After wading about for a little more than half an hour, Jimmy Kineslla’s lady went ashore. She rolled down the sleeves of her blouse and let her skirt fall about her ankles, but she did not put on her shoes and stockings. Jimmy Kinsella was summoned from his stone and launched his boat.
“I daresay,” said Priscilla, “that she thinks her rheumatism ought to be cured by now. That is to say, of course, if she really has rheumatism, and isn’t a nefarious spy. I rather like that word nefarious. Don’t you? I stuck it into an English comp. the other day and spelt it quite right, but it came back to me with a blue pencil mark under it. Sylvia Courtney said that I hadn’t used it in quite the ordinary sense. She thinks she knows, and very likely she does, though not quite as much as she imagines. Nobody can know everything; which is rather a comfort when it comes to algebra. I loath algebra and always did. Any right-minded person would, I think.”
“It looks to me,” said Frank, “as if they were coming over here.”
Jimmy Kinsella was heading his boat straight for the bank on which theTortoiselay. In a few minutes she grounded on the edge of it. The lady stepped out and paddled across the mud towards theTortoise. Seen at close quarters she was, without doubt, fat, and had a round good-humoured face. Her eyes sparkled pleasantly behind a pair of gold rimmed pince-nez.
“She is coming over to us,” said Priscilla. “The thing is for you to keep her in play and unravel her mystery, while I slip off and put a few straight questions to Jimmy Kinsella. Be as polite as you possibly can so as to disarm suspicion.”
Priscilla began the course of diplomatic politeness herself.
“We’re delighted to see you,” she said. “My name is Priscilla Lentaigne, and my cousin is Frank Mannix. We’re out for a picnic.”
“My name,” said the lady, “is Rutherford, Martha Rutherford. I’m out after sponges.”
“Sponges!” said Frank.
Priscilla winked at him. The statement about the sponges was obviously untrue. There is no sponge fishery in Rosnacree Bay. There never has been. Miss Rutherford, so to speak, intercepted Priscilla’s wink.
“By sponges,” she said, “I mean——”
“Won’t you sit down?” said Priscilla.
She picked her stockings from the gunwale of the boat, leaving a clear space beside Miss Rutherford.
“Bother!” she said, “the dye out of the purple clocks has run. That’s the worst of purple clocks. I half suspected it would at the time, but Sylvia Courtney insisted on my buying them. She said they looked chic. Would you care for anything to eat, Miss Rutherford?”
“I’m nearly starved. That’s why I came over here. I thought you might have some food.”
“We’ve lots,” said Priscilla. “Frank will give it to you. I’ll just step across and speak to Jimmy Kinsella. I want to hear about the baby.”
“I’m afraid,” said Miss Rutherford, when Priscilla left them, “that your cousin doesn’t believe me about the sponges.”
Frank felt deeply ashamed of Priscilla’s behaviour. The prefect in him reasserted itself now that he was in the presence of a grown-up lady. He felt it necessary to apologise.
“She’s very young,” he said, “and I’m afraid she’s rather foolish. Little girls of that age——”
He intended to say something of a paternal kind, something which would give Miss Rutherford the impression that he had kindly undertaken the care of Priscilla during the day in order to oblige those ordinarily responsible for her. A curious smile, which began to form at the corners of Miss Rutherford’s lips and a sudden twinkling of her eyes, stopped him abruptly.
“I hope you’ll excuse my not standing up,” he said, “I’ve sprained my ankle.”
“I’d like to get in and sit beside you if I may,” said Miss Rutherford. “Now for the food.”
“There’s some cold tongue,” said Frank.
“Capital. I love cold tongue.”
“But—I’m afraid—” He fished it out from beneath the thwart, “—it may be rather grubby.”
“I don’t mind that a bit.”
“And—the fact is my cousin—it’s only fair to tell you—she bit it pretty nearly all over and——” Frank hesitated. He was an honourable boy. Even at the cost of losing Miss Rutherford’s respect he would not refrain from telling the truth, “And I bit it too,” he blurted out.
“Then I suppose I may,” said Miss Rutherford. “I should like to more than anything. I so seldom get the chance.”
She bit and munched heartily; bit again, and smiled at Frank. He began to feel more at his ease.
“There are some biscuits,” he said. “The macaroons are finished, I’m afraid. But there are some cocoanut creams. I’m afraid they’re rather too sweet to go well with tongue.”
“In the state of starvation I’m in,” she said, “marmalade would go with pea soup. Cocoanut creams and tongue will be simply delicious. Have you anything to drink?”
“Only the juice of the tinned peaches.”
“Peach juice,” said Miss Rutherford, “is nectar. Do I drink it out of the tin or must I pour it into the palm of my hand and lap?”
“Any way you like,” said Frank. “I believe there’s a bailer somewhere if you prefer it.”
“I prefer the tin, if it doesn’t shock you.”
“Oh,” said Frank, “nothing shocks me.”
This was very nearly true. It had not been true a week before; but a day on the sea with Priscilla had done a great deal for Frank. Miss Rutherford threw her head back, tilted the peach tin, and quaffed a satisfying draught.
“I’m afraid,” she said, “that you were just as sceptical as your cousin was about my sponges.”
“I was rather surprised.”
“Naturally. You were thinking of bath sponges and naked Indians plunging over the side of their boats with large stones in their hands to sink them. But I’m not after bath sponges. I’m doing the zoophytes for the natural history survey of this district.”
“Oh,” said Frank vaguely.
“They brought me over from the British Museum because I’m supposed to know something about the zoophytes. I ought to, for I don’t know anything else.”
“It must be most interesting.”
“Last week I did the fresh water lakes and got some very good results. Professor Wilder and his wife are doing rotifers. They’re stopping——”
“In tents?” said Frank with interest.
“Tents! No. In quite the sweetest cottage you ever saw. I sleep on a sofa in the porch. What put tents into your head?”
“Then it wasn’t Professor Wilder and his wife whose boat you rescued just now?”
“Oh, dear no. I don’t know who those people are at all. I never saw them before. Miss Benson is doing the lichens, and Mr. Farringdon the moths. They’re the only other members of our party here at present, and I’m the only one out on the bay.”
Frank was conscious of a sense of relief. It would have been a disappointment to him if the German spies had turned out to be harmless botanists or entomologists.
Jimmy Kinsella was sitting in front of his boat gazing placidly at the sea when Priscilla tapped him on the shoulder.
“What are you doing here, Jimmy?” she said.
“Is that yourself, Miss?” said Jimmy, eyeing her quietly.
“It is. And the only other person present is you. Now we’ve got that settled.”
Jimmy Kinsella grinned.
“I thought it was theTortoisewhen I saw her; but I said to myself ‘There’s strangers on board of her, for Miss Priscilla would know better than to run her aground on the bank when the tide would be leaving her.’”
“You haven’t told me yet,” said Priscilla, “what you’re doing here.”
“I’m out along with the lady beyond.”
“I could see that much for myself. What’s she doing?”
“Without she’d be trying the salt water for the good of her health, I don’t know what she’s doing.”
“I thought at first that it might be that,” said Priscilla. “Has she any sponges with her?”
“Not that I seen, Miss. But sure none of them would take a sponge with them into the sea. They get plenty of it without that.”
“I just thought she hadn’t.”
“If I was to be put on my oath,” said Jimmy slowly, “and was to be asked what I thought of her——”
“That’s just what I am asking you.”
“I’d say she was a high up lady; may be one of them ones that does be waiting on the Queen, or the wife of the Lord Lieutenant or such.”
“What makes you say that?”
“The skin of her.”
Jimmy’s eyes which had been fixed on the remote horizon focussed themselves slowly for nearer objects. His glance settled finally on Priscilla’s bare feet.
“Ah!” she said, “when she took off her shoes and stockings?”
“Saving your presence, Miss, the legs of her doesn’t look as if she was accustomed to going about that way.”
“And that’s all you know about her?”
“Herself and a gentleman that was along with her settled with my da yesterday for the use of the boat, the way I’d row her anywhere she’d a fancy to go.”
“That was the gentleman who has Flanagan’s old boat, I suppose?”
“It was not then, but a different gentleman altogether.”
“Then you can leave him out,” said Priscilla, “and tell me all you know about the other couple, the ones who lost their boat.”
“Them ones,” said Jimmy, “has no sense, no more than a baby would have. Did you hear what they’re after paying Flanagan for that old boat of his?”
“Four pounds a week.”
“You’d think,” said Jimmy, “that when they’d no more care for their money than to be throwing it away that way they’d be able to afford to pay for a roof over their heads and not to be sleeping on the bare ground with no more than a cotton rag to shelter them. It was last Friday they came in to Inishbawn looking mighty near as if they’d had enough of it. ‘Is there any objection,’ says he, ‘to our camping on this island?’ ‘We’ll pay you,’ says the lady, ‘anything in reason for the use of the land.’ My da was terrible sorry for them, for he could see well that they weren’t ones that was used to hardship; but he told them that it would be better for them not.”
“On account of the rats?”
“Rats! What rats?”
“The rats that have the island very nearly eaten,” said Priscilla.
“Sorra the rat ever I saw on Inishbawn, only one that came out in the boat one day along with a sack of yellow meal my da was bringing home from the quay; and I killed it myself with the slap of a loy.”
“I just thought Peter Walsh was telling me a lie about the rats,” said Priscilla. “But if it wasn’t rats will you tell me why your father wouldn’t let them camp on Inishbawn?”
“He said it would be better for them not,” said Jimmy, “on account of there being fever on it, for fear they might catch it and maybe die.”
“What fever?”
“I don’t rightly know the name of it; but sure my ma is covered thick with yellow spots the size of a sixpence or bigger; and the young lads is worse. The cries of them at night would make you turn round on your bed pitying them.”
“Do you expect me to believe all that?” said Priscilla.
“Three times my da was in for the doctor,” said Jimmy, “and the third time he fetched out a powerful fine bottle that he bought in Brannigan’s, but it was no more use to them than water. Is it likely now that he’d allow a strange lady and a gentleman to come to the island, and them not knowing? He wouldn’t do it for a hundred pounds.”
“If you’re going on talking that kind of way there’s not much use my asking you any more questions. But I’d like very much to know where those camping people are now.”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” said Jimmy, “but they’re drowned. The planks of that old boat of Flanagan’s is opened so as you could see the daylight in between every one of them, and it would take a man with a can to be bailing the whole time you’d be going anywhere in her; let alone that the gentleman——”
“I know what the gentleman is in a boat,” said Priscilla.
“And herself is no better. It was only this morning my ma was saying to me that it’s wonderful the little sense them ones has.”
“I thought,” said Priscilla, “that your mother was out all over yellow spots. What does she know about them?”
Jimmy Kinsella grinned sheepishly.
“Believe you me, Miss,” he said, “if it was only yourself that was in it——”
“There’d be neither rats nor fever on the island, I suppose.”
Jimmy looked towards theTortoiseand let his eyes rest with an inquiring expression on Frank Mannix.
“That gentleman’s ankle is sprained,” said Priscilla, “so whatever it is that you have on your island, you needn’t be afraid of him.”
“That might be,” said Jimmy.
“You can tell your father from me,” said Priscilla, “that the next time I’m out this way I’ll land on Inish-bawn and see for myself what it is that has you all telling lies.”
“Any time you come, Miss, you’ll be welcome. It’s a poor place we have, surely, but it would be a queer thing if we wouldn’t give you the best of what might be going. But I don’t know how it is. There’s a powerful lot of strangers knocking around, people that might be decent or might not.”
His eyes were still fixed on Frank Mannix when Priscilla left him.
The tide was flowing strongly and the water began to cover the lower parts of the bank. Priscilla measured with her eye the distance between theTortoiseand the sea. She calculated that she might get off in about an hour.
When she reached theTortoiseshe found Frank pressing the last half peach on their guest.
“Miss Rutherford,” said Priscilla, “have you landed on Inishbawn, that island to the west of you, behind the corner of Illaunglos?”
“No,” she said. “I wanted to, but the boy who’s rowing me strongly advised me not to.”
“Rats?” Said Priscilla, “or fever?”
Miss Rutherford seemed puzzled by the inquiry.
“What I mean,” said Priscilla, “is this: did he give you any reason for not landing on the island?”
“As well as I recollect,” said Miss Rutherford, “he said something to the effect that it wasn’t a suitable island for ladies. I didn’t take much notice of what he said, for it didn’t matter to me where I landed. One of the islands is the same thing as another. In fact Inishbawn, if that’s its name, doesn’t look a very good place for sponges.”
“Oh, you still stick to those sponges?” said Priscilla.
“Miss Rutherford,” said Frank, “is collecting zoophytes for the British Museum.”
“Investigating and tabulating,” said Miss Rutherford, “for the Royal Dublin Society’s Natural History Survey.”
“I took up elementary science last term,” said Priscilla, “but we didn’t do about those things of yours. I daresay we’ll get on to them next year. If we do I’ll write to you for the names of some of the rarer kinds and score off Miss Pennycolt with them. She’s the science teacher, and she thinks she knows a lot. It’ll do her good to be made to look small over a sponge that she’s never seen before, or even heard of.”
“I’ll send them to you,” said Miss Rutherford. “I take the greatest delight in scoring off science teachers everywhere. I was taught science myself at one time and I know exactly what it’s like.”
Jimmy Kinsella sat on a stone with his back to the party in theTortoise. An instinct for good manners is the natural inheritance of all Irishmen. The peasant has it as surely as the peer, generally indeed more surely, for the peer, having mixed more with men of other nations, loses something of his natural delicacy of feeling. When, as in the case of young Kinsella, the Irishman has much to do with the sea his courtesy reaches a high degree of refinement. As the advancing tide crept inch by inch over the mudbank Jimmy Kinsella was forced back towards theTortoise. He moved from stone to stone, dragging his boat after him as the water floated her. Never once did he look round or make any attempt to attract the attention of Miss Rutherford. He would no doubt have retreated uncomplaining to the highest point of the bank and sat there till the water reached his waist, clinging to the painter of the boat, rather than disturb the conversation of the lady whom he had taken under his care. But his courtesy was put to no such extreme test. He made a move at last which brought him within a few feet of theTortoise. A mere patch of sea-soaked mud remained uncovered. The water, advancing from the far side of the bank, already lapped against the bows of theTortoise. Miss Rutherford woke up to the fact that the time for catching sponges was past.
“I’m afraid,” she said, “that I ought to be getting home. I can’t tell you how much obliged to you I am for feeding me. I believe I should have fainted if it hadn’t been for that tongue.”
“It was a pleasure to us,” said Priscilla. “We’d eaten all we could before you came.”
“I’m afraid,” said Frank politely, “that it wasn’t very nice. We ought to have had knives and forks or at least a tumbler to drink out of. I don’t know what you must think of us.”
“Think of you!” said Miss Rutherford. “I think you’re the two nicest children I ever met.”
She stumped off and joined Jimmy Kinsella. Priscilla saw her putting on her shoes and stockings as the boat rowed away. She shouted a farewell. Miss Rutherford waved a stocking in reply.
“There,” said Priscilla, turning to Frank, “what do you think of that? The two nicest children! I don’t mind of course; but I do call it rather rough on you after talking so grand and having on your best first eleven coat and all.”
Frank learned several things while the sails were being hoisted. The word halyard became familiar to him and connected itself definitely with certain ropes. He discovered that a sheet is, oddly enough, not an expanse of canvas, but another rope. He impressed carefully on his mind the part of the boat in which he might, under favourable circumstances, expect to find the centreboard tackle.
The wind, which had dropped completely at low water, sprang up again, this time from the west, with the rising tide. This was pleasant and promised a fair run home, but Priscilla eyed the sky suspiciously. She was weather-wise.
“It’ll die clean away,” she said, “towards evening. It always does on this kind of day when it has worked round with the sun. Curious things winds are, Cousin Frank, aren’t they? Rather like ices in some ways, I always think.”
Frank had considerable experience of ices, and had been obliged, while playing various games, to take some notice of the wind from time to time; but he missed the point of Priscilla’s comparison. She explained herself.
“If you put in a good spoonful at once,” she said, “it gives you a pain in some tooth or other and you don’t enjoy it. On the other hand, if you put in a very little bit it gets melted away before you’re able to taste it properly. That’s just the way the wind behaves when you’re out sailing. Either it has you clinging on to the main sheet for all you’re worth or else it dies away and leaves you flapping. It’s only about once a month that you get just what you want.”
It seemed to Frank, when the boat got under way, that they had happened on the one propitious day. TheTortoiseslipped pleasantly along, her sails well filled, the boom pressed forward against the shroud, the main sheet an attenuated coil at Priscilla’s feet.
“I’m feeling a bit bothered,” said Priscilla.
“We ought to have been back for luncheon,” said Frank. “I know that.”
“It’s not luncheon that’s bothering me; although it’s quite likely that we won’t be back for dinner either. What I can’t quite make up my mind about is what we ought to do next about those spies.”
“Go after them again to-morrow.”
“That’s all well enough; but things are much more mixed up than that. In some ways I rather wish we had Sylvia Courtney with us. She’s president of our Browning Society and tremendously good at every kind of complication. What I feel is that we’re rather like those boys in the poem who went out to catch a hare and came on a lion unaware. I haven’t got the passage quite right but you probably know it.”
Frank did. He could not, since English literature is still only fitfully studied in public schools, have named the author. But he quoted the lines with fluent confidence. It was by turning them into Greek Iambics that he had won the head-master’s prize.
“That’s it,” said Priscilla. “And that’s more or less what has happened to us. We went out to chase a simple, ordinary German spy and we have come on two other mysteries of the most repulsively fascinating kind. First there’s Miss Rutherford, if that’s her real name, who says she’s fishing for sponges, which is certainly a lie.”
“I don’t know about it’s being a lie,” said Frank. “She explained it to me after you’d gone.”
“Oh, that about zoophytes. You don’t believe that surely?”
“I do,” said Frank. “There are lots of queer things in the British Museum. I was there once.”
“My own belief is,” said Priscilla, “that she simply trotted out those zoophyte things and the British Museum when she found that we weren’t inclined to swallow the ordinary sponge. At the same time I can’t believe that she’s a criminal of any kind. She struck me as being an uncommonly good sort. The wind’s dropping. I told you it would. Very soon now we shall have to row. Can you row, Cousin Frank?”
Frank replied with cheerful confidence that he could. He had sat at Priscilla’s feet all day and bowed to her superior knowledge of sailing. When it came to rowing he was sure that he could hold his own. He understood the phraseology of the art, had learned to take advantage of sliding seats, could keep his back straight and had been praised by a member of a University eight for his swing.
“The other mystery,” said Priscilla, “is Inishbawn. The Kinsellas won’t let the spies land on the island. They won’t let Miss Rutherford. They won’t let you, They tell every kind of ridiculous story to head people off.”
The thought of his prowess as an oarsman had restored Frank’s self-respect. He recollected the reason given by Jimmy Kinsella for not allowing Miss Rutherford to land on Inishbawn.
“I don’t see anything ridiculous about it,” he said. “Young Kinsella simply said that it wasn’t a suitable place for ladies. There are lots of places we men go to where we wouldn’t take———-”
His sentence tailed away. Priscilla’s eyes expressed an amount of amusement which made him feel singularly uncomfortable.
“That,” she said, “is the most utter rot I’ve ever heard in my life. And in any case, even if it was true, it wouldn’t apply to us. Jimmy Kinsella distinctly said that I might land on the island as much as I like, but that he jolly well wouldn’t have you. We may just as well row now as later on. The breeze is completely gone.”
She got out the oars and dropped the rowlocks into their holes. She pulled stroke oar herself. Frank settled himself on the seat behind her. He found himself in a position of extreme discomfort. TheTortoisewas designed and built to be a sailing boat. It was not originally contemplated that she should be rowed far or rowed fast. When Frank leaned back at the end of his stroke he bumped against the mast. When he swung forward in the proper way he hit Priscilla between the shoulders with his knuckles. When the boat shot forward the boom swung inboard. If this happened at the end of a stroke Frank was hit on the shoulder. If it happened at the beginning of a stroke the spar struck him on the ear. However he shifted his position he was unable to avoid sitting on some rope. The centreboard case was between his legs and when he tried to get his injured foot against anything firm he found it entangled in ropes which he could not kick away. Priscilla complained.
“Put a little more beef into it, Cousin Frank,” she said. “I’m pulling her head round all the time.”
Frank put all the energy he could into a series of short jerky strokes, using the muscles of his arms, failing altogether to get the weight of his body on the oar. At the end of twenty minutes Priscilla gave him a rest.
“There’s no use our killing ourselves,” she said. “The tide’s under us. It’s a jolly lucky thing it is. If it was the other way we wouldn’t get home to-night. I wonder now whether the Kinsellas think you’ve any connection with the police. You don’t look it in the least, but you never can tell what people will think. If they do mistake you for anything of the sort it might account for their not wanting you to land on Inishbawn.”
“Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know why exactly—not yet. But there often are things knocking about which it wouldn’t at all do for the police to see. That might happen anywhere. There’s an air of wind coming up behind us. Just get in that oar of yours. We may as well take the good of what’s going.”
A faint ripple on the surface of the water approached theTortoise. Before it reached her the boom swung forward, lifting the dripping main sheet from the water, and the boat slipped on.
“But of course,” said Priscilla, “that idea of your being a policeman in disguise doesn’t account for their telling Miss Rutherford that there was something on the island which it wouldn’t be nice for a lady to see. And it doesn’t account for the swine-fever story that Joseph Antony Kinsella told the spies.”
“What was that?”
“Oh, nothing much. Only that his wife and children had come out all over in bright yellow spots.”
“But perhaps they have.”
“Not they. You might just as well believe in Peter Walsh’s rats. That leaves us with three different mysteries on hand.” Priscilla hooked her elbow over the tiller and ticked off the three mysteries on the fingers of her right hand. “The sponge lady, whose name may be Miss Rutherford, one. Inishbawn Island, that’s two. The original spies, which makes three. I’m afraid we’ll have to row again. Do you think you can, Cousin Frank?”
“Of course I can.”
“Don’t be offended. I only meant that you mightn’t be able to on account of your ankle. How is your ankle?”
“It’s all right,” said Frank, “That is to say it’s just the same.”
No other favouring breeze rippled the surface of the bay. For rather more than an hour, with occasional intervals for rest, Frank tugged at his oar, bumped his back, and was struck on the side of the head by the boom. He was very much exhausted when theTortoisewas at length brought alongside the slip at the end of the quay. Priscilla still seemed fresh and vigorous.
“I wonder,” said Frank, “if we could hire a boy.”
“Dozens,” said Priscilla, “if you want them... What for?”
“To wheel that bath-chair. I can’t walk, you know. And I don’t like to think of your pushing me up the hill. You must be tired.”
“That,” said Priscilla, “is what I call real politeness. There are lots of other kinds of politeness which aren’t worth tuppence. But that kind is rather nice. It makes me feel quite grown up. All the same I’ll wheel you home.”
She pushed the bath-chair up the hill from the village without any obvious effort. At the gate of the avenue she stopped. Two small children were playing just inside it. A rather larger child set on the doorstep of the gate lodge with a baby on her knee.
“What time is it, Cousin Frank?” said Priscilla.
“It’s ten minutes past seven.”
“Susan Ann, where’s your mother?”
The girl with the baby on her knee struggled to her feet and answered:
“She’s up at the house beyond, Miss.”
“I just thought she must be,” said Priscilla, “when I saw William Thomas and the other boy playing there, and you nursing the baby. If your mother wasn’t up at the house you’d all be in your beds.”
She wheeled the bath-chair on until she turned the corner of the avenue and was lost to the sight of the children who peered after her. Then she paused.
“Cousin Frank,” she said, “it’s just as well for you to be prepared for some kind of fuss when we get home.”
“We’re awfully late, I know.”
“It’s not that. It’s something far worse. The fuss that’s going on up there at the present moment is a thunderstorm compared to what there would be over our being late.”
“How do you know there’s a fuss?”
“Before she was married,” said Priscilla, “Mrs. Geraghty—that’s the woman at the gate lodge, the mother of those four children—was our upper housemaid. Aunt Juliet simply loved her. She rubs her into all the other servants day and night. She says she was the only sufficient housemaid. I’m not sure that that’s quite the right word. It may be efficient. Any how she says she’s the only something-or-other-ficient housemaid she ever had; which of course is a grand thing for Mrs. Geraghty, though not really as nice as it seems, because whenever anything perfectly appalling happens Aunt Juliet sends for her. Then she and Aunt Juliet rag the other servants until things get smoothed out again. The minute I saw those children sporting about when by rights they ought to be in bed I knew that Mrs. Geraghty had been sent for. Now you understand the sort of thing you have to expect when we get home. I thought I’d just warn you, so that you wouldn’t be taken by surprise.”
Frank felt that he still might be taken by surprise and urged Priscilla to give him some further details about the catastrophe.
“We’ll find out soon enough,” said Priscilla. “At least we may. If it’s the kind of thing that’s visible, streams of water running down the front stairs or anything like that, we’ll see for ourselves, but if it happens to be a more inward sort of disaster which we can’t see—and that’s the kind there’s always the worst fuss about—then it may take us some time to find out. Aunt Juliet doesn’t think it’s good for children to know about inward disasters, and so she never talks of them when I’m there except in what she calls French, and not much of that because Father can’t understand her. They may, of course, confide in you. It all depends on whether they think you’re a child or not.”
“I’m not.”
“Iknow that, of course. And Aunt Juliet saw you in your evening coat last night at dinner, so she oughtn’t to. But you never can tell about things of that kind. Look at the sponge lady for instance. She said you were the nicest child she ever saw. Still they may tell you.”
Frank did not like being reminded of Miss Rutherford’s remark. Priscilla’s repetition of it goaded him to a reply which he immediately afterwards felt to be unworthy.
“If they do tell me,” he said, “I won’t tell you.”
“Then you’ll be a mean, low beast,” said Priscilla.
Frank pulled himself together with an effort. He realised that it would never do to bandy schoolboy repartee with Priscilla. His loss of dignity would be complete. And besides, he was very likely to get the worst of the encounter. He was out of practise. Prefects do not descend to personalities.
“My dear Priscilla,” he said, “I only meant that I wouldn’t tell you if it was the sort of thing a girl oughtn’t to hear.”
“Like what Jimmy Kinsella has on Inishbawn,” said Priscilla. “Do you know, Cousin Frank, you’re quite too funny for words when you go in for being grand. Now would you like me to wheel you up to the hall-door and ring the bell, or would you rather we sneaked round through the shrubbery into the yard, and got in by the gunroom door and so up the back stairs?”
“I don’t care,” said Frank.
“The back way would be the wisest,” said Priscilla, “but in the state of grandeur you’re in now——”
“Oh, do drop it, Priscilla.”
“I don’t want to keep it up.”
“Then go by the back door.”
“Do you promise to tell me all about it, supposing they tell you, and they may? You can never be sure what they’ll do.”
“Yes, I promise.”
“A faithful, solemn oath?”
“Yes.”
“Whether it’s the sort of thing a girl ought to be told or not?”
“Yes. Only do go on. It’ll take me hours to dress, and we’re awfully late already.”
Priscilla trotted briskly through the shrubbery, crossed the yard and helped Frank out of the chair at the gunroom door. She gave him her arm while he hobbled up the back stairs. At the top of the first flight she deserted him suddenly. She darted forward, half opened a baize covered swing door and peeped through.
“I just thought I heard them at it,” she said. “Mrs. Geraghty and the two housemaids are rioting in the long gallery, dragging the furniture about and, generally speaking, playing old hokey. That gives us a certain amount of information, Cousin Frank.”
ROSNACREE HOUSE was built early in the 19th century by the Lentaigne of that day, one Sir Francis. At the beginning of that century the Irish gentry were still an aristocracy. They ruled, and had among their number men who were gentlemen of the grand style, capable of virile passions and striking deeds, incapable, constitutionally and by training, of the prudent foresight of careful tradesmen. Lord Thormanby, who rejoiced in a brand new Union peerage and was a wealthy man, kept race horses. Sir Francis, who, except for the Union peerage, was as big a man as Lord Thormanby, kept race horses too. Lord Thormanby bought a family coach of remarkable proportions. Sir Francis ordered a duplicate of it from the same coach-builder. Lord Thormanby employed an Italian architect to build him a house. Sir Francis sought out the same architect and gave him orders to build another house, identical with Lord Thormanby’s in design, but having each room two feet longer, two feet higher and two feet broader than the corresponding room at Thormanby Park. The architect, after talking a good deal about proportions in a way which Sir Francis did not understand, accepted the commission and erected Rosnacree House.
The two additional cubic feet made all the difference. Lord Thormanby’s fortune survived the building operations. Lord Francis Lentaigne’s estate was crippled.
His successors struggled with a burden of mortgages and a mansion considerably too large for their requirements. Sir Lucius, when his turn came, shut up the great gallery, which ran the whole length of the second storey of the house, and lived with a tolerable amount of elbow room in five downstairs sitting rooms and fourteen bedrooms. Miss Lentaigne made occasional raids on the gallery in order to see that the fine old-fashioned furniture did not rot. Neither she nor her brother thought of using the room.
For Frank Mannix the white tie which is worn in the evening was still something of a novelty and therefore a difficulty. He was struggling with it, convinced of the great importance of having the two sides of its bow symmetrical, when Priscilla tapped at his bedroom door. In response to his invitation to enter she opened the door half way and put her head and shoulders into the room.
“I thought I’d just tell you as I was passing,” she said, “that it’s all right about your ankle.”
Frank, who had just re-bandaged the injured limb, asked her what she meant.
“I’ve seen Aunt Juliet,” she said, “and I find that she’s quite dropped Christian Science and is frightfully keen on Woman’s Suffrage. That’s always the way with her. When she’s done with a thing she simply hoofs it without a word of apology to anyone. It was the same with the uric acid. She’d talk of nothing else in the morning and before night it was withered like the flower of the field upon the housetop, ‘whereof the mower filleth not his arm.’ I expect you know the sort I mean.”
She shut the door and Frank heard her running down the passage. A couple of minutes later he heard her running back again. This time she opened the door without tapping.
“I can’t think,” she said, “what Woman’s Suffrage can possibly have to do with the big gallery, but they must be mixed up somehow or Mrs. Geraghty and the housemaids wouldn’t be sporting about the way they are. They’re at it still. I’ve just looked in at them.”
During dinner the conversation was very largely political. Sir Lucius inveighed with great bitterness against the government’s policy in Ireland. Now and then he recollected that Frank’s father was a supporter of the government. Then he made such excuses for the Cabinet’s blundering as he could. Miss Lentaigne also condemned the government, though less for its incurable habit for truckling to the forces of disorder in Ireland, than for its cowardly and treacherous treatment of women. She made no attempt to spare Frank’s feelings. Indeed, she pointed many of her remarks by uncomplimentary references to Lord Torrington, Secretary of State for War, and the immediate chief of Mr. Edward Mannix, M.P. Lord Torrington, so the public understood, was the most dogged and determined opponent of the enfranchisement of women. He absolutely refused to receive deputations of ladies and had more than once said publicly that he was in entire agreement with a statement attributed to the German Emperor, by which the energies of women were confined to babies, baking and bazaars for church purposes. Miss Lentaigne scorched this sentiment with invective, and used language about Lord Torrington which was terrific. Her abandonment of the cause of Christian Science appeared to be as complete as the most enthusiastic general practitioner could desire. Frank was exceedingly uncomfortable. Priscilla was demure and silent.
When Miss Lentaigne, followed by Priscilla, left the room, Sir Lucius became confidential and friendly. He pushed the decanter of port towards Frank.
“Fill up your glass, my boy,” he said. “After your long day on the sea—— By the way I hope your aunt—I keep forgetting that she’s not your aunt—I hope she didn’t say anything at dinner to hurt your feelings. You mustn’t mind, you know. We’re all rather hot about politics in this country. Have to be with the way these infernal Leagues and things are going on. You don’t understand, of course, Frank. Nor does your father. If he did he wouldn’t vote with that gang. Your aunt—I mean to say my sister is—well, you saw for yourself. She usedn’t to be, you know. It’s only quite lately that she’s taken the subject up. And there’s something in it. I can’t deny that there’s something in it. She’s a clever woman. There’s always something in what she says. Though she pushes things too far sometimes. So does Torrington, it appears. Only he pushes them the other way. I think he goes too far, quite too far. Of course, my sister does too, in the opposite direction.”
Sir Lucius sighed.
“It’s all right, Uncle Lucius,” said Frank. “I don’t mind a bit. I’m not well enough up in these things to answer Miss Lentaigne. If father was here——”
“What’s that? Is your father coming here?”
“Oh, no,” said Frank. “He’s in Schlangenbad.”
“Of course, of course. By the way, your father’s pretty intimate with Torrington, isn’t he? The Secretary of State for War.”
“My father’s under-secretary of the War Office,” said Frank.
“Now, what sort of a man is Torrington? He’s a distant cousin of mine. My great aunt was his grandmother or something of that sort. But I only met him once, years ago. Apart from politics now, I don’t profess to admire his politics—I never did. How men like your father and Torrington can mix themselves up with that damned socialist crew—But apart from politics, what sort of a man is Torrington?”
“I never saw him,” said Frank. “I’ve been at school, you know, Uncle Lucius.”
“Quite so, quite so. But your father now. Your father must know him intimately. I know he’s rich, immensely rich. American mother, American wife, dollars to burn, which makes it all the harder to understand his politics. But his private life—what does your father think of him?
“Last time father stopped there,” said Frank, “he was called in the morning by a footman who asked him whether he’d have tea, coffee or chocolate. Father said tea. ‘Assam, Oolong, or Sooching, sir,’ said the footman, ‘or do you prefer your tea with a flavour of Orange Pekoe?’”
“By gad!” said Sir Lucius.
“That’s the only story I’ve ever heard father tell about him,” said Frank, “but they say——”
“That he has the devil of a temper.” said Sir Lucius, “and rides roughshod over every one? I’ve been told that.”
“Father never said so.”
“Quite right. He wouldn’t, couldn’t in fact. It wouldn’t be the thing at all. The fact is, Frank, that Torrington’s coming here tomorrow, wired from Dublin to say so. He and Lady Torrington. I can’t imagine what he wants here. I’d call it damned insolence in any one else, knowing what I must think of his rascally politics, what every decent man thinks of them. But of course he’s a kind of cousin. I suppose he recollected that. And he’s a pretty big pot. Those fellows invite themselves, like royalty. But I don’t know what the devil to do with him, and your aunt’s greatly upset. She says it’s against her principles to be decently civil to a man who’s treated women the way Torrington has.”
“If the women had let him alone——” said Frank, “I know. I know. One of them boxed his ears or something, pretty girl, too, I hear; but that only makes it worse. That sort of thing would get any man’s back up. But your aunt—that is to say, my sister—doesn’t see that. That’s the worst of strong principles. You never can see when your own side is in the wrong. But it makes it infernally awkward Torrington’s coming here just now. And Lady Torrington! It upsets us all. I wonder what the devil he’s coming here for?”
“I don’t know,” said Frank. “Could he be studying the Irish question? Isn’t there some Home Rule Bill or something? Father said next year would be an Irish year.”
“That’s it. That must be it. Now I wonder who he expects me to have to dinner to meet him. There’s no use my wiring to Thormanby to come over for the night. He wouldn’t do it. Simply loathes the name of Torrington. Besides, I don’t suppose Thormanby is the kind of man he wants to meet. He’d probably rather hear Brannigan or some one of that sort talking damned Nationalism. But I can’t ask Brannigan, really can’t, you know, Frank. I might have O’Hara, that’s the doctor. I don’t suppose my sister would mind now. She quite dropped Christian Science as soon as she heard Torrington was coming. But I don’t know. O’Hara drinks a bit.”
Sir Lucius sat much longer than usual in the dining-room. Frank found himself yawning with uncontrollable frequency. The long day on the sea had made him very sleepy. He did his best to disguise his condition from his uncle, but he felt that his answers to the later questions about Lord Torrington were vague, and he became more and more confused about Sir Lucius’ views of Woman Suffrage. One thing alone became clear to him. Sir Lucius was not anxious to join his sister in the drawingroom. Frank entirely shared his feeling.
But in this twentieth century it is impossible for gentlemen to spend the whole evening in the dining-room. Wine drinking is no longer recognised as a valid excuse for the separation of the sexes and tobacco is so universally tolerated that men carry their cigarettes into the drawingroom on all but the most ceremonial occasions. Sir Lucius rose at last.
“It’s very hot,” said Frank. “May I sit out for a while on the terrace, Uncle Lucius, before I go into the drawingroom. I’d like a breath of fresh air.”
He hobbled out and found a hammock chair not far from the drawingroom window. The voices of Miss Lentaigne and his uncle reached him, the one high-pitched and firm, the other, as he imagined, apologetic and deprecatory. The sound of them, the words being indistinguishable, was somewhat soothing. Frank felt as the poet Lucretius did when from the security of a sheltered nook on the side of a cliff he watched boats tossing on the sea. The sense of neighbouring strain and struggle added to the completeness of his own repose. A bed of mignonette scented the air agreeably. Some white roses glimmered faintly in the twilight. Far off, a grey still shadow, lay the bay. Frank’s cigarette dropped, half smoked, from his fingers. He slept deliciously.
A few minutes later he woke with a start. Priscilla stood over him. She was wrapt from her neck to her feet in a pale blue dressing-gown. Her hair hung down her back in a tight plait. On her feet were a pair of well worn bedroom slippers. The big toe of her right foot had pushed its way through the end of one of them.
“I say, Cousin Frank, are you awake? I’ve been here for hours, dropping small stones on your head, so as to rouse you up. I daren’t make any noise, for they’re still jawing away inside and I was afraid they’d hear me. Could you struggle along a bit further away from the window? I’ll carry your chair.”
They found a nook behind the rose-bed which Priscilla held to be perfectly safe. Frank settled down on his chair. Priscilla, with her knees pulled up to her chin, sat on a cushion at his feet.
“Aunt Juliet hunted me off to bed at half-past nine,” she said. “Dastardly tyranny! And she sent Mrs. Geraghty to do my hair—not that she cared if my hair was never done, but so as to make sure that I really undressed. Plucky lot of good that was!”
The precaution had evidently been of no use at all; but neither Miss Lentaigne nor Mrs. Geraghty could have calculated on Priscilla’s roaming about the grounds in her dressing-gown.
“The reason of the tyranny,” said Priscilla, “was plain enough. Aunt Juliet was smoking a cigarette.”
“Good gracious!” said Frank. “I should never have thought your aunt smoked.”
“She doesn’t. She never did before, though she may take to it regularly now for a time. I simply told her that she oughtn’t to chew the end. No real smoker does; and I could see that she didn’t like the wads of tobacco coming off on her tongue. Besides, it was beastly waste of the cigarette. She chawed off quite as much as she smoked. You’d have thought she’d have been obliged to me for giving her the tip, but quite the contrary. She hoofed me off to bed.”
“But what has made her take to smoking?”
“She had to,” said Priscilla. “I don’t think she really likes it, but with her principles she simply had to. It’s part of what’s called the economic independence of women and she wants to dare the Prime Minister to put her in gaol. I don’t suppose he will, at least not unless she does something worse than that; but that’s what she hopes. You know, of course, that the Prime Minister is coming tomorrow.”
“It’s not the Prime Minister,” said Frank, “only Lord Torrington.”
“That’ll be a frightful disappointment to Aunt Juliet after sending down to Brannigan’s for those cigarettes. Rose—she’s the under housemaid—told me that. Beastly cigarettes they are, too. Rose said the footman saidhewouldn’t smoke them. Ten a penny or something like that. But if Lord Torrington isn’t the Prime Minister what is Aunt Juliet doing out the long gallery?”
“Lord Torrington is rather a boss,” said Frank, “though he’s not the Prime Minister. He’s the head of the War Office.”
Priscilla whistled.
“Great Scott,” she said, “the head of the War Office! And Aunt Juliet hasn’t the least idea what’s bringing him down here. She said so twice.”
“So did Uncle Lucius. He kept wondering after dinner what on earth Lord Torrington wanted.”
“But we know,” said Priscilla. “This is what I call real sport. I have her jolly well scored off now for sending me to bed. I shouldn’t wonder if they made you a knight. It’s pretty well the least they can do.”
“What are you talking about? I don’t know what’s bringing him here unless it’s something to do with Home Rule.”
“Who cares about Home Rule? What he’s coming for is the spies. Didn’t you say that this Torrington man is the head of the War Office? What would bring him down here if it isn’t German spies? And we’re the only two people who know where those spies are. Even we don’t quite know; but we will tomorrow. Just fancy Aunt Juliet’s face when we march them up here in the afternoon, tied hand and foot with the anchor rope, and hand them over to the War Office. We shall be publicly thanked, of course, besides your knighthood, and our names will be in all the papers. Then if Aunt Juliet dares to tell me ever again to go to bed at half past nine I shall simply grin like a dog and run about through the city. She won’t like that. You’re quite, sure, Cousin Frank, that it really is the War Office man who’s coming?”
“Uncle Lucius told me it was Lord Torrington, and I know he’s the head of the War Office because my father’s the under-secretary.”
“That’s all right, then. I was just thinking that it would be perfectly awful if we captured the spies and it turned out that he wasn’t the man who was after them.”
“He may not be after them,” said Frank. “It doesn’t seem to me a bit likely that he is. You see, Priscilla, my father has a lot to do with the War Office and I know he rather laughs at this spy business.”
“That’s probably to disguise his feelings. Spies are always kept dead secrets and if possible not let into the newspapers. Perhaps even your father hasn’t been told. He doesn’t appear to be head boss, and they mightn’t mention it to him. That’s what makes it such an absolutely gorgeous scoop for us. We’ll get off as early as we can tomorrow. You couldn’t start before breakfast, could you? The tide will be all right.”
“I could, of course, if you don’t mind wheeling me down again in that bath-chair.”
“Not a little bit. I’ll get hold of Rose before I go to bed, and tell her to call us. Rose is the only one in the house I can really depend on. She hates Aunt Juliet like poison ever since that time she had the bad tooth. We can pick up some biscuits and things at Brannigan’s as we pass. There’s a good chunk of cold salmon somewhere, for we only ate quite a small bit at dinner tonight. I’ll nail it if I can keep awake till the cook’s in bed, but I don’t know can I. This kind of excitement makes me frightfully sleepy. I suppose it’s what’s called reaction. Sylvia Courtney had it terribly after the English literature prize exam. It was headaches with her and general snappishness of temper. Sleepiness is worse in some ways, though not so bad for the other people. However, I’ll do the best I can, and if we don’t get the cold salmon we’ll just have to do without.”
She rose from her cushion, stretched herself and yawned unrestrainedly. Then she rubbed both eyes with her knuckles.
“Priscilla,” said Frank, “before you go I wish you’d tell me——”
“Yes. What?”
“Do you really believe those two people we saw today are German spies?”
“Do you mean, really and truly in the inmost bottom of my heart?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I don’t, of course. It would be too good to be true if they were. But I mean to go on pretending. Don’t you?”
“Oh, yes, I’ll pretend. I only wanted to know what you thought.”
“All the same,” said Priscilla, “they did rather scoot when they saw we were after them. Nobody can deny that. That may be because they’re pretending, too. I daresay they find it pretty dull being stuck on an island all day, though, of course, it must be rather jolly cooking your own food and washing up plates in the sea. Still they may be tired of that now, and glad enough to pretend to be German spies with us pursuing them. It must be just as good sport for them trying to escape as it is for us trying to catch them. I daresay it’s even better, being stalked unwaveringly by a subtle foe ought to give them a delicious creepy feeling down the back. Anyhow we’ll track them down. We’re much better out of this house tomorrow. It’ll be like the tents of Kedar. You and I might be labouring for peace, but everybody else will be making ready for battle. Aunt Juliet will be out for blood the moment she catches sight of the Prime Minister. Good night, Cousin Frank.”