suspension, is the ideal aimed at by the careful housewife.
Miss Grimshaw never had possessed a house of her own, but she was descended from long generations of careful housewives, and she had an instinct for what ought to be done. But she had also a clear brain that recognised the impossible when it came before her. To put Drumgool in order in twelve working hours, and with a handful of disorganised domestics, was impossible, and she recognised the fact.
So the carpets were to be left unbeaten, the pictures still hanging. Doolan had orders to light fires in the rooms every week, and to be sure to take care not to burn the house down.
At four o'clock, in a burst of sunset which lit up the heaving Atlantic, the rain-stricken land, and the great hills unveiled for a moment of clouds, Mr. Dashwood departed for the station. Andy and the horses had left at three.
"I'll have the bungalow jolly and comfortable for you," said Mr. Dashwood. "You'll be there day after to-morrow evening, if you stay in London for a fewhours' rest. Send me a wire when you reach Euston. Well, good luck!"
"Good luck!" said Mr. French.
"Good-bye!" said the girl.
They watched the car driving down the avenue, the wheel-spokes flashing in the sunlight. Then they turned back into the house.
"To-morrow!" thought Miss Grimshaw, as she lay in bed that night listening to the rain that had resumed business and the ticking of the clock in the corridor making answer to the rain. "Oh, to-morrow!"
Then she fell to thinking. What was the matter with the two men? When she and they were gathered together they were as jolly as possible, but the instant she found herself alone with one of them, that one wilted—at least, became subdued, lost his sprightliness and gaiety. More than that, each, when alone with her, became, if the subject turned that way, the trumpeter of the other's praises. Yet when they were all together they would try as much as they could to outshine each other, Mr. French setting up his wit against Mr. Dashwood, Mr. Dashwood retaliating. Just as two male birds before a hen strut and spread their tails, so these two gentlemen would show off their mental feathers when together. Parted they drooped.
A bell-man could not have told her the fact that they had lost their hearts more plainly than intuition stated the fact when, all three together at afternoon tea, just before Mr. Dashwood's departure for the station, that young gentleman with a plate of toast in his hand, haddallied attendance upon her, while Mr. French had urged the dubious charm of crumpets. Yet, behold! on the departure of the younger man the elder had presumably found his heart again, and at supper had become almost tiresome in his almost fulsome praise of Dashwood.
It was horribly perplexing.
A woman's intuitive knowledge teaches her how to act in every situation love can place her in, from the first glance to the last embrace; her male and female ancestors whisper to her what to do down the long whispering gallery of the past. They whispered nothing now. Miss Grimshaw had relatives long dead, who, fur-covered, tailed, and living in trees, had dropped cocoanuts on the heads of rivals; these gentlemen and ladies could give her no advice. Cave-dwelling ancestors, whose propositions were urged with stone clubs, were equally dumb. Even her more near and cultivated forebears had nothing to say.
It was an entirely new situation in love. Two men "playing the game," and determined to take no mean advantage one of the other—even Love himself found the situation strange, and had no suggestions to offer.
The next morning was dull, but fine. The sky had lifted, thinned, and become mackerelled. Between the ribs of cloud a faint, bluish tinge here and there told of the blue above. The mountains sat calm and grey upon the horizon. They had drawn a great way off as if to make way for the coming sunshine. Fine weather was at hand.
In the hall of Drumgool the luggage was piled,waiting for Doolan and the wagonette. The servants and the luggage were to go in the wagonette, and so carefully had Mr. French thought out the problem before him that he had hired the horses and the wagonette the day before, not from Cloyne, but from Inchkilin, a small town twelve miles south of Drumgool. The Dancing Mistress and the outside car were to be sold off by his agent, and the money held till his return.
The train started at eleven. At eight o'clock the wagonette and its contents drove away from the house, and at ten minutes to nine the car, with Mr. French, Miss Grimshaw, and Effie followed. Doolan was driving, and just as they were turning out of the avenue the whole east side of Drumgool House lit up to a burst of sunshine from over the hills.
It seemed a lucky omen. That and the lovely winter's morning through which they were driving put the party in good spirits, and Doolan's deafness allowed them to talk as freely as they liked about their affairs.
"I hope Dick Giveen hasn't seen the wagonette," said French. "If he has, he'll be following to the station to find out what's up. If he sees us, it won't so much matter, for he'll think, maybe, we are only going for a drive, but the servants and the luggage would give the whole show away."
"Has he any sort of trap to follow us in?" asked Miss Grimshaw.
"He has an old shandrydan of a basket pony-carriage. Maybe he's not up yet, for he's not an early riser. Anyhow, we'll see when we pass the bungalow."
They were drawing near Drumboyne now; the bungalow inhabited by Mr. Giveen lay at the other end of the tiny village. It was a green-painted affair, with an outhouse for the pony and trap; a green-painted palisading, about five feet high, surrounded house and garden, and as the car passed through the village and approached the danger zone, Miss Grimshaw felt a not unpleasant constriction about the heart. Effie seemed to feel it, too, for she clasped "Mrs. Brown's 'Oliday Outin's," which she had brought to read in the train, closer under her arm, and clasped Miss Grimshaw's hand.
There was no sign of the ogre, however, in the front garden, and the girl heaved a sigh of relief, till French, who had stood half up to get a better view of the premises, suddenly sat down again, with a look of alarm on his face, and cried to Doolan to whip up.
"What is it?" asked Miss Grimshaw.
"The blackguard's putting the old pony to," said Mr. French. "I caught a glimpse of him in the back yard. He's got wind of our going, and he's after us. Whip up, Doolan."
"There's not much use whipping up," said Miss Grimshaw, "for the train won't go till eleven. The question now is, Can his old pony get him to the station by eleven?"
"If it does," cried French, now in a towering passion, "I'll—I'll—b'Heaven, I'll shoot him!"
"You haven't anything to shoot him with. Let's think of what's best to be done."
"Doolan!" shouted French into the hairy ear of the driver, "do you know Mr. Giveen's old pony?"
"Do I know Misther Giveen's ould pony?" creaked Doolan. "Sure, who'd know her better? Do I know Misther Giveen's ould pony? Sure, I knew her mother before she was born. An ould skewbal', she was, till Micky Meehan battered her to death dhrivin' roun' the counthryside, wid that ould cart he got from Buck Sheelan of the inn, before he died of the dhrink, and dhrunk he was when he sould it."
"Bother Buck Sheelan! Can the old pony get Mr. Giveen to the station by eleven?"
"D'you mane, can it get him from his house to the station, sorr?"
"Yes."
"Well, sorr, it all dipinds. She's a rockit to go if she's in the mind for it; but if she's set aginst goin', you may lather the lights out of her, and she'll only land you in the ditch. But if she's aisy in her mind and agrayable, faith! I wouldn't wonder if she could, for that ould clothesbasket of Misther Giveen's doesn't weigh more'n a feather."
"Curse him and his clothesbasket!" cried French. "Whip up!"
To be opposed by a villain is not nearly so vexing as to be thwarted by a fool, and the vision of Dick Giveen in his basket carriage, soft, malevolent and pursuing, filled French with such a depth of rage that had he possessed a gun his better nature would certainly have made him fling his ammunition away overthe nearest hedge so as to be out of the way of temptation.
"Look!" said Miss Grimshaw, "isn't that smoke away over there—Cloyne! We'll soon be there now, and there is no use in worrying. If he does follow us, we'll manage to give him the slip at Tullagh."
"That'll mean the whole lot of us, servants and all, will have to get out at Tullagh, and lose the train and stay the night; and then we're not sure of escaping him. He'll stick to us like a burr. You don't know Dick Giveen. Who the divil ever invented relations?"
Miss Grimshaw could not answer Mr. French's question as to who invented relations which many a man has, no doubt, asked, and no more was said till the long, dreary street of Cloyne, destitute of life and colour, lay before them.
It was fifteen minutes to eleven when they reached the station. The train was drawn up at the platform. Mrs. Driscoll and Norah had taken their seats in a third-class carriage, and Moriarty was seeing the luggage stowed in the van.
French took the tickets, chose a first-class compartment, and the hand-bags and wraps having been stowed in it, they walked up and down the platform, waiting and watching.
There was one point in their favour. Mr. Giveen's meanness amounted with this gentleman almost to a monomania. He would do incredible things to save a half-penny. Would he incur the expense of pursuit? Cannibalism among the passions is a law in the mental world. One vice often devours another vice, if theother vice stands between the devourer and its objective. Were the jaws of Mr. Giveen's spite wide enough to engulf his meanness? This was a question that Mr. French was debating vaguely in his mind as he paced the platform with Miss Grimshaw and Effie.
A regiment of live Christmas turkeys were being entrained, not in silence; the engine was blowing off steam; the rattle of barrows, the clank of milk-cans—all these noises made it impossible to hear the approach of wheels on the station road.
"I believe we'll do it," said Mr. French, looking at his watch, which pointed to five minutes to the hour. "Anyhow, we'll be off in five minutes, and I'll break the beast's head at Tullagh if he does follow us."
He walked down the train to the third-class carriage where the servants were, and at the door of which Moriarty was colloguing with Norah.
He told Moriarty in a few words of the pursuit, and then returned to his own compartment.
"Take your sates, take your sates for Tullagh, Kildare, and Dublin!"
The van door was shut on the turkeys, the last of the luggage was in the train, the last door was banged to, and the train was just beginning to move, when out of the ticket-office entrance rushed Mr. Giveen with a ticket in his hand. He had asked the ticket-collector where Mr. French had booked to, and, being told Tullagh, had done likewise.
He had just time to reach the nearest carriage and jump in when Moriarty, who had been observing everything, interposed.
"Mr. Giveen, sorr," cried Moriarty, protruding his head and shoulders from the window of the third-class carriage, which was now in motion. "Mr. Giveen, sorr, here's the shillin' I owe you."
A shilling fell on the platform at Mr. Giveen's feet. He stooped to grab it as it rolled in a leisurely manner towards the booking-office door, missed it, pursued it, and was lost.
At least he lost the train.
Moriarty's profound knowledge of the psychology of the horse often stood him in good stead when dealing with higher animals—or lower.
Crowsnest lies upon a hill. It consists of a post-office, a tiny butcher's shop, a greengrocer's, an Italian warehouse, and a church. The London road climbs the hill, passes through the village, descends the hill, and vanishes from sight. Trees swallow it up. Century-old elms cavern it over. When the great-grandfathers of these elms were young the Roman road leading over the hill to the sea was old. As it was then, so is it now, and so will it be when these elms are coffin-boards, enclosing the bones of vanished and long-forgotten people.
At the foot of the hill passes a nameless river, which the Roman road crosses by a bridge whose stones are as old as the road itself. On a summer's afternoon, leaning one's elbow comfortably on the moss-grown balustrade of this bridge, the river and the road hold one's mind between them; the river leaping amid the weed-green stones, here in the cave-like twilight of the foliage, here diamond bright where the sun dazzle strikes through the leaves; the road steadfast and silent, with a silence which the motor-horn cannot break—a silence that has been growing and feeding upon life since the time of Tiberius.
The place is tremulous and vibrating with life; the wagtail by the water, the water itself, the leavesdancing to the breeze, and the birds amid the leaves: the lost butterfly, the gauze-blue dragonfly, the midges in their interminable dance, all keep up an accompaniment to the flute-like tune of the river. Then, as one muses, the thousand snippets of beauty and life, gay and free and ephemeral, that make up the beauty of a summer's afternoon, suddenly, as if touched by a magic wand, lose their ephemeral nature and become their immortal selves.
"They were old when I was young. The wind blew their songs in the faces of the legionaries; before the phalanx flew the butterfly, and the water wagtails before the glittering eagles."
Thus speaks the road in answer to the river, making the charm of this place—a charm felt even by the teamsters of a summer's afternoon as they halt their horses for a rest.
On either side of the road, down here, stretch woods; mellow-hearted English woods, nut copses, beech glades, willow brakes; the home of the squirrel and the pheasant and the wood-dove. The cork-screw note of the cock pheasant answers the poetical lamentation of the dove; that caressing sound, soothing, sleep-drugged, and fatuous.
In spring the children of Crowsnest come here for the wood violets burning blue amid the brown last autumn leaves; the glades are purple with the wild hyacinths, and the voice of the cuckoo here is a thing never to be forgotten. In autumn the children come for nuts. No poem of tone or word conceived by man can approach the poetry of these glades; no picture theirsimple beauty; they are the home of Oberon and Titania, and they are rented by Colonel Bingham.
The Colonel lives, or lived at the time of this story, at the Hall, which is the chief house of the neighbourhood—a neighbourhood parcelled up into small country seats. Three acres and a house would about constitute one of these seats, and they stretch right round the hill of Crowsnest, invading even the rise of the Downs.
The bungalow is situated on the Downs; a good road of fairly easy ascent leads up to it, and looking from the verandah of the bungalow you can see, below, the roofs of all the country seats, the walls forming their frontiers, and, with a good glass, the seat-holders promenading in their gardens.
From here the Roman road looks like a white cotton ribbon; the woods and gardens, the tennis lawns no bigger than billiard-tables, the red-tiled houses no larger than rabbit hutches, form a pretty enough picture to smoke a cigarette and ponder over on a warm afternoon. The people down there seem playing at life, and finding the game pleasant enough, to judge from their surroundings. They look very small even when viewed with the aid of a lens.
Raising your eyes suddenly from those toy houses, those trim and tiny lawns, those gardens threaded with the scarlet of geraniums, you see Sussex in one great sweep of country, just as by the river you saw the past in the monolithic Roman road. Woods upon woods, domes and vales of foliage, and, to the south, the continuation of the Downs on which you are standing.
Emmanuel Ibbetson had built the bungalow and stables in a moment of enthusiasm about racing. It was certainly an ideal spot for training. Just here the Downs are level as heart of man could wish. A great sweep of turf, a tableland where nothing moves but the grazing sheep and the shadow of the bird and cloud, extends from the stables due south, ending in an outcrop of chalk and a rise leading to the higher Downs and the sea. The higher Downs shelter it in winter from the wind.
There was stabling for half a dozen horses; everything about the place was of the best, from the tiles to the roof, from the patent manger to the patent latch of the doors. There was a patent arrangement with a prong for conducting the hay from the loft above to the manger below. This nearly stabbed Garryowen in his suddenly upflung nose, and Moriarty, who had a contempt for everything patent, including medicine, broke it—but this in parenthesis.
The bungalow, where the human beings were stabled, was a much less elaborate affair in its way. Built for a bachelor and his friends, it just held the Frenches, leaving a spare room over for Mr. Dashwood.
This is a vague sketch of the buildings and premises called The Martens—Heaven knows why—and situated like a marten-box on the eminence above Crowsnest, that highly respectable residential neighbourhood where residents knew nothing yet of the fact that the place had been let—or, rather, borrowed—and nothing yet of the nature of the borrower.
"My dear," wrote Miss Grimshaw in another letter to that lady friend, "here we are at last. We arrived the day before yesterday evening, horses and all, including the servants. I once heard an old lady in the States giving good advice to a young woman just married. One sentence clung to me, and will, I think, by its truth, cling to me for ever. 'Never move servants.'"We took with us from Ireland Mrs. Driscoll, the cook, and Norah, the parlour-maid, besides the menservants. I am not referring to the men when I repeat that axiom, 'Never move servants,' but to the womenfolk."We had not started from Holyhead when Mrs. Driscoll broke down. She weighs fourteen stone, and does everything in a large way. She broke down from homesickness. She had travelled well up to that. The crossing had been smooth, and she had not made a single complaint, fighting bravely, I suppose, all the time, against the growing nostalgia. Then on the platform at Holyhead, before the waiting Irish mail, it all came out at once. It sounds absurd, but really the thing was tragic. Real grief is always tragic, even the grief of a child over a broken toy, and this was real grief, and it taught me more in five minutes about Ireland and why the Irish in America hate England thanI learned from all my months spent in the country itself."It did not seem grief for a lost country so much as for a lost father or mother, and, mind you, she was with people she knew, and she was only being 'expatriated' for a few months. What must they have suffered in the old days, those people driven from their homes and holdings to a country three thousand miles away, never to come back?"
"My dear," wrote Miss Grimshaw in another letter to that lady friend, "here we are at last. We arrived the day before yesterday evening, horses and all, including the servants. I once heard an old lady in the States giving good advice to a young woman just married. One sentence clung to me, and will, I think, by its truth, cling to me for ever. 'Never move servants.'
"We took with us from Ireland Mrs. Driscoll, the cook, and Norah, the parlour-maid, besides the menservants. I am not referring to the men when I repeat that axiom, 'Never move servants,' but to the womenfolk.
"We had not started from Holyhead when Mrs. Driscoll broke down. She weighs fourteen stone, and does everything in a large way. She broke down from homesickness. She had travelled well up to that. The crossing had been smooth, and she had not made a single complaint, fighting bravely, I suppose, all the time, against the growing nostalgia. Then on the platform at Holyhead, before the waiting Irish mail, it all came out at once. It sounds absurd, but really the thing was tragic. Real grief is always tragic, even the grief of a child over a broken toy, and this was real grief, and it taught me more in five minutes about Ireland and why the Irish in America hate England thanI learned from all my months spent in the country itself.
"It did not seem grief for a lost country so much as for a lost father or mother, and, mind you, she was with people she knew, and she was only being 'expatriated' for a few months. What must they have suffered in the old days, those people driven from their homes and holdings to a country three thousand miles away, never to come back?"
Miss Grimshaw, in her letter, continued:
"Mr. French got Mrs. Driscoll brandy from the refreshment-room, and we took her in the first-class carriage with us, but all her cry was to go back, and what lent a grim humour to the situation was the fact that none of us can go back to Ireland from this expedition into England till a certain something has been accomplished."There seems something mysterious and sinister in that statement, but there is really nothing sinister in the situation. Only a horse. However, to return to the servants. Mrs. D. has recovered somewhat, but Norah, the parlour-maid, has now broken down. She is a pretty girl with black hair, grey eyes, and beautiful teeth, and she is sitting at the moment in the kitchen, with her apron over her head, 'eating her heart out,' to use Mrs. Driscoll's expression. The curious thing is that both these women have no relations of any account to tie them to Ireland. It's just Ireland itself they want—and it seems to me they won't be happy till they get it."The woman from Crowsnest, whom Mr. Dashwoodgot to tidy the place up and light the fires and have supper for us the evening we came, has left. She did not get on with the others; and now this place is all Irish with the exception of me—a bit of the west coast planted above a most staid and respectable English village. I wonder what the result will be as far as intercommunication goes?"No one has called yet; but, of course, it is too soon. But I hope they will stay away. I have several reasons.—Yours ever,Violet."
"Mr. French got Mrs. Driscoll brandy from the refreshment-room, and we took her in the first-class carriage with us, but all her cry was to go back, and what lent a grim humour to the situation was the fact that none of us can go back to Ireland from this expedition into England till a certain something has been accomplished.
"There seems something mysterious and sinister in that statement, but there is really nothing sinister in the situation. Only a horse. However, to return to the servants. Mrs. D. has recovered somewhat, but Norah, the parlour-maid, has now broken down. She is a pretty girl with black hair, grey eyes, and beautiful teeth, and she is sitting at the moment in the kitchen, with her apron over her head, 'eating her heart out,' to use Mrs. Driscoll's expression. The curious thing is that both these women have no relations of any account to tie them to Ireland. It's just Ireland itself they want—and it seems to me they won't be happy till they get it.
"The woman from Crowsnest, whom Mr. Dashwoodgot to tidy the place up and light the fires and have supper for us the evening we came, has left. She did not get on with the others; and now this place is all Irish with the exception of me—a bit of the west coast planted above a most staid and respectable English village. I wonder what the result will be as far as intercommunication goes?
"No one has called yet; but, of course, it is too soon. But I hope they will stay away. I have several reasons.—Yours ever,Violet."
Miss Grimshaw had several very good reasons to make her desire seclusion for herself and the family which she had taken under her wing. I say "taken under her wing" advisedly, for since the day of her arrival at Drumgool she had been steadily extending the protection of her practical nature and common sense to her protégés.
In a hundred ways too small for mention in a romance of this description she had interfered in domestic matters. Mrs. Driscoll, for instance, no longer boiled clothes in the soup kettle, prodding them at intervals with the pastry roller, and Norah no longer swept the carpets under the sofas, lit the fires with letters left on the mantel-piece, or emptied pails out of the windows; and these sanitary reforms had been compassed with no loss of goodwill on the part of the reformed towards the reformer.
She had emancipated Effie from her bondage to an imaginary disease, and she had pointed out to French the way he should go, and the methods he should usein carrying out his assault on what, to a lower order of mind than Miss Grimshaw's, would have seemed the impossible.
Common sense of the highest order sometimes allies itself to what common sense of a lower order would deem lunacy. When this alliance takes place, sometimes great and world-shaking events occur.
French had conceived the splendid idea of winning a great English race with an unknown horse in the face of debts, enemies and training disabilities. Miss Grimshaw had, with misgivings enough, brought him the aid of her practical nature. The first move in the game had been made; the knight's gambit had been played; Garryowen had been hopped over three squares and landed in Sussex; nothing threatened him for the moment, and Miss Grimshaw's mind, turned from the big pieces, was now occupied with pawns.
Norah was a pawn. She had a grand-aunt living in Cloyne, and should she forsake The Martens and return, driven by home-sickness, to the roof of her grand-aunt, the game might very easily be lost. Mr. Giveen, who had inklings of French's debt, would discover, by hook or by crook, the Sussex address, and when Lewis' man arrived to find Drumgool empty, the information he would receive from Giveen would be fatal as a loaded gun in the hands of an unerring marksman. Mrs. Driscoll was another pawn in a dangerous position; but the small pieces most engaging the attention of our chess-player at the moment were literally small pieces—half-crowns and shillings.
She had carefully worked out the money problem with Mr. French, and, allowing for everything, and fifty pounds over, to take them back to Ireland, in case of disaster, there was barely three pounds a week left to bring them up to the second week of April.
"Oh, bother the money!" French would say. "It's not the money I'm thinking of."
"Yes, but it's what I'm thinking of. We must be economical. We should have travelled here third-class, not first. You sent that order to Mr. Dashwood's wine merchant for all that champagne and stuff."
"I did, I know, but that won't have to be paid for a year."
"Well, it will have to be paid some time. However, I don't mind that so much. What is frightening me is the small amount of actual money in hand. We have four months before us, and only a little over sixty pounds for that four months. Now, I want to propose something."
"Yes?"
"It's this. Why not give me that sixty pounds to keep and pay the expenses out of? If you keep it, it will be gone in a month."
Mr. French scratched his head. Then he laughed.
"Faith, perhaps you're right," said he.
"I know I am right. It is only by saving and scraping that we will tide over these four months. Now you have that money in the bank. We calculated that it will just cover your racing expenses; the money you will require for bringing the horse to Colonel What's-his-name's stable at Epsom before the race, the moneyyou will require for backing the horse—in fact, for the whole business—leaving fifty pounds over in case of disaster."
"Yes."
"Well, I want you to lock your cheque-book up in a drawer and give me the key, and promise not to touch that money on any account."
"I won't touch it," said French, with the air of a schoolboy making a resolution about apples.
"I know that's what you say and feel now; but there are temptations, and it is vital that you should be out of the way of temptation. You remember Jason, and how he stopped his ears with wax not to hear the songs of the sirens?"
"Faith," said French in a tender tone, "if the sirens' voices were as sweet as——"
He checked himself.
"That may be," said Miss Grimshaw hurriedly, "but, sweet or not sweet, there are always voices calling for money; even coming through London a five-pound note went on nothing. So you must, please, put that cheque-book in a drawer and lock it, and give me the key. Will you do this?"
"I will, I will. The thing's all right, but if you want it done, I'll do it."
"Well, let's do it now, then."
"I will in a minute, when I've seen Moriarty——"
"No; now. There's nothing like doing things at the moment."
"Well, all right," said French. "Let's do it now."
He produced his cheque-book from his desk, andMiss Grimshaw locked it up in the drawer of an escritoire.
"And now," said she, "how about that sixty pounds?"
The badgered one produced a pocket-book and took three twenty-pound notes from it.
"That leaves me only three pounds ten," said he, taking the coins from his waistcoat pocket and exhibiting them as he handed over the notes.
Miss Grimshaw cast a hungry eye on the gold.
"When that's gone," said she, "I will have to allow you pocket money out of my household expenses. We are in exactly the position of shipwrecked people on a raft, with only a certain amount of food and water, and when people are in that condition the first thing they have to do is to put themselves on a strict allowance. I want you," said Miss Grimshaw, "to feel that you are on a raft—and it might be much worse. You have a house for which we have to pay no rent. You have wine and all that which need not be paid for yet. How about cigars and tobacco?"
"Oh, there's lots of smokes," said French rather drearily. "And Bewlays know me, and I can get anything I want on credit—only I'm thinking——"
"Yes?"
"There may be other expenses. In a place like this people are sure to call, and how about if they want to play bridge, or——"
"Don't let's think of it," said the girl. "Bother! Why couldn't it have been summer?"
"They play bridge in summer as well as winter."
"Yes, I suppose they do. But the fools spend their energy on tennis as well, and that makes the disease less acute. Well, if you have to play bridge, I'll try to find the money for it somehow, even if I have to keep the household on oatmeal. What other expenses are likely to turn up?"
"There's sure to be subscriptions and things. And, see here. If we're invited out, we'll have to return any hospitality we receive."
Visions of Mrs. Driscoll's fantastic cookery, crossed by visions of big bills from Benoist, rose before Miss Grimshaw's mind, but she was not a person to be easily cast down.
"If they do, we'll manage somehow. We have wine, and that's the biggest item. Besides"—a brilliant inspiration seized her—"I'm only the governess. People won't call on me. You are really in the position of a bachelor, so you'll only have to invite men."
Mr. French looked troubled for a moment, then he said, "I was going to have told you something."
He stopped and lit a cigarette.
"Well?"
"Dashwood——"
"Well?"
"Well, he said—in fact, he said that these old English folk round here are such a lot of stuck-up old fools that, as a matter of fact, you'd have a bad time here as a governess. So he said that he said to a man that lives here I was bringing my niece with me. D'you see?"
Miss Grimshaw laughed. She knew at once what French meant. Over in clean Ireland no one thought anything of a pretty young governess living in the house of a widower and looking after his daughter; but here it was different. The morals of the rabbit-hutch, which are the morals of English society, had to be conformed to. She had never thought of the matter before, and lo and behold! Bobby Dashwood had thought of the matter for her.
"But I'm not your niece," said Miss Grimshaw.
"No," said French, "but, sure, you might be. And how are they to know? Lot of old fools, they think the position of a governess beneath them—not that you are a governess. Sure," finished he, apologetic and laughing, "we're all at sixes and sevens, and the easiest way out is to cut the knot and claim kinship. I don't know but one of the Frenches mayn't have married some of your people in the past."
"That would scarcely make me your niece. Anyhow, I don't care, only the servants——"
"Faith, and it's little the servants will say. They're dead-set against the English folk, and won't have a word with them. Only this morning I heard Mrs. Driscoll with a chap that had come round selling vegetables. 'Away with you,' says she, 'or I'll set the dog on you, coming round to my back door with your turnips and your rubbish!' The sight of an English face sets her off going like an alarm clock. But little I care about that, so long as she doesn't go off herself."
"Well, then, I'll go now and see what Effie's doingand how the servants are getting on. Mr. Dashwood is coming down for the week-end, is he not?"
"Yes; he'll be down on Friday."
"The great comfort about him," said she, "is that he takes us just as we are, and there's no trouble or expense with him."
She left the room. It was the second morning of their stay at The Martens, and before going to look after Effie and the servants she passed out on the verandah and stood there for a moment, looking at the winter landscape and then down at the houses of the Crowsnesters.
She felt dimly antagonistic to the people who lived in those comfortable-looking, red-tiled houses set about with gardens. She fancied women sitting by those fires whose smoke curled up in thin wreaths through the winter air, women who would cast their noses up at the idea of a governess, and their heads and eyes after their noses at the idea of a supposititious "niece." She imagined gentlemen addicted to bridge who would drain, perhaps, her narrow resources.
One thing pleased her. The neighbourhood looked prosperous, and the charitable appeals, she thought, could not be very exacting. On this she reckoned without the knowledge that a large amount of English charity begins and ends abroad.
Then she turned, and, still delaying before going to see after the servants and Effie, she passed round to the stableyard.
Andy, who was passing across the yard with a bucket in his hand, touched his cap, put down thebucket, and with a grin on his face, but without a word, opened the upper door of the loose-box that held the treasure and pride of the Frenches.
Scarcely had he done so than the sharp sound of horse-hoofs on flags was heard, and a lovely picture framed itself in the doorway—the head of Garryowen.
Leaving aside the beauty of women, surely above all things beautiful and sentient the head of a beautiful horse is supreme. Where else in the animal kingdom will you find such grace, such sensitiveness, such delicacy, combined with strength? Where else, even in the faces of men, such soul?
Even in the faces of men! The girl thought of the faces of the men she had come across in life, and she contrasted those heads, stamped with dulness, with greed, with business, or with pleasure—she contrasted these images of God with the finely chiselled, benign, and beautiful head of Garryowen.
Could it be possible that Mr. Giveen would have the impudence to call Garryowen a lower animal?
Even Andy's "mug" looked like the mask of a gargoyle by contrast, as she turned from the loose-box and made her way back to the house.
"What's the matter?" asked Mr. Dashwood.
"Botherations!" replied Miss Grimshaw. "Look at this."
She handed him a neatly-printed card, folded in the middle. It looked like a ball programme. Nearly four months had passed. The Frenches had settled down at The Martens. The whole neighbourhood had called; there had been several small dinner parties at the bungalow, and Garryowen was turning out a dream. Training a horse is just like painting a picture; the thing grows in spirit and in form; it has some of you in it; the pride of the artist is not unallied to the pride of the trainer. When you see swiftness coming out, and strength, endurance, and pluck, you feel just as the artist feels when, of a morning, he uncovers his canvas and says to himself: "Ah! yes, I put some good stuff into that yesterday."
On the dull, clear winter mornings, in the bracing air of the Downs, French knew something of the joy of life as he watched Garryowen and The Cat taking exercise. Sometimes young ladies from Crowsnest would appear on the edge of the Downs to watch Mr. French's "dear horses." They little knew how apt that expression was.
* * * * *
Mr. Dashwood examined the card.
It contained the programme and the rules of a small poetical club presided over by a Miss Slimon. Each member was supposed to invent or create a poem on a given subject each month and to send the result to Miss Slimon, who would read it. But the matter did not end there. Miss Slimon, by virtue of her self-constituted office, would send in due course each member's poem to each of the other members for criticism, and the results would be made known and published in a small pamphlet at the end of the year. The subscription was a guinea, and to this society for the circulation of rubbish Miss Grimshaw had been invited to subscribe. Hence the trouble.
"She asked me if I liked poetry, and I said I did, like a fool, and then she asked me to join, and I agreed. I can't back out now. She never told me the subscription was a guinea."
"It's beastly bad luck," said Mr. Dashwood, who by this time knew the financial affairs of the Frenches thoroughly to their innermost convolutions, and who was at the moment himself in the most horrible condition of penury, a condition that made the purchase of his week-end ticket to Crowsnest (he came down every week-end) a matter of consequence.
"And that's not all," went on the girl. "Here's a bazaar coming on, and, of course, we'll have to subscribe to that in some way. They want me to take a stall. You haven't any aunts or anyone who would do embroidery for it, have you? It's to be on April 5."
"No," said Mr. Dashwood, "I don't think I haveany female relatives any good in the fancy needlework line. I've got a charitably-disposed elderly female cousin I might land for a subscription, though."
"I wouldn't trust myself with the money. No matter. I daresay we will manage somehow. I want to go down to Crowsnest and post these letters. Will you walk with me?"
"Rather," replied Mr. Dashwood, and, taking his hat, he followed her out on the verandah.
It was a clear March morning, without a trace of cloud in the sky, and with just a trace of frost in the air. The country, still half wrapped in the sleep of winter, had that charm which a perfect English early spring day can alone disclose, and there was something—something in the air, something in the sky, some indefinable thrill at the heart of things that said, spirit fashion, to whoever could hear, "All this is drawing to a close. Even now, in the woods, here and there, you will find primroses. In a week or two you will find a million. My doors are just about to open, the cuckoo is just preening for flight, the swallows at Luxor and Carnac are dreaming of the pine trees and the north. I am Spring."
Mr. Dashwood was not given to poetical interpretations of Nature's moods, but there was that in the air to-day which raised to an acute stage the chronic disease he had been suffering from for months. He had seen a lot of his companion during the last ten weeks or so, but he had played the game like a man. Not a word had he said of his mortal malady to the author of it.
But there are limits to endurance. This could not go on any longer; yet how was he to end it? French had said nothing since that interview in the Shelbourne Hotel, and a subject like that, once dropped between two men, is horribly difficult to take up again.
What did French propose to do? Was he waiting till Garryowen won or lost the City and Suburban before he "asked" Miss Grimshaw. No time limit had been imposed. "I'm giving you a fair field and no favour," Mr. French had said. "If she likes you better than me, well and good. If she likes me better than you, all the better for me."
That was all very well, but which did she like best? This question was now calling imperatively for an answer. Miss Grimshaw alone could answer it; but who was to ask her? No third person could put the proposition before her. Only one of the two rivals could do so, and to do so would be to propose, and to propose would be dishonest.
Of course, a seemingly easy solution of the difficulty would be to go to French and say: "See here. I can't stand this any longer. I'm so much in love with this girl I must speak. What do you propose to do?"
Seemingly easy, yet most immensely difficult. In the Shelbourne, when the young man had spoken, he had spoken in one of those outbursts of confidence which men rarely give way to. To reopen the question in cold blood was appallingly hard. Not only had he got to know the girl better in the last few months, but he had also got an entirely different view of French. The good, easy-going French had turned for Mr.Dashwood from another man who was a friend into a friend who was a sort of fatherly relation. The difference in years between them showed up stronger and stronger as acquaintanceship strengthened, and French had taken on an avuncular manner.
The benevolent and paternal in his nature had unconsciously developed; he was constantly giving Bobby good advice, warning him of the evils of getting into debt, holding himself up as an awful example, etc. French, in the last ten weeks, had shown no symptoms of special feeling with regard to the lady. Was he, too, playing the game, or had he forgotten all about his intentions towards her? Or was his mind taken up so completely with the horse and his money troubles that he had no time at the moment to think of anything else?
"Isn't it delightful?" said Miss Grimshaw.
"Which?" asked Bobby, coming back from perplexed meditations to reality.
"This! The air! The country! Look! there's a primrose."
They were taking the downhill path from The Martens. A pale yellow primrose growing in a coign of the Down side had attracted her attention, and she stooped to pick it.
"Now, I wish I hadn't. What beasts we are! We never see a flower but we must pick it, or a bird but we want to shoot it. This might have lived days if I had left it alone, and now it will wither in a few hours. Here."
She stopped and fixed the primrose in Mr.Dashwood's buttonhole. She was so close, touching him, and her felt hat almost brushed his face. There was no one on the path. It was the psychological moment, yet he had to let it go.
"Thanks," he said.
Miss Grimshaw looked at the flower critically for a second, with her pretty head slightly on one side.
"It will stick in without a pin," she said. "Come on, or I'll miss the post. No, thanks, I can carry the letters all right. I like to have something in my hand. Why is it that persons always feel lost without something in their hands? Look, that's Miss Slimon's house, The Ranch. She's immensely rich and awfully mean, and lives there alone with three servants. She's always dismissing them. I don't know why unless they steal the poetry. There's nothing else much to steal, for she's a vegetarian and lives on a shilling a day, and keeps the servants on board wages. And I have to give her a guinea out of my hard-earned savings for that poetical club. I'm going to make Effie write the poetry. It will give the child something to do. That's Colonel Creep's house, The Roost. They were the first people to call on us. Sort of spies sent out by the others to see how the land lay. Do you know, I've never thanked you for something?"
"No? What's that?"
"Do you remember your forethought in making me a niece to Mr. French? Well, I never felt the benefit of your benevolent intention so much as the day when the Creeps called on us, and when they crept into the drawing-room, three girls like white snails, followedby an old gentleman like a white cockatoo. It was so pleasant to think they thought I was on a social and mental equality with them, and so pleasant to think they were wrong!"
"Wrong!" cried Dashwood, flying out. "I should think they were wrong! Not fit to black your boots."
"Perhaps that's what I meant, from my point of view," said Miss Grimshaw modestly, "and perhaps it wasn't. Anyhow, the situation was not without humour. Our relationship with the Crowsnest people has been a long comedy of a sort. You know all our affairs, but you don't know the ins and outs, and how the wild Irish on the hillside——"
"Yes?"
Miss Grimshaw laughed. "Do you remember that little dinner party Mr. French—my uncle, I mean—gave in January to Colonel Bingham and the Smith-Jacksons?"
"Yes."
"You remember how Colonel Bingham praised the pheasants? Well, they were his own pheasants."
"His own pheasants!"
"Moriarty poached them."
Mr. Dashwood exploded.
"I did not know at the time," went on Miss Grimshaw virtuously. "I entrusted the marketing to Mrs. Driscoll. I explained to her privately that we would have to be very economical. She quite understood. I will say for the Irish that they are quicker in the uptake than any other people I know. She said she could make ends meet on two pounds ten a week, and shehas done so. More, she has made them lap over. I am not very good at the price of things. Still, pheasants at a shilling each seemed to me very cheap. Of course, I thought most probably she was dealing with some man who got the things in some contraband way, and I suppose it was very wicked of me, but—the pheasants were very nice. Then there were vegetables.
"You can't poach vegetables?"
"I think I said before," went on Miss Grimshaw, "that the Irish were quicker than any other people I know in the uptake, and I'm very much afraid that Moriarty has uptaken, not only all the potatoes that have come to our table this winter, but the turnips as well."
Again Mr. Dashwood exploded.
"Of course you can't poach vegetables," she went on, "but you can poach eggs, and, as a matter of fact, I believe our fried eggs are poached eggs. Could such a statement ever occur out of Ireland and carry sense with it? It's awful, isn't it?"
"I think it's a jolly lark," said Mr. Dashwood. "Gloats! To think of old Bingham gobbling his own turkeys!"
"Pheasants, you mean. Don't talk of turkeys, for we've had three since Christmas, and I don't know what's been going on in the kitchen in the way of food, but I know they had jugged hare for supper last night."
"When did you find out about it?"
"Yesterday morning I began to guess. You see, I had been wondering for a long time how Mrs. Driscollhad been managing to produce such good food for two pounds ten a week. She pays for the groceries and everything out of it. Well, yesterday morning she brought me six pounds that she had 'saved' out of the housekeeping money; she said it might be useful to 'the master.'
"I must say it was a perfect godsend, but I thought it more than peculiar, and I tried to cross-question her. But it was useless. She swore she had been saving the money for months—before we left Drumgool even—so I could say no more.
"However, things came to a climax last night. I was lying in bed; it was long after eleven, and the moon was very bright, and I heard a noise in the stable-yard. My window looks on to the stable-yard. I got up and peeped through the blind, and I saw Moriarty and Andy with a sheep between them. They were trying to put it into one of the loose boxes, and it didn't seem to want to go. Now, when you are trying to drive a sheep like that against its will, it bleats, doesn't it?"
"I should think so."
"Well; this sheep didn't bleat—it was muzzled!"
They had reached the post-office by this, and Miss Grimshaw stopped to put in her letters; then she remembered that she required stamps and a packet of hooks and eyes, so she left Mr. Dashwood to his meditations in the street and entered the little shop.
It was a very small shop that competed in a spirited way with the Italian warehouse. It sold boots, too—hobnailed boots hung in banks from the ceiling—and a small but sprightly linen-drapery business went onbehind a counter at right angles to the counter that sold tinned salmon and tea.
Chopping, who owned this emporium, was a pale-faced man, consumptive, and sycophantic, with a horrible habit of washing his hands with invisible soap when any of the carriage people of Crowsnest entered his little shop. This is a desperately bad sign in an Englishman; as a symptom of mental and moral depravity it has almost died out. In the early and mid Victorian age, in the era of little shops and small hotels, it was marked; but it lingers still here and there in England, and when one meets with it it makes one almost a convert to Socialism.
Mr. Chopping washed his hands before Miss Grimshaw, for, though the Frenches were not carriage people, they owned horses and were part of the social state of Crowsnest; and Miss Grimshaw wondered if Mr. Chopping would have washed his hands so vigorously if he had known all.
There was a big notice of the forthcoming bazaar hanging behind the drapery counter.
This bazaar had become a bugbear to the girl. Amid her other distractions she was working a table-cover for it, and Effie, who was clever with her needle, was embroidering a tea-cosy. If the thing were a failure, and the sum necessary for reconstructing the choir stalls in the church were not forthcoming, there was sure to be a subscription, and money was horribly tight, and growing tighter every day.
Things had managed themselves marvellously well up to this, thanks to French's luck. The unfortunategentleman, whose pocket-money under the strict hand of Miss Grimshaw did not exceed ten shillings a week, had managed to make that sum do. More than that, he wore the cloak of his poverty in such a way that it seemed the garment of affluence. The ready laugh, the bright eye, and the jovial face of Mr. French made the few halfpence he jingled in his pocket sound like sovereigns. He played bridge with so much success that he just managed to keep things even; and the rare charm of his genial personality made him a general favourite.
"Shall we go back, or go for a little walk down the road?" asked Miss Grimshaw, as she left the post-office and rejoined her cavalier.
"A walk, by all means," replied Mr. Dashwood. "Let's go this way. Well, go on, and tell me about the sheep."
"Oh, the sheep! Yes, there it was, struggling in the moonlight; they were trying to get it into the loose box next the one The Cat's in; and they did, Andy jostling it behind and Moriarty pulling it by the head. Then they shut the door."
"Yes?"
"That's all. I saw the light of a lantern gleaming through the cracks of the door, and I felt as if I had been accessory before the fact—isn't that what they call it?—to a murder. Of course, I saw Mrs. Driscoll this morning, and I taxed her right out, and she swore she knew nothing about it. At all events, I told her it mustn't occur again and I think I frightened her."
"That chap Moriarty must be an expert poacher," said Mr. Dashwood.
"Expert is no name for it, if he's done all I suspect him of doing. It's a most strange position, for I believe they don't see any harm in it. You see, they seem to look upon the people about here as enemies and Sussex as an enemy's country, and really, you know, they have still a good deal of the original savage clinging to them. I found a notched stick in the kitchen the other day, and I found it belonged to Norah. Every notch on it stood for a week that she had been here."
"They used to do that at cricket matches long ago to score the runs. I've seen an old rustic Johnny—they said he was 104—doing it."
"Let's stop here for a moment," said the girl.
Miss Grimshaw and Mr. Dashwood had reached the little bridge on the Roman road at the foot of the hill. The river, wimpling and sparkling in the sunlight, was alive as in summer, but all else was dead—or asleep. Dead leaves had blown in the river bed and floated on the water, or were mossed in the crevices of the stones here and there. They found a brown carpet amid the trees of the wood. You could see far in amid the trees, whose leafless branches formed a brown network against the blue winter sky.
From amid the tree, from here, from there, came occasionally the twitter of a bird. Not a breath of wind stirred the branches, and the place had the stillness of a stereoscopic picture. This spot, so haunted by poetry and beauty in summer, in winter was notentirely deserted. On a day like this it had a strange beauty of its own.
Temptation comes in waves. The all but overmastering temptation to seize the girl in his arms and kiss her, which had assailed Mr. Dashwood on the hillside, was now returning gradually. She was leaning with her elbows on the balustrade of the bridge; her clear-cut profile, delicately outlined against the winter trees, held him, as one is held by the graceful curves of a cameo.