OF course,” said Lady Innisfail to Edmund Airey the next day. “Of
course, if Harold alone had rescued Helen from her danger last night,
all would have been well. You know as well as I do that when a man
rescues a young woman from a position of great danger, he can scarcely
do less than ask her to marry him.”
“Of course,” replied Edmund. “I really can’t see how, if he has any
dramatic appreciation whatever, he could avoid asking her to marry him.”
“It is beyond a question,” said Lady Innisfail. “So that if Harold had
been alone in the boat all would have been well. The fact of Miss Avon’s
being also in the boat must, however, be faced. It complicates matters
exceedingly.”
Edmund shook his head gravely.
“I knew that you would see the force of it,” resumed Lady Innisfail.
“And then there is his father--his father must be taken into account.”
“It might be as well, though I know that Lord Fotheringay’s views are
the same as yours.”
“I am sure that they are; but why, then, does he come here to sit by the
side of the other girl and interest her as he did last evening?”
“Lord Fotheringay can never be otherwise than interesting, even to
people who do not know how entirely devoid of scruple he is.”
“Of course I know all that; but why should he come here and sit beside
so very pretty a girl as this Miss Avon?”
“There is no accounting for tastes, Lady Innisfail.
“You are very stupid, Mr. Airey. What I mean is, why should Lord
Fotheringay behave in such a way as must force his son’s attention to be
turned in a direction that--that--in short, it should not be turned in?
Heaven knows that I want to do the best for Harold--I like him so well
that I could almost wish him to remain unmarried. But you know as well
as I do, that it is absolutely necessary for him to marry a girl with a
considerable amount of money.”
“That is as certain as anything can be. I gave him the best advice in
my power on this subject, and he announced his intention of asking Miss
Craven to marry him.”
“But instead of asking her he strolled round the coast to that wretched
cave, and there met, by accident, the other girl--oh, these other girls
are always appearing on the scene at the wrong moment.”
“The world would go on beautifully if it were not for the Other Girl.”
said Edmund. “If you think of it, there is not an event in history that
has not turned upon the opportune or inopportune appearance of the Other
Girl. Nothing worth speaking of has taken place, unless by the agency of
the Other Girl.”
“And yet Lord Fotheringay comes here and sits by the side of this
charming girl, and his son watches him making himself interesting to her
as, alas! he can do but too easily. Mr. Airey, I should not be surprised
if Harold were to ask Miss Avon to-day to marry him--I should not,
indeed.”
“Oh, I think you take too pessimistic a view of the matter altogether,
Lady Innisfail. Anyhow, I don’t see that we can do more than we have
already done. I think I should feel greatly inclined to let Providence
and Lord Fotheringay fight out the matter between them.”
“Like the archangel and the Other over the body of Moses?”
“Well, something like that.”
“No, Mr. Airey; I don’t believe in Providence as a match-maker.”
Mr. Airey gave a laugh. He wondered if it was possible that Harold
had mentioned to her that he, Edmund, had expressed the belief that
Providence as a match-maker had much to learn.
“I don’t see how we can interfere,” said he. “I like Harold Wynne
greatly. He means to do something in the world, and I believe he will
do it. He affords a convincing example of the collapse of heredity as a
principle. I like him if only for that.”
Lady Innisfail looked at him in silence for a few moments.
“Yes,” she said, slowly. “Harold does seem to differ greatly from his
father. I wonder if it is the decree of Providence that has kept him
without money.”
“Do you suggest that the absence of money--?”
“No, no; I suggest nothing. If a man must be wicked he’ll be wicked
without money almost as readily as with it. Only I wonder, if Harold had
come in for the title and the property--such as it was--at the same age
as his father was when he inherited all, would he be so ready as you say
he is to do useful work on the side of the government of his country?”
“That is a question for the philosophers,” said Edmund.
In this unsatisfactory way the conversation between Lady Innisfail and
Mr. Airey on the morning after Lord Fotheringay’s arrival at the Castle,
came to an end. No conversation that ends in referring the question
under consideration to the philosophers, can by any possibility be
thought satisfactory. But the conversation could not well be continued
when Miss Craven, by the side of Miss Avon, was seen to be approaching.
Edmund Airey turned his eyes upon the two girls, then they rested upon
the face of Beatrice.
As she came closer his glance rested upon the eyes of Beatrice. The
result of his observation was to convince him that he had never before
seen such beautiful eyes.
They were certainly gray; and they were as full of expression as gray
eyes can be. They were large, and to look into them seemed like looking
into the transparent depths of an unfathomed sea--into the transparent
heights of an inexhaustible heaven.
A glimpse of heaven suggests the bliss of the beatified. A glimpse of
the ocean suggests shipwreck.
He knew this perfectly well as he looked at her eyes; but only for an
instant did it occur to him that they conveyed some message to him.
Before he had time to think whether the message promised the bliss of
the dwellers in the highest heaven, or the disaster of those who go down
into the depths of the deepest sea, he was inquiring from Helen Craven
if the chill of which she had complained on the previous night, had
developed into a cold.
Miss Craven assured him that, so far from experiencing any ill effects
from her adventure, she had never felt better in all her life.
“But had it not been for Miss Avon’s hearing my cries of despair,
goodness knows where I should have been in another ten minutes,” she
added, putting her arm round Miss Avon’s waist, and looking, as Edmund
had done, into the mysterious depths of Miss Avon’s gray eyes.
“Nonsense!” said Miss Avon. “To tell you the plain truth, I did not hear
your cries. It was Mr. Wynne who said he heard the White Lady wailing
for her lover.”
“How could he translate the cry so accurately?” said Edmund. “Do you
suppose that he had heard the Banshee’s cry at the same place?”
He kept his eyes upon Miss Avon’s face, and he saw in a moment that she
was wondering how much he knew of the movements of Harold Wynne during
the previous two nights.
Helen Craven looked at him also pretty narrowly. She was wondering if he
had told anyone that he had suggested to her the possibility of Harold’s
being in the neighbourhood of the Banshee’s Cave during the previous
evening.
Both girls laughed in another moment, and then Edmund Airey laughed
also--in a sort of way. Lady Innisfail was the last to join in the
laugh. But what she laughed at was the way in which Edmund had laughed.
And while this group of four were upon the northern terrace, Harold was
seated the side of his father on one of the chairs that faced the south.
Lord Fotheringay was partial to a southern aspect. His life might be
said to be a life of southern aspects. He meant that it should never be
out of the sun, not because some of the incidents that seemed to him to
make life worth preserving were such as could best stand the searching
light of the sun, but simply because his was the nature of the
butterfly. He was a butterfly of fifty-seven--a butterfly that found it
necessary to touch up with artificial powders the ravages of years upon
the delicate, downy bloom of youth--a butterfly whose wings had now and
again been singed by contact with a harmful flame--whose still shapely
body was now and again bent with rheumatism. Surely the rheumatic
butterfly is the most wretched of insects!
He had fluttered away from a fresh singeing, he was assuring his son.
Yes, he had scarcely strength left in his wings to carry him out of the
sphere of influence of the flame. He had, he said in a mournful tone,
been very badly treated. She had treated him very badly. The Italian
nature was essentially false--he might have known it--and when an
Italian nature is developed with a high soprano, very shrill in its
upper register, the result was--well, the result was that the flame had
singed the wings of the elderly insect who was Harold’s father.
“Talk of money!” he cried, with so sudden an expression of emotion that
a few caked scraps of sickly, roseate powder fluttered from the
crinkled lines of his forehead--Talk of money! It was not a matter of
hundreds--he was quite prepared for that--but when the bill ran up to
thousands--thousands--thousands--oh, the whole affair was sickening.
(Harold cordially agreed with him, though he did not express himself to
this effect). Was it not enough to shake one’s confidence in woman--in
human nature--in human art (operatic)--in the world?
Yes, it was the Husband.
The Husband, Lord Fotheringay was disposed to regard in pretty much
the same light as Mr. Airey regarded the Other Girl. The Husband was not
exactly the obstacle, but the inconvenience. He had a habit of turning
up, and it appeared that in the latest of Lord Fotheringay’s experiences
his turning up had been more than usually inopportune.
“That is why I followed so close upon the heels of my letter to you,”
said the father. “The crash came in a moment--it was literally a
crash too, now that I think upon it, for that hot-blooded ruffian, her
husband, caught one corner of the table cloth--we were at supper--and
swept everything that was on the table into a corner of the room. Yes,
the bill is in my portmanteau. And she took his part. Heavens above!
She actually took his part. I was the scoundrel--_briccone!_--the coarse
Italian is still ringing in my ears. It was anything but a charming
duetto. He sang a basso--her upper register was terribly shrill--I had
never heard it more so. Artistically the scene was a failure; but I had
to run for all that. Humiliating, is it not, to be overcome by something
that would, if subjected to the recognized canons of criticism, be
pronounced a failure? And he swore that he would follow me and have my
life. Enough. You got my letter. Fortune is on your side, my boy. You
saved her life last night.”
“Whose life did I save?” asked the son. “Whose life? Heavens above! Have
you been saving more than one life?”
“Not more than one--a good deal less than one. Don’t let us get into
a sentimental strain, pater. You are the chartered--ah, the chartered
sentimentalist of the family. Don’t try and drag me into your strain.
I’m not old enough. A man cannot pose as a sentimentalist nowadays until
he is approaching sixty.”
“Really? Then I shall have to pause for a year or two still. Let us put
that question aside for a moment. Should I be exceeding my privileges
if I were to tell you that I am ruined?--Financially ruined, I mean,
of course; thank heaven, I am physically as strong as I was--ah, three
years ago.”
“You said something about my allowance, I think.”
“If I did not I failed in my duty as a father, and I don’t often do
that, my boy--thank God, I don’t often do that.”
“No,” said Harold. “If the whole duty of a father is comprised in
acquainting his son with the various reductions that he says he finds
it necessary to make in his allowance, you are the most exemplary of
fathers, pater.”
“There is a suspicion of sarcasm--or what is worse, epigram in that
phrase,” said the father. “Never mind, you cannot epigram away the stern
fact that I have now barely a sufficient income to keep body and soul
together. I wish you could.”
“So do I,” said Harold. “But yours is a _ménage à trois_. It is not
merely body and soul with your but body, soul, and sentiment--it is the
third element that is the expensive one.”
“I dare say you are right. Anyhow, I grieve for your position, my boy.
If it had pleased Heaven to make me a rich man, I would see that your
allowance was a handsome one.”
“But since it has pleased the other Power to make you a poor one--”
“You must marry Miss Craven--that’s the end of the whole matter, and an
end that most people would be disposed to regard as a very happy one,
too. She is a virtuous young woman, and what is better, she dresses
extremely well. What is best of all, she has several thousands a year.”
There was a suggestion of the eighteenth century phraseology in Lord
Fotheringay’s speech, that made him seem at least a hundred years old.
Surely people did not turn up their eyes and talk of virtue since the
eighteenth century, Harold thought. The word had gone out. There was
no more need for it. The quality is taken for granted in the nineteenth
century.
“You are a trifle over-vehement,” said he.
“Have I ever refused to ask Miss Craven to marry me?”
“Have you ever asked her--that’s the matter before us?”
“Never. But what does that mean? Why, simply that I have before me
instead of behind me a most interesting quarter of an hour--I suppose
a penniless man can ask a wealthy woman inside a quarter of an hour, to
marry him. The proposition doesn’t take longer in such a case than an
honourable one would.”
“You are speaking in a way that is not becoming in a son addressing his
father,” said Lord Fotheringay. “You almost make me ashamed of you.”
“You have had no reason to be ashamed of me yet,” said Harold. “So long
as I refrain from doing what you command me to do, I give you no cause
to be ashamed of me.”
“That is a pretty thing for a son to say,” cried the father,
indignantly.
“For heaven’s sake don’t let us begin a family broil under the windows
of a house where we are guests,” said the son, rising quickly from the
chair. “We are on the border of a genuine family bickering. For God’s
sake let us stop in time.”
“I did not come here to bicker,” said the father. “Heavens above! Am
I not entitled to some show of gratitude at least for having come more
than a thousand miles--a hundred of them in an Irish train and ten of
them on an Irish jolting car--simply to see that you are comfortably
settled for life?”
“Yes,” said the son, “I suppose I should feel grateful to you for coming
so far to tell me that you are ruined and that I am a partner in your
ruin.” He had not seated himself, and now he turned his back upon his
father and walked round to the west side of the Castle where some of
the girls were strolling. They were waiting to see how the day would
develop--if they should put on oilskins and sou’westers or gauzes
and gossamer--the weather on the confines of the ocean knows only the
extremes of winter or summer.
The furthest of the watchers were, he perceived, Edmund Airey and Miss
Avon. He walked toward them, and pronounced in a somewhat irresponsible
way an opinion upon the weather.
Before the topic had been adequately discussed, Mr. Durdan and another
man came up to remind Mr. Airey that he had given them his word to be of
their party in the fishing boat, where they were accustomed to study the
Irish question for some hours daily.
Mr. Airey protested that his promise had been wholly a conditional one.
It had not been made on the assumption that the lough should be moaning
like a Wagnerian trombone, and it could not be denied that such notes
were being produced by the great rollers beneath the influence of a
westerly wind.
Harold gave a little shrug to suggest to Beatrice that the matter was
not one that concerned her or himself in the least, and that it might
be as well if Mr. Airey and his friends were left to discuss it by
themselves.
The shrug scarcely suggested all that he meant it to suggest, but in
the course of a minute he was by the side of the girl a dozen yards away
from the three men.
“I wonder if you chanced to tell Mr. Airey of the queer way you and I
met,” she said in a moment.
“How could I have told any human being of that incident?” he cried. “Why
do you ask me such a question?”
“He knows all about it--so much is certain,” said she. “Oh, yes, he gave
me to understand so much--not with brutal directness, of course.”
“No, I should say not--brutal directness is not in his line,” said
Harold.
“But the result is just the same as if he had been as direct as--as a
girl.”
“As a girl?”
“Yes. He said something about Miss Craven’s voice having suggested
something supernatural to Brian, and then he asked me all at once if
there had been any mist on the previous evening when I had rowed across
the lough. Now I should like to know how he guessed that I had crossed
the lough on the previous night.”
“He is clever--diabolically clever,” said Harold after a pause. “He was
with Miss Craven in the hall--they had been dancing--when I returned--I
noticed the way he looked at me. Was there anything in my face to tell
him that--that I had met you?”
She looked at his face and laughed.
“Your face,” she said. “Your face--what could there have been apparent
on your face for Mr. Airey to read?”
“What--what?” his voice was low. He was now looking into her gray eyes.
“What was there upon my face? I cannot tell. Was it a sense of doom? God
knows. Now that I look upon your face--even now I cannot tell whether I
feel the peace of God which passes understanding, or the doom of those
who go down to the sea and are lost.”
“I do not like to hear you speak in that way,” said she. “It would be
better for me to die than to mean anything except what is peaceful and
comforting to all of God’s creatures.”
“It would be better for you to die,” said he. He took his eyes away from
hers. They stood side by side in silence for some moments, before he
turned suddenly to her and said in quite a different strain. “I shall
row you across the lough when you are ready. Will you go after lunch?”
“I don’t think that I shall be going quite so soon,” said she. “The fact
is that Lady Innisfail was good enough to send Brian with another letter
to my father--a letter from herself, asking my father to come to the
Castle for a day or two, but, whether he comes or not, to allow me to
remain for some days.”
Again some moments passed before Harold spoke.
“I want you to promise to let me know where you go when you leave
Ireland,” said he. “I don’t want to lose sight of you. The world is
large. I wandered about in it for nearly thirty years before meeting
you.”
She was silent. It seemed as if she was considering whether or not his
last sentence should be regarded as a positive proof of the magnitude of
the world.
She appeared to come to the conclusion that it would be unwise to
discuss the question--after all, it was only a question of statistics.
“If you wish it,” said she, “I shall let you know our next
halting-place. I fancy that my poor father is less enthusiastic than he
was some years ago on the subject of Irish patriotism. At any rate, I
think that he has worked out all the battles fought in this region.”
“Only let me know where you go,” said he. “I do not want to lose sight
of you. What did you say just now--peace and comfort to God’s creatures?
No, I do not want to lose sight of you.”