CHAPTER XChristmas at Castle Freyne came in formally about ten o'clock with the advent of the wran boys at the dining-room windows.Gheena fumed furiously before the sacrifice of tiny feathered things, and was ignored by her stepfather, who supported old customs principally because no one else wished him to. Custom also dictated that everyone's presents should repose on their plates; so that they waited in hunger to slash string and express rapture, and the table was littered with bits of twine and wrapping paper.Gheena rhapsodized over a new bag of severe green leather with jail-like clasps, then embracing her stepfather with the fervour expected of her. She put it aside to pick up a variety of other oddments, amongst them a cigarette-case from "V.W." with Gheena scratched across its tortoiseshell form in silver. At the bottom of the heap she discovered her mother's string of pearls, long coveted, and exclaimed shrilly.Dearest George grunted gratitude over two new pipes, a tobacco jar and a box of cigars, and a note-case for the new paper money from his wife.Her plate was obliterated by a vast edifice in glass, destined to hold flowers and glimmering with a dull green hideousness."Got it over from London, you see, Matilda," said her husband, beaming. "Badly wanted for the drawing-room shelf to take the everlastings."Gheena dived again, to find a big turquoise charm, with "For Luck" on it, from Darby, and a pair of race-glasses with no name.Hooking the charm on the pearls, where it did not look at home, Gheena turned over everything once more to find some note about the race-glasses, and heard Dearest George repress, with extreme difficulty, the words which he would have used concerning a litter on the floor, if he had not been opening the case containing Gheena's present of a pipe, and had to say "Thank you, my dear," instead."I wanted race-glasses," said Gheena, "but who? Darby, you're a duck!"Darby smiled as he hobbled to his meagre array of presents. Gheena always gave him a box of cigarettes. There were no little mementoes from loving girls for Darby Dillon now."But I say who?" said General Brownlow, picking up a little silver matchbox. "I got Psyche's letter yesterday.""I thought you wouldn't mind—that there'd be nothing on your plate," apologized Gheena shyly. "And mother sent the cigarettes. Oh!" This as the old man kissed her rather tenderly.The theatrical advent of Lancelot with his mother and sister guarding his crutches, intercepted the sorting of presents. He came so plainly expecting general sympathy, to be installed in an arm-chair with a small table by his side, and his mother fussily superintending every mouthful of his breakfast.They went to church presently, where the cotton-wool texts looked brave, if a little tired, and the usual smell of roast stove and drying cushions pervaded the airless atmosphere. Mr. Brady completely forgot the season when he touched upon the war. He took for his text the writing on the wall, and forgot that too, as he plunged into metaphor as difficult to follow as modern tactics; for in a breath he compared the Germans with burrowing snakes and carrion-seeking eagles, both of which expressions were listened to with rapture by his wife, and made the General and Darby tap their heads softly. Mr. Brady then explained smoothly how even as a God-fearing nation we wanted nothing but peace, and the best way to get it was to go and kill every man Jack of German traitors and treaty violators, until there were only grey-beards and infants left. "And, of course, the prisoners," he added, regretfully."The Redeemer of the world," he said, "never meant an army which warred on women and children to dominate humanity, and to-day, in the words of the Bible, it 'was to us to go forth and kill.'"If he had not got on to the National Anthem very quickly someone would have cheered."Even if we are fighting, the texts will never do for next year," said Mrs. Keefe in the doorway. "So what would you think, Mrs. Freyne, of stuffing pillows for the troops with them now while the wool is fairly dry."A fine rain was falling outside, and the gleam of wintry sunshine somewhere behind it; the day was very cold.The heavy appetite engendered by church made George Freyne fidget, when Gheena delayed him by rushing off with Violet Weston. Mrs. Weston was brilliant in rather crude mauve, with sky-blue silk stockings on, and held Gheena's arm very affectionately as they whispered together.The old Professor beamed at them all, a beam with sadness in it."In Germany they love Christmas so," he said gently. "The Gretchens and the Annas romp like children over their presents; they all over-eat themselves and everywhere is the smell of pine needles and candles which have burnt themselves out—the 'Tannen-baum.' The women are as bad as the men, you say, Mr. Freyne, because they look now as ever, when they are told to look. They clap their poor hands now for war as they did for the beauty of the Christmas-tree. Christmas, with empty chairs near the fire—is it not sad for all?""How you can say one word for the brutes who lamed my Lancelot," said Mrs. Augustus Freyne, "I do not know, Professor."The Professor said humbly that he only spoke for humanity and Christmastide."We are astonished to hear the dreadful people ever mentioned," said Mrs. De Burgho Keane heavily. "After all, if there were no dreadful fat mothers there would be no brutal sons to run about murdering and rapining." Here Mrs. Keane stopped to consider if that was quite the right word, especially in the churchyard path, because the Professor chuckled softly and Darby grinned. Changing the conversation, Mrs. Keane objected to last year's texts as disrespectful to the season.Mrs. Brady uneasily remarked that the cotton-wool was to make pillows, and it will all look quite nice with the lights up this evening.Mrs. De Burgho Keane replied energetically that the evening would not concern her. She passed on to interrogate Lancelot as he hopped to the motor, and wished to know if the brutal Germans really laughed when they wounded people, or if that was a newspaper lie.Lancelot replied vaguely, the tail of his eye on the General. It was a secret carefully preserved that he had not gone beyond Boulogne. His foot was badly crushed, and he was not likely to see service again.Then came the heaviness of Christmas luncheon. A meal which was always faintly neglected by Anne, who had dinner upon her mind, to say nothing of roast beef and plum pudding backed up by cheap sherry in the kitchen.When it was over George Freyne helped Lancelot his nephew to his study, where he talked to him long and seriously.A wounded man possessed the privilege of sympathy. Now was the hour to lay siege to Gheena's heart. Lancelot was not at all averse to life at Castle Freyne on a large income. The fear which he felt for his cousin Gheena now would easily turn to sulky authority when he found his position secure. A boy who had been indulged for his twenty-three years, was not likely to be a very pleasant companion through life.Dearest George, moving his mind on its narrow ledge of cunning, decided that a new régime of petty tyranny would make his stepdaughter inclined to take her liberty at all costs, and Lancelot had promised faithfully that the Dower House would never be his father-in-law's position.Gheena, through the soft cold which was turning to frost outside, wandered off by the sea. It shimmered in steely restlessness, mouthing white-toothed at the brown rocks. Cold held the world in its grip, the brown world looked icy, the shingle as though its touch would hurt in its chill."And out in the North Sea they keep watch," said a voice behind Gheena, "with the wind we find here cutting, there as a knife, and spray freezing on their eyelashes, and constant anxiety.""And those dreadful submarines," said Gheena, turning to see Stafford, who had come up quietly over the grass."Which they threaten to blockade us with in the early spring.""And—you believe there are bases here—men who help them?" said Gheena.Mr. Stafford said dreamily that money would do anything."You have wanted it badly?" said Gheena.Basil Stafford shot a swift look at Gheena as he answered that he had once wanted it so badly that he would have sold a limb to get it."I suppose," said Gheena, walking on, "that you won't keep to the drains after the winter here. You'll join something.""You're not thinking of putting a white feather in my mince-pie for dinner, are you?" he said gravely. "There are other ways of helping besides wearing khaki, Miss Gheena, helping on war."Gheena repeated "Helping on war" with sarcastic emphasis, and told Crabbit not to chase seagulls.Crabbit leapt forth in swift pursuit of an elusive bird, a stately gull, which sailed off and then bobbed down into the icy sea, floating there gracefully, Crabbit immediately putting his paws into the water, trying to pretend that he had only come down to take the temperature. Then he pounced on something in the line of flotsam, and galloped back to Gheena to lay the offering at her feet.It was a pocket-handkerchief of large size.Gheena said "Crabbit, you beast!" turning away; but Stafford bent down and picked the sodden rag up; then dropped it again with a sharp exclamation and looked out to sea."We'll go back." Gheena walked towards the house. The kitchen chimney was absolutely pouring out smoke, heaving against the evening light."After all," said Stafford, "if there had been no war someone else would have been employed for the drainage, and I should never have come here."Gheena, nose in air, considered the evening sky.He laughed slightly bitterly."And it doesn't much matter when I go away again, I suppose," he said. "There is the Professor on the cliffs. He must have sampled every rock in the place by now.""And also Hook, coming back." Gheena stopped to look at the General's man. "He seems to do everything except look after his master, that man of the General's."Hook and the Professor met upon the cliffs and spoke. Then the valet overtook them."Been right away to the point, sir," he said to Stafford. "Regular nest of caves and holes, this coast.""There are some that one can see the water going into, but are quite hidden," said Gheena. "I believe there are entrances from the land. I know of a way down to one of those caves. My old nurse, who came from the village out there, said there were two or three others, but she never showed them to me."Hook stroked his chin thoughtfully."One is curious. It's just over there, if you'd like to see it, with the tide coming in its ease."Stafford looked longingly at the lighted house, for Gheena was already flying back through the scrum of trees and out on to the chill low cliffs with the sea moaning below. Here, diving through a tangle of dead bracken and unpleasantly live gorse, she came to a hole in the ground, caught a lichen-covered slab of slaty rock and dropped out of sight, remarking cheerily that it was pitch dark and very slippery.The cliff ran out just there in bare slaty stone, with stunted fuchsias clinging in the crevices, and brambles creeping along, long and thorny.To get goatwise from slab to slab in a grey gloom of almost complete darkness, with the touch of the stones biting numbly, was not pleasant, but the two men followed Gheena down."Here is the shingle. The sea is up. Oh——"For Stafford snapped on an electric torch and a dripping gloomy cavern came into view. It smelt dankly salt, and cold sea-water was pouring along the wet floor, sluicing in through inlets in the rock.One could imagine sightless slimy fish in there living in the deep pools in the rocks, chill weeds and noisome things. The sea echoed outside, slushing and gurgling, and the swelling rim of water creeping in through hidden channels was ghost-like in its grey upward movement."But there's no outlet," was what Hook said thoughtfully.Stafford said it was like a nightmare, snapped off his torch and scrambled for the entrance.The grey dusk outside was sweet daylight after the gloom below. Hook thanked them, and they scurried back to the house, through wisps of white mist which were rising in the hollows.."Your cousin is being helped in to tea." The blinds were not drawn, and the surrounded entrance of Lancelot could be plainly seen, with a chair being made ready for him and footstools arranged."He went out to fight," said Gheena sympathetically. "Whether it was a cart or shrapnel, he did go out to try to be hit."Basil Stafford's lips came together with a snap.Lancelot complained of pain at tea-time. He carped at his mother and invited Gheena to adjust his cushions. When she had done that, he asked her for more tea, because she knew the exact quantities of cream and sugar—and then he begged her to show himPunch'sAlmanack.The well of pity in which so much female reason drowns kept Gheena attending to the invalid and forbearing to say sharp things. He had gone out bravely and done his best.She listened while he fretted and grumbled because now he could never do anything; his soldier's life was over for quite a year, if not more, when the war must be over. He talked of what he might have done, and of the loneliness at Cahercalla.The big dining-room table had to have a leaf put in it for dinner that night. The Freynes had collected everyone in the village, down to the Professor, who came in baggy evening clothes and square-toed boots.A meal of mighty courses marched solemnly to the haven of dessert—champagne creamed, regardless of war time, and from fine oysters to fine brandy-veiled plum-pudding—it was indigestible Christmas fare.Of course everyone talked of the war, until Mrs. Freyne suddenly remembered that Mr. Brady ought to tell the General his splendid scheme, even down to the Kaiser's place of imprisonment in Runnymede.Darby's "Why Runnymede?" held a note of astonishment.Matilda Freyne said she supposed because it would always remind the dreadful man of Magna Charta and England's might. Well, if it was Spike Island Mr. Brady had suggested, she thought Runnymede was much more suitable, so English all round, and everyone agreed with her gravely.They played games afterwards, to amuse the Brady and O'Toole children—blind man's buff and general post—in which game Mrs. Freyne could never think of any post save London to Berlin, and as no one would be Berlin, London got tired of hopping up vainly, and allowed poor Paris to be caught when someone called this town.When Mr. Keefe, the blind man, spun frantically round the room amid a ring of mockers, Gheena took refuge in a window recess, to find General Brownlow smoking there peacefully.Next minute Stafford was caught and blinded. In the whirl of pulling hands he felt one catch harder than the others, and having secured Lucy Brady, of eleven, wondered if it was chance or design that had placed a goose-quill in his button-hole. The Keefe children had had one to torment their father with, but—— He took it out and put it carefully into his pocket-book."If anyone did that on purpose," said Brownlow as Gheena came back to him, "it was a dirty thing to do.""He won't forget, though," said Gheena carelessly. "And he doesn't care. Miss O'Toole might have done it.""Don't you ever judge Don't-cares by appearances, young lady," he snapped. "And don't judge that boy, because he's a good sort, or I'm no judge myself."Mrs. Weston, in flaming pink silk high to the throat, and wearing a becoming feather boa because she had a cold, had disappeared from view with Mr. Keefe. A murmur of voices from the firelit library indicated their retreat.Darby, by the blazing drawing-room fire, looked on. He could not romp with the grown-up children, and no one could settle to Bridge. Some of the sadness of any anniversary fell on him. How many Christmases had come and gone in that old room! How many generations of white-frocked mites, grown year by year to girls and boys, to men and women, until they sat by the fire and tried to forget that soon they must go alone into the unknown! The withered-handed, tottering people, with their little pleasures of warmth, which glows as new life into their blood; of some favourite dish; or of love for the youth crowding them out of life—their lives are of the day; they are past looking back and dare not look forward. So the hours of waking after fitful sleep to the time when, tired out, they seek it again—makes each day a life to them. How many gay brides had fluttered in new finery to their new home, wives of the three-bottle men of old days, when shutters were shut at five and the day old by night!—women who had no voice in life. Subservient, early Victorian wives, advanced now to dinner at seven, putting away the fragile lovely furniture which had delighted their forbears, filling the room with hideous heaviness, with round tables and mirrors, and stiff arm-chairs and clumsy cabinets. A later Victorian, Gheena's grandmother, rejoicing in an outbreak of macrame-edged brackets, of good china entombed in red plush mounts, of black and gold, of chenille monkeys, and satin antimacassars worked over with rosebuds or forget-me-nots.An old house must be a sad thing, a looker-on at the life which comes and goes within its portals—the birth so gladly hailed, to the solemn tramp of heavily-laden men and the flower-smothered coffin standing in the hall.Darby's own house was older than Castle Freyne, and had seen more people pass, and now he lived there alone, only son of an only son—and who would come after him? There was a cousin, a bright boy at school, heir if Darby never married.The entrance of a huge bowl of punch carried in by Naylour broke up the games. Everyone took a spoonful, coughed apologetically, and had a little more, for it was rather a wonderfully deceitful punch, hiding its Samson-like strength behind a mild and mingled flavour of lemons and innocent things."To those in France who guard us here!" Gheena proposed a toast and swung her glass so vigorously that she upset a large portion of her punch over her stepfather."And thank goodness Christmas is over!" said Dearest George ill-humouredly, wiping sticky punch from inside his collar."I'm leaving two fellows I like behind me," said old Tony Brownlow next day, "Stafford and Dillon. All right, George; come on to the stables before I go."The Stephen's Day hunt at Dunkillen began with a completely illegal race run for any stakes which could be collected, anything over four pounds being called a present.It was run over an S-shaped course, consisting of small slaty banks and open ditches and two stone gaps, and they went round three times.Darby gave a silver cup this year, so that competition was, as Phil termed it, fierce entirely.Dan Rooney's That's the Boy was an easy favourite from James Rourke's dun gelding, unnamed—That's the Boy being a great over-lopped, leggy bay, almost in the book, with a whistler's head and no bone, and the dun a scrubby beast, hiding a certain amount of quality behind a goose rump and a ewe neck, but with great second thighs and nine inches below the knee. A weedy grey mare was the only other animal expected to complete the course. There were four three-year-olds willing to go until they fell from exhaustion, and Andy on the Rat, which he had begged leave to enter."You'll never get him round the turns," was what Darby said to young Rooney, "and you're backing the horse as if the race was over."Mr. Rooney replied contemptuously that That's the Boy had time to run out and back and catch what was against him, and that he hoped there'd be no talks of this race when he pulled the horse out to win in Cork Park."I'm allowing for a fall or two even," observed Rooney, as he pulled off his coat to display a silk jacket and a pair of very baggy drab breeches.The dun's owner affected a flannel shirt and trousers tied in below the knee with string, and this, with varieties of shirts and trousers, was the fashionable and favourite get-up.Darby, with the hounds grouped patiently in the background, was starter and judge. He dropped the flag directly they came at all near him, knowing the handiness of their heels, and saw them tear off in a bunch, the Rat scuttling along in the rear and the rush of That's the Boy knocking over one horse at the first fence."Bedam to himself an' his breedin'," commented the fallen jockey bitterly. "An' me mare gone home on me for certainty, an' maybe a boy away for the coffin before I'd be back meself."That's the Boy's great stride carried him out with a clean lead, his Roman-nosed head in air; he shaved two banks with nerve-shattering carelessness, and being pulled in from the first turn, was crossed by a three-year-old, ridden out with whip and spur, and came down handsomely."There's the price of him," commented the knocked-out jockey by Darby's side.The Field's snatched lead was easily taken back, but they had some way to go, and Darby still prophesied that the turns would do for the great big horse, even if he did not come down again.The first stone gaps being scattered and shattered, the horses made for the second inward turn. Two of the three-year-olds were now trailing, completely done, and the little Rat, going at his ease, was close up with the leaders.Quick and handily, James Rourke's dun slipped over the narrow banks with cat-like accurate ease, a complete contrast to the big horse's slithering bounds, invariably wrongly timed; but so far as pace went, That's the Boy had only to gallop on and win.He tore at his head at the fences, cheeked his bit, and rushed out of the course, the violent wrench which brought him round bringing him also into collision with a rather awkward bank and sending him on to his knees.Now a variety of mistakes will blow any horse. When Dan Rooney set his mount going again he did not meet with the same response, and the dun, the grey and the Rat were a field ahead."Bet you a sovereign, Rourke," said Darby. "Gheena, a sovereign."Gheena, of course, backed That's the Boy. Wild shrieks began to arise from the crowd, and the local bookmaker could not issue tickets fast enough. He had absolutely lost count of where he stood, so much that he eyed his outside car more than once.The grey mare, going gallantly, closed with the dun, who wore her down and shot out. Half a field behind, That's the Boy, white with foam, was being unmercifully flogged on. But the dun gave the last bank a lightning-like kick, and as James Rourke wondered if he would be caught in the run home, something slipped by him.The Rat was clean bred, with brothers and sisters running races in England. He had been going quite within himself, and now he stretched his wicked little head and made for the hounds at a pace which completely worsted the dun five-year-old."The divil's delight to it, but the pony has it won!" yelled someone frantically. "The pony!""Andy, for the love of God!" wailed James Rourke. "An' I have three pound on at fours. Twelve pounds, Andy, I'll be dhrawin'.""I have a shillin' on meself," replied Andy, leaning forward victoriously."Cosy in the trinches they might be the ways they is chattin'," said a disturbed and embittered onlooker, who had backed the big horse; "an' even theobbjectin' won't save us now with that Kinnat out there in front. Someone suggested obbjectin' to both for conspiracy and colloquy."If we could rowl a hat or two accidental to swherve thim," suggested another backer of the favourite, "an' let Rooney up."Someone else declared the two were too tirened out to mind any hats, but the big horse was coming on. James Rourke bent down and called something out to little Andy, something emphatic.Andy shook his head, Rourke bent again, and the next moment the Rat, instead of passing the post, made for the waiting hounds, sailing through the crowd dexterously.And in a hail of hats and a hurricane of yells, the dun went past the post at his lobbing gallop, with That's the Boy's head just at his girth and well past him before they pulled up.Darby declined to give the cup if there were any objections, but he went on to Andy to demand explanation."Well, you see, me Mama would take the cup for the parlour, an' he offered me two pounds of them twelve to pull out," said Andy equably; "an' he a dacent bye that won't break his word; so I pulled out, and that was the thraffic there was betune us.""And such is Irish racing," said Darby thoughtfully. "You send that pony home, Andy, and ride old Dobbin to hounds."Basil Stafford said that if he laughed any more he knew something would give way."What you see to laugh at when my pony might have had a silver cup," said Gheena angrily, "I cannot see. Oh, call it Irish. You don't expect us to be Germans, do you?""If they could only meet you all for a little," gasped Stafford, "and see your little methods!""Oh, you'd like us to meet them, would you?" said Gheena. "You seem to know Germany well."Stafford gasped that he wanted to see German officials encountering Phil and Andy, or your old Anne. That isverboten."'Forbidden. Is that so, young man?'"'Himmel! Haf I not said it must not be done? Schwine!'"'One side, young man, an' kape a civil tongue in ye're head. Isn't the right side the same as the left for th'ass a cyar if there is none in the sthreet?' Oh, if you only knew them and their superiority and their rages.""Some people," said Gheena darkly, "ought to know them better at present."Mr. Stafford's fingers touched his pocket-book; he leant forward suddenly."There is something here which you may take back some day," he said softly—"something which you gave me, I think."Gheena turned away, looking puzzled."Ivery penny he paid me," said Andy deliriously joyful; "an' isn't that same bether than a silver cup on the table at home, Miss Gheena? An' sure, in honour an' glory I was first as well."They moved on presently to draw a hill from the crest of which one could see the sea plainly.Gheena began to talk of the submarines, wondering if the menace would ever be carried out."They'll want help if they do it," returned Stafford absently—"bases along coasts and ships to supply oil. People will do it. Money can buy anything, Miss Freyne, even some people's honour."Gheena grew a little pale.Christmas Day had interfered with stopping. A fox got to ground in covert and Darby decided to go home, glad of the chance, for hounds had had a hard day on Christmas Eve, and Barty was riding the same horse.Gheena rode back with Darby as far as his turn and then on with Stafford, whose horse jogged dully and without spirit. He only kept one hunter.It was cold and raw. Gheena missed Phil, when having glacially invited Stafford to tea, she slipped off in the big old yard, waving away proffered help."Phil is away with the two horses, Miss, to catch the thrain at the junction."Gheena questioned wildly."With Whitebird and the Masther's Matty, Miss, the old mare. Tin year, he called her. The General took them both for remounts."Gheena was young. She did not care for the youngster. But to sell her horse without her leave!Attended by Crabbit, who was privately certain that nothing but a rat could create such haste, Gheena stormed through the back door, slamming it so hard that two panes of glass smashed, and Anne observed "Bomb-shells!" from the kitchen and tore to the library. Her stepfather, with an ugly look in his eyes which she had learnt to dread, was reading by an enormous fire."Four horses," he said coolly, "at the present time was absurd and unpatriotic." Gheena must remember that she was completely in her mother's hands, and, in fact ... here he saw the girl's eyes and decided that threats might not be wise.Anyhow, the horse was gone, he said, and he had locked up the white oats.His stepdaughter went out of the room rather too quietly.Gheena could not censure her mother, who was nervous, expecting it, waiting for the girl's wrath."Dearest George had said the animal was not wanted, and there were some new farm implements which were required—chaff-cutter and oats-crusher; a new reaper for the spring. So he said you would understand, my dear."Miss Freyne kissed her weeping mother and went into the drawing-room. Here Lancelot begged for attention, relying on her so humbly that she gave it ungrudgingly."They sold my horse when I was out," she said to Stafford. "My grey horse! You see, until I come of age or marry, I'm a minor without an income, and Dearest is affected by economy and wants mowing machines."A dangerous glimmer shone in Gheena's eyes. Basil Stafford said "Indeed!" in tones of unmixed perplexity."I'll marry the Professor if Dearest is not careful," said Gheena.Then with the lack of grace which haunts woman in muddy apron habit skirts and high boots, Gheena marched to her room, where Crabbit, very wet indeed, was just tearing into.Evidently sorry she had missed that rat, he had gone out to fetch her comfort, and laid the sodden handkerchief, which he had picked up the day before, at her feet."Crabbit, you horrid dog!" said Gheena, her hand on his soft brown head; "but you meant it nicely." She held up the sopped rag, meaning to throw it on the fire, and saw the marking."Heinrich V. Belstein" in neat letters, and a number torn off.A German's handkerchief cast up on the shores. Handkerchiefs do not float for long; even supposing it had caught in some seaweed, it was not likely to come from a distance. No submarine had been sunk. Gheena forgot that she was muddy and that a fire which she expected to see was non-existent. Someone was trafficking with German submarines. Some of the U boats must have been close in.Gheena put her finger on the bell and kept it there, until Mary Kate, the head housemaid, arrived at full gallop, breathlessly wanting to know if Miss Gheena had a wakeness."Dropped down dead we all thought you must be, Miss, when the bell went on whirring."Disappointed, Mary Kate took a message dubiously. It was teemin' rain out of the sky, she said."If the Masther hears it goin' out, Miss, he'll destroy us," said Mary Kate with resignation. "So I'll find some that'll ride a bicycle."Then Gheena lighted her own fire and waited breathlessly until Mrs. Weston's presence was announced."She is waitin' on ye in the ould school-room. She would not come up, Miss Gheena, not a step."After Gheena had got down, an excited clacking of tongues rose so high, that Mr. Freyne came along the passage and severely censured Maria, the second housemaid, for having lighted an extra fire in the school-room.As she rushed down Gheena met Stafford, and all but knocked him over."It's Violet; she wouldn't come up," panted Gheena, rushing on.After quite a short time Mrs. Weston drove off again, with her usual bright smile changed to a frown of thought and her lips pressed into a line.Gheena was quiet that evening. She took very little tea and she was remotely civil to Stafford, instead of snapping at him in her wonted fashion. Lancelot she waited on patiently.But when the order for sixty pounds for the grey came, it was made out in Gheena's name, and she said she would go to Cortra to cash it; there might be difficulties otherwise.She came back with the same quiet look in her eyes, which was anger and mischief beaten by the whip of thought, and when asked if she had, as desired, paid the money into her mother's account, merely said it was all right.But next day Mr. Freyne was called out to find Dinny, his herdsman, joyfully unpacking a variety of brilliantly painted agricultural machines from two carts from Cornahulty, which his master looked at blankly.Gheena, quietly demure, came out to listen to the comments."Mother told me you wanted Whitebird's price for these things, Dearest," she said gently. "So I went to O'Malley's, and he knew what you and Dinny had been looking at, and he gave me discount for cash. There is just five pounds more to pay, I think."Dearest George opened his mouth twice, and shut it on what he wished to articulate."An' the two men from Cornahulty want twenty-five shillin' for the haulin'," said Naylour, coming in to his stormy master. "Miss Gheena agreed to that with them, they says. God save us! but ye'd think I axed him for his heart's blood," said Naylour, when he got back to the kitchen; "an' he wrote the cheque like as if 'twas his own ordther for execution. Miss Gheena said I was to give the two of ye ye're tea."CHAPTER XIDarby Dillon ceased reading about the hobnobbing of Germans and English at Christmas-time to parley with the infuriated owner of That's the Boy, who had ridden over to say the horse's charackther was blighted for life not to get the race and the cup."Bathered and bumped an' crossed, sir, an' then to have me just obbjection pushed down me throat the same as a dose to a horse, an' all the neighbours at me, an' that broth of a boy Rourke won't even have a match to show the rights of it. Him that I could thrample on an' bate out with one stride to his two, his muddeen of a dun horse."Andy, who was holding the blighted That's the Boy, looked up to suggest—grinning—a match with the Rat."Seein' that the Rat bate ye both," said Andy, "it is me ye should be matchin' with. Bate ye aisy, too.""An' if ye bate him, why was ye not fust?" thundered Mr. Rooney stormily.Andy, becoming reserved, said that was his bizness, and lapsed into silence."It would be like the likes of his birth an' breedin' to offer ye a shillin' to pull off," said Rooney bitterly; "but I did not think ye're father's son would do the dirty thrick to me father's, Andy Casey, for dirty pince.""I will take me Bible oath that he niver mentioned dirty pince," said Andy, his face scarlet, "nor any pince."Darby wondered how that oath would be recorded."Then what med ye?" Mr. Rooney scratched his chin, shaven two days before."It was time for me to go back to me dogs," said Andy coldly. "An' if Miss Gheena gives me the pony, I'll match ye around me own place an' down Carty's Hill an' around to me uncle's, four miles across the counthry, any day ye likes."As the proposed course would include about twenty sharp bends to avoid bogs, the crossing of a ravine, and a collection of completely unsafe fences, Rooney replied: "Match where ye are," and left Andy, to again reproach Darby."Bribery an' corruption the same as ye'd read off the Holy Bible," he said sourly, "an' ye wouldn't let me spheak. I that ran fair an' honest with two falls an' a run out—an' that's prepared to back meself for twenty pounds for a match. There's more than a cup on it," he added, whimpering. "There's Janey O'Dea that is wavering between us, an' his ould father, chattin' now of the rale silver cup, an' inclined towards Rourke."Miss Janey O'Dea was a buxom damsel, who rode in a bright blue habit topped by a tie which she ironed, but too plainly did not wash save on occasions, and a bowler hat which, as Andy put it, just perched above on her nesht of hair."But I got around him lasht evenin' that if it was Jamesey Rourke's chat an' I could bate his horse aisy, he'd have the word for me with Janey, an' before Shrove so that we'd settle."Rourke was a long, lean youth, with shifty eyes and a battered complexion; he was loose of joint and given to wearing the long coats and over-baggy breeches of the horse-coper. His friends said that he was one that knew daylight when he saw it, and his enemies that there was no roguery that he had not a masthery of, exceptin' maybe the little he'd forgotten. He drank and was not attractive."Make Rourke do the dacent, Mr. Dillon, to make up for the way ye thrated me, an' I'll say no more."Darby rubbed his nose thoughtfully; this long, lean youth could do a great deal to spoil fox hunting; there were two coverts on his land, and several others on those of his relations and friends."We'll ride over to Rourke's," said Darby to Andy. "I'll see what I can do, Rooney."Darby crippled down the steps, swinging out more easily on the gravel with his crutch under his arm. The twisted leg was growing so strong that the crutch would soon be discarded for a stick, and Darby was looking forward with a child's zest to throwing it away. They were making him a new boot which would support the foot and help him greatly.Yet the very flush of partial strength, the brightness of the cool winter's day, brought a sigh quickly on the heels of elation. It was hard to be able to feel young, and yet have all youth's possessions placed well out of reach. He was a mere piece of flotsam cast up on Life's beach, riddled and battered, never to float lightly on the grey-blue salt waters.Darby clambered on to the back of his pet chestnut. Once in the saddle he was upright, sitting easily, a cripple no longer. Riper plunged lightly and came down to the firm, light touch on the bits and the pressure of a heel. Andy scrambled on to his second mount, a stumpy and dogged roan cob, rejoicing in the stable name of Go Aisy—because "go aisy" he would except under stress of the sharpest spurs—though he had been christened Dobbin.Rourke's house lay inland, snug in a hollow. There were signs of good farming over the carefully kept fences, the fields free of weeds, the heaps of manure out ready for top-dressing; the house was substantial and the yard clean.Jamesey himself was ringing a young horse at the back. He was a fresh-faced, squarely-built fellow, unpretentious and good-humoured.In answer to Darby's questions, he put in the lumpy youngster and put a bridle on the dun horse, pulling him out."Look at him! An', in God's name, sir, is it likely he'd ever bate that great stridin' horse again?" he said, grinning. "They are schooling That's the Boy now, an' without a crowd likely he wouldn't fall. An' why would I be out to be a laffin' sthock to please Masther Dan Rooney?"Darby explained further in low tones.James Rourke's face fell a little. He replied that he was really attached to Jennie once, and that all was going well until the war and the buying of remounts."An' then ye see me bit comes gradual, bein' honest airnin's; but Dan Rooney med a rich man of himself sellin' misfortunes to the soldiers—buyin' here an' there, he havin' a friend in the barracks. Well, before Hivin, Mr. Darby, one blind as a sthone, an' one a runaway that no man could manage, but he drugged him carryin' him in; an' one with staggers, an' a kicker that it never let ye up, an' a craythur with spavins. I couldn't be goin' to say me prayers thinkin' of some poor felly wantin' to make a boult with Slattery's grey kicker to try to get on; but Rooney bought the dhregs of the counthry-side, an' drew out more than ye'd believe, and now he has Jennie's father tormented with the show of money. A new side-car no less, with green cushions, an' silver spoons to stir tay with—he bought thim above at an auction—an' two yelly an' red china vases for the parlour table. He has the ould man mismerized, while poor Janey——"Just then Jane O'Dea herself, on her greatly galled black horse, rode shyly into the yard, and seeing Darby there, asked behind hot blushes for the lend of a bridle, hers being unsteady. She had really come to see the cup.With a great many protests she got down, folding a modestly unsafe habit skirt about her gaitered ankles, and was welcomed by Jamesey's mother.Darby knew now that tea, eggs and blackberry jam were things he could not escape from. He admired the silver cup which he had purchased, and grinned as he looked—the reflection of Jamesey silently kissing Miss O'Dea being clearly mirrored in the polished surface. Later on, when the room had lost its earthly smile and grown tropical in temperature, he removed the young people to the yard, where Jane, growing truthful in her sadness, said her Dada was set upon Dan Rooney, had been shaken by the beating of the big horse and the unpleasant loss of five shillings, but now inclined, bribed by libations of whisky, to Rooney again."Danny sayin' he'll be aisy on me fortin'," she said tearfully, "an' not on this horse even that is me own; an' he swearin' that if Jamesey here does not run off the race, he is a coward and had no right to win; an', agen, that the raison is that Jamesey has not twinty pound to lay down ready money."The course of true love was not running smooth. It was Andy coming over and whispering in Rourke's ear who seemed to oil the machinery. A slow smile broke across Jamesey's face, and an expression of dubious anxiety gradually gave way to one of hope.He told Darby that he'd say in a day or two if he could run the match, and then hoisted Janey to her saddle with many "Lord, save us!" and "Have a cares!" from the unagile damsel.Darby rode a little way with her, telling Andy to keep behind. Coyly, since it is not maidenly to express affection, she told him how she disliked Mr. Rooney, and how her heart was set on Jim."An' what is a few pounds extra if it goes on check ridin' trousers an' whisky," said Miss Janey shrewdly, "which is both poor value, Mr. Dillon!"Darby said "Undoubtedly.""An' he no farmer, but all for buyin' bad horses an' sellin' them on. A stable full there now on him, with the greenest buyers beginnin' to look at more than just that a horse is alive, as they did at first. A pianny he promised me, an' I scalded from musical pieces at the convent, pullin' out with your fingers what a musical box'd tune for you for the twist of a handle. An' if it's up there I goes, it will be with the heart broke in me," concluded Janey tearfully, as she pointed to a bleak house upon a hill. "An' go I will if poor Jamesey cannot beat that ould thoroughbred in a match."Darby rode on to Castle Freyne. He found Gheena leaning over one of the horses' doors, her face set gravely and time of gay youth fled."It's Dearest, Darby," she said. "He has taken to sticking little pin-pricks into me, refusing white oats for the horses, stopping fires, keeping in the motor. He would dismiss my two new old men but mother considers their employment charity. And Lancelot is staying on for a month, and I—wish there had never been a war. It seems to upset everyone so"—Gheena's busy unskilful fingers clicked at her knitting—"now they talk of submarines coming along in herds and our having supply bases for them. And if they have, Crabbit and I will find them," said Gheena emphatically."I am afraid I cannot come along the rocks to help, Gheena."Her face softened suddenly."You could motor me," she said, "to points and places. As petrol is too dear to use now we are to have out the wagonette and drive the farm horses. But wait until Dearest misses the first train to Cortra," said Gheena hopefully, "and mother takes his advice as to hiring a car to go on in, because she must have supplies for the week and the curry powder is out."Darby put his horse up and accepted a drive to the village in Gheena's pony-trap. The pony was a creature of moods which occasionally rattled along at a gallop, and more often walked and grazed. It had a hard side to its mouth, a failing which made traffic a difficulty, and it occasionally kicked when beaten.As they drove, Gheena explained that she had strong hopes of Whitebird being returned to her. She had written to her uncle, telling of the horse's little accomplishment, which was lying down flat at a certain signal. The grey had been brought up in a circus. He had done it once out hunting at the sound of a whistle."And ... Uncle Tony has learnt the whistle," said Gheena softly and with meaning.Darby observed that he understood the sixty pounds had been carefully spent, so the money would have to be returned, and a bump stopped further conversation."If they won't pick up their legs in time I can't help them doing it too late and overbalancing," she said severely. "It's your own fault, Ned Kavanagh, you know Topsy."The aggrieved Kavanagh remarked sourly that he was greatly hurted where he met the road, and that it was to fall or the loss of two good legs.He mounted his cart again, glaring balefully at the pony.Topsy having declined to come over, they had grazed a donkey cart, and the driver's wild swoop to save his dangling limbs had resulted in his overbalancing.They skated off a large heap of stones and pulled up in the village, when they saw two motors outside Mrs. Weston's cottage."Is Stafford the latest?" Darby asked.Gheena did not reply, but was snappish to Topsy when the pony would not stand. The old Professor was in the shop—a crowded place, smelling of cheese and bacon and flannelette, where you could purchase a reel of cotton with a salted pig's head brushing your hat, and pull the flannelette of your choice out from under lumps of butter and loaves of bread. The window rejoiced in an array of Peggy's leg firmly adhering to its glass bottles, some tins of tomatoes, an array of match-boxes and the day's bread; the far end of the shop was the post-office, smelling of damp gum and dust.Here Miss Carty, the postmistress, had at first been greatly put out because every man in the Army, no matter what regiment they jined, good Munsthers or not, was all put into the same lot—the Expeditionary Force—where, for all they knew, they might be dyin' and fightin' with misfortunate furriners, Scotch and English. Explanation having proved vain, she gave it up and accepted the injustice. Mrs. Carty, who rolled to and fro deftly amid boxes and barrels, was a person of superior intelligence, greatly shocked just then at the hobnobbing of the English soldiers with the German thraitors at Christmas-tide."If it was rooses to get them over to their ditches and doctor them quietly, I could understand," declaimed Mrs. Carty; "but—but to be handin' out smhokes and dhrinks an' carryin' on pleasantly without an objec'! I have the sardines in, Miss Gheena. Thruppence a box extry, seein' the ways them under-minded boats has all the fish swhep from the say. Aisy for them to get a catch down below with the fish to be cot an' they slheepin'."Gheena placed the sardines in the trap and got in gloomily.They were hailed passing Mrs. Weston's door. Violet really brilliant in pale blue with a wide sailor hat on her toupée, and wearing purple shoes and stockings, was at it with Stafford."Watching for you," she said to Gheena, "to bring you in to tea."Gheena observed with care how Stafford kept close to Violet as they went up the path, and looked really admiringly at her brilliant colouring and bright face."If she'd only let her feet out," said Darby, hobbling in.Mrs. Weston did not excel in giving tea. It came up upon a brass tray, and was generally both stewed and chilly. Two bought cakes, crumbly and dry, and a plate of thick bread and butter were the eatables.Mrs. Weston said frankly that tea was washy stuff, and called for the forgotten sugar.Old Berthe, in frilled cap with banded grey hair, hobbled off rapidly. She was enveloped by many petticoats, and was a taciturn old woman, never going out or making friends."Poor Berthe is so anxious about her precious Switzerland," said Violet, "for fear it would go to war, and all her relations in France, and no way of hearing."Gheena was still gloomy. She could not understand why her stepfather had grown suddenly unpleasant and niggardly, and why they seemed to collide so often. Lancelot, the wounded hero, rather interested her—she was kind-hearted enough to like waiting on him, and was even a little pleased at his dependence upon her.After a cup of tepid tea and a prolonged period of Mr. Keefe glaring at Mr. Stafford, Gheena got up to go home. Darby having taken the lid off the teapot looked into it critically."Made with cold water and let heat, foreign fashion," he said. "Why not, Mrs. Weston, teach your old lady the English way?"Violet said, "Imagine you knowing the other!" in a curious way."And some of you have left your pipe," called out Gheena. She had dropped a glove and stayed to hunt for it. She brought out an ornate carved pipe, lately used.Violet said she thought it must be the Professor's as no one else claimed it, and took it back.The Professor, whom they met toddling back from his walk, stopped to speak, and got asked in to Castle Freyne for tea. He thought the pipe was probably that wild Mrs. Weston's. "But her garden is tidier. She did rave at the man Guinane when she came back a few evenings ago, so high that I heard her scolding. Carefully, Darby; stand still, Topsy, you beast!"The hurt of helplessness came back to Darby; he should have been helping Gheena out. It reminded him of what he was to see her spring to the pony's head and stop the little beast going on."You take care of the poor cripple, Gheena," he said gently.Gheena's eyes filled with tears as she muttered denial. Darby swung up the shallow steps, his leg was undoubtedly growing stronger.Later on he told Gheena all about the dispute over the race.At the next meet, two days afterwards, Rourke rode up on the little dun."They have me shamed, Mr. Darby," he said, "with 'Afraid ye are,' and 'How many mile would ye be left behind in two?'"Darby wondered."An' 'If ye're horse is good, pull him out.' So the match it will have to be—or Juliana Carty above at the farm, an' I have no great wish for her for a wife."Janey rode up at the moment, her cheeks polished with soap, her tie well ironed, and her pretty face looking out under a fringe of brown hair, and James sighed."I have a wish for Janey," he said shyly. "An' so will ye settle all for the match, sir, I'll risk it."Darby said hopefully that the thoroughbred might fall."Or he might not gallop as fast as he'd think," said Jamesey softly. "Ye'd niver know. Ye'd niver know."The result of this was that after a good hunt and a kill, Darby took the two men home with him to settle matters."We will write it out proper," said Rourke, "so as to be sure."Darby was familiar with matches. He wrote out that Mr. D. Rooney's That's the Boy, five years, by Barcol Lise, would be matched against Mr. J. Rourke's—here he lifted his pen."I have no right name for him," said Jamesey vaguely; "put me little dun horse, sir, five years.""Dun horse, five years," wrote on Darby, "twenty pounds a side—over a natural course of three miles.""An' let all have good coats on to keep warm waitin' for Rourke here," sneered Rooney."Yerself an' ye're dirty boastin'," returned Rourke, without the animosity which seemed natural."Will ye bet me five pounds I'm not in five minnits before ye cross the last fince?" stormed Rooney."I will so," said Jamesey firmly, pulling out some greasy notes which he handed to Darby.Darby had a great deal to say to the match, and saw Janey, who was racked by doubt and fears."For he'd be the slithery class of a husband, that Dan," she said fretfully; "one that does no credit to the good bit he'd get, an' he takes drink terrible. An' Jamesey cannot win, an' yet he has a smilin' face on him; an' he ordthered two new cushions for his side-car at Carey's yesterday to drive home from chapel on. He says he'd stand me three days in Dublin straight away if I'd fancy it, too. An' he without a chance!"The date of the match was fixed for the second Thursday in January at one o'clock, until Rooney wrote to say that he must go to the big town, and could not get back until three, so it must be run then.Now the hours after three early in January begin to get chill and dark, but it had to be.Everyone related to the Rourkes and Rooneys poured in from all sides to see the match; the hillside was black with cars and carts; there was even a stall laden with glutinous leathery buns dotted with pink sugar, and surreptitious porter sold and consumed behind a flapping tent. The one bookmaker had returned, to close almost immediately up That's the Boy and take all he could get for Rourke's dun.At a quarter-past three Rourke trotted up, his mount veiled in a brand-new American rug of superlative smartness, and bandaged all round with linen bandages."If it's racin' I am, it's racin' I may as well look," he said good-humouredly when chaffed.Old Mr. O'Dea, who was stout and slow of movement, came up to say querulously that he heard it was childthers' nonsense putting out that dun at all. And that now maybe they'd hear no more boasting and chat.James replied that with luck he might not, looking fixedly at the flushed countenance of his opponent.Janey's father, coming to superintend, remarked to Rourke that if it was an accident his taking the cup, there was no call to make so much boast of it afther Mass, Janey listening with tears in her eyes.Here Mr. Rooney broke in with, "An' he not able to win until Miss Gheena's pony had to be pulled off. An' the gibin' before all with 'Where was ye're racehorse?' or 'Will ye have a drink out of silver?'"James Rourke's complete good-humour as he stood by the sheeted dun roused his opponent to further eloquence. Bitterly he informed the interested listeners that when Cup-winner James inquired where was the racehorse to-day, it was gone home, they could tell him, if any friends waited on in the could to see the thrickster come in.Here Darby thought that if the matter was to be put to the proof, it might be better to start while there was a little light, and he looked thoughtfully at Rourke's reserved smile.When Dan Rooney emerged from the chrysalis of his coat, as a butterfly in a pink jacket, dirty breeches and papery boots, his glitter wrought a groan of admiration from the crowd.Old O'Dea, falling back to admire, suggested that he was the Boyo himself, the fine figure of a man, what there was of him. When James, quietly arrayed in his hunting kit, slipped the rug from his horse, leaving on the bandages, and it was observed that its tail was plaited up, fresh pleasantries broke forth.Someone wished to know if Rourke imagined he owned The Tetrarch. A large Rooney cousin asked hilariously if Danny thought maybe that if he foxed the horse he was a racehorse he'd run faster, to which James replied pleasantly that he might, and backed himself for another pound.Darby had laid out a fair course, over easy banks, and presenting no difficulties for a striding horse.That's the Boy looked overtrained and tucked up. He lashed out irritably when mounted.From the start Rooney adopted the hurricane-like tactics which he meant to win with. He tore away at racing pace, taking the first fence in his stride.There were no horses to confuse the big youngster. He fled along at a pace which no one could possibly hope the dun to keep up with."All over," said Darby, putting up a pair of totally useless glasses, for it was growing quite dusk. "Poor Rourke won't see the way the other is going in half a mile."But to everyone's astonishment the dun horse and quietly-dressed rider clung obstinately close to the comet-like flash of Dan Rooney's pink jacket. The rider of That's the Boy shook up the big horse to a pace which set him sprawling, and all but resulted in disaster at a bank. Sobered by this, he looked back angrily and pulled his horse together; he was a fine rider. Still going quite easily and slugging hard against his bit, the dun was close behind. Rooney sat forward, using as much jockey fashion as he could master, bumping uncomfortably at his jumps."Did ye dhrug him?" hurled Rooney over an irate shoulder, "that I can hear him so long?""Three gallons of whisky. Was it cloryform yours got?" was Rourke's reply, his tone preoccupied, for they were nearing the nasty little scramble in and out of the boreen.Gheena and Darby had cut the two racers off at this point, and listened, smiling, to them."But I never saw Rooney adopt Tod Sloan's style before," said Darby; "and if he can't get the horse together, he'll fall at the boreen."That's the Boy, consummately handled, dropped in and out just without a fall; the dun struck the far fence hard, grunted, and bundled somehow into the far field, shooting his rider off. With the boreen behind him and Rourke down, Rooney cheered as he galloped on.But the fall took little more time than a clean jump would have done. James Rourke was up again as soon as his horse and sat back suddenly."Be dam to where the weight is! How can he win if it is not there at all!" he stormed as he changed his seat.Next moment, in the fast falling dusk, the spectators roared to see the despised dun closing the gap, fighting his way to the big horse's quarters, to his girth, forging ahead.At this stage Jane O'Dea fell upon her father's neck, clasping him closely as she wailed, "It was no boastin', Pappy, it was no boastin'," into the displeased ear of a man who had invested five pounds at evens on Rooney, and who thirsted for liberty of action to get something speedily on the other."If he wasn't boastin', then wasn't he lyin', to pretend to let the Rat up lasht time?" roared O'Dea, when his proffered crown on the dun had been promptly refused.An enthusiastic cousin of Rooney's offered an even crown, hotly declaring, "It's cantherin' the man is, so as to make a race of it, and shame the other.""If he is, he is beltin'," shrilled Janey, letting her parent go. "Beltin'!""He has the sphur out too," grunted her progenitor. "I'll make the crown double, if ye like, Tom Rooney."The big, bewildered youngster sprang forward to the drub of the stick and the bite of the steel in his flanks. He gave of his best, but the little dun was a length ahead, striding along, pulling double, and his rider had not moved.They landed over the last fence, the bay closed the gap, the dun surged forward. The crowd swayed and roared, leaping into traps which gave way and upset them, hurling up hats, jumping to get a better view. The one bookmaker, seeing the dun ahead, wondered if he had got straight to Heaven through the laxity of the authorities, and looked at his book with breath held hard. As they dashed up the long slope, Rooney dropped his reins a little, so that just at the post the bay closed upon him, and the dun's head was barely half a length in front."It was one of them hippodromic sirringes," gasped Rooney, dropping his tired right hand. "Nothin' less. Ye dam thraitor of a spy!" He rolled off, panting. "I protest, Mister Dillon. He has an artificial horse med with one of them hippodromic doses, an' it was near out of him an' he finishing."There was no weighing in, catch-weights had been the order. Little Andy led off the panting dun, and Darby himself saw to the exhausted That's the Boy. A few more gruellings of this type would break any horse's spirit.Mr. Rooney, bewildered, took consolation in liquid form, agreed with several people that he was hardly treated, then his pink coat gleaming in the dusk, he squared up to Mr. James Rourke to demand satisfaction.
CHAPTER X
Christmas at Castle Freyne came in formally about ten o'clock with the advent of the wran boys at the dining-room windows.
Gheena fumed furiously before the sacrifice of tiny feathered things, and was ignored by her stepfather, who supported old customs principally because no one else wished him to. Custom also dictated that everyone's presents should repose on their plates; so that they waited in hunger to slash string and express rapture, and the table was littered with bits of twine and wrapping paper.
Gheena rhapsodized over a new bag of severe green leather with jail-like clasps, then embracing her stepfather with the fervour expected of her. She put it aside to pick up a variety of other oddments, amongst them a cigarette-case from "V.W." with Gheena scratched across its tortoiseshell form in silver. At the bottom of the heap she discovered her mother's string of pearls, long coveted, and exclaimed shrilly.
Dearest George grunted gratitude over two new pipes, a tobacco jar and a box of cigars, and a note-case for the new paper money from his wife.
Her plate was obliterated by a vast edifice in glass, destined to hold flowers and glimmering with a dull green hideousness.
"Got it over from London, you see, Matilda," said her husband, beaming. "Badly wanted for the drawing-room shelf to take the everlastings."
Gheena dived again, to find a big turquoise charm, with "For Luck" on it, from Darby, and a pair of race-glasses with no name.
Hooking the charm on the pearls, where it did not look at home, Gheena turned over everything once more to find some note about the race-glasses, and heard Dearest George repress, with extreme difficulty, the words which he would have used concerning a litter on the floor, if he had not been opening the case containing Gheena's present of a pipe, and had to say "Thank you, my dear," instead.
"I wanted race-glasses," said Gheena, "but who? Darby, you're a duck!"
Darby smiled as he hobbled to his meagre array of presents. Gheena always gave him a box of cigarettes. There were no little mementoes from loving girls for Darby Dillon now.
"But I say who?" said General Brownlow, picking up a little silver matchbox. "I got Psyche's letter yesterday."
"I thought you wouldn't mind—that there'd be nothing on your plate," apologized Gheena shyly. "And mother sent the cigarettes. Oh!" This as the old man kissed her rather tenderly.
The theatrical advent of Lancelot with his mother and sister guarding his crutches, intercepted the sorting of presents. He came so plainly expecting general sympathy, to be installed in an arm-chair with a small table by his side, and his mother fussily superintending every mouthful of his breakfast.
They went to church presently, where the cotton-wool texts looked brave, if a little tired, and the usual smell of roast stove and drying cushions pervaded the airless atmosphere. Mr. Brady completely forgot the season when he touched upon the war. He took for his text the writing on the wall, and forgot that too, as he plunged into metaphor as difficult to follow as modern tactics; for in a breath he compared the Germans with burrowing snakes and carrion-seeking eagles, both of which expressions were listened to with rapture by his wife, and made the General and Darby tap their heads softly. Mr. Brady then explained smoothly how even as a God-fearing nation we wanted nothing but peace, and the best way to get it was to go and kill every man Jack of German traitors and treaty violators, until there were only grey-beards and infants left. "And, of course, the prisoners," he added, regretfully.
"The Redeemer of the world," he said, "never meant an army which warred on women and children to dominate humanity, and to-day, in the words of the Bible, it 'was to us to go forth and kill.'"
If he had not got on to the National Anthem very quickly someone would have cheered.
"Even if we are fighting, the texts will never do for next year," said Mrs. Keefe in the doorway. "So what would you think, Mrs. Freyne, of stuffing pillows for the troops with them now while the wool is fairly dry."
A fine rain was falling outside, and the gleam of wintry sunshine somewhere behind it; the day was very cold.
The heavy appetite engendered by church made George Freyne fidget, when Gheena delayed him by rushing off with Violet Weston. Mrs. Weston was brilliant in rather crude mauve, with sky-blue silk stockings on, and held Gheena's arm very affectionately as they whispered together.
The old Professor beamed at them all, a beam with sadness in it.
"In Germany they love Christmas so," he said gently. "The Gretchens and the Annas romp like children over their presents; they all over-eat themselves and everywhere is the smell of pine needles and candles which have burnt themselves out—the 'Tannen-baum.' The women are as bad as the men, you say, Mr. Freyne, because they look now as ever, when they are told to look. They clap their poor hands now for war as they did for the beauty of the Christmas-tree. Christmas, with empty chairs near the fire—is it not sad for all?"
"How you can say one word for the brutes who lamed my Lancelot," said Mrs. Augustus Freyne, "I do not know, Professor."
The Professor said humbly that he only spoke for humanity and Christmastide.
"We are astonished to hear the dreadful people ever mentioned," said Mrs. De Burgho Keane heavily. "After all, if there were no dreadful fat mothers there would be no brutal sons to run about murdering and rapining." Here Mrs. Keane stopped to consider if that was quite the right word, especially in the churchyard path, because the Professor chuckled softly and Darby grinned. Changing the conversation, Mrs. Keane objected to last year's texts as disrespectful to the season.
Mrs. Brady uneasily remarked that the cotton-wool was to make pillows, and it will all look quite nice with the lights up this evening.
Mrs. De Burgho Keane replied energetically that the evening would not concern her. She passed on to interrogate Lancelot as he hopped to the motor, and wished to know if the brutal Germans really laughed when they wounded people, or if that was a newspaper lie.
Lancelot replied vaguely, the tail of his eye on the General. It was a secret carefully preserved that he had not gone beyond Boulogne. His foot was badly crushed, and he was not likely to see service again.
Then came the heaviness of Christmas luncheon. A meal which was always faintly neglected by Anne, who had dinner upon her mind, to say nothing of roast beef and plum pudding backed up by cheap sherry in the kitchen.
When it was over George Freyne helped Lancelot his nephew to his study, where he talked to him long and seriously.
A wounded man possessed the privilege of sympathy. Now was the hour to lay siege to Gheena's heart. Lancelot was not at all averse to life at Castle Freyne on a large income. The fear which he felt for his cousin Gheena now would easily turn to sulky authority when he found his position secure. A boy who had been indulged for his twenty-three years, was not likely to be a very pleasant companion through life.
Dearest George, moving his mind on its narrow ledge of cunning, decided that a new régime of petty tyranny would make his stepdaughter inclined to take her liberty at all costs, and Lancelot had promised faithfully that the Dower House would never be his father-in-law's position.
Gheena, through the soft cold which was turning to frost outside, wandered off by the sea. It shimmered in steely restlessness, mouthing white-toothed at the brown rocks. Cold held the world in its grip, the brown world looked icy, the shingle as though its touch would hurt in its chill.
"And out in the North Sea they keep watch," said a voice behind Gheena, "with the wind we find here cutting, there as a knife, and spray freezing on their eyelashes, and constant anxiety."
"And those dreadful submarines," said Gheena, turning to see Stafford, who had come up quietly over the grass.
"Which they threaten to blockade us with in the early spring."
"And—you believe there are bases here—men who help them?" said Gheena.
Mr. Stafford said dreamily that money would do anything.
"You have wanted it badly?" said Gheena.
Basil Stafford shot a swift look at Gheena as he answered that he had once wanted it so badly that he would have sold a limb to get it.
"I suppose," said Gheena, walking on, "that you won't keep to the drains after the winter here. You'll join something."
"You're not thinking of putting a white feather in my mince-pie for dinner, are you?" he said gravely. "There are other ways of helping besides wearing khaki, Miss Gheena, helping on war."
Gheena repeated "Helping on war" with sarcastic emphasis, and told Crabbit not to chase seagulls.
Crabbit leapt forth in swift pursuit of an elusive bird, a stately gull, which sailed off and then bobbed down into the icy sea, floating there gracefully, Crabbit immediately putting his paws into the water, trying to pretend that he had only come down to take the temperature. Then he pounced on something in the line of flotsam, and galloped back to Gheena to lay the offering at her feet.
It was a pocket-handkerchief of large size.
Gheena said "Crabbit, you beast!" turning away; but Stafford bent down and picked the sodden rag up; then dropped it again with a sharp exclamation and looked out to sea.
"We'll go back." Gheena walked towards the house. The kitchen chimney was absolutely pouring out smoke, heaving against the evening light.
"After all," said Stafford, "if there had been no war someone else would have been employed for the drainage, and I should never have come here."
Gheena, nose in air, considered the evening sky.
He laughed slightly bitterly.
"And it doesn't much matter when I go away again, I suppose," he said. "There is the Professor on the cliffs. He must have sampled every rock in the place by now."
"And also Hook, coming back." Gheena stopped to look at the General's man. "He seems to do everything except look after his master, that man of the General's."
Hook and the Professor met upon the cliffs and spoke. Then the valet overtook them.
"Been right away to the point, sir," he said to Stafford. "Regular nest of caves and holes, this coast."
"There are some that one can see the water going into, but are quite hidden," said Gheena. "I believe there are entrances from the land. I know of a way down to one of those caves. My old nurse, who came from the village out there, said there were two or three others, but she never showed them to me."
Hook stroked his chin thoughtfully.
"One is curious. It's just over there, if you'd like to see it, with the tide coming in its ease."
Stafford looked longingly at the lighted house, for Gheena was already flying back through the scrum of trees and out on to the chill low cliffs with the sea moaning below. Here, diving through a tangle of dead bracken and unpleasantly live gorse, she came to a hole in the ground, caught a lichen-covered slab of slaty rock and dropped out of sight, remarking cheerily that it was pitch dark and very slippery.
The cliff ran out just there in bare slaty stone, with stunted fuchsias clinging in the crevices, and brambles creeping along, long and thorny.
To get goatwise from slab to slab in a grey gloom of almost complete darkness, with the touch of the stones biting numbly, was not pleasant, but the two men followed Gheena down.
"Here is the shingle. The sea is up. Oh——"
For Stafford snapped on an electric torch and a dripping gloomy cavern came into view. It smelt dankly salt, and cold sea-water was pouring along the wet floor, sluicing in through inlets in the rock.
One could imagine sightless slimy fish in there living in the deep pools in the rocks, chill weeds and noisome things. The sea echoed outside, slushing and gurgling, and the swelling rim of water creeping in through hidden channels was ghost-like in its grey upward movement.
"But there's no outlet," was what Hook said thoughtfully.
Stafford said it was like a nightmare, snapped off his torch and scrambled for the entrance.
The grey dusk outside was sweet daylight after the gloom below. Hook thanked them, and they scurried back to the house, through wisps of white mist which were rising in the hollows..
"Your cousin is being helped in to tea." The blinds were not drawn, and the surrounded entrance of Lancelot could be plainly seen, with a chair being made ready for him and footstools arranged.
"He went out to fight," said Gheena sympathetically. "Whether it was a cart or shrapnel, he did go out to try to be hit."
Basil Stafford's lips came together with a snap.
Lancelot complained of pain at tea-time. He carped at his mother and invited Gheena to adjust his cushions. When she had done that, he asked her for more tea, because she knew the exact quantities of cream and sugar—and then he begged her to show himPunch'sAlmanack.
The well of pity in which so much female reason drowns kept Gheena attending to the invalid and forbearing to say sharp things. He had gone out bravely and done his best.
She listened while he fretted and grumbled because now he could never do anything; his soldier's life was over for quite a year, if not more, when the war must be over. He talked of what he might have done, and of the loneliness at Cahercalla.
The big dining-room table had to have a leaf put in it for dinner that night. The Freynes had collected everyone in the village, down to the Professor, who came in baggy evening clothes and square-toed boots.
A meal of mighty courses marched solemnly to the haven of dessert—champagne creamed, regardless of war time, and from fine oysters to fine brandy-veiled plum-pudding—it was indigestible Christmas fare.
Of course everyone talked of the war, until Mrs. Freyne suddenly remembered that Mr. Brady ought to tell the General his splendid scheme, even down to the Kaiser's place of imprisonment in Runnymede.
Darby's "Why Runnymede?" held a note of astonishment.
Matilda Freyne said she supposed because it would always remind the dreadful man of Magna Charta and England's might. Well, if it was Spike Island Mr. Brady had suggested, she thought Runnymede was much more suitable, so English all round, and everyone agreed with her gravely.
They played games afterwards, to amuse the Brady and O'Toole children—blind man's buff and general post—in which game Mrs. Freyne could never think of any post save London to Berlin, and as no one would be Berlin, London got tired of hopping up vainly, and allowed poor Paris to be caught when someone called this town.
When Mr. Keefe, the blind man, spun frantically round the room amid a ring of mockers, Gheena took refuge in a window recess, to find General Brownlow smoking there peacefully.
Next minute Stafford was caught and blinded. In the whirl of pulling hands he felt one catch harder than the others, and having secured Lucy Brady, of eleven, wondered if it was chance or design that had placed a goose-quill in his button-hole. The Keefe children had had one to torment their father with, but—— He took it out and put it carefully into his pocket-book.
"If anyone did that on purpose," said Brownlow as Gheena came back to him, "it was a dirty thing to do."
"He won't forget, though," said Gheena carelessly. "And he doesn't care. Miss O'Toole might have done it."
"Don't you ever judge Don't-cares by appearances, young lady," he snapped. "And don't judge that boy, because he's a good sort, or I'm no judge myself."
Mrs. Weston, in flaming pink silk high to the throat, and wearing a becoming feather boa because she had a cold, had disappeared from view with Mr. Keefe. A murmur of voices from the firelit library indicated their retreat.
Darby, by the blazing drawing-room fire, looked on. He could not romp with the grown-up children, and no one could settle to Bridge. Some of the sadness of any anniversary fell on him. How many Christmases had come and gone in that old room! How many generations of white-frocked mites, grown year by year to girls and boys, to men and women, until they sat by the fire and tried to forget that soon they must go alone into the unknown! The withered-handed, tottering people, with their little pleasures of warmth, which glows as new life into their blood; of some favourite dish; or of love for the youth crowding them out of life—their lives are of the day; they are past looking back and dare not look forward. So the hours of waking after fitful sleep to the time when, tired out, they seek it again—makes each day a life to them. How many gay brides had fluttered in new finery to their new home, wives of the three-bottle men of old days, when shutters were shut at five and the day old by night!—women who had no voice in life. Subservient, early Victorian wives, advanced now to dinner at seven, putting away the fragile lovely furniture which had delighted their forbears, filling the room with hideous heaviness, with round tables and mirrors, and stiff arm-chairs and clumsy cabinets. A later Victorian, Gheena's grandmother, rejoicing in an outbreak of macrame-edged brackets, of good china entombed in red plush mounts, of black and gold, of chenille monkeys, and satin antimacassars worked over with rosebuds or forget-me-nots.
An old house must be a sad thing, a looker-on at the life which comes and goes within its portals—the birth so gladly hailed, to the solemn tramp of heavily-laden men and the flower-smothered coffin standing in the hall.
Darby's own house was older than Castle Freyne, and had seen more people pass, and now he lived there alone, only son of an only son—and who would come after him? There was a cousin, a bright boy at school, heir if Darby never married.
The entrance of a huge bowl of punch carried in by Naylour broke up the games. Everyone took a spoonful, coughed apologetically, and had a little more, for it was rather a wonderfully deceitful punch, hiding its Samson-like strength behind a mild and mingled flavour of lemons and innocent things.
"To those in France who guard us here!" Gheena proposed a toast and swung her glass so vigorously that she upset a large portion of her punch over her stepfather.
"And thank goodness Christmas is over!" said Dearest George ill-humouredly, wiping sticky punch from inside his collar.
"I'm leaving two fellows I like behind me," said old Tony Brownlow next day, "Stafford and Dillon. All right, George; come on to the stables before I go."
The Stephen's Day hunt at Dunkillen began with a completely illegal race run for any stakes which could be collected, anything over four pounds being called a present.
It was run over an S-shaped course, consisting of small slaty banks and open ditches and two stone gaps, and they went round three times.
Darby gave a silver cup this year, so that competition was, as Phil termed it, fierce entirely.
Dan Rooney's That's the Boy was an easy favourite from James Rourke's dun gelding, unnamed—That's the Boy being a great over-lopped, leggy bay, almost in the book, with a whistler's head and no bone, and the dun a scrubby beast, hiding a certain amount of quality behind a goose rump and a ewe neck, but with great second thighs and nine inches below the knee. A weedy grey mare was the only other animal expected to complete the course. There were four three-year-olds willing to go until they fell from exhaustion, and Andy on the Rat, which he had begged leave to enter.
"You'll never get him round the turns," was what Darby said to young Rooney, "and you're backing the horse as if the race was over."
Mr. Rooney replied contemptuously that That's the Boy had time to run out and back and catch what was against him, and that he hoped there'd be no talks of this race when he pulled the horse out to win in Cork Park.
"I'm allowing for a fall or two even," observed Rooney, as he pulled off his coat to display a silk jacket and a pair of very baggy drab breeches.
The dun's owner affected a flannel shirt and trousers tied in below the knee with string, and this, with varieties of shirts and trousers, was the fashionable and favourite get-up.
Darby, with the hounds grouped patiently in the background, was starter and judge. He dropped the flag directly they came at all near him, knowing the handiness of their heels, and saw them tear off in a bunch, the Rat scuttling along in the rear and the rush of That's the Boy knocking over one horse at the first fence.
"Bedam to himself an' his breedin'," commented the fallen jockey bitterly. "An' me mare gone home on me for certainty, an' maybe a boy away for the coffin before I'd be back meself."
That's the Boy's great stride carried him out with a clean lead, his Roman-nosed head in air; he shaved two banks with nerve-shattering carelessness, and being pulled in from the first turn, was crossed by a three-year-old, ridden out with whip and spur, and came down handsomely.
"There's the price of him," commented the knocked-out jockey by Darby's side.
The Field's snatched lead was easily taken back, but they had some way to go, and Darby still prophesied that the turns would do for the great big horse, even if he did not come down again.
The first stone gaps being scattered and shattered, the horses made for the second inward turn. Two of the three-year-olds were now trailing, completely done, and the little Rat, going at his ease, was close up with the leaders.
Quick and handily, James Rourke's dun slipped over the narrow banks with cat-like accurate ease, a complete contrast to the big horse's slithering bounds, invariably wrongly timed; but so far as pace went, That's the Boy had only to gallop on and win.
He tore at his head at the fences, cheeked his bit, and rushed out of the course, the violent wrench which brought him round bringing him also into collision with a rather awkward bank and sending him on to his knees.
Now a variety of mistakes will blow any horse. When Dan Rooney set his mount going again he did not meet with the same response, and the dun, the grey and the Rat were a field ahead.
"Bet you a sovereign, Rourke," said Darby. "Gheena, a sovereign."
Gheena, of course, backed That's the Boy. Wild shrieks began to arise from the crowd, and the local bookmaker could not issue tickets fast enough. He had absolutely lost count of where he stood, so much that he eyed his outside car more than once.
The grey mare, going gallantly, closed with the dun, who wore her down and shot out. Half a field behind, That's the Boy, white with foam, was being unmercifully flogged on. But the dun gave the last bank a lightning-like kick, and as James Rourke wondered if he would be caught in the run home, something slipped by him.
The Rat was clean bred, with brothers and sisters running races in England. He had been going quite within himself, and now he stretched his wicked little head and made for the hounds at a pace which completely worsted the dun five-year-old.
"The divil's delight to it, but the pony has it won!" yelled someone frantically. "The pony!"
"Andy, for the love of God!" wailed James Rourke. "An' I have three pound on at fours. Twelve pounds, Andy, I'll be dhrawin'."
"I have a shillin' on meself," replied Andy, leaning forward victoriously.
"Cosy in the trinches they might be the ways they is chattin'," said a disturbed and embittered onlooker, who had backed the big horse; "an' even theobbjectin' won't save us now with that Kinnat out there in front. Someone suggested obbjectin' to both for conspiracy and colloquy.
"If we could rowl a hat or two accidental to swherve thim," suggested another backer of the favourite, "an' let Rooney up."
Someone else declared the two were too tirened out to mind any hats, but the big horse was coming on. James Rourke bent down and called something out to little Andy, something emphatic.
Andy shook his head, Rourke bent again, and the next moment the Rat, instead of passing the post, made for the waiting hounds, sailing through the crowd dexterously.
And in a hail of hats and a hurricane of yells, the dun went past the post at his lobbing gallop, with That's the Boy's head just at his girth and well past him before they pulled up.
Darby declined to give the cup if there were any objections, but he went on to Andy to demand explanation.
"Well, you see, me Mama would take the cup for the parlour, an' he offered me two pounds of them twelve to pull out," said Andy equably; "an' he a dacent bye that won't break his word; so I pulled out, and that was the thraffic there was betune us."
"And such is Irish racing," said Darby thoughtfully. "You send that pony home, Andy, and ride old Dobbin to hounds."
Basil Stafford said that if he laughed any more he knew something would give way.
"What you see to laugh at when my pony might have had a silver cup," said Gheena angrily, "I cannot see. Oh, call it Irish. You don't expect us to be Germans, do you?"
"If they could only meet you all for a little," gasped Stafford, "and see your little methods!"
"Oh, you'd like us to meet them, would you?" said Gheena. "You seem to know Germany well."
Stafford gasped that he wanted to see German officials encountering Phil and Andy, or your old Anne. That isverboten.
"'Forbidden. Is that so, young man?'
"'Himmel! Haf I not said it must not be done? Schwine!'
"'One side, young man, an' kape a civil tongue in ye're head. Isn't the right side the same as the left for th'ass a cyar if there is none in the sthreet?' Oh, if you only knew them and their superiority and their rages."
"Some people," said Gheena darkly, "ought to know them better at present."
Mr. Stafford's fingers touched his pocket-book; he leant forward suddenly.
"There is something here which you may take back some day," he said softly—"something which you gave me, I think."
Gheena turned away, looking puzzled.
"Ivery penny he paid me," said Andy deliriously joyful; "an' isn't that same bether than a silver cup on the table at home, Miss Gheena? An' sure, in honour an' glory I was first as well."
They moved on presently to draw a hill from the crest of which one could see the sea plainly.
Gheena began to talk of the submarines, wondering if the menace would ever be carried out.
"They'll want help if they do it," returned Stafford absently—"bases along coasts and ships to supply oil. People will do it. Money can buy anything, Miss Freyne, even some people's honour."
Gheena grew a little pale.
Christmas Day had interfered with stopping. A fox got to ground in covert and Darby decided to go home, glad of the chance, for hounds had had a hard day on Christmas Eve, and Barty was riding the same horse.
Gheena rode back with Darby as far as his turn and then on with Stafford, whose horse jogged dully and without spirit. He only kept one hunter.
It was cold and raw. Gheena missed Phil, when having glacially invited Stafford to tea, she slipped off in the big old yard, waving away proffered help.
"Phil is away with the two horses, Miss, to catch the thrain at the junction."
Gheena questioned wildly.
"With Whitebird and the Masther's Matty, Miss, the old mare. Tin year, he called her. The General took them both for remounts."
Gheena was young. She did not care for the youngster. But to sell her horse without her leave!
Attended by Crabbit, who was privately certain that nothing but a rat could create such haste, Gheena stormed through the back door, slamming it so hard that two panes of glass smashed, and Anne observed "Bomb-shells!" from the kitchen and tore to the library. Her stepfather, with an ugly look in his eyes which she had learnt to dread, was reading by an enormous fire.
"Four horses," he said coolly, "at the present time was absurd and unpatriotic." Gheena must remember that she was completely in her mother's hands, and, in fact ... here he saw the girl's eyes and decided that threats might not be wise.
Anyhow, the horse was gone, he said, and he had locked up the white oats.
His stepdaughter went out of the room rather too quietly.
Gheena could not censure her mother, who was nervous, expecting it, waiting for the girl's wrath.
"Dearest George had said the animal was not wanted, and there were some new farm implements which were required—chaff-cutter and oats-crusher; a new reaper for the spring. So he said you would understand, my dear."
Miss Freyne kissed her weeping mother and went into the drawing-room. Here Lancelot begged for attention, relying on her so humbly that she gave it ungrudgingly.
"They sold my horse when I was out," she said to Stafford. "My grey horse! You see, until I come of age or marry, I'm a minor without an income, and Dearest is affected by economy and wants mowing machines."
A dangerous glimmer shone in Gheena's eyes. Basil Stafford said "Indeed!" in tones of unmixed perplexity.
"I'll marry the Professor if Dearest is not careful," said Gheena.
Then with the lack of grace which haunts woman in muddy apron habit skirts and high boots, Gheena marched to her room, where Crabbit, very wet indeed, was just tearing into.
Evidently sorry she had missed that rat, he had gone out to fetch her comfort, and laid the sodden handkerchief, which he had picked up the day before, at her feet.
"Crabbit, you horrid dog!" said Gheena, her hand on his soft brown head; "but you meant it nicely." She held up the sopped rag, meaning to throw it on the fire, and saw the marking.
"Heinrich V. Belstein" in neat letters, and a number torn off.
A German's handkerchief cast up on the shores. Handkerchiefs do not float for long; even supposing it had caught in some seaweed, it was not likely to come from a distance. No submarine had been sunk. Gheena forgot that she was muddy and that a fire which she expected to see was non-existent. Someone was trafficking with German submarines. Some of the U boats must have been close in.
Gheena put her finger on the bell and kept it there, until Mary Kate, the head housemaid, arrived at full gallop, breathlessly wanting to know if Miss Gheena had a wakeness.
"Dropped down dead we all thought you must be, Miss, when the bell went on whirring."
Disappointed, Mary Kate took a message dubiously. It was teemin' rain out of the sky, she said.
"If the Masther hears it goin' out, Miss, he'll destroy us," said Mary Kate with resignation. "So I'll find some that'll ride a bicycle."
Then Gheena lighted her own fire and waited breathlessly until Mrs. Weston's presence was announced.
"She is waitin' on ye in the ould school-room. She would not come up, Miss Gheena, not a step."
After Gheena had got down, an excited clacking of tongues rose so high, that Mr. Freyne came along the passage and severely censured Maria, the second housemaid, for having lighted an extra fire in the school-room.
As she rushed down Gheena met Stafford, and all but knocked him over.
"It's Violet; she wouldn't come up," panted Gheena, rushing on.
After quite a short time Mrs. Weston drove off again, with her usual bright smile changed to a frown of thought and her lips pressed into a line.
Gheena was quiet that evening. She took very little tea and she was remotely civil to Stafford, instead of snapping at him in her wonted fashion. Lancelot she waited on patiently.
But when the order for sixty pounds for the grey came, it was made out in Gheena's name, and she said she would go to Cortra to cash it; there might be difficulties otherwise.
She came back with the same quiet look in her eyes, which was anger and mischief beaten by the whip of thought, and when asked if she had, as desired, paid the money into her mother's account, merely said it was all right.
But next day Mr. Freyne was called out to find Dinny, his herdsman, joyfully unpacking a variety of brilliantly painted agricultural machines from two carts from Cornahulty, which his master looked at blankly.
Gheena, quietly demure, came out to listen to the comments.
"Mother told me you wanted Whitebird's price for these things, Dearest," she said gently. "So I went to O'Malley's, and he knew what you and Dinny had been looking at, and he gave me discount for cash. There is just five pounds more to pay, I think."
Dearest George opened his mouth twice, and shut it on what he wished to articulate.
"An' the two men from Cornahulty want twenty-five shillin' for the haulin'," said Naylour, coming in to his stormy master. "Miss Gheena agreed to that with them, they says. God save us! but ye'd think I axed him for his heart's blood," said Naylour, when he got back to the kitchen; "an' he wrote the cheque like as if 'twas his own ordther for execution. Miss Gheena said I was to give the two of ye ye're tea."
CHAPTER XI
Darby Dillon ceased reading about the hobnobbing of Germans and English at Christmas-time to parley with the infuriated owner of That's the Boy, who had ridden over to say the horse's charackther was blighted for life not to get the race and the cup.
"Bathered and bumped an' crossed, sir, an' then to have me just obbjection pushed down me throat the same as a dose to a horse, an' all the neighbours at me, an' that broth of a boy Rourke won't even have a match to show the rights of it. Him that I could thrample on an' bate out with one stride to his two, his muddeen of a dun horse."
Andy, who was holding the blighted That's the Boy, looked up to suggest—grinning—a match with the Rat.
"Seein' that the Rat bate ye both," said Andy, "it is me ye should be matchin' with. Bate ye aisy, too."
"An' if ye bate him, why was ye not fust?" thundered Mr. Rooney stormily.
Andy, becoming reserved, said that was his bizness, and lapsed into silence.
"It would be like the likes of his birth an' breedin' to offer ye a shillin' to pull off," said Rooney bitterly; "but I did not think ye're father's son would do the dirty thrick to me father's, Andy Casey, for dirty pince."
"I will take me Bible oath that he niver mentioned dirty pince," said Andy, his face scarlet, "nor any pince."
Darby wondered how that oath would be recorded.
"Then what med ye?" Mr. Rooney scratched his chin, shaven two days before.
"It was time for me to go back to me dogs," said Andy coldly. "An' if Miss Gheena gives me the pony, I'll match ye around me own place an' down Carty's Hill an' around to me uncle's, four miles across the counthry, any day ye likes."
As the proposed course would include about twenty sharp bends to avoid bogs, the crossing of a ravine, and a collection of completely unsafe fences, Rooney replied: "Match where ye are," and left Andy, to again reproach Darby.
"Bribery an' corruption the same as ye'd read off the Holy Bible," he said sourly, "an' ye wouldn't let me spheak. I that ran fair an' honest with two falls an' a run out—an' that's prepared to back meself for twenty pounds for a match. There's more than a cup on it," he added, whimpering. "There's Janey O'Dea that is wavering between us, an' his ould father, chattin' now of the rale silver cup, an' inclined towards Rourke."
Miss Janey O'Dea was a buxom damsel, who rode in a bright blue habit topped by a tie which she ironed, but too plainly did not wash save on occasions, and a bowler hat which, as Andy put it, just perched above on her nesht of hair.
"But I got around him lasht evenin' that if it was Jamesey Rourke's chat an' I could bate his horse aisy, he'd have the word for me with Janey, an' before Shrove so that we'd settle."
Rourke was a long, lean youth, with shifty eyes and a battered complexion; he was loose of joint and given to wearing the long coats and over-baggy breeches of the horse-coper. His friends said that he was one that knew daylight when he saw it, and his enemies that there was no roguery that he had not a masthery of, exceptin' maybe the little he'd forgotten. He drank and was not attractive.
"Make Rourke do the dacent, Mr. Dillon, to make up for the way ye thrated me, an' I'll say no more."
Darby rubbed his nose thoughtfully; this long, lean youth could do a great deal to spoil fox hunting; there were two coverts on his land, and several others on those of his relations and friends.
"We'll ride over to Rourke's," said Darby to Andy. "I'll see what I can do, Rooney."
Darby crippled down the steps, swinging out more easily on the gravel with his crutch under his arm. The twisted leg was growing so strong that the crutch would soon be discarded for a stick, and Darby was looking forward with a child's zest to throwing it away. They were making him a new boot which would support the foot and help him greatly.
Yet the very flush of partial strength, the brightness of the cool winter's day, brought a sigh quickly on the heels of elation. It was hard to be able to feel young, and yet have all youth's possessions placed well out of reach. He was a mere piece of flotsam cast up on Life's beach, riddled and battered, never to float lightly on the grey-blue salt waters.
Darby clambered on to the back of his pet chestnut. Once in the saddle he was upright, sitting easily, a cripple no longer. Riper plunged lightly and came down to the firm, light touch on the bits and the pressure of a heel. Andy scrambled on to his second mount, a stumpy and dogged roan cob, rejoicing in the stable name of Go Aisy—because "go aisy" he would except under stress of the sharpest spurs—though he had been christened Dobbin.
Rourke's house lay inland, snug in a hollow. There were signs of good farming over the carefully kept fences, the fields free of weeds, the heaps of manure out ready for top-dressing; the house was substantial and the yard clean.
Jamesey himself was ringing a young horse at the back. He was a fresh-faced, squarely-built fellow, unpretentious and good-humoured.
In answer to Darby's questions, he put in the lumpy youngster and put a bridle on the dun horse, pulling him out.
"Look at him! An', in God's name, sir, is it likely he'd ever bate that great stridin' horse again?" he said, grinning. "They are schooling That's the Boy now, an' without a crowd likely he wouldn't fall. An' why would I be out to be a laffin' sthock to please Masther Dan Rooney?"
Darby explained further in low tones.
James Rourke's face fell a little. He replied that he was really attached to Jennie once, and that all was going well until the war and the buying of remounts.
"An' then ye see me bit comes gradual, bein' honest airnin's; but Dan Rooney med a rich man of himself sellin' misfortunes to the soldiers—buyin' here an' there, he havin' a friend in the barracks. Well, before Hivin, Mr. Darby, one blind as a sthone, an' one a runaway that no man could manage, but he drugged him carryin' him in; an' one with staggers, an' a kicker that it never let ye up, an' a craythur with spavins. I couldn't be goin' to say me prayers thinkin' of some poor felly wantin' to make a boult with Slattery's grey kicker to try to get on; but Rooney bought the dhregs of the counthry-side, an' drew out more than ye'd believe, and now he has Jennie's father tormented with the show of money. A new side-car no less, with green cushions, an' silver spoons to stir tay with—he bought thim above at an auction—an' two yelly an' red china vases for the parlour table. He has the ould man mismerized, while poor Janey——"
Just then Jane O'Dea herself, on her greatly galled black horse, rode shyly into the yard, and seeing Darby there, asked behind hot blushes for the lend of a bridle, hers being unsteady. She had really come to see the cup.
With a great many protests she got down, folding a modestly unsafe habit skirt about her gaitered ankles, and was welcomed by Jamesey's mother.
Darby knew now that tea, eggs and blackberry jam were things he could not escape from. He admired the silver cup which he had purchased, and grinned as he looked—the reflection of Jamesey silently kissing Miss O'Dea being clearly mirrored in the polished surface. Later on, when the room had lost its earthly smile and grown tropical in temperature, he removed the young people to the yard, where Jane, growing truthful in her sadness, said her Dada was set upon Dan Rooney, had been shaken by the beating of the big horse and the unpleasant loss of five shillings, but now inclined, bribed by libations of whisky, to Rooney again.
"Danny sayin' he'll be aisy on me fortin'," she said tearfully, "an' not on this horse even that is me own; an' he swearin' that if Jamesey here does not run off the race, he is a coward and had no right to win; an', agen, that the raison is that Jamesey has not twinty pound to lay down ready money."
The course of true love was not running smooth. It was Andy coming over and whispering in Rourke's ear who seemed to oil the machinery. A slow smile broke across Jamesey's face, and an expression of dubious anxiety gradually gave way to one of hope.
He told Darby that he'd say in a day or two if he could run the match, and then hoisted Janey to her saddle with many "Lord, save us!" and "Have a cares!" from the unagile damsel.
Darby rode a little way with her, telling Andy to keep behind. Coyly, since it is not maidenly to express affection, she told him how she disliked Mr. Rooney, and how her heart was set on Jim.
"An' what is a few pounds extra if it goes on check ridin' trousers an' whisky," said Miss Janey shrewdly, "which is both poor value, Mr. Dillon!"
Darby said "Undoubtedly."
"An' he no farmer, but all for buyin' bad horses an' sellin' them on. A stable full there now on him, with the greenest buyers beginnin' to look at more than just that a horse is alive, as they did at first. A pianny he promised me, an' I scalded from musical pieces at the convent, pullin' out with your fingers what a musical box'd tune for you for the twist of a handle. An' if it's up there I goes, it will be with the heart broke in me," concluded Janey tearfully, as she pointed to a bleak house upon a hill. "An' go I will if poor Jamesey cannot beat that ould thoroughbred in a match."
Darby rode on to Castle Freyne. He found Gheena leaning over one of the horses' doors, her face set gravely and time of gay youth fled.
"It's Dearest, Darby," she said. "He has taken to sticking little pin-pricks into me, refusing white oats for the horses, stopping fires, keeping in the motor. He would dismiss my two new old men but mother considers their employment charity. And Lancelot is staying on for a month, and I—wish there had never been a war. It seems to upset everyone so"—Gheena's busy unskilful fingers clicked at her knitting—"now they talk of submarines coming along in herds and our having supply bases for them. And if they have, Crabbit and I will find them," said Gheena emphatically.
"I am afraid I cannot come along the rocks to help, Gheena."
Her face softened suddenly.
"You could motor me," she said, "to points and places. As petrol is too dear to use now we are to have out the wagonette and drive the farm horses. But wait until Dearest misses the first train to Cortra," said Gheena hopefully, "and mother takes his advice as to hiring a car to go on in, because she must have supplies for the week and the curry powder is out."
Darby put his horse up and accepted a drive to the village in Gheena's pony-trap. The pony was a creature of moods which occasionally rattled along at a gallop, and more often walked and grazed. It had a hard side to its mouth, a failing which made traffic a difficulty, and it occasionally kicked when beaten.
As they drove, Gheena explained that she had strong hopes of Whitebird being returned to her. She had written to her uncle, telling of the horse's little accomplishment, which was lying down flat at a certain signal. The grey had been brought up in a circus. He had done it once out hunting at the sound of a whistle.
"And ... Uncle Tony has learnt the whistle," said Gheena softly and with meaning.
Darby observed that he understood the sixty pounds had been carefully spent, so the money would have to be returned, and a bump stopped further conversation.
"If they won't pick up their legs in time I can't help them doing it too late and overbalancing," she said severely. "It's your own fault, Ned Kavanagh, you know Topsy."
The aggrieved Kavanagh remarked sourly that he was greatly hurted where he met the road, and that it was to fall or the loss of two good legs.
He mounted his cart again, glaring balefully at the pony.
Topsy having declined to come over, they had grazed a donkey cart, and the driver's wild swoop to save his dangling limbs had resulted in his overbalancing.
They skated off a large heap of stones and pulled up in the village, when they saw two motors outside Mrs. Weston's cottage.
"Is Stafford the latest?" Darby asked.
Gheena did not reply, but was snappish to Topsy when the pony would not stand. The old Professor was in the shop—a crowded place, smelling of cheese and bacon and flannelette, where you could purchase a reel of cotton with a salted pig's head brushing your hat, and pull the flannelette of your choice out from under lumps of butter and loaves of bread. The window rejoiced in an array of Peggy's leg firmly adhering to its glass bottles, some tins of tomatoes, an array of match-boxes and the day's bread; the far end of the shop was the post-office, smelling of damp gum and dust.
Here Miss Carty, the postmistress, had at first been greatly put out because every man in the Army, no matter what regiment they jined, good Munsthers or not, was all put into the same lot—the Expeditionary Force—where, for all they knew, they might be dyin' and fightin' with misfortunate furriners, Scotch and English. Explanation having proved vain, she gave it up and accepted the injustice. Mrs. Carty, who rolled to and fro deftly amid boxes and barrels, was a person of superior intelligence, greatly shocked just then at the hobnobbing of the English soldiers with the German thraitors at Christmas-tide.
"If it was rooses to get them over to their ditches and doctor them quietly, I could understand," declaimed Mrs. Carty; "but—but to be handin' out smhokes and dhrinks an' carryin' on pleasantly without an objec'! I have the sardines in, Miss Gheena. Thruppence a box extry, seein' the ways them under-minded boats has all the fish swhep from the say. Aisy for them to get a catch down below with the fish to be cot an' they slheepin'."
Gheena placed the sardines in the trap and got in gloomily.
They were hailed passing Mrs. Weston's door. Violet really brilliant in pale blue with a wide sailor hat on her toupée, and wearing purple shoes and stockings, was at it with Stafford.
"Watching for you," she said to Gheena, "to bring you in to tea."
Gheena observed with care how Stafford kept close to Violet as they went up the path, and looked really admiringly at her brilliant colouring and bright face.
"If she'd only let her feet out," said Darby, hobbling in.
Mrs. Weston did not excel in giving tea. It came up upon a brass tray, and was generally both stewed and chilly. Two bought cakes, crumbly and dry, and a plate of thick bread and butter were the eatables.
Mrs. Weston said frankly that tea was washy stuff, and called for the forgotten sugar.
Old Berthe, in frilled cap with banded grey hair, hobbled off rapidly. She was enveloped by many petticoats, and was a taciturn old woman, never going out or making friends.
"Poor Berthe is so anxious about her precious Switzerland," said Violet, "for fear it would go to war, and all her relations in France, and no way of hearing."
Gheena was still gloomy. She could not understand why her stepfather had grown suddenly unpleasant and niggardly, and why they seemed to collide so often. Lancelot, the wounded hero, rather interested her—she was kind-hearted enough to like waiting on him, and was even a little pleased at his dependence upon her.
After a cup of tepid tea and a prolonged period of Mr. Keefe glaring at Mr. Stafford, Gheena got up to go home. Darby having taken the lid off the teapot looked into it critically.
"Made with cold water and let heat, foreign fashion," he said. "Why not, Mrs. Weston, teach your old lady the English way?"
Violet said, "Imagine you knowing the other!" in a curious way.
"And some of you have left your pipe," called out Gheena. She had dropped a glove and stayed to hunt for it. She brought out an ornate carved pipe, lately used.
Violet said she thought it must be the Professor's as no one else claimed it, and took it back.
The Professor, whom they met toddling back from his walk, stopped to speak, and got asked in to Castle Freyne for tea. He thought the pipe was probably that wild Mrs. Weston's. "But her garden is tidier. She did rave at the man Guinane when she came back a few evenings ago, so high that I heard her scolding. Carefully, Darby; stand still, Topsy, you beast!"
The hurt of helplessness came back to Darby; he should have been helping Gheena out. It reminded him of what he was to see her spring to the pony's head and stop the little beast going on.
"You take care of the poor cripple, Gheena," he said gently.
Gheena's eyes filled with tears as she muttered denial. Darby swung up the shallow steps, his leg was undoubtedly growing stronger.
Later on he told Gheena all about the dispute over the race.
At the next meet, two days afterwards, Rourke rode up on the little dun.
"They have me shamed, Mr. Darby," he said, "with 'Afraid ye are,' and 'How many mile would ye be left behind in two?'"
Darby wondered.
"An' 'If ye're horse is good, pull him out.' So the match it will have to be—or Juliana Carty above at the farm, an' I have no great wish for her for a wife."
Janey rode up at the moment, her cheeks polished with soap, her tie well ironed, and her pretty face looking out under a fringe of brown hair, and James sighed.
"I have a wish for Janey," he said shyly. "An' so will ye settle all for the match, sir, I'll risk it."
Darby said hopefully that the thoroughbred might fall.
"Or he might not gallop as fast as he'd think," said Jamesey softly. "Ye'd niver know. Ye'd niver know."
The result of this was that after a good hunt and a kill, Darby took the two men home with him to settle matters.
"We will write it out proper," said Rourke, "so as to be sure."
Darby was familiar with matches. He wrote out that Mr. D. Rooney's That's the Boy, five years, by Barcol Lise, would be matched against Mr. J. Rourke's—here he lifted his pen.
"I have no right name for him," said Jamesey vaguely; "put me little dun horse, sir, five years."
"Dun horse, five years," wrote on Darby, "twenty pounds a side—over a natural course of three miles."
"An' let all have good coats on to keep warm waitin' for Rourke here," sneered Rooney.
"Yerself an' ye're dirty boastin'," returned Rourke, without the animosity which seemed natural.
"Will ye bet me five pounds I'm not in five minnits before ye cross the last fince?" stormed Rooney.
"I will so," said Jamesey firmly, pulling out some greasy notes which he handed to Darby.
Darby had a great deal to say to the match, and saw Janey, who was racked by doubt and fears.
"For he'd be the slithery class of a husband, that Dan," she said fretfully; "one that does no credit to the good bit he'd get, an' he takes drink terrible. An' Jamesey cannot win, an' yet he has a smilin' face on him; an' he ordthered two new cushions for his side-car at Carey's yesterday to drive home from chapel on. He says he'd stand me three days in Dublin straight away if I'd fancy it, too. An' he without a chance!"
The date of the match was fixed for the second Thursday in January at one o'clock, until Rooney wrote to say that he must go to the big town, and could not get back until three, so it must be run then.
Now the hours after three early in January begin to get chill and dark, but it had to be.
Everyone related to the Rourkes and Rooneys poured in from all sides to see the match; the hillside was black with cars and carts; there was even a stall laden with glutinous leathery buns dotted with pink sugar, and surreptitious porter sold and consumed behind a flapping tent. The one bookmaker had returned, to close almost immediately up That's the Boy and take all he could get for Rourke's dun.
At a quarter-past three Rourke trotted up, his mount veiled in a brand-new American rug of superlative smartness, and bandaged all round with linen bandages.
"If it's racin' I am, it's racin' I may as well look," he said good-humouredly when chaffed.
Old Mr. O'Dea, who was stout and slow of movement, came up to say querulously that he heard it was childthers' nonsense putting out that dun at all. And that now maybe they'd hear no more boasting and chat.
James replied that with luck he might not, looking fixedly at the flushed countenance of his opponent.
Janey's father, coming to superintend, remarked to Rourke that if it was an accident his taking the cup, there was no call to make so much boast of it afther Mass, Janey listening with tears in her eyes.
Here Mr. Rooney broke in with, "An' he not able to win until Miss Gheena's pony had to be pulled off. An' the gibin' before all with 'Where was ye're racehorse?' or 'Will ye have a drink out of silver?'"
James Rourke's complete good-humour as he stood by the sheeted dun roused his opponent to further eloquence. Bitterly he informed the interested listeners that when Cup-winner James inquired where was the racehorse to-day, it was gone home, they could tell him, if any friends waited on in the could to see the thrickster come in.
Here Darby thought that if the matter was to be put to the proof, it might be better to start while there was a little light, and he looked thoughtfully at Rourke's reserved smile.
When Dan Rooney emerged from the chrysalis of his coat, as a butterfly in a pink jacket, dirty breeches and papery boots, his glitter wrought a groan of admiration from the crowd.
Old O'Dea, falling back to admire, suggested that he was the Boyo himself, the fine figure of a man, what there was of him. When James, quietly arrayed in his hunting kit, slipped the rug from his horse, leaving on the bandages, and it was observed that its tail was plaited up, fresh pleasantries broke forth.
Someone wished to know if Rourke imagined he owned The Tetrarch. A large Rooney cousin asked hilariously if Danny thought maybe that if he foxed the horse he was a racehorse he'd run faster, to which James replied pleasantly that he might, and backed himself for another pound.
Darby had laid out a fair course, over easy banks, and presenting no difficulties for a striding horse.
That's the Boy looked overtrained and tucked up. He lashed out irritably when mounted.
From the start Rooney adopted the hurricane-like tactics which he meant to win with. He tore away at racing pace, taking the first fence in his stride.
There were no horses to confuse the big youngster. He fled along at a pace which no one could possibly hope the dun to keep up with.
"All over," said Darby, putting up a pair of totally useless glasses, for it was growing quite dusk. "Poor Rourke won't see the way the other is going in half a mile."
But to everyone's astonishment the dun horse and quietly-dressed rider clung obstinately close to the comet-like flash of Dan Rooney's pink jacket. The rider of That's the Boy shook up the big horse to a pace which set him sprawling, and all but resulted in disaster at a bank. Sobered by this, he looked back angrily and pulled his horse together; he was a fine rider. Still going quite easily and slugging hard against his bit, the dun was close behind. Rooney sat forward, using as much jockey fashion as he could master, bumping uncomfortably at his jumps.
"Did ye dhrug him?" hurled Rooney over an irate shoulder, "that I can hear him so long?"
"Three gallons of whisky. Was it cloryform yours got?" was Rourke's reply, his tone preoccupied, for they were nearing the nasty little scramble in and out of the boreen.
Gheena and Darby had cut the two racers off at this point, and listened, smiling, to them.
"But I never saw Rooney adopt Tod Sloan's style before," said Darby; "and if he can't get the horse together, he'll fall at the boreen."
That's the Boy, consummately handled, dropped in and out just without a fall; the dun struck the far fence hard, grunted, and bundled somehow into the far field, shooting his rider off. With the boreen behind him and Rourke down, Rooney cheered as he galloped on.
But the fall took little more time than a clean jump would have done. James Rourke was up again as soon as his horse and sat back suddenly.
"Be dam to where the weight is! How can he win if it is not there at all!" he stormed as he changed his seat.
Next moment, in the fast falling dusk, the spectators roared to see the despised dun closing the gap, fighting his way to the big horse's quarters, to his girth, forging ahead.
At this stage Jane O'Dea fell upon her father's neck, clasping him closely as she wailed, "It was no boastin', Pappy, it was no boastin'," into the displeased ear of a man who had invested five pounds at evens on Rooney, and who thirsted for liberty of action to get something speedily on the other.
"If he wasn't boastin', then wasn't he lyin', to pretend to let the Rat up lasht time?" roared O'Dea, when his proffered crown on the dun had been promptly refused.
An enthusiastic cousin of Rooney's offered an even crown, hotly declaring, "It's cantherin' the man is, so as to make a race of it, and shame the other."
"If he is, he is beltin'," shrilled Janey, letting her parent go. "Beltin'!"
"He has the sphur out too," grunted her progenitor. "I'll make the crown double, if ye like, Tom Rooney."
The big, bewildered youngster sprang forward to the drub of the stick and the bite of the steel in his flanks. He gave of his best, but the little dun was a length ahead, striding along, pulling double, and his rider had not moved.
They landed over the last fence, the bay closed the gap, the dun surged forward. The crowd swayed and roared, leaping into traps which gave way and upset them, hurling up hats, jumping to get a better view. The one bookmaker, seeing the dun ahead, wondered if he had got straight to Heaven through the laxity of the authorities, and looked at his book with breath held hard. As they dashed up the long slope, Rooney dropped his reins a little, so that just at the post the bay closed upon him, and the dun's head was barely half a length in front.
"It was one of them hippodromic sirringes," gasped Rooney, dropping his tired right hand. "Nothin' less. Ye dam thraitor of a spy!" He rolled off, panting. "I protest, Mister Dillon. He has an artificial horse med with one of them hippodromic doses, an' it was near out of him an' he finishing."
There was no weighing in, catch-weights had been the order. Little Andy led off the panting dun, and Darby himself saw to the exhausted That's the Boy. A few more gruellings of this type would break any horse's spirit.
Mr. Rooney, bewildered, took consolation in liquid form, agreed with several people that he was hardly treated, then his pink coat gleaming in the dusk, he squared up to Mr. James Rourke to demand satisfaction.