CHAPTER V. ON A PERILOUS CAUSEWAY.

MISS CRAVEN laughed and watched Mr. Airey searching for a reply beneath the frill of a Neapolitan ice. She did not mean that he should find one. Her aim was that he should talk about Harold Wynne. The dinner had reached its pianissimo passages, so to speak. It was dwindling away into the marrons glacés and fondants stage, so she had not much time left to her to find out if it was indeed with his friend Edmund Airey that Harold had disappeared every afternoon.

Edmund Airey knew what her aim was. He was a clever man, and he endeavoured to frustrate it. Ten minutes afterwards he was amazed to find that he had told her all that she wanted to know, and something over, for he had told her that Harold was at present greatly interested in the question of the advisability of a man’s entering public life by the perilous causeway—the phrase was Edmund Airey’s—of matrimony.

As he chose a cigar for himself—for there was a choice even among Lord Innisfail’s cigars—he was actually amazed to find that the girl’s purpose had been too strong for his resolution. He actually felt as if he had betrayed his friend to the enemy—he actually put the matter in this way in his moment of self-reproach.

Before his cigar was well alight, however, he had become more reasonable in his censorship of his own weakness. An enemy? Why, the young woman was the best friend that Harold Wynne could possibly have. She was young—that is, young enough—she was clever—had she not got the better of Edmund Airey?—and, best of all, she was an heiress.

“The perilous causeway of matrimony”—that was the phrase which had come suddenly into his mind, and, in order to introduce it, he had sent the girl away feeling that she was cleverer than he was.

“The perilous causeway of matrimony,” he repeated. “With a handrail of ten thousand a year—there is safety in that.”

He looked down the long dining-hall, glistening with silver, to where Harold stood facing the great window, the square of which framed a dim picture of a mountain slope, purple with heather, that had snared the last light of the sunken sun. The sea horizon cut upon the slope not far from its summit, and in that infinity of Western distance there was a dash of drifting crimson.

Harold Wynne stood watching that picture of the mountain with the Atlantic beyond, and Edmund watched him.

There was a good deal of conversation flying about the room. The smokers of cigarettes talked on a topic which they would probably have called Art. The smokers of pipes explained in a circumstantial way, that carried suspicion with it to the ears of all listeners, their splendid failures to secure certain big fish during the day. The smokers of cigars talked of the Horse and the House—mostly of the Horse. There was a rather florid judge present—he had talked himself crimson to the appreciative woman who had sat beside him at dinner, on the subject of the previous racing-season, and now he was talking himself purple on the subject of the future season. He had been at Castle Innisfail for three days, and he had steadily refused to entertain the idea of talking on any other subject than the Horse from the standpoint of a possible backer.

This was the judge, who, during the hearing of a celebrated case a few months before—a case that had involved a reference to an event known as the City and Suburban, inquired if that was the name of a Railway Company. Hearing that it was a race, he asked if it was a horse race or a dog race.

Harold remained on his feet in front of the window, and Edmund remained watching him until the streak of crimson had dwindled to a flaming Rahab thread. The servants entered the room with coffee, and brought out many subtle gleams from the old oak by lighting the candles in the silver sconces.

Every time that the door was opened, the sound of a human voice (female) trying, but with indifferent success, to scale the heights of a song that had been saleable by reason of its suggestions of passion—drawing-room passion—saleable passion—fought its way through the tobacco smoke of the dining-hall. Hearing it fitfully, such men as might have felt inclined to leave half-smoked cigars for the sake of the purer atmosphere of the drawingroom, became resigned to their immediate surroundings.

A whisper had gone round the table while dinner was in progress, that Miss Stafford had promised—some people said threatened—to recite something in the course of the evening. Miss Stafford was a highly-educated young woman. She spoke French, German, Italian and Spanish. This is only another way of saying that she could be uninteresting in four languages. In addition to the ordinary disqualifications of such young women, she recited a little—mostly poems about early childhood, involving a lisp and a pinafore. She wished to do duty as an object lesson of the possibility of combining with an exhaustive knowledge of mathematical formulæ, the strongest instincts of femininity. Mathematics and motherhood were not necessarily opposed to one another, her teachers had assured the world, through the medium of magazine articles. Formulæ and femininity went hand in hand, they endeavoured to prove, through the medium of Miss Stafford’s recitations; so she acquired the imaginary lisp of early childhood, and tore a pinafore to shreds in the course of fifteen stanzas.

It was generally understood among men that one of these recitations amply repaid a listener for a careful avoidance of the apartment where it took place.

The threat that had been whispered round the dinner-table formed an excuse for long tarrying in front of the coffee cups and Bénédictine.

“Boys,” at length said Lord Innisfail, endeavouring to put on an effective Irish brogue—he thought it was only due to Ireland to put on a month’s brogue. “Boys, we’ll face it like men. Shall it be said in the days to come that we ran away from a lisp and a pinafore?” Then suddenly remembering that Miss Stafford was his guest, he became grave. “Her father was my friend,” he said. “He rode straight. What’s the matter with the girl? If she does know all about the binomial-theorem and German philosophy, has she not some redeeming qualities? You needn’t tell me that there’s not some good in a young woman who commits to memory such stuff as that—that what’s its name—the little boy that’s run over by a ‘bus or something or other and that lisps in consequence about his pap-pa. No, you needn’t argue with me. It’s extremely kind of her to offer to recite, and I will stand up for her, confound her! And if anyone wants to come round with the Judge and me to the stables while she’s reciting, now’s the time. Will you take another glass of claret, Wynne?”

“No, thank you,” said Harold. “I’m off to the drawing-room.”

He followed the men who were straggling into the great square hall where a billiard table occupied an insignificant space. The skeleton of an ancient Irish elk formed a rather more conspicuous object in the hall, and was occasionally found handy for the disposal of hats, rugs, and overcoats.

“She is greatly interested in the Romeo and Juliet story,” remarked Edmund, strolling up to him.

“She—who?” asked Harold.

“The girl—the necessary girl. The—let us say, alternative. The—the handrail.”

“The handrail?”

“Yes. Oh, I forgot: you were not within hearing. There was something said about the perilous causeway of matrimony.”

“And that suggested the handrail idea to you? No better idea ever occurred even to you, O man of many ideas, and of still more numerous phrases.”

“She is responsive—she is also clever—she is uncommonly clever—she got the better of me.”

“Say no more about her cleverness.”

“I will say no more about it. A man cannot go a better way about checking an incipient passion for a young woman than by insisting on her cleverness. We do not take to the clever ones. Our ideal does not include a power of repartee.”

“Incipient passion!”

There was a suspicion of bitterness in Harold’s voice, as he repeated the words of his friend.

“Incipient passion! I think we had better go into the drawing-room.”

They went into the drawing-room.