MISS CRAVEN laughed and watched Mr. Airey searching for a reply beneath the frill of a Neapolitan ice. She did not mean that he should find one. Her aim was that he should talk about Harold Wynne. The dinner had reached its pianissimo passages, so to speak. It was dwindling away into the marrons glacés and fondants stage, so she had not much time left to her to find out if it was indeed with his friend Edmund Airey that Harold had disappeared every afternoon.
Edmund Airey knew what her aim was. He was a clever man, and he endeavoured to frustrate it. Ten minutes afterwards he was amazed to find that he had told her all that she wanted to know, and something over, for he had told her that Harold was at present greatly interested in the question of the advisability of a man’s entering public life by the perilous causeway—the phrase was Edmund Airey’s—of matrimony.
As he chose a cigar for himself—for there was a choice even among Lord Innisfail’s cigars—he was actually amazed to find that the girl’s purpose had been too strong for his resolution. He actually felt as if he had betrayed his friend to the enemy—he actually put the matter in this way in his moment of self-reproach.
Before his cigar was well alight, however, he had become more reasonable in his censorship of his own weakness. An enemy? Why, the young woman was the best friend that Harold Wynne could possibly have. She was young—that is, young enough—she was clever—had she not got the better of Edmund Airey?—and, best of all, she was an heiress.
“The perilous causeway of matrimony”—that was the phrase which had come suddenly into his mind, and, in order to introduce it, he had sent the girl away feeling that she was cleverer than he was.
“The perilous causeway of matrimony,” he repeated. “With a handrail of ten thousand a year—there is safety in that.”
He looked down the long dining-hall, glistening with silver, to where Harold stood facing the great window, the square of which framed a dim picture of a mountain slope, purple with heather, that had snared the last light of the sunken sun. The sea horizon cut upon the slope not far from its summit, and in that infinity of Western distance there was a dash of drifting crimson.
Harold Wynne stood watching that picture of the mountain with the Atlantic beyond, and Edmund watched him.
There was a good deal of conversation flying about the room. The smokers of cigarettes talked on a topic which they would probably have called Art. The smokers of pipes explained in a circumstantial way, that carried suspicion with it to the ears of all listeners, their splendid failures to secure certain big fish during the day. The smokers of cigars talked of the Horse and the House—mostly of the Horse. There was a rather florid judge present—he had talked himself crimson to the appreciative woman who had sat beside him at dinner, on the subject of the previous racing-season, and now he was talking himself purple on the subject of the future season. He had been at Castle Innisfail for three days, and he had steadily refused to entertain the idea of talking on any other subject than the Horse from the standpoint of a possible backer.
This was the judge, who, during the hearing of a celebrated case a few months before—a case that had involved a reference to an event known as the City and Suburban, inquired if that was the name of a Railway Company. Hearing that it was a race, he asked if it was a horse race or a dog race.
Harold remained on his feet in front of the window, and Edmund remained watching him until the streak of crimson had dwindled to a flaming Rahab thread. The servants entered the room with coffee, and brought out many subtle gleams from the old oak by lighting the candles in the silver sconces.
Every time that the door was opened, the sound of a human voice (female) trying, but with indifferent success, to scale the heights of a song that had been saleable by reason of its suggestions of passion—drawing-room passion—saleable passion—fought its way through the tobacco smoke of the dining-hall. Hearing it fitfully, such men as might have felt inclined to leave half-smoked cigars for the sake of the purer atmosphere of the drawingroom, became resigned to their immediate surroundings.
A whisper had gone round the table while dinner was in progress, that Miss Stafford had promised—some people said threatened—to recite something in the course of the evening. Miss Stafford was a highly-educated young woman. She spoke French, German, Italian and Spanish. This is only another way of saying that she could be uninteresting in four languages. In addition to the ordinary disqualifications of such young women, she recited a little—mostly poems about early childhood, involving a lisp and a pinafore. She wished to do duty as an object lesson of the possibility of combining with an exhaustive knowledge of mathematical formulæ, the strongest instincts of femininity. Mathematics and motherhood were not necessarily opposed to one another, her teachers had assured the world, through the medium of magazine articles. Formulæ and femininity went hand in hand, they endeavoured to prove, through the medium of Miss Stafford’s recitations; so she acquired the imaginary lisp of early childhood, and tore a pinafore to shreds in the course of fifteen stanzas.
It was generally understood among men that one of these recitations amply repaid a listener for a careful avoidance of the apartment where it took place.
The threat that had been whispered round the dinner-table formed an excuse for long tarrying in front of the coffee cups and Bénédictine.
“Boys,” at length said Lord Innisfail, endeavouring to put on an effective Irish brogue—he thought it was only due to Ireland to put on a month’s brogue. “Boys, we’ll face it like men. Shall it be said in the days to come that we ran away from a lisp and a pinafore?” Then suddenly remembering that Miss Stafford was his guest, he became grave. “Her father was my friend,” he said. “He rode straight. What’s the matter with the girl? If she does know all about the binomial-theorem and German philosophy, has she not some redeeming qualities? You needn’t tell me that there’s not some good in a young woman who commits to memory such stuff as that—that what’s its name—the little boy that’s run over by a ‘bus or something or other and that lisps in consequence about his pap-pa. No, you needn’t argue with me. It’s extremely kind of her to offer to recite, and I will stand up for her, confound her! And if anyone wants to come round with the Judge and me to the stables while she’s reciting, now’s the time. Will you take another glass of claret, Wynne?”
“No, thank you,” said Harold. “I’m off to the drawing-room.”
He followed the men who were straggling into the great square hall where a billiard table occupied an insignificant space. The skeleton of an ancient Irish elk formed a rather more conspicuous object in the hall, and was occasionally found handy for the disposal of hats, rugs, and overcoats.
“She is greatly interested in the Romeo and Juliet story,” remarked Edmund, strolling up to him.
“She—who?” asked Harold.
“The girl—the necessary girl. The—let us say, alternative. The—the handrail.”
“The handrail?”
“Yes. Oh, I forgot: you were not within hearing. There was something said about the perilous causeway of matrimony.”
“And that suggested the handrail idea to you? No better idea ever occurred even to you, O man of many ideas, and of still more numerous phrases.”
“She is responsive—she is also clever—she is uncommonly clever—she got the better of me.”
“Say no more about her cleverness.”
“I will say no more about it. A man cannot go a better way about checking an incipient passion for a young woman than by insisting on her cleverness. We do not take to the clever ones. Our ideal does not include a power of repartee.”
“Incipient passion!”
There was a suspicion of bitterness in Harold’s voice, as he repeated the words of his friend.
“Incipient passion! I think we had better go into the drawing-room.”
They went into the drawing-room.
MISS CRAVEN was sitting on a distant sofa listening, or pretending to listen, which is precisely the same thing, with great earnestness to the discourse of Mr. Durdan, who, besides being an active politician, had a theory upon the question of what Ibsen meant by his “Master Builder.”
Harold said a few words to Miss Innisfail, who was trying to damp her mother’s hope of getting up a dance in the hall, but Lady Innisfail declined to be suppressed even by her daughter, and had received promises of support for her enterprise in influential quarters. Finding that her mother was likely to succeed, the girl hastened away to entreat one of her friends to play a “piece” on the pianoforte.
She knew that she might safely depend upon the person to whom she applied for this favour, to put a stop to her mother’s negotiations. The lady performed in the old style. Under her hands the one instrument discharged the office of several. The volume of sound suggested that produced by the steam orchestra of a switchback railway.
Harold glanced across the room and perceived that, while the performer was tearing notes by the handful and flinging them about the place—up in the air, against the walls—while her hands were worrying the bass notes one moment like rival terrier puppies over a bone, and at other times tickling the treble rather too roughly to be good fun—Miss Craven’s companion had not abandoned the hope of making himself audible if not intelligible. He had clearly accepted the challenge thrown down by the performer.
Harold perceived that a man behind him had furtively unlatched one of the windows leading to the terrace, and was escaping by that means, and not alone. From outside came the hearty laughter of the judge telling an open-air story to his host. People looked anxiously toward the window. Harold shook his head as though suggesting that that sort of interruption must be put a stop to at once, and that he was the man to do it.
He went resolutely out through the window.
“‘Which was immediately suppressed by the officers of the court,’” said Edmund, in the ear of Lady Innisfail.
He spoke too soon. The judge’s laugh rolled along like the breaking of a tidal wave. It was plain that Harold had not gone to remonstrate with the judge.
He had not. He had merely strolled round the terrace to the entrance hall. Here he picked up one of the many caps which were hanging there, and putting it on his head, walked idly away from the castle, hearing only the floating eulogy uttered by the judge of a certain well-known jockey who was, he said, the kindliest and most honourable soul that had ever pulled the favourite.
A longing had come to him to hurry as far as he could from the Castle and its company—they were hateful to him just at that instant. The shocking performance of the woman at the pianoforte, the chatter of his fellow-guests, the delicate way in which his friend Edmund Airey made the most indelicate allusions, the nisi prius jocularity of the judge—he turned away from all with a feeling of repulsion.
And yet Lord Innisfail’s cook was beyond reproach as an artist.
Harold Wynne had accepted the invitation of Lady Innisfail in cold blood. She had asked him to go to Castle Innisfail for a few weeks in August, adding, “Helen Craven has promised to be among our party. You like her, don’t you?”
“Immensely,” he had replied.
“I knew it,” she had cried, with an enthusiasm that would have shocked her daughter. “I don’t want a discordant note at our gathering. If you look coldly on Helen Craven I shall wish that I hadn’t asked you; but if you look on her in—well, in the other way, we shall all be happy.”
He knew exactly what Lady Innisfail meant to convey. It had been hinted to him before that, as he was presumably desirous of marrying a girl with a considerable amount of money, he could not do better than ask Miss Craven to be his wife. He had then laughed and assured Lady Innisfail that if their happiness depended upon the way he looked upon Miss Craven, it would be his aim to look upon her in any way that Lady Innisfail might suggest.
Well, he had come to Castle Innisfail, and for a week he had given himself up to the vastness of the Western Cliffs—of the Atlantic waves—of the billowy mountains—of the mysterious sunsets. It was impossible to escape from the overwhelming influence of the Atlantic in the region of Castle Innisfail. Its sound seemed to go out to all the ends of the earth. At the Castle there was no speech or language where its voice was not heard. It was a sort of background of sound that had to be arranged for by anyone desirous of expressing any thought or emotion in that region. Even the judge had to take it into consideration upon occasions. He never took into consideration anything less important than an ocean.
For a week the influence of the Atlantic had overwhelmed Harold. He had given himself up to it. He had looked at Miss Craven neither coldly nor in the other way—whatever it was—to which Lady Innisfail had referred as desirable to be adopted by him. Miss Craven had simply not been in his thoughts. Face to face with the Infinite one hesitates to give up one’s attention to a question of an income that may be indicated by five figures only.
But at the end of a week, he received a letter from his father, who was Lord Fotheringay, and this letter rang many changes upon the five-figure-income question. The question was more than all the Infinities to Lord Fotheringay, and he suggested as much in writing to his son.
“Miss Craven is all that is desirable,” the letter had said. “Of course she is not an American; but one cannot expect everything in this imperfect world. Her money is, I understand, well invested—not in land, thank heaven! She is, in fact, a CERTAINTY, and certainties are becoming rarer every day.”
Here the letter went on to refer to some abstract questions of the opera in Italy—it was to the opera in Italy that Lord Fotheringay w as, for the time being, attached. The progress made by one of its ornaments—gifted with a singularly flexible soprano—interested him greatly, and Harold had invariably found that in proportion to the interest taken by his father in the exponents of certain arts—singing, dancing, and the drama—his own allowance was reduced. He knew that his father was not a rich man, for a peer. His income was only a trifle over twelve thousand a year; but he also knew that only for his father’s weaknesses, this sum should be sufficient for him to live on with some degree of comfort. The weaknesses, however, were there, and they had to be calculated on. Harold calculated on them; and after doing the sum in simple subtraction with the sound of the infinite ocean around him, he had asked his friend Edmund Airey to pass a few hours in the boat with him. Edmund had complied for three consecutive afternoons, with the result that, with three ridiculous stories from the Irish boatman, Harold had acquired a certain amount of sound advice from the friend who was in his confidence.
He had made up his mind that, if Miss Craven would marry him, he would endeavour to make her the wife of a distinguished man.
That included everything, did it not?
He felt that he might realize the brilliant future predicted for him by his friends when he was the leader of the party of the hour at Oxford. The theory of the party was—like everything that comes from Oxford—eminently practical. The Regeneration of Humanity by means of Natural Scenery was its foundation. Its advocates proved to their own satisfaction that, in every question of morality and the still more important question of artistic feeling, heredity was not the dominant influence, but natural scenery.
By the party Harold was regarded as the long-looked-for Man—what the world wanted was a Man, they declared, and he was destined to be the Man.
He had travelled a good deal on leaving the University, and in a year he had forgotten that he had ever pretended that he held any theory. A theory he had come to believe to be the paper fortress of the Immature. But the Man—that was a different thing. He hoped that he might yet prove himself to be a man, so that, after all, his friends—they had also ceased to theorize—might not have predicted in vain.
Like many young men without experience, he believed that Parliament was a great power. If anyone had told him that the art of gerrymandering is greater than the art of governing, he would not have known what his informant meant.
His aspirations took the direction of a seat in the House of Commons. In spite of the fact of his being the son of Lord Fotheringay, he believed that he might make his mark in that Assembly. The well-known love of the Voter for social purity—not necessarily in Beer—and his intolerance of idleness—excepting, of course, when it is paid for by an employer—had, he knew, to be counted on. Lord Fotheringay was not, he felt, the ideal of the Working man, but he hoped he might be able to convince the Working man—the Voter—that Lord Fotheringay’s most noted characteristics had not descended to his son.
From his concern on this point it will be readily understood how striking a figure was the Voter, in his estimation.
It is not so easy to understand how, with that ideal Voter—that stern unbending moralist—before his eyes, he should feel that there was a great need for him to be possessed of money before offering himself to any constituency. The fact remained, however, that everyone to whom he had confided his Parliamentary aspirations, had assured him at the outset that money had to be secured before a constituency could be reckoned on. His friend Edmund Airey had still further impressed upon him this fact; and now he had made up his mind that his aspirations should not be discouraged through the lack of money.
He would ask Helen Craven that very night if she would have the goodness to marry him.
WHY the fact of his having made up his mind to ask Miss Craven who, without being an American, still possessed many qualities which are generally accepted as tending to married happiness, should cause him to feel a great longing to leave Castle Innisfail, its occupants, and its occupations behind him for evermore, it is difficult to explain on any rational grounds. That feeling was, however, upon him, and he strode away across the billowy moorland in the direction of the cliffs of the fjord known as Lough Suangorm.
The moon was at its full. It had arisen some little way up the sky and was showering its red gold down the slopes of the two cone-shaped mountains that guard the pass of Lamdhu; the deep glen was flooded with moonlight—Harold could perceive in its hollows such objects as were scarcely visible on the ordinary gray days of the West of Ireland. Then he walked until he was on the brink of the great cliffs overhanging the lough. From the high point on which he stood he could follow all the curves of the lough out to the headlands at its entrance seven miles away. Beyond those headlands the great expanse of sea was glittering splendidly in the moonlight, though the moon had not risen high enough to touch the restless waters at the base of the cl iffs on which he stood. The waters were black as they struggled within their narrow limits and were strangled in the channel. Only a white thread of surf marked the breaking place of the waves upon the cliffs.
He went down the little track, made among the rocks of the steep slope, until he reached the natural cavern that bore the name of the Banshee’s Cave.
It was scarcely half-way up the face of the cliff. From that hollow in the rocks the descent to the waters of the lough was sheer; but the cave was easily accessible by a zig-zag path leading up from a small ledge of rocks which, being protected by a reef that started up abruptly half a dozen yards out in the narrow channel, served as a landing place for the fishing boats, of which there were several owned in the tiny village of Carrigorm.
He stood at the entrance to the cavern, thinking, not upon the scene which, according to the boatman’s story, had been enacted at the place several hundreds—perhaps thousands (the chronology of Irish legends is vague)—of years before, but upon his own prospects.
“It is done,” he said, looking the opposite cliffs straight in the face, as though they were Voters—(candidates usually look at the Voters straight in the face the first time they address them). “It is done; I cast it to the winds—to the seas, that are as indifferent to man’s affairs as the winds. I must be content to live without it. The career—that is enough!”
What it was that he meant to cast to the indifference of the seas and the winds was nothing more than a sentiment—a vague feeling that he could not previously get rid of—a feeling that man’s life without woman’s love was something incomplete and unsatisfactory.
He had had his theory on this subject as well as on others long ago—he had gone the length of embodying it in sonnets.
Was it now to go the way of the other impracticable theories?
He had cherished it for long. If it had not been dear to him he would not have subjected himself to the restriction of the sonnet in writing about it. He would have adopted the commonplace and facile stanza. But a sonnet is a shrine.
He had felt that whatever might happen to him, however disappointed he might become with the world and the things of the world, that great and splendid love was before him, and he felt that to realize it would be to forget all disappointments—to forget all the pangs which the heart of man knows when its hour of disillusion comes.
Love was the reward of the struggle—the deep, sweet draught that refreshes the heart of the toiler, he felt. In whatever direction illusion may lie, love was not in that direction.
That had been his firm belief all his life, and now he was standing at the entrance to the cavern—the cavern that was associated with a story of love stronger than death—and he had just assured himself that he had flung to the seas and the winds all his hopes of that love which had been in his dreams.
“It is gone—it is gone!” he cried, looking down at that narrow part of the lough where the boat had been tumbling during the afternoon.
What had that adviser of his said? He remembered something of his words—something about marriage being a guarantee of love.
Harold laughed grimly as he recalled the words. He knew better. The love that he had looked for was not such as was referred to by his friend Mr. Airey. It was——
But what on earth was the good of trying to recall what it was? The diamonds that Queen Guinevere flung into the river, made just the same splash as common stones would have done under the same circumstances: and the love which he had cherished was, when cast to the winds, no more worthy of being thought precious than the many other ideas which he had happily rid himself of in the course of his walk through the world.
This was how he repressed the thought of his conversation with his friend; and after a while the recollections that he wished to suppress yielded to his methods.
Once more the influences of the place—the spectacle of the infinite mountains, the voice of the infinite sea—asserted themselves as they had done during the first week of his arrival at the Castle. The story of the legendary Prince and Princess came back to him as though it were the embodiment of the influences of the region of romance in the midst of which he was standing.
What had Brian the boatman said? The beautiful girl had crossed the narrow channel of the lough night after night and had climbed the face of the cliffs to her lover at their dizzy trysting-place—the place where he was now standing.
Even while he thought upon the details, as carefully narrated by the boatman, the moon rose high enough to send her rays sweeping over the full length of the lough. For a quarter of an hour a single thin crag of the Slieve Gorm mountains had stood between the moon and the narrowing of the lough. The orb rose over the last thin peak of the crag. The lough through all its sinuous length flashed beneath his eyes like a Malayan crease, and in the waters just below the cliffs which a moment before had been black, he saw a small boat being rowed by a white figure.
“That is the lovely Princess of the story,” said he. “She is in white—of course they are all in white, these princesses. It’s marvellous what a glint of moonlight can do. It throws a glamour over the essentially commonplace, the same way that—well, that that fancy known as love does upon occasions, otherwise the plain features of a woman would perish from the earth and not be perpetuated. The lumpy daughter of the village who exists simply to show what an artist was Jean François Millet, appears down there to float through the moonlight like the restless spirit of a princess. Is she coming to meet the spirit of her lover at their old trysting-place? Ah, no, she is probably about to convey a pannikin of worms for bait to one of the fishing boats.”
HAROLD WYNNE was in one of those moods which struggle for expression through the medium of bitter phrases. He felt that he did well to be cynical. Had he not outlived his belief in love as a necessity of life?
He watched with some degree of interest the progress of the tiny boat rowed by the white figure. He had tried to bring himself to believe that the figure was that of a rough fisher-girl—the fisher-girls are not rough, however, on that part of the coast, and he knew it, only his mood tended to roughness. He tried to make himself believe that a coarse jest shrieked through the moonlight to reach the ears of an appreciatively coarse fisherman, would not be inconsistent with the appearance of that white figure. He felt quite equal to the act of looking beneath the glory and the glamour of the moonlight and of seeing there only the commonplace. He was, he believed, in a mood to revel in the disillusion of a man.
And yet he watched the progress of the boat through the glittering waters, without removing his eyes from it.
The white figure in the boat was so white as to seem the centre of the light that flashed along the ripples and silvered the faces of the cliffs—so much was apparent to him in spite of his mood. As the boat approached the landing-place at the ledge of rock a hundred feet below him, he also perceived that the rower handled her oars in a scientific way unknown to the fisher-girls; and the next thing that he noticed was that she wore a straw hat and a blouse of a pattern that the fisher-girls were powerless to imitate, though the skill was easily available to the Mary Anns and the Matilda Janes who steer (indifferently) perambulators through the London parks. He was so interested in what he saw, that he had not sufficient presence of mind to resume his cynical mutterings, or to inquire if it was possible that the fashion of the year as regards sailor hats and blouses, was a repetition of that of the period of the Princess Fither.
He was more than interested—he was puzzled—as the boat was skilfully run alongside the narrow landing ledge at the foot of the cliffs, and when the girl—the figure was clearly that of a girl—landed—-she wore yachting shoes—carrying with her the boat’s painter, which she made fast in a business-like way to one of the iron rings that had been sunk in the face of the cliff for the mooring of the fishing boats, he was more puzzled still. In another moment the girl was toiling up the little zig-zag track that led to the summit of the cliffs.
The track passed within a yard or two of the entrance to the cavern. He thought it advisable to step hack out of the moonlight, so that the girl should not see him. She was doubtless, he thought, on her way to the summit of the cliffs, and she would probably be startled if he were to appear suddenly before her eyes. He took a step or two back into the friendly shadow of the cavern, and waited to hear her footsteps on the track above him.
He waited in vain. She did not take that zigzag track that led to the cliffs above the cave. He heard her jump—it was almost a feat—from the track by which she had ascended, on to a flat rock not a yard from the entrance to the cavern. He shrunk still further back into the darkness, and then there came before the entrance the most entrancing figure of a girl that he had ever seen.
She stood there delightfully out of breath, with the moonlight bringing out every gracious curve in her shape. So he had seen the limelight reveal the graces of a breathless danseuse, when taking her “call.”
“My dear Prince,” said the girl, with many a gasp. “You have treated me very badly. It’s a pull—undeniably a pull—up those rocks, and for the third time I have kept my tryst with you, only to be disappointed.”
She laughed, and putting a shapely foot—she was by no means careful to conceal her stocking above the ankle—upon a stone, she quietly and in a matter-of-fact way, tied the lace of her yachting shoe.
The stooping was not good for her—he felt that, together with a few other matters incidental to her situation. He waited for the long breath he knew she would draw on straightening herself.
It came. He hoped that her other shoe needed tying; but it did not.
He watched her as she stood there with her back to him. She was sending her eyes out to the Western headlands.
“No, my Prince; on the whole I’m not disappointed,” she said. “That picture repays me for my toil by sea and land. What a picture! But what would it be to be here with—with—love!”
That was all she said.
He thought it was quite enough.
She stood there like a statue of white marble set among the black rocks. She was absolutely motionless for some minutes; and then the sigh that fluttered from her lips was, he knew, a different expression altogether from that which had come from her when she had straightened herself on fastening her shoe.
His father was a connoisseur in sighs; Harold did not profess to have the same amount of knowledge on the subject, but still he knew something. He could distinguish roughly on some points incidental to the sigh as a medium of expression.
After that little gasp which was not quite a gasp, she was again silent; then she whispered, but by no means gently, the one word “Idiot!” and in another second she had sent her voice into the still night in a wild musical cry—such a cry as anyone gifted with that imaginative power which Brian had declared to be so necessary for archæological research, might attribute to the Banshee—the White Lady of Irish legends.
She repeated the cry an octave higher and then she executed what is technically known as a “scale” but ended with that same weird cry of the Banshee.
Once again she was breathless. Her blouse was turbulent just below her throat.
“If Brian does not cross himself until he feels more fatigue than he would after a pretence at rowing, I’ll never play Banshee again,” said the girl. “Ta, ta, mon Prince; a rivederci.”
He watched her poise herself for the leap from the rock where she was standing, to the track—her grace was exquisite—it suggested that of the lithe antelope. The leap took her beyond his sight, and he did not venture immediately to a point whence he could regain possession of her with his eyes. But when he heard the sound of her voice singing a snatch of song—it was actually “L’amour est un oiseau rebelle”—the Habanera from “Carmen”—he judged that she had reached the second angle of the zig-zag downward, and he took a step into the moonlight.
There she went, lilting the song and keeping time with her feet, until she reached the ledge where the boat was moored. She unfastened the painter, hauled the boat close, and he heard the sound of the plunge of the bows as she jumped on one of the beams, the force of her jump sending the boat far from shore.
She sat for some minutes on the beam amidship, listlessly allowing the boat to drift away from the rocks, then she put out her hands for the oars. Her right hand grasped one, but there was none for the left to grasp. Harold perceived that one of the oars had disappeared.
There was the boat twenty yards from the rock drifting away beyond the control of the girl.
THE girl had shown so much adroitness in the management of the little craft previously, he felt—with deep regret—that she would be quite equal to her present emergency. He was mistaken. She had reached the end of her resources in navigation when she had run the boat alongside the landing place. He saw—with great satisfaction—that with only one oar she was helpless.
What should he do?
That was what he asked himself when he saw her dip her remaining oar into the water and paddle a few strokes, making the boat describe an awkward circle and bringing it perilously close to a jagged point of the reef that did duty as a natural breakwater for the mooring place of the boats. He came to the conclusion that if he allowed her to continue that sort of paddling, she would run the boat on the reef, and he would be morally responsible for the disaster and its consequences, whatever they might be. He had never felt more conscientious than at that moment.
He ran down the track to the landing ledge, but before he had reached the latter, the girl had ceased her efforts and was staring at him, her hands still resting on the oar.
He had an uneasy feeling that he was scarcely so picturesquely breathless as she had been, and this consciousness did not tend to make him fluent as he stood upon the rocky shelf not a foot above the ridges of the silver ripples.
He found himself staring at her, just as she was staring at him.
Quite a minute had passed before he found words to ask her if he could be of any help to her.
“I don’t know,” she replied, in a tone very different from that in which she had spoken at the entrance to the cavern. “I don’t really know. One of the oars must have gone overboard while the boat was moored. I scarcely know what I am to do.”
“I’m afraid you’re in a bad way!” said he, shaking his head. The change in the girl’s tone was very amusing to him. She had become quite demure; but previously, demureness had been in the background. “Yes, I’m afraid your case is a very bad one.”
“So bad as that?” she asked.
“Well, perhaps not quite, but still bad enough,” said he. “What do you want to do?”
“To get home as soon as possible,” she replied, without the pause of a second.
Her tone was expressive. It conveyed to him the notion that she had just asked if he thought that she was an idiot. What could she want to do if not to go home?
“In that case,” said he, “I should advise you to take the oar to the sculling place in the centre of the stern. The boat is a stout one and will scull well.”
“But I don’t know how to scull,” said she, in a tone of real distress; “and I don’t think I can begin to learn just now.”
“There’s something in that,” said he. “If I were only aboard I could teach you in a short time.”
“But—”
She had begun her reply without the delay of a second, but she did not get beyond the one word. He felt that she did not need to do so: it was a sentence by itself.
“Yes,” said he, “as you say, I’m not aboard. Shall I get aboard?”
“How could you?” she inquired, brightening up.
“I can swim,” he replied.
She laughed.
“The situation is not so desperate as that,” she cried.
He also laughed.
They both laughed together.
She stopped suddenly and looked up the cliffs to the Banshee’s Cave.
Was she wondering if he had been within hearing when she had been—and not in silence—at the entrance to the cave?
He felt that he had never seen so beautiful a girl. Even making a liberal allowance for that glamour of the moonlight, which he had tried to assure himself was as deceptive as the glamour of love, she was, he felt, the most beautiful girl he had ever seen.
He crushed down every suggestion that came to him as to the best way of helping her out of her difficulty. It was his opportunity.
Then she turned her eyes from the cliff and looked at him again.
There was something imploring in her look.
“Keep up your heart,” said he. “Whose boat is that, may I ask?”
“It belongs to a man named Brian—Brian something or other—perhaps O’Donal.”
“In that case I think it almost certain that you will find a fishing line in the locker astern—a fishing line and a tin bailer—the line will help you out of the difficulty.”
Before he had quite done speaking she was in the stern sheets, groping with one hand in the little locker.
She brought out, first, a small jar of whiskey, secondly, a small pannikin that served a man’s purpose when he wished to drink the whiskey in unusually small quantities, and was also handy in bailing out the boat, and, thirdly, a fishing line-wound about a square frame.
She held up the last-named so that Harold might see it.
“I thought it would be there,” said he. “Now if you can only cast one end of that line ashore, I will catch it and the boat will be alongside the landing-place in a few minutes. Can you throw?”
She was silent. She examined the hooks on the whale-bone cross-cast.
He laughed again, for he perceived that she was reluctant to boast of the possession of a skill which was denied to all womankind.
“I’ll explain to you what you must do,” he said. “Cut away the cast of hooks.”
“But I have no knife.”
“Then I’ll throw mine into the bottom of your boat. Look out.”
Being a man, he was able to make the knife alight within reasonable distance of the spot at which he aimed. He saw her face brighten as she picked up the implement and, opening it, quickly cut away the cast of hooks.
“Now make fast the leaden sinker to the end of the fishing line, unwind it all from the frame, and then whirl the weight round and sling it ashore—anywhere ashore.”
She followed his instructions implicitly, and the leaden weight fled through the air, with the sound of a shell from a mortar.
“Well thrown!” he cried, as it soared above his head; and it was well thrown—so well that it carried overboard every inch of the line and the frame to which it was attached.
“How stupid of me!” she said.
“Of me, you mean,” said he. “I should have told you to make it fast. However, no harm is done. I’ll recover the weight and send it back to you.”
He had no trouble in effecting his purpose. He threw the weight as gently as possible into the bow of the boat, she picked it up, and the line was in her hands as he took in the slack and hauled the boat alongside the shelf of rock.
It cannot have escaped notice that the system of hauling which he adopted had the result of bringing their hands together. They scarcely touched, however.
“Thank you,” said she, with profound coldness, when the boat was alongside.
“Your case was not so desperate, after all,” he remarked, with just a trifle less frigidity in his tone, though he now knew that she was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. He had talked of the glamour of moonlight. How could he have been so ridiculous?
“No, my case was not so very desperate,” she said. “Thank you so much.”
Did she mean to suggest that he should now walk away?
“I can’t go, you know, until I am satisfied that your contretemps is at an end,” said he. “My name is Wynne—Harold Wynne. I am a guest of Lord Innisfail’s. I dare say you know him.”
“No,” she replied. “I know nobody.”
“Nobody?”
“Nobody here. Of course I daily hear something about Lord Innisfail and his guests.”
“You know Brian—he is somebody—the historian of the region. Did you ever hear the story of the Banshee?”
She looked at him, but he flattered himself that his face told her nothing of what she seemed anxious to know.
“Yes,” she said, after a pause. “I do believe that I heard the story of the Banshee—a princess, was she not—a sort of princess—an Irish princess?”
“Strictly Irish. It is said that the cry of the White Lady is sometimes heard even on these nights among the cliffs down which the Princess flung herself.”
“Really?” said she, turning her eyes to the sea. “How strange!”
“Strange? well—perhaps. But Brian declares that he has heard the cry with his own ears. I have a friend who says, very coarsely, that if lies were landed property Brian would be the largest holder of real estate in the world.”
“Your friend does not understand Brian.” There was more than a trace of indignation in her voice. “Brian has imagination—so have all the people about here. I must get home as soon as possible. I thank you very much for your trouble. Goodnight.”
“I have had no trouble. Good-night.”
He took off his cap, and moved away—to the extent of a single step. She was still standing in the boat.
“By the way,” he said, as if the thought had just occurred to him; “do you intend going overland?”
The glamour of the moonlight failed to conceal the troubled look that came to her eyes. He regained the step that he had taken away from her, and remarked, “If you will be good enough to allow me, I will scull you with the one oar to any part of the coast that you may wish to reach. It would be a pleasure to me. I have nothing whatever to do. As a matter of fact, I don’t see that you have any choice in the matter.”
“I have not,” she said gravely. “I was a fool—such a fool! But—the story of the Princess—”
“Pray don’t make any confession to me,” said he. “If I had not heard the story of the Princess, should I be here either?”
“My name,” said she, “is Beatrice Avon. My father’s name you may have heard—most people have heard his name, though I’m afraid that not so many have read his books.”
“But I have met your father,” said he. “If he is Julius Anthony Avon, I met him some years ago. He breakfasted with my tutor at Oxford. I have read all his hooks.”
“Oh, come into the boat,” she cried with a laugh. “I feel that we have been introduced.”
“And so we have,” said he, stepping upon the gunwale so as to push off the boat. “Now, where is your best landing place?”
She pointed out to him a white cottage at the entrance to a glen on the opposite coast of the lough, just below the ruins—they could be seen by the imaginative eye—of the Castle of Carrigorm. The cottage was glistening in the moonlight.
“That is where we have been living—my father and I—for the past month,” said she. “He is engaged on a new work—a History of Irish Patriotism, and he has begun by compiling a biographical dictionary of Irish Informers. He is making capital progress with it. He has already got to the end of the seventh volume and he has very nearly reached the letter C—oh, yes, he is making rapid progress.”
“But why is he at this place? Is he working up the Irish legends as well?”
“It seems that the French landed here some time or other, and that was the beginning of a new era of rebellions. My father is dealing with the period, and means to have his topography strictly accurate.”
“Yes,” said Harold, “if he carefully avoids everything that he is told in Ireland his book may tend to accuracy.”