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.