Priscilla wheeled the bath-chair up the hill from the town, chatting cheerfully as she went.
“It’ll be rather exciting,” she said, “to see these Torrington people. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a regular, full-blown Marquis before. Lord Thormanby is a peer of course, but he doesn’t soar to those giddy heights. I suppose he’ll sit on us frightfully if we dare to speak. Not that I mean to try. The thing for me to do is to be ‘a simple child which lightly draws its breath, and feels its life in every limb.’ That’s a quotation, Cousin Frank. Wordsworth, I think. Sylvia Courtney says it’s quite too sweet for words. I haven’t read the rest of it, so of course, can’t say, but I think that bit’s rather rot, though I daresay Lord Torrington will like it all right when I do it for him.”
Frank felt a certain doubt about the policy. Lord Torrington was indeed pretty sure to prefer a simple child to Priscilla in her ordinary mood; but there was a serious risk of her over-doing the part. He warned Priscilla to be exceedingly careful. She brushed his advice aside with an abrupt change of subject.
“I expect,” she said, “that Mrs. Geraghty will be up at the house again. Aunt Juliet wouldn’t trust anybody else to hook up Lady Torrington’s back. I can do my own, of course; but nobody can who is either fat or dignified. I’m pretty lean, but even I have to wriggle a lot.”
Mrs. Geraghty was up at the house. This became plain to Priscilla when she reached the gate-lodge. Mr. Geraghty, who was a gardener by profession, was sitting on his own doorstep with the baby in his arms. The baby, resenting the absence of his mother, was howling. Priscilla stopped.
“If you like,” she said, “I’ll wheel the baby up to the house and give him to Mrs. Geraghty. Aunt Juliet won’t like it if I do. In fact she’ll dance about with insatiable fury. But it may be the right thing to do all the same. We ought always to do what’s right, Mr. Geraghty, even if other people behave like wild boars; that is to say if we are quite sure that it is right; I think it’s nearly sure to be right to give a baby to its mother; though there may be times when it’s not. Solomon did, and that’s a pretty good example; though I don’t suppose that even Solomon always knew for certain when he was doing the rightest thing there was. Anyhow, I’ll risk it if you like, Mr. Geraghty. You won’t mind having the baby on your knee for a bit, will you, Cousin Frank?”
Frank did mind very much. The ordinary healthy-minded, normal prefect dislikes having anything to do with babies even more than he dislikes being called a child by maiden ladies.
He looked appealingly at Mr. Geraghty. The baby, misunderstanding Priscilla’s intentions, yelled louder than before.
Mr. Geraghty, fortunately for Frank, was not a man of the heroic kind. Abstract right was less to him than expediency and he missed the point of the comparison between his position and King Solomon’s. He thought it better that his baby should suffer than that Miss Lentaigne’s anger should be roused. He declined Priscilla’s offer.
Near the upper end of Rosnacree avenue there is a corner from which a view of the lawn is obtained. Sir Lucius and another gentleman were pacing to and fro on the grass when Priscilla and Frank reached the corner and caught sight of them.
“Stop,” said Frank, suddenly. “Turn back, Priscilla. Go round some other way.”
Priscilla stopped. The eager excitement of Frank’s tone surprised her.
“Why?” she asked. “It’s only father and that Lord of his. We’ve got to face them some time or other. We may as well get it over at once.”
“That’s the beast who shoved me over the steamer’s gangway,” said Frank, “and sprained my ankle.”
Sir Lucius and Lord Torrington turned at the end of the lawn and began to walk towards Priscilla and Frank.
“Now I can see his face,” said Priscilla, “I don’t wonder at your rather loathing him. I think you were jolly lucky to get off with a sprained ankle. A man with a nose like that would break your arm or stab you in the back.”
Lord Torrington’s nose was fleshy, pitted in places, and of a purple colour.
“Curious taste the King must have,” said Priscilla, “to make a man like that a Marquis. You’d expect he’d choose out fairly good-looking people. But, of course, you can’t really tell about kings. I daresay they have to do quite a lot of things they don’t really like, on account of being constitutional. Rather poor sport being constitutional, I should say; for the King that is. It’s pleasanter, of course, for the other people.”
Frank knew that the present King was blameless in the matter of Lord Torrington’s marquisate. It was inherited from a great-grandfather, who may have had an ordinary, possibly even a beautiful nose. But he attempted no explanation. His anxiety made him disinclined for a discussion of the advantages of having an hereditary aristocracy.
“Do turn back, Priscilla,” he said.
“If he is the man who sprained your ankle,” she said, “it’s far better for you to have it out with him now when I’m here to back you up. If you put it off till dinner time you’ll have to tackle him alone. I’m sure not to be let in. Anyhow, we can’t go back now. They’ve seen us.”
Lord Torrington and Sir Lucius approached them. Frank plucked nervously at his tie, unbuttoned and then re-buttoned his coat. He felt that he had been entirely blameless during the scrimmage on the gangway of the steamer, but Lord Torrington did not look like a man who would readily own himself to be in the wrong.
“Your daughter, Lentaigne?” said Lord Torrington. “H’m, fifteen, you said; looks less. Shake hands, little girl.”
Priscilla put out her right hand demurely. Her eyes were fixed on the ground. Her lips were slightly parted in a deprecating smile, suggestive of timid modesty.
“What’s your name?” said Lord Torrington.
“Priscilla Lentaigne.”
Nothing could have been meeker than the tone in which she spoke.
“H’m,” said Lord Torrington, “and you’re Mannix’s boy. Not much like your father. At school?”
“Yes,” said Frank. “At Haileybury.”
“What are you doing in that bath-chair with the young lady wheeling you? Is that the kind of manners they teach at Haileybury?”
“Please,” said Priscilla, speaking very gently. “It’s not his fault.”
“He has sprained his ankle,” said Sir Lucius. “He can’t walk.”
“Oh,” said Lord Torrington. “Sprained ankle, is it?”
He turned and walked back to the lawn. Sir Lucius followed him.
“Rather a bear, I call him,” said Priscilla. “But, of course, he may be one of those cases of a heart of gold inside a rough skin. You can’t be sure. We did ‘As You Like It’ last Christmas—dramatic club, you know—and Sylvia Courtney had a bit to say about a toad ugly and venomous which yet wears a precious jewel in his head. I’d say he’s just the opposite. If there is a precious jewel—and there may be—it’s not in his head. Anyhow one great comfort is that he doesn’t remember spraining your ankle.”
Frank, who recollected Lord Torrington with disagreeable distinctness, did not find any great comfort in being totally forgotten. He would have liked, though he scarcely expected, some expression of regret that the accident had occurred.
“It’ll be all the easier,” said Priscilla, “to pay him back if he hasn’t any suspicion that we have an undying vendetta against him. I rather like vendettas, don’t you? There’s something rather noble in the idea of pursuing a man with implacable vengeance from generation to generation.”
“I don’t quite see,” said Frank, “what good a vendetta is. We can’t do anything while he’s in your father’s house. It wouldn’t be right.”
“All the same,” said Priscilla, “well score off him. For the immediate present we’ve got to wait and watch his every movement with glittering eyes and cynical smiles concealed behind our ingenuous brows. You needn’t say ‘ingenuous’ isn’t a real word, because it is. I put it in an English comp. last term and got full marks, which shows that it must be a good word.”
Priscilla was right in supposing that she would not be allowed to dine in the dining-room. Frank faced the banquet without her support. It was not a very pleasant meal for him. Lady Torrington shook hands with him and asked him whether he were the boy whom she had heard reciting a prize poem on the last Speech Day at Winchester. Frank told her that he was at Haileybury.
“I thought it might have been you,” said Lady Torrington, “because I seem to remember your face. I must have seen you somewhere, I suppose.”
She took no further notice of him during dinner. Lord Torrington took no notice of him at all. The dinner was long and, in spite of the fact that he had a good appetite, Frank did not enjoy himself. He was extremely glad when Lady Torrington and Miss Lentaigne left the dining-room. He was casting about for a convenient excuse for escape when Sir Lucius spoke to him.
“You and Priscilla were out on the bay all day, I suppose?”
“Yes,” said Frank, “we started early and sailed about.”
“I daresay you’ll be able to give us some information then,” said Sir Lucius. “Shall I ask him a few questions, Torrington? The police sergeant said——”
“The police sergeant is a damned fool,” said Lord Torrington. “She can’t be going about in a boat. She doesn’t know how to row.”
“Frank,” said Sir Lucius, “did you and Priscilla happen to see anything of a young lady——”
“You may just as well tell him the story,” said Lord Torrington. “It’ll be in the papers in a day or two if we can’t find her.”
“Very well, Torrington. Just as you like. The fact is, Frank, that Lord Torrington is here looking for his daughter, who has——well, a week ago she disappeared.”
“Disappeared!” said Lord Torrington. “Why not say bolted?”
“Ran away from home,” said Sir Lucius.
“According to your aunt——” said Lord Torrington.
“She’s not my aunt,” said Frank.
“Oh, isn’t she?” Lord Torrington’s tone suggested that this was a distinct advantage to Frank. “According to Miss Lentaigne then, the girl has asserted her right to live her own life untrammelled by the fetters of conventionality. That’s the way she put it, isn’t it, Lentaigne?”
“Lady Isabel,” said Sir Lucius, “came over to Ireland. We know that.”
“Booked her luggage in advance from Euston,” said Lord Torrington, “under another name. I had a detective on the job, and he worried that out. Women are all going mad nowadays; though I had no notion Isabel went in for—well, the kind of thing your sister talks, Lentaigne. I thought she was religious. She used to be perpetually going to church, evensong on the Vigil of St. Euphrosyne, and that kind of thing, but I am told lots of parsons now have taken up these advanced ideas about women. It may have been in church she heard them.”
“From Dublin,” said Sir Lucius, “she came on here. The police sergeant——”
“Who’s a dunderheaded fool,” said Lord Torrington.
“He says there’s a young lady going about the bay for the last two days in a boat.”
“That’s the wrong tack altogether,” said Lord Torrington. “Isabel would never think of going in a boat. I tell you she can’t row.”
“Now, Frank,” said Sir Lucius, “did you see or hear anything of her?”
Frank would have liked very much to deny that he had seen any lady. His dislike of Lord Torrington was strong in him. He had been snubbed in the train, injured while leaving the steamer, and actually insulted that very afternoon. He felt, besides, the strongest sympathy with any daughter who ran away from a home ruled by Lord and Lady Torrington. But he had been asked a straight question and it was not in him to tell a lie deliberately.
“We did meet a lady,” he said, “in fact we lunched with her today, but her name was Rutherford.”
“Was she rowing about alone in a boat?” said Lord Torrington.
“She had a boy to row her,” said Frank. “She’d hired the boat. She said she came from the British Museum and was collecting sponges.”
“Sponges!” said Sir Lucius. “How could she collect sponges here, and what does the British Museum want sponges for?”
“They weren’t exactly sponges,” said Frank, “they were zoophytes.”
“It’s just possible,” said Lord Torrington, “that she might—Sponges, you say? I don’t know what would put sponges into her head. But, of course, she had to say something. What was she like to look at?”
“She had a dark blue dress,” said Frank, “and was tallish.”
“Fuzzy fair hair?” said Lord Torrington.
“I don’t remember her hair.”
“Slim?”
“I’d call Miss Rutherford fat,” said Frank. “At least, she’s decidedly stout.”
“Not her,” said Lord Torrington. “Nobody could call Isabel fat. That police sergeant of yours is a fool, Lentaigne. I always said he was. If Isabel is in this neighbourhood at all she’s living in some country inn.”
“The sergeant said he’d make inquiries about the lady he mentioned,” said Sir Lucius. “We shall hear more about her tomorrow.”
“She had a Primus stove with her,” said Frank.
“That’s no help,” said Lord Torrington. “Anybody might have a Primus stove.”
“She said she’d borrowed it from Professor Wilder,” said Frank.
“Who the devil is Professor Wilder?”
“He’s doing the rotifers,” said Frank. “At least Miss Rutherford said he was. I don’t know who he is.”
“That’s not Isabel,” said Lord Torrington. “She wouldn’t have the intelligence to invent a professor who collected rotifers. I don’t suppose she ever heard of rotifers. I never did. What are they?”
“Insects, I fancy,” said Sir Lucius. “I daresay Priscilla would know. Shall I send for her?”
“No,” said Lord Torrington. “I don’t care what rotifers are. Let’s finish our cigars outside, Lentaigne. It’s infernally hot.”
Frank had finished his cigarette. He had no wish to spend any time beyond what was absolutely necessary in Lord Torrington’s company. He felt sure that Lord Torrington would insist on walking briskly up and down when he got outside. Frank could not walk briskly, even with the aid of two sticks. He made up his mind to hobble off in search of Priscilla. He found her, after some painful journeyings, in a most unlikely place. She was sitting in the long gallery with Lady Torrington and Miss Lentaigne. The two ladies reclined in easy chairs in front of an open window. There were several partially smoked cigarettes in a china saucer on the floor beside Miss Lentaigne. Lady Torrington was fanning herself with a slow motion which reminded Frank of the way in which a tiger, caged in a zoological garden, switches its tail after being fed. Priscilla sat in the background under a lamp. She had chosen a straight-backed chair which stood opposite a writing table. She sat bolt upright in it with her hands folded on her lap and her left foot crossed over her right. Her face wore a look of slightly puzzled, but on the whole intelligent interest; such as a humble dependent might feel while submitting to instruction kindly imparted by some very eminent person. She wore a white frock, trimmed with embroidery, of a perfectly simple kind. She had a light blue sash round her waist. Her hair, which was very sleek, was tied with a light blue ribbon. Round her neck, on a third light blue ribbon, much narrower than either of the other two, hung a tiny gold locket shaped like a heart. She turned as Frank entered the room and met his gaze of astonishment with a look of extreme innocence. Her eyes made him think for a moment of those of a lamb, a puppy or other young animal which is half-frightened, half-curious at the happening of something altogether outside of its previous experience.
Neither of the ladies at the window took any notice of Frank’s entrance. He hobbled across the room and sat down beside Priscilla. She got up at once and, without looking at him, walked demurely to the chair on which Miss Lentaigne was sitting.
“Please, Aunt Juliet,” she said, “may I go to bed? I think it’s time.”
Miss Lentaigne looked at her a little doubtfully. She had known Priscilla for many years and had learned to be particularly suspicious of meekness.
“I heard the stable clock strike,” said Priscilla. “It’s half-past nine.”
“Very well,” said Miss Lentaigne. “Good-night.”
Priscilla kissed her aunt lightly on her left cheek bone. Then she held out her hand to Lady Torrington.
“You may kiss me,” said the lady. “You seem to be a very quiet well behaved little girl.”
Priscilla kissed Lady Torrington and then passed on to Frank.
“Good-night, Cousin Frank,” she said. “I hope you’re not tired after being out in the boat, and I hope your ankle will be better tomorrow.”
Her eyes still had an expression of cherubic innocence; but just as she let go Frank’s hand she winked abruptly. He found as she turned away, that she had left something in his hand. He unfolded a small, much crumpled piece of blotting paper, taken, he supposed, by stealth from the writing table beside Priscilla’s chair. A note was scratched with a point of a pin on the blotting paper.
“Come to the shrubbery, ten sharp. Most important. Excuse scratching. No pencil.”
“Priscilla,” said Lady Torrington, “is a sweet child, very subdued and modest.”
Frank’s attention was arrested by the silvery sweetness of the tone in which she spoke. He had a feeling that she meant to convey to Miss Lentaigne something more than her words implied. Miss Lentaigne struck a match noisily and lit another cigarette.
“She may be a little wanting in animation,” said Lady Torrington, “but that is a fault which one can forgive nowadays when so many girls run into the opposite extreme and become self-assertive.”
“Priscilla,” said Miss Lentaigne, “is not always quite so good as she was this evening.”
“You must be quite pleased that she isn’t,” said Lady Torrington, with a deliberate, soft smile. “With your ideas about the independence of our sex I can quite understand that Priscilla, if she were always as quiet and gentle as she was this evening, would be trying, very trying.”
Frank became acutely uncomfortable. He had entered the room noisily enough, hobbling on his two sticks; but neither lady seemed to be aware of his presence. He began to feel as if he were eavesdropping, listening to a conversation which he was not intended to hear. He hesitated for a moment, wondering whether he ought to say a formal good-night, or get out of the room as quietly as he could without calling attention to his presence. Miss Lentaigne’s next remark decided him.
“Your own daughter,” she said, “seems to have imbibed some of our more modern ideas. That must be a trial to you, Lady Torrington.”
Frank got up and made his way out of the room without speaking.
To reach the corner of the shrubbery it was necessary to cross the lawn. Lord Torrington and Sir Lucius, having lit fresh cigars, were pacing up and down in earnest conversation. Frank hobbled across their path and received a kindly greeting from his uncle.
“Well, Frank, out for a breath of fresh air before turning in? Sorry you can’t join our march. Lord Torrington is just talking about your father.”
“Thanks, Uncle Lucius,” said Frank, “but I can’t walk. There’s a hammock chair in the corner. I’ll sit there for a while and smoke another cigarette.”
Sir Lucius and Lord Torrington walked briskly, turning each time they reached the edge of the grass and walking briskly back again. Frank realised that Priscilla, if she was to keep her appointment, must cross their track. He watched anxiously for her appearance. The stable clock struck ten. In the shadow of the verandah in front of the dining-room window Frank fancied he saw a moving figure. Sir Lucius and Lord Torrington crossed the lawn again. Half-way across they were exactly opposite the dining-room window, A few steps further on and the direct line between the window and a corner of the shrubbery lay behind them. Priscilla seized the most favourable moment for her passage. Just as the two men reached the point at which their backs were turned to the line of her crossing she darted forward. Half-way across she seemed to trip, hesitated for a moment and then ran on. Before the walkers reached their place of turning she was safe in a laurel bush beside Frank’s chair.
“My shoe,” she whispered. “It came off slap in the middle of the lawn. I always knew those were perfectly beastly shoes. It was Sylvia Courtney made me buy them, though I told her at the time they’d never stick on, and what good are shoes if they don’t. Now they are sure to see it; though perhaps they won’t. If they don’t I can make another dart and get it.”
To avoid all risk of the loss of the second shoe Priscilla took it off before she started. Lord Torrington and Sir Lucius crossed the lawn again. It seemed as if one or other of them must tread on the shoe which lay on their path; but they passed it by. Priscilla seized her chance, rushed to the middle of the lawn and returned again successfully. Then she and Frank retreated, for the sake of greater security, into the middle of the shrubbery.
“Everything’s all right,” said Priscilla. “I’ve got lots and lots of food stored away. I simply looted the dishes as they were brought out of the dining-room. Fried fish, a whole roast duck, three herrings’ roes on toast, half a caramel pudding—I squeezed it into an old jam pot—and several other things. We can start at any hour we like tomorrow and it won’t in the least matter whether Brannigan’s is open or not. What do you say to 6 a.m.?”
“I’m not going on the bay tomorrow.”
“You must. Why not?”
“Because I want to score off that old beast who sprained my ankle.”
The prefect in Frank had entirely disappeared. Two days of close companionship with Priscilla erased the marks made on his character by four long years of training at Haileybury. His respect for constituted authorities had vanished. The fact that Lord Torrington was Secretary of State for War did not weigh on him for an instant. He was, as indeed boys ought to be at seventeen years of age, a primitive barbarian. He was filled with a desire for revenge on the man who had insulted and injured him.
“You don’t know,” he said, “what Lord Torrington is here for.”
“Oh, yes, I do,” said Priscilla. “I’m not quite an ass. I was listening to Aunt Juliet and Lady Torrington shooting barbed arrows at each other after dinner. Aunt Juliet got rather the worst of it, I must say. Lady Torrington is one of those people whose garments smell of myrrh, aloes and cassia, and yet whose words are very swords; you know the sort I mean.”
“Lord Torrington is chasing his daughter,” said Frank, “who has run away from home. I vote we find her first and then help her to hide.”
“Of course. That’s what we’re going to do. That’s why we’re going off in the boat tomorrow.”
“But she’s not on the bay,” said Frank. “Miss Rutherford is too fat to be her. He said so.”
“Who’s talking about Miss Rutherford? She’s simply sponge-hunting. Nobody but a fool would think she was Miss Torrington.”
“Lady Isabel,” said Frank. “He’s a marquis.”
“Anyhow she’s not the escaped daughter.”
“Then who is?”
“The lady spy, of course. Any one could see that at a glance.”
“But she has a man with her. Lord Torrington said—”
“If you can call that thing a man,” said Priscilla, “she has. That’s her husband. She’s run away with him and got married surreptitiously, like young Lochinvar. People do that sort of thing, you know. I can’t imagine where the fun comes in; but it’s quite common, so I suppose it must be considered pleasant. Anyhow Sylvia Courtney says that English literature is simply stock full of most beautiful poems about people who do it; all more or less true, so there must be some attraction.”
Frank made no reply. Priscilla’s theory was new to him. It seemed to have a certain plausibility. He wanted to think it over before committing himself to accepting it.
“It’s not a thing I’d care to do myself,” said Priscilla. “But then people are so different. What strikes me as rather idiotic may be sweeter than butter in the mouth to somebody else. You never can tell beforehand. Anyhow we can count on Aunt Juliet as a firm ally. She can’t go back on us on account of her principles.”
This was another new idea to Frank. He began to feel slightly bewildered.
“The one thing she’s really keen on just at present,” said Priscilla, “is that women should assert their independence and not be mere tame parasites in gilded cages. That’s what she said to Lady Torrington anyhow. So of course she’s bound to help us all she can, so long as she doesn’t know that they’re married, and nobody does know that yet except you and me. Not that I’d be inclined to trust Aunt Juliet unless we have to; but it’s a comfort to know she’s there if the worst comes to the worst.”
“What do you intend to do?” said Frank.
“Find them first. If we start off early tomorrow well probably get to Curraunbeg before they’re up. My idea would be to hand over the young man to Miss Rutherford for a day or two. She’s sure to be somewhere about and when she understands the circumstances she won’t mind pretending that he, the original spy, I mean, is her husband, just for a while, until the first rancour of the pursuit has died away. She strikes me as an awfully good sort who won’t mind. She may even like it. Some people love being married. I can’t imagine why; but they do. Anyhow I don’t expect there’ll be any difficulty about that part of the programme. We’ll simply tranship him, tent and all, into Jimmy Kinsella’s boat.”
“I don’t see the good of doing all that,” said Frank.
“Why not——?”
“The good of it is this. We must keep Aunt Juliet on our side in case of accidents. She’s got a most acute mind and will throw all kinds of obstacles in the way of the pursuers. As long as she thinks that Miss Torrington—Lady Isabel, I mean—is really going in for leading a beautiful scarlet kind of life of her own; but if she once finds out that she’s gone and got married to a man, any man, even one who can’t manage a boat, she’ll be keener than any one else to have her dragged back.”
“What do you mean to do with her?” said Frank.
“We’ll plant her down on Inishbawn. That’s the safest place in the whole bay for her to be. Of course Joseph Antony Kinsella will object; but we’ll make him see that it’s his duty to succor the oppressed, and anyhow we’ll land her there and leave her. I don’t exactly know what it is that they’re doing on that island, though I can guess. But whatever it is you may bet your hat they won’t let Lord Torrington or the police or any one of that kind within a mile of it. If once we get her there she’s safe from her enemies. Every man, woman and child in the neighbourhood will combine to keep that sanctuary—bother! there’s a word which exactly expresses what a sanctuary is kept; but I’ve forgotten what it is. I came across it once in a book and looked it out in the dict. to see what it meant. It’s used about sanctuaries and secrets. Do you remember what it is?”
Frank did not give his mind to the question. He was thinking, with some pleasure, of the baffled rage of Lord Torrington when he was not allowed to land on Inishbawn. Lady Isabel would be plainly visible sitting at the door of her tent on the green slope of the island. Lord Torrington, with violent language bursting from him, would approach the island in a boat, anticipating a triumphant capture. But Joseph Antony Kinsella would sally like a rover from his anchorage and tow Lord Torrington’s boat off to some distant place. With invincible determination the War Lord would return again. From every inhabited island in the bay would issue boats, Flanagan’s old one among them. They would surround Lord Torrington, hustle and push him away. Children from cottage doors would jeer at him. Peter Walsh and Patsy, the drunken smith, would add their taunts to the chorus when at last, baffled and despairing, he landed at the quay. The vision was singularly attractive. Frank ran his hand over his bandaged ankle and smiled with joy.
“I know it’s used of secrets as well as sanctuaries,” said Priscilla, “because Aunt Juliet used to say it about the Confessional when she was thinking of being a Roman Catholic. I told you about that, didn’t I?”
“No,” said Frank. “But will they be able to stop him landing, really?”
“Of course they will. That was one of the worst times we ever had with Aunt Juliet. Father simply hated it, expecting the blow to fall every day, especially after she took to fasting frightfully hard with finnan haddocks. That was just after the time she was tremendously down on all religion and wouldn’t let him have prayers in the morning, which he didn’t mind as much; though, of course, he pretended. Fortunately she found out about uric acid just before she actually did the deed, so that was all right. It always is in the end, you know. That’s one of the really good points about Aunt Juliet. All the same I wish I could remember that word.”
“I don’t quite see,” said Frank, “how they’ll stop him landing on Inishbawn if he wants to.”
“Nor do I; but they will. If Peter Walsh and Joseph Antony Kinsella and Flanagan and Patsy the smith—they’re all in the game, whatever it is—if they determine not to let him land on Inishbawn he won’t land there.”
“But even if they keep him off for a day or two they can’t for ever.”
“Well,” said Priscilla, “he can’t stay here for ever either. There’s sure to be a war soon and then he’ll jolly well have to go back to London and see after it. You told me it was his business to look after wars, so of course he must. Now that we’ve got everything settled I’ll sneak off again and get to bed. If I recollect that word during the night I’ll write it down.”
Priscilla, leaving Frank to make his own way back to the house as best he could, crept through the laurel bushes to the edge of the lawn. Lord Torrington and Sir Lucius had gone indoors. She could see them through the open window of the long gallery. She stole carefully across the lawn and entered the house by way of the dining-room window. She went very quietly to her bedroom. Before undressing she opened her wardrobe, lifted out two dresses which lay folded on a shelf and took out the store of provisions which she had secured at dinner time. She wrapped up the duck and the fish in paper, nice white paper taken from the bottoms of the drawers in her dressing table. The herrings’ roes on toast, originally a savoury, she put in the bottom of the soap dish and tied a piece of paper over the top of it. The caramel pudding rather overflowed the jam pot. It was impossible to press it down below the level of the rim. Priscilla sliced off the bulging excess of it with the handle of her tooth brush and dropped it into her mouth. Then she tied some paper over the top of the jam pot, and wrote, “pudding” across it with a blue pencil. The remainder of her spoil—some rolls, two artichokes and a sweetbread—she wrapped up together.
Then she undressed and got into bed. Half an hour later she woke suddenly. Without a moment’s hesitation she got out of bed and lit a candle. The blue pencil was still lying on top of the jam pot which stood on the dressing table. Priscilla took it, and to avoid all possibility of mistake in the morning, wrote word “inviolable” on every one of her parcels.
It was ten o’clock in the forenoon. Peter Walsh, having breakfasted, strolled down the street towards the quay. When he reached it he surveyed the boats which lay there with a long, deliberate stare. TheBlue Wandererwas at her moorings. TheTortoise, with a new iron on her rudder, had gone out at seven o’clock. There were three boats from the islands and one large hooker lying at the quay. Peter Walsh made quite sure that there was nothing which called for comment or investigation in the appearance of any of these. Then he lit his pipe and took his seat on one of the windows of Brannigan’s shop. Four out of the six habitués of this meeting place were already seated. Peter Walsh made the fifth. The sixth man had not yet arrived.
At half past ten Timothy Sweeny left his shop and walked down to the quay. Timothy Sweeny, though not the richest, was the most important man in Rosnacree. His public house was in a back street and the amount of business which he did was insignificant compared to that done by Brannigan. But he was a politician of great influence and had been made a Justice of the Peace by a government anxious to popularise the administration of the law in Ireland. The law itself, as was recognised on all sides, could not possibly be made to command the respect of any one; but it was hoped that it might excite less active hostility if it were modified to suit the public convenience by men like Sweeny who had some personal experience of the unpleasantness of the penalties which it ordained.
It was seldom that Timothy Sweeny left his shop. He was a man of corpulent figure and flabby muscles. He disliked the smell of fresh air and walking was a trouble to him. The five loafers on Brannigan’s window sills looked at him with some amazement when he approached them.
“Is Peter Walsh here?” said Sweeny.
“I am here,” said Peter Walsh. “Where else would I be?”
“I’d be glad,” said Sweeny, “if you’d step up to my house with me for two minutes the way I could speak to you without the whole town listening to what we’re saying.”
Peter Walsh rose from his seat with quiet dignity and followed Sweeny up the street.
“You’ll take a sup of porter,” said Sweeny, when they reached the bar of the public house.
Peter finished the half pint which was offered to him at a draught.
“They tell me,” said Sweeny, “that the police sergeant was up at the big house again this morning. I don’t know if it’s true but it’s what they’re after telling me.”
“It is true,” said Peter. “I’ll say that much for whoever it was that told you. It’s true enough. The sergeant was off last night after dark. He thinks he’s damned smart that sergeant, and it was after dark he went the way nobody would see him; but he was seen, for Patsy the smith was on the side of the road, mortal sick after the way that Joseph Antony Kinsella made him turn to making a rudder iron and him as drunk at the time as any man ever you seen. It was him told me about the sergeant and where he went last night.”
“Well,” said Sweeny, “and what did he tell you?”
“He told me that the sergeant went along the road till he met with the gentleman that does be going about the country and has the two ladies with him, the one of them that might be his wife and the other has Jimmy Kinsella engaged to row her round the bay while she’d be bathing.”
“There’s too many going round the country and the bay and that’s a fact. We could do with less.”
“We could, surely. But there’s no harm in them ones. What the sergeant said to the gentleman Patsy the smith couldn’t hear but it was maybe half an hour after when the sergeant went home again and he had a look on him like a man that was middling well satisfied. Patsy the smith saw him for he was in the ditch when he passed, terrible sick, retching the way he thought the whole of his liver would be out on the road before he’d done. Well, there was no more happened last night; but it wasn’t more than nine o’clock this morning before that same sergeant was off up to the big house and I wouldn’t wonder but it was to tell the strange gentleman that’s there whatever it was he heard him last night. He had that kind of a look about him anyway.”
“I don’t like the way things is going on,” said Sweeny. “What is it that’s up at the big house at all?”
“They tell me,” said Walsh, “that he’s a mighty high up gentleman whoever he is.”
“He may be, but I’d be glad if I knew what he’s doing here, for I don’t like the looks of him.”
Patsy the smith, pallid after the experience of the night before, walked into the shop.
“If Peter Walsh is there,” he said, “the sergeant is down about the quay looking for him.”
“You better go to him,” said Sweeny, “and mind now what you say to him.”
“You’ll not say much,” said Patsy the smith, “for he’ll have you whipped off into one of the cells in the barrack before you’ve time to speak. He’s terrible determined.”
Patsy’s face was yellow—a witness to the fact that his liver was still in him—and he was inclined to take a pessimistic view of life. Peter Walsh paid no attention to his prophecy. Sweeny looked anxious.
The sergeant was standing outside the door of Brannigan’s shop. He accosted Peter Walsh as soon as he caught sight of him.
“Sir Lucius bid me tell you,” he said, “that you’re to have theTortoiseready for him at twelve o’clock, and that his lordship will be going with him, so he won’t be needing you in the boat.”
“It would fail me to do that,” said Peter, “for she’s out, Miss Priscilla and the young gentleman with the sore leg has her.”
“Sir Lucius was partly in doubt,” said the sergeant, “but it might be the way you say, for I told him myself that the boat was gone. But his lordship wouldn’t be put off, and you’re to hire another boat.”
“What boat?”
“It was Joseph Antony Kinsella’s he mentioned,” said the sergeant, “when I told him it was likely he’d be in with another load of gravel. But sure one boat’s as good as another so long as it is a boat. His lordship wouldn’t be turned aside from going.”
“Them ones,” said Peter Walsh, “must have their own way whatever happens. It’s pleasure sailing they’re for, I’m thinking, among the islands?”
“It might be,” said the sergeant “I didn’t ask.”
“You could guess though.”
“And if I could, do you think I’d tell you? It’s too fond of asking questions you are, Peter Walsh, about what doesn’t concern you.”
The sergeant turned his back and walked away. Peter Walsh watched him enter the barrack. Then he himself went back to Sweeny’s shop.
“They’re wanting a boat,” he said. “Joseph Antony Kinsella’s or another.”
“And what for?”
“Unless it’s to go out to Inishbawn,” said Peter, “I don’t know what for.”
“Bedamn then,” said Sweeny, “there’s no boat for them.”
“I was thinking that myself.”
“I wouldn’t wonder,” said Sweeney, “but something might stop Joseph Antony Kinsella from coming in today after all, thought he’s due with another load of gravel.”
“He mightn’t come,” said Patsy the smith. “There’s many a thing could happen to prevent him.”
“What time were they thinking of starting?” said Sweeny.
“Twelve o’clock,” said Peter Walsh.
“Patsy,” said Sweeny, “let you take Brannigan’s old punt and go down as far as the stone perch to try can you see Joseph Antony Kinsella coming in.”
Patsy the smith was in a condition of great physical misery; but the occasion demanded energy and self-sacrifice. He staggered down to the slip, loosed the mooring rope of Brannigan’s dilapidated punt and drove her slowly down the harbour, waggling one oar over her stern.
“Let you go round the town,” said Sweeny to Peter Walsh, “and find out where the fellows is that came in with the boats that’s at the quay this minute. It’s time they were off out of this.”
Peter Walsh left the shop. In a minute or two he came back again.
“There’s Miss Priscilla’s boat,” he said, “theBlue Wanderer. You’re forgetting her.”
“They’d never venture as far as Inishbawn in her,” said Sweeny.
“They might then. The wind’s east and she’d run out easy enough under the little lug.”
“They’d have to row back.”
“The likes of them ones,” said Peter Walsh, “wouldn’t think about how they’d get back till the time came. I’m uneasy about that boat, so I am.”
“Tell me this now,” said Sweeny, after a moment’s consideration. “Did the young lady say e’er a word to you about giving the boat a fresh lick of paint?”
“She did not. Why would she? Amn’t I just after painting the boat?”
“Are you sure now she didn’t say she’d be the better of another coat?”
“She might then, some time that I wouldn’t be paying much attention to what she said. I’m a terrible one to disremember things anyway.”
“You’d better do it then,” said Sweeny. “There’s plenty of the same paint you had before in Brannigan’s, and it will do the boat no harm to get a lick with it.”
Peter Walsh left the shop again and walked in a careless way down the street. Sweeny followed him at a little distance and spoke to the men who were sitting on Brannigan’s window sills. They rose at once and walked down to the slip. In a few minutes theBlue Wandererwas dragged from her moorings and carried up to a glassy patch of waste land at the end of the quay. Her floor boards were taken out of her, her oars, rudder and mast were laid on the grass. The boat herself was turned bottom upwards.
In the course of the next half hour the owners of the boats which lay alongside the quay sauntered down one by one. Brown lugsails were run up on the smaller boats. The mainsail of the hooker was slowly hoisted. At half past eleven there was not a single boat of any kind left afloat in the harbour. Peter Walsh, his coat off and his sleeves rolled up, was laying long stripes of green paint on the already shining bottom of the Blue Wanderer. He worked with the greatest zeal and earnestness. Timothy Sweeny looked at the empty harbour with satisfaction. Then he went back to the shop and dosed comfortably behind his bar.
Patsy the smith stood in the stern of the punt and waggled his oar with force and skill. He disliked taking this kind of exercise very much indeed. His nature craved for copious, cooling drafts of porter, drawn straight from the cask and served in large thick tumblers. He had intended to spend the morning in taking this kind of refreshment. The day was exceedingly hot. When he reached the end of the quay his mouth was quite dry inside and his legs were shaking under him. He looked round with eyes which were strikingly bloodshot. There was no sign of Joseph Antony Kinsella’s boat on the long stretch of water between him and the stone perch. If he could have articulated at all he would have sworn. Being unable to swear he groaned deeply and took his oar again. The punt wobbled forward very much as a fat duck walks.
When he reached Delgipish he looked round again. A mile out beyond the stone perch he saw a boat moving slowly towards him. His eyes served him badly and although he could see the splash of the oars in the water he could not make out who the rower was. A man of weaker character, suffering the same physical torture, would have allowed himself to drift on the shore of Delginish and there would have awaited the coming of the boat he had seen. But Patsy the smith was brave. He was also nerved by the extreme importance of his mission. It was absolutely necessary that something should happen to prevent Joseph Antony bringing his boat to Rosnacree harbour. The sight of one brown sail and then another stealing round the end of the quay gave him fresh courage. Timothy Sweeny and Peter Walsh had done their work on shore. He was determined not to fail in carrying through his part of a masterly scheme.
For twenty minutes Patsy the smith sculled on. It seemed to him sometimes as if each sway of his body, each tug of his tired arms must be the last possible. Yet he succeeded in going on. He dared not look round lest the boat he had seen should prove after all not to be the one he sought. Such a disappointment would, he knew, be more than he could bear. At last the splash of oars reached his ears and he heard himself hailed by name. The voice was Kinsella’s. The relief was too much for Patsy. He sat down on the thwart behind him and was violently sick. Kinsella laid his boat alongside the punt and looked calmly at his friend. Not until the worst spasms were over did he speak.
“Faith, Patsy,” he said, “it must have been a terrible drenching you gave yourself last night, and the stuff was good too, as good as ever I seen. What has you in the state you’re in at all?”
The sickness had to some extent revived Patsy the smith. He was able to speak, though with difficulty.
“Go back out of that,” he said.
“And why would I go back?”
“Timothy Sweeny says you’re to go back, for if you come in to the quay today there’ll be the devil and all if not worse.”
“If that’s the way of it I will go back; but I’d be glad, so I would, if I knew what Sweeny means by it. It’s a poor thing to be breaking my back rowing a boatload of gravel all the way from Inishbawn and then to be told to turn round and go back; and just now too, when the wind has dropped and it’s beginning to look mighty black over to the eastward.”
“You’re to go back,” said Patsy, “because the strange gentleman that’s up at the big house is wanting your boat.”
“Let him want!”
“He’ll get it, if so be that you go in to the quay, and when he has it the first thing he’ll do is to go out to Inishbawn. It’s there he wants to be and it’s yourself knows best what he’d find if he got there. Go back, I tell you.”
“If you’ll take my advice,” said Kinsella, “you will go back yourself. There’s thunder beyond there coming up, and there’ll be a breeze setting towards it from the west before another ten minutes is over our heads. I don’t know will you care for that in the state you’re in this minute, with that old punt and only one oar. The tide’ll be running strong against the breeze and there’ll be a kick-up at the stone perch.”
Patsy the smith saw the wisdom of this advice. Tired as he was he seized his one oar and began sculling home. Kinsella watched him go and then did a peculiar thing. He took the shovel which lay amidships in his boat and began to heave his cargo of gravel into the sea. As he worked a faint breeze from the west rose, fanned him and died away. Another succeeded it and then another. Kinsella looked round him. The four boats which had drifted out from the quay before the easterly breeze of the morning, had hauled in their sheets. They were awaiting a wind from the west. The heavy purple thunder cloud was rapidly climbing the sky. Kinsella shovelled hard at his gravel. His boat, lightened of her load, rose in the water, showing inch by inch more free board. A steady breeze from the west succeeded the light occasional puffs. It increased in strength. The four boats inside him stooped to it. They sped across and across the channel towards the stone perch in short tacks. Kinsella hoisted his sail and took the tiller. The boat swung up into the wind and coursed away to the south west, close hauled to a stiff west wind. The thunder cloud burst over Rosnacree.
Sir Lucius and Lord Torrington drove into the town and pulled up in front of Brannigan’s shop at a quarter to twelve. They looked round the empty harbour in some surprise. Sir Lucius went at once into the shop. Lord Torrington, being an Englishman with a proper belief in the forces of law and order, walked a few yards back and entered the police barracks.
“Brannigan,” said Sir Lucius, “where’s my boat? and where’s that ruffian Peter Walsh?”
“Your boat, is it?” said Brannigan.
“I sent down word to Peter Walsh to have her ready for me at twelve, or, if my daughter had taken her out——”
“It would be better,” said Brannigan, “if you were to see Peter Walsh yourself. Sure I don’t know what’s happened to your boat.”
“Where’s Peter Walsh?”
“He’s down at the end of the quay putting an extra coat of paint on Miss Priscilla’s boat. I don’t know what sense there is in doing the like, but of course he wouldn’t care to go contrary to what the young lady might say.”
Sir Lucius left the shop abruptly. At the door he ran into Lord Torrington and the police sergeant.
“Damn it all, Lentaigne,” said Lord Torrington, “how are we going to get out?”
“There was boats in it,” said the police sergeant, “plenty of them, when I gave your lordship’s message to Peter Walsh.”
“Where are they now?” said Lord Torrington. “What’s the good of telling me they were here when they’re not?”
The police sergeant looked cautiously round.
“I wouldn’t say,” he said at last, “but they’re gone out of it, every one of the whole lot of them.”
Peter Walsh, his paint brush in his hand, and an expression of respectful regret, on his face, came up to Sir Lucius and touched his hat.
“What’s the meaning of this?” said Sir Lucius. “Didn’t I send you word to have a boat, either my own or some other, ready for me at twelve?”
“The message the sergeant gave me,” said Peter Walsh, “was to engage Joseph Antony Kinsella’s boat for your honour if so be that Miss Priscilla had your own took out.”
“And why the devil didn’t you?” said Lord Torrington.
“Because she’s not in it, your honour; nor hasn’t been this day. I was waiting for her and the minute she came to the quay I’d have been in her, helping Joseph Antony to shovel out the gravel the way she’d be fit for two gentlemen like yourselves to go in her.”
“Is there no other boat to be got?” said Lord Torrington.
“Launch Miss Priscilla’s at once,” said Sir Lucius.
“Sure the paint’s wet on the bottom of her.”
“Launch her,” said Sir Lucius, “paint or not paint.”
“I’ll launch her if your honour bids me,” said Peter Walsh. “But what use will she be to you when she’s in the water? She’ll not work to windward for you under the little lug that’s in her, and it’s from the west the wind’s coming now.”
He looked round the sky as he spoke.
“Glory be to God!” he said. “Will you look at what’s coming. There’s thunder in it and maybe worse.”
Sir Lucius took Lord Torrington by the arm and led him out of earshot of the police sergeant and Peter Walsh.
“We’d better not go today, Torrington. There’s a thunder storm coming. We’d simply get drenched.”
“I don’t care if I am drenched.”
“And besides we can’t go. There isn’t a boat. We couldn’t get anywhere in that little thing of Priscilla’s. After all if she’s on an island today she’ll be there tomorrow.”
“If that fool of a sergeant told us the truth this morning,” said Lord Torrington, “and there’s some man with her I want to break every bone in his body as soon as I can.”
“He’ll be there tomorrow,” said Sir Lucius, “and I’ll see that there’s a boat here to take us out.”