MY FRIEND McSHANUS.
_Dr. Fabos at Dieppe._
I thought that I knew no one in Dieppe, but I was wrong, as you shall
see; and I had scarcely set foot in the hotel when I ran against no
other than Timothy McShanus, the journalist of Fleet Street, and found
myself in an instant listening to his odd medley of fact and fancy. For
the first time for many years he was in no immediate need of a little
loan.
“Faith,” says he, “’tis the best thing that ever ye heard. The Lord
Mayor of this very place is dancing and feasting the County
Councillors—and me, Timothy McShanus, is amongst ’em. Don’t ask how it
came about. I’ll grant ye there is another McShanus in the Parlyment—a
rare consated divil of a man that they may have meant to ask to the
rejoicin’. Well, the letter came to worthier hands—and by the honour of
ould Ireland, says I, ’tis this McShanus that will eat their victuals.
So here I am, me bhoy, and ye’ll order what ye like, and my beautiful La
France shall pay for it. Shovels of fire upon me head, if I shame their
liquor——”
I managed to arrest his ardour, and, discovering that he had enjoyed the
hospitality of Dieppe for three days upon another man’s invitation, and
that the end of the pleasant tether had been reached, I asked him to
dine with me, and he accepted like a shot.
“’Tis for the pleasure of me friend’s company. To-morrow ye shall dine
with me and the Mayor—me old friend the Mayor—that I have known since
Tuesday morning. We’ll have fine carriages afterwards, and do the woods
and the forests. Ye came here, I’ll be saying, because ye heard that the
star of Timothy McShanus was on high? ’Twould be that, no doubt. What
the divil else should bring such an astronomer man to Dieppe?”
I kept it from him a little while; but when he rejoined me at the dinner
table later on, the first person he clapped his eyes upon was little
Joan Fordibras, sitting with a very formidable-looking chaperone three
tables from our own. The expression upon his face at this passed all
simile. I feared that every waiter in the room would overhear his truly
Celtic outburst.
“Mother of me ancestors!” he cried; “but ’tis the little shepherdess
herself. Ean Fabos, have shame to admit it. ’Twas neither the stars of
the celestial heavens nor the beauty of the firmament that carried ye to
this shore. And me that was naming it the wit and the beauty of me
native counthry. Oh, Timothy McShanus, how are the mighty fallen! No
longer——”
I hustled him to his seat and showed my displeasure very plainly. As for
little Joan Fordibras, while she did not hear his words, his manner set
her laughing, and in this she was imitated by French and English women
round about. Indeed, I defy the greatest of professors to withstand this
volatile Irishman, or to be other than amused by his amazing
eccentricities.
“We’ll drink champagne to her, Fabos, me bhoy,” he whispered as the soup
was served. “Sure, matrimony is very like that same wine—a good thing
at the beginning, but not so good when you take overmuch of it. ’Twould
be married I had been meself to the Lady Clara Lovenlow of Kildare, but
for the blood of Saxons in her veins. Ay, and a poor divil of a man I
would be this same time, if I had done it. Sure, think of Timothy
McShanus with his feet in the family slippers and his daughters singing
‘The Lost Chord’ to him. Him that is the light of the Goldsmith Club.
Who goeth home even with the milk! Contemplate it, me bhoy, and say what
a narrow escape from that designing wench he has had.”
He rattled on, and I did not interrupt him. To be plain, I was glad of
his company. Had it appeared to Joan Fordibras that I was quite alone in
the hotel, that I knew no friends in Dieppe, and had no possible object
in visiting the town but to renew acquaintance with her during her
father’s absence—had this been so, then the difficulties of our
intercourse were manifest. Now, however, I might shelter my intentions
behind this burly Irishman. Indeed, I was delighted at the encounter.
“McShanus,” I said, “don’t be a fool. Or if you must be one, don’t
include me in the family relationship. Do I look like a man whose
daughters will be permitted to sing the ‘Lost Chord’ to him?”
“Ye can never judge by looks, Docthor. Me friend Luke O’Brien, him that
wrote ‘The Philosophy of Loneliness’ in the newspapers, he’s seven
children in County Cork and runs a gramophone store. ‘Luke,’ says I,
‘’tis a fine solitude ye have entirely.’ ‘Be d——d to that,’ says
he—and we haven’t spoken since.”
“Scarcely delicate to mention it, McShanus. Let me relieve your feelings
by telling you that my yacht, _White Wings_, will be here to-morrow
night to fetch me.”
“Glory be to God, ye’ll be safe on the sea. I mistrust the colleen
entirely. Look at the eyes of it. D’ye see the little foot peepin’ in
and out—‘like mice beneath the petticoat,’ says the poet. She’s anxious
to show ye she’s a small foot and won’t cost ye much in shoe leather.
Turn your head away when she laughs, Ean, me bhoy. ’Tis a wicked bit of
a laugh, and to a man’s destruction.”
“I must remember this, McShanus. Do you think you could entertain the
old lady while I talk to her?”
“What, the she-cat with the man’s hair and the telescope? The Lord be
good to me. I’d sooner do penal servitude.”
“Now, come, you can see by her glance that she is an authority upon some
of the ’isms, McShanus. I know that she plays golf. I saw her carrying
sticks this very afternoon.”
“To break heads at a fair. Is Timothy McShanus fallen to this? To tread
at the heels of a she-man with sticks in her hands. Faith, ’twould be a
fancy fair and fête entirely.”
“Drink some more champagne, and brace yourself up to it, Timothy.”
He shook his head and lapsed into a melancholy silence. Certainly his
nerves required bracing up for the ordeal, and many glasses of ’89
Pommery went to that process. When dinner was done, we strolled out upon
the verandah and found Miss Fordibras and her chaperone, Miss Aston,
drinking coffee at one of the little tables in the vestibule. They made
way for us at once, as though we had been expected, and I presented
McShanus to them immediately.
“Mr. Timothy McShanus—the author of ‘Ireland and Her Kings.’ He’s
descended from the last of them, I believe. Is it not so, McShanus?”
“From all of them, Dr. Fabos. Me father ruled Ireland in the past, and
me sons will rule it in the future. Ladies, your servant. Be not after
calling me an historian. ’Tis a poet I am when not in the police
courts.”
Miss Aston, the elderly lady with the short hair and the glasses, took
McShanus seriously, I am afraid. She began to speak to him of Browning
and Walt Whitman and Omar Khayyam. I drew my chair near to Miss
Fordibras and took my text from the common talk.
“No one reads poetry nowadays,” I said. “We have all grown too cynical.
Even McShanus does not consider his immortal odes worth publishing.”
“They will perish with me in an abbey tomb,” said he; “a thousand years
from now, ’tis the professors from New Zealand who will tell the world
what McShanus wrote.”
Miss Aston suggested a little tritely that much modern poetry should be
so treated.
“Time is the true critic,” she exclaimed majestically, and McShanus
looked at me as who should say, “She has some experience of that same
Time.”
I turned to Joan Fordibras and asked her to defend the poets.
“The twentieth century gives us no solitudes,” I said; “you cannot have
poets without solitudes. We live in crowds nowadays. Even yachting is a
little old-fashioned. Men go where other men can see them show off.
Vanity takes them there—even Bridge is vanity, the desire to do better
than the other man.”
Miss Aston demurred.
“There are some women who know nothing of vanity,” she said stonily. “We
live within ourselves, and our lives are our own. Our whole existence is
a solitude. We are most truly alone when many surround us.”
“’Tis a compliment to my friend Fabos,” cried McShanus triumphantly.
“Let me have the honour to escort ye to the Casino, lady, for such a man
is no company for us. No doubt he’ll bring Miss Fordibras over when
they’ve done with the poets. Will ye not, doctor?”
I said that I should be delighted, and when the cloaks had been found we
all set out for the Casino. Timothy was playing his part well, it
appeared. I found myself alone with Joan Fordibras presently—and
neither of us had the desire to hurry on to the Casino. In truth, the
season at Dieppe had already begun to wane, and there were comparatively
few people abroad on the parade by the sea-shore. We walked apart, a
great moon making golden islands of light upon the sleeping sea, and the
distant music of the Casino band in our ears.
“This time to-morrow,” I said, “my yacht will be nearer Ushant than
Dieppe.”
She looked up at me a little timidly. I thought that I had rarely seen a
face at once so pathetic and so beautiful.
“Away to the solitudes?” she asked quickly.
“Possibly,” I said; “but that is the point about yachting. You set out
for nowhere, and if you don’t like it, you come back again.”
“And you positively don’t know where you are going?”
“I positively don’t know where I am going.”
“But I do,” she said. “You are going to follow my father.”
I had never been so amazed in my life. To say that I was astonished
would be to misrepresent the truth. I knew already that she suspected
me; but this challenge—from a mere child—this outspoken defiance, it
passed all comprehension.
“Why should I follow your father?” I asked her as quickly.
“I do not know, Dr. Fabos. But you are following him. You suspect him,
and you wish to do us an injury.”
“My dear child,” I said, “God forbid that I should do any man an injury.
You do not mean what you say. The same cleverness which prompts this
tells you also that anything I may be doing is right and proper to
do—and should be done. May we not start from that?”
I turned about and faced her. We had come almost to the water’s edge by
this time. The lazy waves were rolling at our feet—the waves of that
sea I purposed to cross in quest of a truth which should astonish the
world. The hour was momentous to both our lives. We knew it so to be and
did not flinch from it.
“Oh,” she said, with tears in her eyes, “if I could only believe you to
be my friend.”
“Miss Fordibras,” I said, “believe it now because I tell you so. Your
friend whatever may befall. Please to call me that.”
I think that she was about to confess to me the whole story of her life.
I have always thought that it might have been so at that moment. But the
words remained unspoken—for a shadow fell upon us as we talked, and,
looking up, I perceived the figure of a man so near to us that his
outstretched hand could have touched my own. And instantly perceiving it
also, she broke away from me and begged me to take her to the Casino.
“Miss Aston will be anxious,” she cried, excited upon compulsion.
“Please let us go. It must be nine o’clock.”
I rejoined that I was quite in ignorance of the fact; but, taking her
cue, I led the way from the place and turned toward the Casino. The
light of an arc lamp as we went showed me her young face as pale as the
moonbeams upon the still sea before us. I understood that the man had
been watching her, and that she was afraid of him. Indeed, no artifice
could conceal so plain a fact.
Of this, however, she would not speak at all. In the Casino, she went
straight to the side of the formidable Miss Aston, and began to babble
some idle excuse for our delay. McShanus himself was playing at Petits
Chevaux and making the room ring with his exclamations. I understood
that the hour for confidence had passed, and that the words she had
meant to speak to me might go for ever unspoken.
Was it well that this should be? God knows. The path of my duty lay
clearly marked before me. Not even the hand of Joan Fordibras must turn
me aside therefrom. I could but hope that time would lift the shadows
and let me see the sun beyond them.