LADY INNISFAIL’S guests—especially those who had been wandering over the mountains with guns all day—found her rather too indefatigable in her search for new methods of entertaining them. The notion of an after-dinner stroll of a few miles to the village of Ballycruiskeen for the sake of witnessing an entertainment, the details of which Lady Innisfail was unable to do more than suggest, and the attractions of which were rather more than doubtful, was not largely relished at the Castle.
Lord Innisfail announced his intention of remaining where he had dined; but he was one of the few men who could afford to brave Lady Innisfail’s disdain and to decline to be chilled by her cold glances. The other men who did not want to be entertained on the principles formulated by Lady Innisfail, meanly kept out of her way after dinner. They hoped that they might have a chance of declaring solemnly afterwards, that they had been anxious to go, but had waited in vain for information as to the hour of departure, the costume to be worn, and the password—if a password were needed—to admit them to the historic rites of the Cruiskeen.
One of the women declined to go, on the ground that, so far as she could gather, the rite was not evangelical. Her views were evangelical.
One of the men—he was an Orangeman from Ulster—boldly refused to attend what was so plainly a device planned by the Jesuits for the capture of the souls—he assumed that they had souls—of the Innisfail family and their guests.
Miss Craven professed so ardently to be looking forward to the entertainment, that Mr. Airey, with his accustomed observance of the distribution of high lights in demeanour as well as in conversation. felt certain that she meant to stay at the Castle.
His accuracy of observation was proved when the party were ready to set out for Ballycruiskeen. MIss Craven’s maid earned that lady’s affectionate regards to her hostess; she had been foolish enough to sit in the sun during the afternoon with that fascinating novel, and as she feared it would, her indiscretion had given her a headache accompanied by dizziness. She would thus be unable to go with the general party to the village, but if she possibly could, she would follow them in an hour—perhaps less.
Edmund Airey smiled the smile of the prophet who lives to see his prediction realized—most of the prophets died violent deaths before they could have that gratification.
“Yes, it was undoubtedly an indiscretion,” he murmured.
“Sitting in the sun?” said Lady Innisfail.
“Reading Paul Bourget,” said he.
“Of course,” said Lady Innisfail. “Talking of indiscretions, has anyone seen—ah, never mind.”
“It is quite possible that the old friend whom you say he wrote about, may be a person of primitive habits—he may be inclined to retire early,” said Mr. Airey.
Lady Innisfail gave a little puzzled glance at him—the puzzled expression vanished in a moment, however, before the ingenuousness of his smile.
“What a fool I am becoming!” she whispered. “I really never thought of that.”
“That was because you never turned your attention properly to the mystery of the headache,” said he.
Then they set off in the early moonlight for their walk along the cliff path that, in the course of a mile or so, trended downward and through the Pass of Lamdhu, with its dark pines growing half-way up the slope on one side. The lower branches of the trees stretched fantastic arms over the heads of the party walking on the road through the Pass. In the moonlight these fantastic arms seemed draped. The trees seemed attitudinizing to one another in a strange pantomime of their own.
The village of Ballycruiskeen lay just beyond the romantic defile, so that occasionally the inhabitants failed to hear the sound of the Atlantic hoarsely roaring as it was being strangled in the narrow part of the lough. They were therefore sometimes merry with a merriment impossible to dwellers nearer the coast.
It did not appear to their visitors that this was one of their merry nights. The natives were commanded by their good priest to be merry for “the quality,” under penalties with which they were well acquainted. But merriment under a penalty is no more successful than the smile which is manufactured in a photographer’s studio.
Father Conn made the mistake of insisting on all the members of his flock washing their faces. They had washed all the picturesqueness out of them, Mr. Airey suggested.
The Curragh of Ballycruiskeen was a somewhat wild moorland that became demoralized into a bog at one extremity. There was, however, a sufficiently settled portion to form a dancing green, and at one side of this patch the shocking incongruity of chairs—of a certain sort—and even a sofa—it was somewhat less certain—met the eyes of the visitors.
“Mind this, ye divils,” the priest was saying in an affectionate way to the members of his flock, as the party from the Castle approached. “Mind this, it’s dancing a new roof on the chapel that ye are. Every step ye take means a slate, so it does.”
This was clearly the peroration of the pastor’s speech.
The speech of Mr. Phineas O’Flaherty, who was a sort of unceremonious master of the ceremonies, had been previously delivered, fortunately when the guests were out of hearing.
At first the entertainment seemed to be a very mournful one. It was too like examination day at a village school to convey an idea of spontaneous mirth. The “quality” sat severely on the incongruous chairs—no one was brave enough to try the sofa—and some of the “quality” used double eye-glasses with handles, for the better inspection of the performers. This was chilling to the performers.
In spite of the efforts of Father Conn and his stage manager, Mr. O’Flaherty, the members of the cast for the entertainment assumed a huddled appearance that did themselves great injustice. They declined to group themselves effectively, but suggested to Mr. Durdan—who was not silent on the subject—one of the illustrations to Foxe’s Book of Martyrs—a scene in which about a score of persons about to be martyred are shown to be awaiting, with an aspect of cheerful resignation that deceived no one, their “turn” at the hands of the executioner.
The merry Irish jig had a depressing effect at first. The priest was well-meaning, but he had not the soul of an artist. When a man has devoted all his spare moments for several years to the repression of unseemly mirth, he is unwise to undertake, at a moment’s notice, the duties of stimulating such mirth. Under the priest’s eye the jig was robbed of its jiguity, so to speak. It was the jig of the dancing class.
Mr. O’Flaherty threatened to scandalize Father Conn by a few exclamations about the display of fetlocks—the priest had so little experience of the “quality” that he fancied a suggestion of slang would be offensive to their ears. He did not know that the hero of the “quality” in England is the costermonger, and that a few years ago the hero was the cowboy. But Edmund Airey, perceiving with his accustomed shrewdness, how matters stood, managed to draw the priest away from the halfhearted exponents of the dance, and so questioned him on the statistics of the parish—for Father Conn was as hospitable with his statistics as he was with his whiskey punch upon occasions—that half an hour had passed before they returned together to the scene of the dance, the priest with a five-pound note of Mr. Airey’s pressed against his heart.
“Murder alive! what’s this at all at all?” cried Father Conn, becoming aware of the utterance of whoop after whoop by the dancers.
“It’s the jig they’re dancin’ at last, an’ more power to thim!” cried Phineas O’Flaherty, clapping his hands and giving an encouraging whoop or two.
He was right. The half dozen couples artistically dishevelled, and rapidly losing the baleful recollections of having been recently tidied up to meet the “quality”—rapidly losing every recollection of the critical gaze of the “quality”—of the power of speech possessed by the priest—of everything, clerical and lay, except the strains of the fiddle which occupied an intermediate position between things lay and clerical, being wholly demoniac—these half dozen couples were dancing the jig with a breadth and feeling that suggested the youth of the world and the reign of Bacchus.
Black hair flowing in heavy flakes over shoulders unevenly bare—shapely arms flung over heads in an attitude of supreme self-abandonment—a passionate advance, a fervent retreat, then an exchange of musical cries like wild gasps for breath, and ever, ever, ever the demoniac music of the fiddle, and ever, ever, ever the flashing and flying from the ground like the feet of the winged Hermes—flashing and flashing with the moonlight over all, and the fantastic arms of the hill-side pines stretched out like the fringed arms of a grotesque Pierrot—this was the scene to which the priest returned with Edmund Airey.
He threw up his hands and was about to rush upon the half-frenzied dancers, when Edmund grasped him by the arm, and pointed mutely to the attitude of the “quality.”
Lady Innisfail and her friends were no longer sitting frigidly on their chairs—the double eye-glasses were dropped, and those who had held them were actually joining in the whoops of the dancers. Her ladyship was actually clapping her hands in the style of encouragement adopted by Mr. O’Flaherty.
The priest stood in the attitude in which he had been arrested by the artful Edmund Airey. His eyes and his mouth were open, and his right hand was pressed against the five-pound note that he had just received. There was a good deal of slate-purchasing potentialities in a five-pound note. If her ladyship and her guests were shocked—as the priest, never having heard of the skirt dance and its popularity in the drawing-room—believed they should be, they were not displaying their indignation in a usual way. They were almost as excited as the performers.
Father Conn seated himself without a word of protest, in one of the chairs vacated by the Castle party. He felt that if her ladyship liked that form of entertainment, the chapel roof was safe. The amount of injury that would be done to the Foul Fiend by the complete re-roofing of the chapel should certainly be sufficient to counteract whatever sin might be involved in the wild orgy that was being carried on beneath the light of the moon. This was the consolation that the priest had as he heard whoop after whoop coming from the dancers.
Six couples remained on the green dancing-space. The fiddler was a wizened, deformed man with small gleaming eyes. He stood on a stool and kept time with one foot. He increased the time of the dance so gradually as to lead the dancers imperceptibly on until, without being aware of it, they had reached a frenzied pitch that could not be maintained for many minutes. But still the six couples continued wildly dancing, the moonlight striking them aslant and sending six black quivering shadows far over the ground. Suddenly a man dropped out of the line and lay gasping on the grass. Then a girl flung herself with a cry into the arms of a woman who was standing among the onlookers. Faster still and faster went the grotesquely long arms of the dwarf fiddler—his shadow cast by the moonlight was full of horrible suggestions—and every now and again a falsetto whoop came from him, his teeth suddenly gleaming as his lips parted in uttering the cry.
The two couples, who now remained facing one another, changing feet with a rapidity that caused them to appear constantly off the ground, were encouraged by the shouts and applause of their friends. The air was full of cries, in which the spectators from the Castle joined. Faster still the demoniac music went, every strident note being clearly heard above the shouts. But when one of the two couples staggered wildly and fell with outstretched arms upon the grass, the shriek of the fiddle sounded but faintly above the cries.
The priest could restrain himself no longer. He sprang to his feet and kicked the stool from under the fiddler, sending the misshapen man sprawling in one direction and his instrument with an unearthly shriek in another.
Silence followed that shriek. It lasted but a few seconds, however. The figure of a man—a stranger—appeared running across the open space between the village and the Curragh, where the dance was being held.
He held up his right hand in so significant a way, that the priest’s foot was arrested in the act of implanting another kick upon the stool, and the fiddler sat up on the ground and forgot to look for his instrument through surprise at the apparition.
“It’s dancin’ at the brink of the grave, ye are,” gasped the man, as he approached the group that had become suddenly congested in anticipation of the priest’s wrath.
“Why, it’s only Brian the boatman, after all,” said Lady Innisfail. “Great heavens! I had such a curious thought as he appeared. Oh, that dancing! He did not seem to be a man.”
“This is no doubt part of the prehistoric rite,” said Mr. Airey.
“How simply lovely!” cried Miss Stafford.
“In God’s name, man, tell us what you mean,” said the priest.
“It’s herself,” gasped Brian. “It’s the one that’s nameless. Her wail is heard over all the lough—I heard it with my ears and hurried here for your reverence. Don’t we know that she never cries except for a death?”
“He means the Banshee,” said Lady Innisfail.
“The people, I’ve heard, think it unlucky to utter her name.”
“So lovely! Just like savages!” said Miss Stafford.
“I dare say the whole thing is only part of the ceremony of the Cruiskeen,” said Mr. Durdan.
“Brian O’Donal,” said the priest; “have you come here to try and terrify the country side with your romancin’?”
“By the sacred Powers, your reverence, I heard the cry of her myself, as I came by the bend of the lough. If it’s not the truth that I’m after speaking, may I be the one that she’s come for.”
“Doesn’t he play the part splendidly?” said Lady Innisfail. “I’d almost think that he was in earnest. Look how the people are crossing themselves.”
Miss Stafford looked at them through her double eye-glasses with the long handle.
“How lovely!” she murmured. “The Cruiskeen is the Oberammergau of Connaught.”
Edmund Airey laughed.
“God forgive us all for this night!” said the priest. “Sure, didn’t I think that the good that would come of getting on the chapel roof would cover the shame of this night! Go to your cabins, my children. You were not to blame. It was me and me only. My Lady”—he turned to the Innisfail party—“this entertainment is over. God knows I meant it for the best.”
“But we haven’t yet heard the harper,” cried Lady Innisfail.
“And the native bards,” said Miss Stafford. “I should so much like to hear a bard. I might even recite a native poem under his tuition.”
Miss Stafford saw a great future for native Irish poetry in English drawing-rooms. It might be the success of a season.
“The entertainment’s over,” said the priest.
“It’s that romancer Brian, that’s done it all,” cried Phineas O’Flaherty.
“Mr. O’Flaherty, if it’s not the truth may I—oh, didn’t I hear her voice, like the wail of a girl in distress?” cried Brian.
“Like what?” said Mr. Airey.
“Oh, you don’t believe anything—we all know that, sir,” said Brian.
“A girl in distress—I believe in that, at any rate,” said Edmund.
“Now!” said Miss Stafford, “don’t you think that I might recite something to these poor people?” She turned to Lady Innisfail. “Poor people! They may never have heard a real recitation—‘The Dove Cote,’ ‘Peter’s Blue Bell’—something simple.”
There was a movement among her group.
“The sooner we get back to the Castle the better it will be for all of us,” said Lady Innisfail. “Yes, Father Constantine, we distinctly looked for a native bard, and we are greatly disappointed. Who ever heard of a genuine Cruiskeen without a native bard? Why, the thing’s absurd!”
“A Connaught Oberammergau without a native bard! Oh, Padre mio—Padre mio!” said Miss Stafford, daintily shaking her double eye-glasses at the priest.
“My lady,” said he, “you heard what the man said. How would it be possible for us to continue this scene while that warning voice is in the air?”
“If you give us a chance of hearing the warning voice, we’ll forgive you everything, and say that the Cruiskeen is a great success,” cried Lady Innisfail.
“If your ladyship takes the short way to the bend of the lough you may still hear her,” said Brian.
“God forbid,” said the priest.
“Take us there, and if we hear her, I’ll give you half a sovereign,” cried her ladyship, enthusiastically.
“If harm comes of it don’t blame me,” said Brian. “Step out this way, my lady.”
“We may still be repaid for our trouble in coming so far,” said one of the party. “If we do actually hear the Banshee, I, for one, will feel more than satisfied.”
Miss Stafford, as she hurried away with the party led by Brian, wondered if it might not be possible to find a market for a Banshee’s cry in a London drawing-room. A new emotion was, she understood, eagerly awaited. The serpentine dance and the costermonger’s lyre had waned. It was extremely unlikely that they should survive another season. If she were to be first in the field with the Banshee’s cry, introduced with a few dainty steps of the jig incidental to a poem with a refrain of “Asthore” or “Mavourneen,” she might yet make a name for herself.
IN a space of time that was very brief, owing to the resolution with which Lady Innisfail declined to accept the suggestion of short cuts by Brian, the whole party found themselves standing breathless at the beginning of the line of cliffs. A mist saturated with moonlight had drifted into the lough from the Atlantic. It billowed below their eyes along the surface of the water, and crawled along the seared faces of the cliffs, but no cold fingers of the many-fingered mist clasped the higher ridges. The sound of the crashing of the unseen waves about the bases of the cliffs filled the air, but there was no other sound.
“Impostor!” said Edmund Airy, turning upon Brian. “You heard no White Lady to-night. You have jeopardized our physical and your spiritual health by your falsehood.”
“You shall get no half sovereign from me,” said Lady Innisfail.
“Is it me that’s accountable for her coming and going?” cried Brian, with as much indignation as he could afford. Even an Irishman cannot afford the luxury of being indignant with people who are in the habit of paying him well, and an Irishman is ready to sacrifice much to sentiment. “It’s glad we should all be this night not to hear the voice of herself.”
Lady Innisfail looked at him. She could afford to be indignant, and she meant to express her indignation; but when it came to the point she found that it was too profound to be susceptible of expression.
“Oh, come away,” she said, after looking severely at Brian for nearly a minute.
“Dear Lady Innisfail,” said Mr. Durdan, “I know that you feel indignant, fancying that we have been disappointed. Pray do not let such an idea have weight with you for a moment.”
“Oh, no, no,” said Miss Stafford, who liked speaking in public quite as well as Mr. Durdan. “Oh, no, no; you have done your best, dear Lady Innisfail. The dance was lovely; and though, of course, we should have liked to hear a native bard or two, as well as the Banshee—”
“Yet bards and Banshees we know to be beyond human control,” said Mr. Airey.
“We know that if it rested with you, we should hear the Banshee every night,” said Mr. Durdan.
“Yes, we all know your kindness of heart, dear Lady Innisfail,” resumed Miss Stafford.
“Indeed you should hear it, and the bard as well,” cried Lady Innisfail. “But as Mr. Airey says—and he knows all about bard and Banshees and such like things Great heaven! We are not disappointed after all, thank heaven!”
Lady Innisfail’s exclamation was uttered after there floated to the cliffs where she and her friends were standing, from the rolling white mist that lay below, the sound of a long wail. It was repeated, only fainter, when she had uttered her thanksgiving, and it was followed by a more robust shout.
“Isn’t it lovely?” whispered Lady Innisfail.
“I don’t like it,” said Miss Stafford, with a shudder. “Let us go away—oh, let us go away at once.”
Miss Stafford liked simulated horrors only. The uncanny in verse was dear to her; but when, for the first time, she was brought face to face with what would have formed the subject of a thrilling romance with a suggestion of the supernatural, she shuddered.
“Hush,” said Lady Innisfail; “if we remain quiet we may hear it again.”
“I don’t want to hear it again,” cried Miss Stafford. “Look at the man. He knows all about it. He is one of the natives.”
She pointed to Brian, who was on his knees on the rock muttering petitions for the protection of all the party.
He knew, however, that his half sovereign was safe, whatever might happen. Miss Stafford’s remark was reasonable. Brian should know all about the Banshee and its potentialities of mischief.
“Get up, you fool!” said Edmund Airey, catching the native by the shoulder. “Don’t you know as well as I do that a boat with someone aboard is adrift in the mist?”
“Oh, I know that you don’t believe in anything.” said Brian.
“I believe in your unlimited laziness and superstition,” said Edmund. “I’m very sorry, my dear Lady Innisfail, to interfere with your entertainment, but it’s perfectly clear to me that someone is in distress at the foot of the cliffs.”
“How can you be so horrid—so commonplace?” said Lady Innisfail.
“He is one of the modern iconoclasts,” said another of the group. “He would fling down our most cherished beliefs. He told me that he considered Madame Blavatsky a swindler.”
“Dear Mr. Airey,” said Miss Stafford, who was becoming less timid as the wail from the sea had not been repeated. “Dear Mr. Airey, let us entreat of you to leave us our Banshee whatever you may take from us.”
“There are some things in heaven and earth that refuse to be governed by a phrase,” sneered Mr. Durdan.
“Mules and the members of the Opposition are among them,” said Edmund, preparing to descend the cliffs by the zig-zag track.
He had scarcely disappeared in the mist when there was a shriek from Miss Stafford, and pointing down the track with a gesture, which for expressiveness, she had never surpassed in the most powerful of her recitations, she flung herself into Lady Innisfail’s arms.
“Great heavens!” cried Lady Innisfail. “It is the White Lady herself’!”
“We’re all lost, and the half sovereign’s nothing here or there,” said Brian, in a tone of complete resignation.
Out of the mist there seemed to float a white figure of a girl. She stood for some moments with the faint mist around her, and while the group on the cliff watched her—some of them found it necessary to cling together—another white figure floated through the mist to the side of the first, and then came another figure—that of a man—only he did not float.
“I wish you would not cling quite so close to me, my dear; I can’t see anything of what’s going on,” said Lady Innisfail to Miss Stafford, whose head was certainly an inconvenience to Lady Innisfail.
With a sudden, determined movement she shifted the head from her bosom to her shoulder, and the instant that this feat was accomplished she cried out, “Helen Craven!”
“Helen Craven?” said Miss Stafford, recovering the use of her head in a moment.
“Yes, it’s Helen Craven or her ghost that’s standing there,” said Lady Innisfail.
“And Harold Wynne is with her. Are you there, Wynne?” sang out Mr. Durdan.
“Hallo?” came the voice of Harold from below. “Who is there?”
“Why, we’re all here,” cried Edmund, emerging from the mist at his side. “How on earth did you get here?—and Miss Craven—and—he looked at the third figure—he had never seen the third figure before.
“Oh, it’s a long story,” laughed Harold. “Will you give a hand to Miss Craven?”
Mr. Airey said it would please him greatly to do so, and by his kindly aid Miss Craven was, in the course of a few minutes, placed by the side of Lady Innisfail.
She took the place just vacated by Miss Stafford on Lady Innisfail’s bosom, and was even more embarrassing to Lady Innisfail than the other had been. Helen Craven was heavier, to start with.
But it was rather by reason of her earnest desire to see the strange face, that Lady Innisfail found Helen’s head greatly in her way.
“Lady Innisfail, when Miss Craven is quite finished with you, I shall present to you Miss Avon,” said Harold.
“I should be delighted,” said Lady Innisfail. “Dearest Helen, can you not spare me for a moment?”
Helen raised her head.
It was then that everyone perceived how great was the devastation done by the mist to the graceful little curled fringes of her forehead. Her hair was lank, showing that she had as massive a brow as Miss Stafford’s, if she wished to display it.
“It is a great pleasure to me to meet you, Miss Avon; I’m sure that I have often heard of you from Mr. Wynne and—oh, yes, many other people,” said Lady Innisfail. “But just now—well, you can understand that we are all bewildered.”
“Yes, we are all bewildered,” said Miss Avon. “You see, we heard the cry of the White Lady—”
“Of course,” said Harold; “we heard it too. The White Lady was Miss Craven. She was in one of the boats, and the mist coming on so suddenly, she could not find her way back to the landing place. Luckily we were able to take her boat in tow before it got knocked to pieces. I hope Miss Craven did not over-exert herself.”
“I hope not,” said Lady Innisfail. “What on earth induced you to go out in a boat alone, Helen—and suffering from so severe a headache into the bargain?”
“I felt confident that the cool air would do me good,” said Miss Craven. somewhat dolefully.
Lady Innisfail looked at her in silence for some moments, then she laughed.
No one else seemed to perceive any reason for laughter.
Lady Innisfail then turned her eyes upon Miss Avon. The result of her observation was precisely the same as the result of Harold’s first sight of that face had been. Lady Innisfail felt that she had never seen so beautiful a girl.
Then Lady Innisfail laughed again.
Finally she looked at Harold and laughed for the third time. The space of a minute nearly was occupied by her observations and her laughter.
“I think that on the whole we should hasten on to the Castle,” said she at length. “Miss Craven is pretty certain to be fatigued—we are, at any rate. Of course you will come with us, Miss Avon.”
The group on the cliff ceased to be a group when she had spoken; but Miss Avon did not move with the others. Harold also remained by her side.
“I don’t know what I should do,” said Miss Avon. “The boat is at the foot of the cliff.”
“It would be impossible for you to find your course so long as the mist continues,” said Harold. “Miss Avon and her father—he is an old friend of mine—we breakfasted together at my college—are living in the White House—you may have heard its name—on the opposite shore—only a mile by sea, but six by land,” he added, turning to Lady Innisfail.
“Returning to-night is out of the question,” said Lady Innisfail. “You must come with us to the Castle for to-night. I shall explain all to your father to-morrow, if any explanation is needed.” Miss Avon shook her head, and murmured a recognition of Lady Innisfail’s kindness.
“There is Brian,” said Harold. “He will confront your father in the morning with the whole story.”
“Yes, with the whole story,” said Lady Innisfail, with an amusing emphasis on the words. “I already owe Brian half a sovereign.”
“Oh, Brian will carry the message all for love,” cried the girl.
Lady Innisfail did her best to imitate the captivating freshness of the girl’s words.
“All for love—all for love!” she cried.
Harold smiled. He remembered having had brought under his notice a toy nightingale that imitated the song of the nightingale so closely that the Jew dealer, who wanted to sell the thing, declared that no one on earth could tell the difference between the two.
The volubility of Brian in declaring that he would do anything out of love for Miss Avon was amazing. He went down the cliff face to bring the boats round to the regular moorings, promising to be at the Castle in half an hour to receive Miss Avon’s letter to be put into her father’s hand at his hour of rising.
By the time Miss Avon and Harold had walked to the Castle with Lady Innisfail, they had acquainted her with a few of the incidents of the evening—how they also had been caught by the mist while in their boat, and had with considerable trouble succeeded in reaching the craft in which Miss Craven was helplessly drifting. They had heard Miss Craven’s cry for help, they said, and Harold had replied to it. But still they had some trouble picking up her boat.
Lady Innisfail heard all the story, and ventured to assert that all was well that ended well.
“And this is the end,” she cried, as she pointed to the shining hall seen through the open doors.
“Yes, this is the end of all—a pleasant end to the story,” said the girl.
Harold followed them as they entered.
He wondered if this was the end of the story, or only the beginning.
IT was said by some people that the judge, during his vacation, had solved the problem set by the philosopher to his horse. He had learned to live on a straw a day, only there was something perpetually at the end of his straw—something with a preposterous American name in a tumbler to match.
He had the tumbler and the straw on a small table by his side while he watched, with great unsteadiness, the strokes of the billiard players.
From an hour after dinner he was in a condition of perpetual dozing. This was his condition also from an hour after the opening of a case in court, which required the closest attention to enable even the most delicately appreciative mind to grasp even its simplest elements.
He had, he said, been the most widely awake of counsel for thirty years, so that he rather thought he was entitled to a few years dozing as a judge.
Other people—they were his admirers—said that his dozing represented an alertness far beyond that of the most conscientiously wakeful and watchful of the judicial establishment in England.
It is easy to resemble Homer—in nodding—and in this special Homeric quality the judge excelled; but it was generally understood that it would not be wise to count upon his nodding himself into a condition of unobservance. He had already delivered judgment on the character of the fine cannons of one of the players in the hall, and upon the hazards of the other. He had declined to mark the game, however, and he had thereby shown his knowledge of human nature. There had already been four disputes as to the accuracy of the marking. (It was being done by a younger man).
“How can a man expect to make his favourite break after some hours on a diabolical Irish jaunting car?” one of the players was asking, as he bent over the table.
The words were uttered at the moment of Harold’s entrance, close behind Lady Innisfail and Miss Avon.
Hearing the words he stood motionless before he had taken half-a-dozen steps into the hall.
Lady Innisfail also stopped at the same instant, and looked over her shoulder at Harold.
Through the silence there came the little click of the billiard balls.
The speaker gave the instinctive twist of the practised billiard player toward the pocket that he wished the ball to approach. Then he took a breath and straightened himself in a way that would have made any close observer aware of the fact that he was no longer a young man.
There was, however, more than a suggestion of juvenility in his manner of greeting Lady Innisfail. He was as effusive as is consistent with the modern spirit of indifference to the claims of hostesses and all other persons.
He was not so effusive when he turned to Harold; but that was only to be expected, because Harold was his son.
“No, my boy,” said Lord Fotheringay, “I didn’t fancy that you would expect to see me here to-night—I feel surprised to find myself here. It seems like a dream to me—a charming dream-vista with Lady Innisfail at the end of the vista. Innisfail always ruins his chances of winning a game by attempting a screw back into the pocket. He leaves everything on. You’ll see what my game is now.”
He chalked his cue and bent over the table once more.
Harold watched him make the stroke. “You’ll see what my game is,” said Lord Fotheringay, as he settled himself down to a long break.
Harold questioned it greatly. His father’s games were rarely transparent.
“What on earth can have brought him?—oh, he takes one’s breath away,” whispered Lady Innisfail to Harold, with a pretty fair imitation of a smile lingering about some parts of her face.
Harold shook his head. There was not even the imitation of a smile about his face.
Lady Innisfail gave a laugh, and turned quickly to Miss Avon.
“My husband will be delighted to meet you, my dear,” said she. “He is certain to know your father.”
Harold watched Lord Innisfail shaking hands with Miss Avon at the side of the billiard table, while his father bent down to make another stroke. When the stroke was played he saw his father straighten himself and look toward Miss Avon.
The look was a long one and an interested one. Then the girl disappeared with Lady Innisfail, and the look that Lord Fotheringay cast at his son was a short one, but it was quite as intelligible to that soft as the long look at Miss Avon had been to him.
Harold went slowly and in a singularly contemplative mood to his bedroom, whence he emerged in a space, wearing a smoking-jacket and carrying a pipe and tobacco pouch.
The smoking-jackets that glowed through the hall towards the last hour of the day at Castle Innisfail were a dream of beauty.
Lady Innisfail had given orders to have a variety of sandwiches and other delicacies brought to the hall for those of her guests who had attended the festivities at Ballycruiskeen; and when Harold found his way downstairs, he perceived in a moment that only a few of the feeble ones of the house-party—the fishermen who had touches of rheumatism and the young women who cherished their complexions—were absent from the hall.
He also noticed that his father was seated by the side of Beatrice Avon and that he was succeeding in making himself interesting to her.
He knew that his father generally succeeded in making himself interesting to women.
In another part of the hall Lady Innisfail was succeeding in making herself interesting to some of the men. She also was accustomed to meet with success in this direction. She was describing to such as had contrived to escape the walk to Ballycruiskeen, the inexhaustibly romantic charm of the scene on the Curragh while the natives were dancing, and the descriptions certainly were not deficient in colour.
The men listened to her with such an aspect of being enthralled, she felt certain that they were full of regret that they had failed to witness the dance. It so happened, however, that the result of her account of the scene was to lead those of her audience who had remained at the Castle, to congratulate themselves upon a lucky escape.
And all this time, Harold noticed that his father was making himself interesting to Beatrice Avon.
The best way for any man to make himself interesting to a woman is to show himself interested in her. He knew that his father was well aware of this fact, and that he was getting Beatrice Avon to tell him all about herself.
But when Lady Innisfail reached the final situation in her dramatic account of the dance, and hurried her listeners to the brink of the cliff—when she reproduced in a soprano that was still vibratory, the cry that had sounded through the mist—when she pointed to Miss Avon in telling of the white figure that had emerged from the mist—(Lady Innisfail did not think it necessary to allude to Helen Craven, who had gone to bed)—the auditors’ interest was real and not simulated. They looked at the white figure as Lady Innisfail pointed to her, and their interest was genuine.
They could at least appreciate this element of the evening’s entertainment, and as they glanced at Harold, who was eating a number of sandwiches in a self-satisfied way, they thought that they might safely assume that he was the luckiest of the dramatis personae of the comedy—or was it a tragedy?—described by Lady Innisfail.
And all this time Harold was noticing that his father, by increasing his interest in Beatrice, was making himself additionally interesting to her.
But the judge had also—at the intervals between his Homeric nods—been noticing the living things around him. He put aside his glass and its straw—he had been toying with it all the evening, though the liquid that mounted by capillary attraction up the tube was something noisome, without a trace of alcohol—and seated himself on the other side of the girl.
He assured her that he had known her father. Lord Fotheringay did not believe him; but this was not to the point, and he knew it. What was to the point was the fact that the judge understood the elements of the art of interesting a girl almost as fully as Lord Fotheringay did, without having quite made it the serious business of his life. The result was that Miss Avon was soon telling the judge all about herself—this was what the judge professed to be the most anxious to hear—and Lord Fotheringay lit a cigar.
He felt somewhat bitterly on the subject of the judge’s intrusion. But the feeling did not last for long. He reflected upon the circumstance that Miss Avon could never have heard that he himself was a very wicked man.
He knew that the interest that attaches to a man with a reputation for being very wicked is such as need fear no rival. He felt that should his power to interest a young woman ever be jeopardized, he could still fall back upon his bad character and be certain to attract her.