HE meant to ask her at night. He had felt convinced, on returning after
his adventure in his dinner dress, that nothing could induce him to
think of Miss Craven as a possible wife. While sitting at breakfast,
he had felt even more confident on this point; and yet now his mind was
made up to ask her to marry him.
It must be admitted that his mood was a singular one, especially as,
with his mind full of his resolution to ask Miss Craven to marry him,
he was wandering around the rugged coastway, wondering by what means he
could bring himself by the side of the girl with whom he had crossed the
lough on the previous night.
His mood will be intelligible to such persons as have had friends who
occasionally have found it necessary to their well-being to become
teetotallers. It is well known that the fascination of the prospect of
teetotalism is so great for such persons that the very thought of it
compels them to rush off in the opposite direction. They indulge in an
outburst of imbibing that makes even their best friends stand aghast,
and then they ‘take the pledge’ with the cheerfulness of a child.
Harold Wynne felt inclined to allow his feelings an outburst, previous
to entering upon a condition in which he meant his feelings to be kept
in subjection.
To engage himself to marry Miss Craven was, he believed, equivalent
to taking the pledge of the teetotaller so far as his feelings were
concerned.
Meantime, however, he remained unpledged and with an unbounded sense of
freedom.
And this was why he laughed loud and long when he saw in the course of
his stroll around the cliffs, a small oar jammed in a crevice of the
rocks a hundred feet below where he was walking.
He laughed again when he had gone--not so cautiously as he might have
done--down to the crevice and released the oar.
It was, he knew, the one that had gone adrift from the boat the previous
night.
He climbed the cliff to the Banshee’s Cave and deposited the piece of
timber in the recesses of that place. Then he lay down on the coarse
herbage at the summit of the cliff until it was time to drift to the
Castle for lunch. Life at the Castle involved a good deal of drifting.
The guests drifted out in many directions after breakfast and
occasionally drifted back to lunch, after which they drifted about until
the dinner hour.
While taking lunch he was in such good spirits as made Lady Innisfail
almost hopeless of him.
Edmund Airey had told her the previous night that Harold intended asking
Miss Craven to marry him. Now, however, perceiving how excellent were
his spirits, she looked reproachfully across the table at Edmund.
She was mutely asking him--and he knew it--how it was possible to
reconcile Harold’s good spirits with his resolution to ask Helen Craven
to marry him? She knew--and so did Edmund--that high spirits and the
Resolution are rarely found in association.
An hour after lunch the girl with the Brow entreated Harold’s critical
opinion on the subject of a gesture in the delivery of a certain poem,
and the discussion of the whole question occupied another hour. The
afternoon was thus pretty far advanced before he found himself seated
alone in the boat which had been at the disposal of himself and Edmund
during the two previous afternoons. The oar that he had picked up was
lying at his feet along the timbers of the boat.
The sun was within an hour of setting when Brian appeared at the Castle
bearing a letter for Lady Innisfail. It had been entrusted to him for
delivery to her ladyship by Mr. Wynne, he said. Where was Mr. Wynne?
That Brian would not take upon him to say; only he was at the opposite
side of the lough. Maybe he was with Father Conn, who was the best
of good company, or it wasn’t a bit unlikely that it was the District
Inspector of the Constabulary he was with. Anyhow it was sure that the
gentleman had took a great fancy to the queer places along the coast,
for hadn’t he been to the thrubble to give a look in at the Banshee’s
Cave, the previous night, just because he was sthruck with admiration of
the story of the Princess that he, Brian, had told him and Mr. Airey in
the boat?
The letter that Lady Innisfail received and glanced at while drinking
tea on one of the garden seats outside the Castle, begged her ladyship
to pardon the writer’s not appearing at dinner that night, the fact
being that he had unexpectedly found an old friend who had taken
possession of him.
“It was very nice of him to write, wasn’t it, my dear?” Lady Innisfail
remarked to her friend Miss Craven, who was filtering a novel by a
popular French author for the benefit of Lady Innisfail. “It was very
nice of him to write. Of course that about the friend is rubbish. The
charm of this neighbourhood is that no old friend ever turns up.”
“You don’t think that--that--perhaps--” suggested Miss Craven with the
infinite delicacy of one who has been employed in the filtration of Paul
Bourget.
“Not at all--not at all,” said Lady Innisfail, shaking her head. “If it
was his father it would be quite another matter.”
“Oh!”
“Lord Fotheringay is too great a responsibility even for me, and I don’t
as a rule shirk such things,” said Lady Innisfail. “But Harold is--well,
I’ll let you into a secret, though it is against myself: he has never
made love even to me.”
“That is inexcusable,” remarked Miss Craven, with a little movement
of the eyebrows. She did not altogether appreciate Lady Innisfail’s
systems. She had not a sufficient knowledge of dynamics and the
transference of energy to be able to understand the beauty of the
“switch” principle. “But if he is not with a friend--or--or--the
other--”
“The enemy--our enemy?”
“Where can he be--where can he have been?”
“Heaven knows! There are some things that are too wonderful for me. I
fancied long ago that I knew Man. My dear Helen, I was a fool. Man is
a mystery. What could that boy mean by going to the Banshee’s Cave last
night, when he might have been dancing with me--or you?”
“Romance?”
“Romance and rubbish mean the same thing to such men as Harold Wynne,
Helen--you should know so much,” said Lady Innisfail. “That is, of
course, romance in the abstract. The flutter of a human white frock
would produce more impression on a man than a whole army of Banshees.”
“And yet the boatman said that Mr. Wynne had spent some time last
night at the Cave,” said Miss Craven. “Was there a white dress in the
question, do you fancy?”
Lady Innisfail turned her large and luminous eyes upon her companion.
So she was accustomed to turn those orbs upon such young men as declared
that they adored her. The movement was supposed to be indicative of
infinite surprise, with abundant sympathy, and a trace of pity.
Helen Craven met the luminous gaze with a smile, that broadened as she
murmured, “Dearest Lilian, we are quite alone. It is extremely unlikely
that your expression can be noticed by any of the men. It is practically
wasted.”
“It is the natural and reasonable expression of the surprise I feel at
the wisdom of the--the--”
“Serpent?”
“Not quite. Let us say, the young matron, lurking beneath the
harmlessness of the--the--let us say the _ingenue_. A white dress! Pray
go on with ‘_Un Cour de Femme’._”
Miss Craven picked up the novel which had been on the ground, flattened
out in a position of oriental prostration and humility before the wisdom
of the women.