CHAPTER XIV

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Miss Grimshaw's room was situated at the back of the house, overlooking the kitchen garden. Any sound from the stable-yard would reach it, and she determined to lie awake and listen. Moriarty's description of the expected desperado, "over six fut and as black as a flue-brush," seemed to promise developments. Like most women, she had a horror of fighting, and, like most women, fighting had a fascination for her. She had no fear of the result. Mr. French, Mr. Dashwood, Moriarty, and the stable helper, not to mention Andy, formed a combination bad to beat, even against a dozen Black Larrys.

All the same, there was a certain heart-catching excitement about the business not altogether unpleasurable, and never did the silence of the great old house seem more freighted with the voices of the past, never did the ticking of the huge old clock on the landing outside seem more pronounced than just now as, lying in bed with a candle burning on the table by her side and "Tartarin of Tarascon" open in her hand, she listened.

The bed she was lying in was the bed that once had supported Dan O'Connell's portly person. The tent-like curtains had been removed, so that one could breathe in it, but the pillars remained, and the headpiece and the carvings. It was less a bed than a coign of history, and more conducive to thought than sleep.

From this bed and its suggestions, from Drumgool, from Ireland, the delightful Tartarin led Miss Grimshaw to the land of plane-trees and blue sky. Mock heroics are the finest antidote for tragic thoughts, and they fitted the situation now, had she known it, to a charm.

Now she was at Tarascon. Tartarin, leaving his house in the moonlight, armed to the teeth against imaginary foes, led her down the white road, past the little gardens, odorous as bouquets, to the house of Mme. BÉzuguet, whence issued the voices of Costecalde, the gunmaker, and the tinkling of the Nimes piano.

Now she was seated beside him, and his guns and implements of the chase, in the old dusty African stage coach, bound for Blidah, listening to the old coach's complaining voice.

"Ah! my good Monsieur Tartarin, I did not come out here of my own free will, I assure you. Once the railway to Beaucaire was finished, I was of no more use there, and they packed me off to Africa."

Miss Grimshaw paused in her reading. Was that a shout from the night outside? The clock on the landing, gathering itself up for the business of striking with a deep humming sound, began to strike. It struck twelve, and at the last leisurely and sledge-hammer stroke resumed its monotonous ticking. The faint boom of the sea filled the night, but all else was silence, and the old stage-coach continued her complaint.

"And now I have to sleep in the open air, in the courtyard of a caravanserai, exposed to all the winds of heaven. At night jackals and hyenas come sniffing round my boxes, and tramps, who fear the evening dew, seek refuge in my compartments. Such is the life I lead, my worthy friend, and I suppose it will continue till the day when, blistered by the sun and rotted by the damp, I shall fall to pieces, a useless heap, on some bit of road, when the Arabs will make use of the remains of my old carcase to boil their kousskouss."

"Blidah! Blidah!" shouted the conductor as he opened the door.

* * * * *

Miss Grimshaw awoke. The candle had burnt itself out, and a ray of early morning sunlight was peeping in through the blinds.

She could still hear the clank of the old stage-coach—or was it imagination? She rubbed her eyes.

Yes, there it came again. The window was half open, and the sound came from the kitchen garden below—a metallic sound that had broken through her sleep, filling her dreams with pictures of the Blidah coach and the illustrious Tartarin, with his guns, hunting-knives, and powder-horns.

She sprang out of bed, went to the window, pulled aside the curtains, and looked out.

In the kitchen garden down below she saw an object that had once been a man—more desperate even than the immortal Tartarin. The once-man was on all-fours; he could not get on his feet because his ankles were hobbled together with a piece of rope. He could not untie the rope because on each of his hands was firmly tied a boxing-glove. Try to untie a knot with your hands encased in boxing-gloves, if you wish to realise nightmare helplessness in its acutest form. A tin stable bucket was tied down over the head of the figure, and, as a last artistic touch one of old Ryan's cow's tails was tied to a band round the waist and hung down behind.

The creature was trying to get out of the kitchen garden. Miss Grimshaw could not help thinking of the blind and hopeless antics of an insect imprisoned under a wine-glass as she watched. The garden, strongly railed in, formed a sort of pound hopelessly ungetoutable.

The whole thing seemed so like a joke that the girl at the window for a moment did not connect it with the obvious. Opening the window more, she leaned further out.

"Hi!" cried Miss Grimshaw. "What are you doing there?"

The thing rose up on its knees, the boxing-gloves, like great paws, seized the bucket on either side, in a frantic endeavour to wrench it off, failed, and then from the bucket broke a volume of language that caused the listener to draw hastily in and shut the window.

She guessed.

At this moment eight o'clock struck from the landing, and Norah knocked at the door with hot water.

For a moment she thought of asking the servant the meaning of it all. Then she decided not.

Half an hour later she entered the dining-room, where breakfast was laid. Mr. French and Mr. Dashwood were already there, both spick and span and looking like people who had enjoyed an undisturbed night's rest. But there was a jubilant look in Mr. Dashwood's face and a twinkle in Mr. French's eye such as seldom appears on the face or in the eye of man before breakfast.

During the meal the conversation turned upon indifferent matters. Mr. Dashwood had several attacks of choking, but Mr. French seemed quite unmoved.

When the meal was over, and cigarettes were lit, Mr. French, who had been scanning through his letters, stretched out his hand to the bell-pull which was close to him.

"Norah," said Mr. French when that damsel appeared, "go down to the stable and send up Moriarty."

He lit a cigarette, and Miss Grimshaw, who had been preparing to leave the room, waited.

A few minutes passed; then came a knock at the door, and Moriarty, cap in hand, stood before his master.

"Moriarty," said Mr. French, "there's a pig got into the kitchen garden."

"A pig, sorr!"

"Yes, it's escaped down here from Cloyne. At least I'm going to send it back to Cloyne. Get the cart."

"Yes, sorr."

"And a pig-net. Get it into the cart with the net over it and take it to Cloyne. I don't know who it belongs to, so just dump it in the market-place. This is market-day, so there'll be some one to claim it, or it will find its way home."

"Yes, sorr."

"And, see here, bring the cart round to the door before you start."

"Yes, sorr."

Moriarty departed.

"Now," said Mr. French, "let's talk business. Miss Grimshaw, we're leaving Ireland to-morrow—you and I and Effie and Garryowen, the servants, and all. I've got a place——"

"To train Garryowen?"

"Yes, and here's the man that's got me it. It's in Sussex, down at a place called Crowsnest. There are too many pigs in Ireland, poking their noses into my affairs, to do any good with the business here."

"Good!" said Miss Grimshaw, with a rising colour. To escape from the rain, and the awful loneliness of Drumgool had been the chief desire of her heart for days past. She knew Sussex, and loved the country, and a great feeling of gratitude towards Mr. Dashwood, the provider of this means of escape, welled up in her heart.

"So," said Mr. French, "we'll find our work cut out to pack and all before eleven o'clock to-morrow morning. I'm sending Andy and the horses on by this night's train to Dublin; he'll put up with them at Bourke's livery stables. I'm leaving only Buck Slane and Doolan behind to look after the house. Janes, my agent, will pay them their wages. I'm not even telling Janes where I'm going. I want to make a clean sweep. I'm safe till the debt to Lewis becomes due. If that beast of a Giveen knew my address he'd put Lewis' man on to me the minute he came here claiming the money. I must cut myself off as completely from the place as if I were dead."

"Well, there's one thing," said the girl. "If you can get away from here without any one knowing where you are going to, they'll never dream of looking for you in Sussex. I shouldn't think they know the name of the place here. But can you?"

"How do you mean?"

"Well, you must take tickets at the station here. You must take tickets to Dublin, first of all. Well, that's a clue to where you are going."

"I've thought of that," said Mr. French, with a chuckle. "I'm going to take our tickets to Tullagh; that's half way. The express stops at Tullagh, and I'll hop out of the train there and book on to Dublin. Mr. Dashwood here is going on with the horses to-night, and then on to Crowsnest to have the house ready. Faith, I never can thank him for what he's done or what he's going to do."

"Bless my soul!" said Dashwood, "I don't want thanks. It's the greatest lark I ever came across. I wouldn't have lost last night for a thousand pounds. I mean, you know, it's tremendous fun; beats a comic opera to fits."

"Please, sir," came Norah's voice at the door, "the cart's round and waiting."

Mr. French rose to his feet and led the way from the room, followed by the others.

At the hall door steps a manure cart was drawn up. In the cart was something covered with a pig-net. Doolan, whip in hand, was standing at the horse's head.

"Let up!" came a voice from the cart. "What are yiz doin' wid me? Where am I, at all, at all? Oh, but I'll pay yiz out for this! I'll have the laa on yiz—and—and—yer sowls!"

"Shut your ears," said Mr. French to the girl; then he took Doolan's whip, and with the butt of it prodded the thing in the cart. What seemed a great tin snout resented this treatment. Then the cart moved off, Doolan at the horse's head, and disappeared down the drive.

"Did you see what was in the cart?" asked Mr. French when Miss Grimshaw uncovered her ears.

"Yes," she replied, "and I saw it in the garden this morning, and I spoke to it, and asked it what it was doing, and—well, I don't wonder at your wanting to leave Ireland."

"Not while there's things like that in it," said the master of Drumgool, following Doolan and his charge with his eyes till they disappeared from sight. "And now, let's get to work."

The sunlight of the early morning had vanished, and almost as the cart and its contents turned from the avenue drive into the road the rain began to come down again in great sheets—thunderous pourings, as if to make up for lost time. But it was a merry rain, at least in the ears of the girl. "You're going, you're going!" The rain beat a tattoo to the words on the zinc roof of outhouse and window-pane. "To-morrow," slobbered the overflowing water-butts, and "Sussex" hissed the schoolroom fire, as the raindrops down the chimney hit the burning coals.

No one but a woman knows the things to be done in a sudden disruption of a household like this. "Everything must be covered up, and everything must be turned over," is a broad axiom that only just covers the situation when a house is to be left uninhabited for a number of months. That is to say, carpets must be taken up, beaten, and folded, pictures and looking-glasses taken down, covered in brown paper, and placed on the floor. A sort of spring cleaning, petrified half-way through and left in a state of suspension, is the ideal aimed at by the careful housewife.

Miss Grimshaw never had possessed a house of her own, but she was descended from long generations of careful housewives, and she had an instinct for what ought to be done. But she had also a clear brain that recognised the impossible when it came before her. To put Drumgool in order in twelve working hours, and with a handful of disorganised domestics, was impossible, and she recognised the fact.

So the carpets were to be left unbeaten, the pictures still hanging. Doolan had orders to light fires in the rooms every week, and to be sure to take care not to burn the house down.

At four o'clock, in a burst of sunset which lit up the heaving Atlantic, the rain-stricken land, and the great hills unveiled for a moment of clouds, Mr. Dashwood departed for the station. Andy and the horses had left at three.

"I'll have the bungalow jolly and comfortable for you," said Mr. Dashwood. "You'll be there day after to-morrow evening, if you stay in London for a few hours' rest. Send me a wire when you reach Euston. Well, good luck!"

"Good luck!" said Mr. French.

"Good-bye!" said the girl.

They watched the car driving down the avenue, the wheel-spokes flashing in the sunlight. Then they turned back into the house.

"To-morrow!" thought Miss Grimshaw, as she lay in bed that night listening to the rain that had resumed business and the ticking of the clock in the corridor making answer to the rain. "Oh, to-morrow!"

Then she fell to thinking. What was the matter with the two men? When she and they were gathered together they were as jolly as possible, but the instant she found herself alone with one of them, that one wilted—at least, became subdued, lost his sprightliness and gaiety. More than that, each, when alone with her, became, if the subject turned that way, the trumpeter of the other's praises. Yet when they were all together they would try as much as they could to outshine each other, Mr. French setting up his wit against Mr. Dashwood, Mr. Dashwood retaliating. Just as two male birds before a hen strut and spread their tails, so these two gentlemen would show off their mental feathers when together. Parted they drooped.

A bell-man could not have told her the fact that they had lost their hearts more plainly than intuition stated the fact when, all three together at afternoon tea, just before Mr. Dashwood's departure for the station, that young gentleman with a plate of toast in his hand, had dallied attendance upon her, while Mr. French had urged the dubious charm of crumpets. Yet, behold! on the departure of the younger man the elder had presumably found his heart again, and at supper had become almost tiresome in his almost fulsome praise of Dashwood.

It was horribly perplexing.

A woman's intuitive knowledge teaches her how to act in every situation love can place her in, from the first glance to the last embrace; her male and female ancestors whisper to her what to do down the long whispering gallery of the past. They whispered nothing now. Miss Grimshaw had relatives long dead, who, fur-covered, tailed, and living in trees, had dropped cocoanuts on the heads of rivals; these gentlemen and ladies could give her no advice. Cave-dwelling ancestors, whose propositions were urged with stone clubs, were equally dumb. Even her more near and cultivated forebears had nothing to say.

It was an entirely new situation in love. Two men "playing the game," and determined to take no mean advantage one of the other—even Love himself found the situation strange, and had no suggestions to offer.

The next morning was dull, but fine. The sky had lifted, thinned, and become mackerelled. Between the ribs of cloud a faint, bluish tinge here and there told of the blue above. The mountains sat calm and grey upon the horizon. They had drawn a great way off as if to make way for the coming sunshine. Fine weather was at hand.

In the hall of Drumgool the luggage was piled, waiting for Doolan and the wagonette. The servants and the luggage were to go in the wagonette, and so carefully had Mr. French thought out the problem before him that he had hired the horses and the wagonette the day before, not from Cloyne, but from Inchkilin, a small town twelve miles south of Drumgool. The Dancing Mistress and the outside car were to be sold off by his agent, and the money held till his return.

The train started at eleven. At eight o'clock the wagonette and its contents drove away from the house, and at ten minutes to nine the car, with Mr. French, Miss Grimshaw, and Effie followed. Doolan was driving, and just as they were turning out of the avenue the whole east side of Drumgool House lit up to a burst of sunshine from over the hills.

It seemed a lucky omen. That and the lovely winter's morning through which they were driving put the party in good spirits, and Doolan's deafness allowed them to talk as freely as they liked about their affairs.

"I hope Dick Giveen hasn't seen the wagonette," said French. "If he has, he'll be following to the station to find out what's up. If he sees us, it won't so much matter, for he'll think, maybe, we are only going for a drive, but the servants and the luggage would give the whole show away."

"Has he any sort of trap to follow us in?" asked Miss Grimshaw.

"He has an old shandrydan of a basket pony-carriage. Maybe he's not up yet, for he's not an early riser. Anyhow, we'll see when we pass the bungalow."

They were drawing near Drumboyne now; the bungalow inhabited by Mr. Giveen lay at the other end of the tiny village. It was a green-painted affair, with an outhouse for the pony and trap; a green-painted palisading, about five feet high, surrounded house and garden, and as the car passed through the village and approached the danger zone, Miss Grimshaw felt a not unpleasant constriction about the heart. Effie seemed to feel it, too, for she clasped "Mrs. Brown's 'Oliday Outin's," which she had brought to read in the train, closer under her arm, and clasped Miss Grimshaw's hand.

There was no sign of the ogre, however, in the front garden, and the girl heaved a sigh of relief, till French, who had stood half up to get a better view of the premises, suddenly sat down again, with a look of alarm on his face, and cried to Doolan to whip up.

"What is it?" asked Miss Grimshaw.

"The blackguard's putting the old pony to," said Mr. French. "I caught a glimpse of him in the back yard. He's got wind of our going, and he's after us. Whip up, Doolan."

"There's not much use whipping up," said Miss Grimshaw, "for the train won't go till eleven. The question now is, Can his old pony get him to the station by eleven?"

"If it does," cried French, now in a towering passion, "I'll—I'll—b'Heaven, I'll shoot him!"

"You haven't anything to shoot him with. Let's think of what's best to be done."

"Doolan!" shouted French into the hairy ear of the driver, "do you know Mr. Giveen's old pony?"

"Do I know Misther Giveen's ould pony?" creaked Doolan. "Sure, who'd know her better? Do I know Misther Giveen's ould pony? Sure, I knew her mother before she was born. An ould skewbal', she was, till Micky Meehan battered her to death dhrivin' roun' the counthryside, wid that ould cart he got from Buck Sheelan of the inn, before he died of the dhrink, and dhrunk he was when he sould it."

"Bother Buck Sheelan! Can the old pony get Mr. Giveen to the station by eleven?"

"D'you mane, can it get him from his house to the station, sorr?"

"Yes."

"Well, sorr, it all dipinds. She's a rockit to go if she's in the mind for it; but if she's set aginst goin', you may lather the lights out of her, and she'll only land you in the ditch. But if she's aisy in her mind and agrayable, faith! I wouldn't wonder if she could, for that ould clothesbasket of Misther Giveen's doesn't weigh more'n a feather."

"Curse him and his clothesbasket!" cried French. "Whip up!"

To be opposed by a villain is not nearly so vexing as to be thwarted by a fool, and the vision of Dick Giveen in his basket carriage, soft, malevolent and pursuing, filled French with such a depth of rage that had he possessed a gun his better nature would certainly have made him fling his ammunition away over the nearest hedge so as to be out of the way of temptation.

"Look!" said Miss Grimshaw, "isn't that smoke away over there—Cloyne! We'll soon be there now, and there is no use in worrying. If he does follow us, we'll manage to give him the slip at Tullagh."

"That'll mean the whole lot of us, servants and all, will have to get out at Tullagh, and lose the train and stay the night; and then we're not sure of escaping him. He'll stick to us like a burr. You don't know Dick Giveen. Who the divil ever invented relations?"

Miss Grimshaw could not answer Mr. French's question as to who invented relations which many a man has, no doubt, asked, and no more was said till the long, dreary street of Cloyne, destitute of life and colour, lay before them.

It was fifteen minutes to eleven when they reached the station. The train was drawn up at the platform. Mrs. Driscoll and Norah had taken their seats in a third-class carriage, and Moriarty was seeing the luggage stowed in the van.

French took the tickets, chose a first-class compartment, and the hand-bags and wraps having been stowed in it, they walked up and down the platform, waiting and watching.

There was one point in their favour. Mr. Giveen's meanness amounted with this gentleman almost to a monomania. He would do incredible things to save a half-penny. Would he incur the expense of pursuit? Cannibalism among the passions is a law in the mental world. One vice often devours another vice, if the other vice stands between the devourer and its objective. Were the jaws of Mr. Giveen's spite wide enough to engulf his meanness? This was a question that Mr. French was debating vaguely in his mind as he paced the platform with Miss Grimshaw and Effie.

A regiment of live Christmas turkeys were being entrained, not in silence; the engine was blowing off steam; the rattle of barrows, the clank of milk-cans—all these noises made it impossible to hear the approach of wheels on the station road.

"I believe we'll do it," said Mr. French, looking at his watch, which pointed to five minutes to the hour. "Anyhow, we'll be off in five minutes, and I'll break the beast's head at Tullagh if he does follow us."

He walked down the train to the third-class carriage where the servants were, and at the door of which Moriarty was colloguing with Norah.

He told Moriarty in a few words of the pursuit, and then returned to his own compartment.

"Take your sates, take your sates for Tullagh, Kildare, and Dublin!"

The van door was shut on the turkeys, the last of the luggage was in the train, the last door was banged to, and the train was just beginning to move, when out of the ticket-office entrance rushed Mr. Giveen with a ticket in his hand. He had asked the ticket-collector where Mr. French had booked to, and, being told Tullagh, had done likewise.

He had just time to reach the nearest carriage and jump in when Moriarty, who had been observing everything, interposed.

"Mr. Giveen, sorr," cried Moriarty, protruding his head and shoulders from the window of the third-class carriage, which was now in motion. "Mr. Giveen, sorr, here's the shillin' I owe you."

A shilling fell on the platform at Mr. Giveen's feet. He stooped to grab it as it rolled in a leisurely manner towards the booking-office door, missed it, pursued it, and was lost.

At least he lost the train.

Moriarty's profound knowledge of the psychology of the horse often stood him in good stead when dealing with higher animals—or lower.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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