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.