"If ye were to borry me Dada's bugle," said Andy hopefully. "It is hangin' up at home."
"Chance the road, Phil," said Darby. "We must get to Cullane on Monday somehow."
Darby's old house stood well back from the sea, a long, rambling house, which had been pulled down by someone who objected to its original hideousness, and rebuilt with gables and wide windows. A flagged terrace, guarded with stone railings and stone urns, which in summer overflowed with scarlet geraniums, had been laid out at one side; and the usual basement, where the kitchen blinked up behind a dark alley, was made darker still by another railing of cut stone. The inevitable fuchsia hedges guarded the flower-beds, a tangle now of withering dahlias and Michaelmas daisies.
A fine old place, well kept up, and no one alive knew what battles the young owner had fought with himself there when he came back to it crippled. Battles fought for endurance, when the joys of being up again and able to shuffle in the sunshine had worn off. The very trees which he used to climb, the sunk fences which he jumped so lightly over, the ladders leading to the lofts, mocked Darby.
To get down to the trout stream meant a long weary struggle, or the bitterness of sitting in his bath-chair drawn by old Ned the donkey.
When hope of amending culminated in being able to ride, Darby knew that his days of swift life were done for ever. He snatched something from the wreck; he could shuffle on his crutch. He could shoot as straight as ever, fish from a boat or where the banks were flat.
When he ceased to rebel, he knitted up as many ravelled strands as he could, and twisted and crippled, faced his lease of life.
England called now; he could not go to her, not back to his old regiment which was fighting somewhere in France. Riding at Darby's right side, he looked straight and whole, a lean, good-looking man, with a kindly ravaged face. Coming to the other, one saw an arm tied up, a leg palpably cork, stiff and useless, an almost useless hand, and a scar, vanishing now, on the cheek-bone.
He could ride still, and shuffle back to the saddle without much difficulty after a fall, easy things to meet with in the close country, with its trappy fences and its occasional big bog drains or awkward pieces of gaps fenced by stabs of bog dale.
Black Maria sidled and snorted at the pack, which trolled along obediently enough now, believing they must really be going out hunting. Stafford said he would come to help and get them to know him. And Mr. Keefe could not come because they wanted him somewhere.