CHAPTER III. ON HONESTY AND THE WORKING MAN.

DON’T you think,” remarked Edmund, the next day, as the boat drifted under the great cliffs, and Brian was discharging with great ability his normal duty of resting on his oars. “Don’t you think that you should come to business without further delay?”

“Come to business?” said Harold.

“Yes. Two days ago you lured me out in this coracle to make a communication to me that I judged would have some bearing upon your future course of life. You began talking of Woman with a touch of fervour in your voice. You assured me that you were referring only to woman in the abstract, and when I convinced you—I trust I convinced you—that woman in the abstract has no existence, you got frightened—as frightened as a child would be, if the thing that it has always regarded as a doll were to wink suddenly, suggesting that it had an individuality, if not a distinction of its own—that it should no longer be included among the vague generalities of rags and bran. Yesterday you began rather more boldly. The effects of education upon the development of woman, the probability that feeling would survive an intimate acquaintance with Plato in the original. Why not take another onward step today? In short, who is she?”

Harold laughed—perhaps uneasily.

“I’m not without ambition,” said he.

“I know that. What form does your ambition take? A colonial judgeship, after ten years of idleness at the bar? A success in literature that shall compensate you for the favourable criticisms of double that period? The ownership of the Derby winner? An American heiress, moving in the best society in Monte Carlo? A co-respondency in brackets with a Countess? All these are the legitimate aspirations of the modern man.”

“Co-respondency as a career has, no doubt, much to recommend it to some tastes,” said Harold. “It appears to me, however, that it would be easy for an indiscreet advocate to over-estimate its practical value.”

“You haven’t been thinking about it?”

“You see, I haven’t yet met the countess.”

“What, then, in heaven’s name do you hope for?”

“Well, I would say Parliament, if I could be sure that that came within the rather narrow restrictions which you assigned to my reply. You said ‘in heaven’s name.’”

“Parliament! Parliament! Great Powers! is it so bad as that with you?”

“I don’t say that it is. I may be able to get over this ambition as I’ve got over others—the stroke oar in the Eight, for instance, the soul of Sarasate, the heart of Miss Polly Floss of the Music Halls. Up to the present, however, I have shown no sign of parting with the surviving ambition of many ambitions.”

“I don’t say that you’re a fool,” said the man called Edmund. He did not speak until the long pause, filled up by the great moan of the Atlantic in the distance and the hollow fitful plunge of the waters upon the rocks of the Irish shore, had become awkwardly long. “I can’t say that you’re a fool.”

“That’s very good of you, old chap.”

“No; I can’t conscientiously say that you’re a fool.”

“Again? This is becoming cloying. If I don’t mistake, you yourself do a little in the line I suggest.”

“What would be wisdom—comparative wisdom—on my part, might be idiotcy—”

“Comparative idiotcy?”

“Sheer idiotcy, on yours. I have several thousands a year, and I can almost—not quite—but I affirm, almost, afford to talk honestly to the Working man. No candidate for Parliament can quite afford to be honest to the Working man.”

“And the Working man returns the compliment, only he works it off on the general public,” said Harold.

The other man smiled pityingly upon him—the smile of the professor of anatomy upon the student who identifies a thigh bone—the smile which the savant allows himself when brought in contact with a discerner of the obvious.

“No woman is quite frank in her prayers—no politician is quite honest with the Working man.”

“Well. I am prepared to be not quite honest with him too.”

“You may believe yourself equal even to that; but it’s not so easy as it sounds. There is an art in not being quite honest. However, that’s a detail.”

“I humbly venture so to judge it.”

“The main thing is to get returned.”

“The main thing is, as you say, to get the money.”

“The money?”

“Perhaps I should have said the woman.”

“The woman? the money? Ah, that brings us round again in the same circle that we traversed yesterday, and the day before. I begin to perceive.”

“I had hope that you would—in time.”

“I shouldn’t wonder if we heard the Banshee after dark,” said the Third.

“You are facing things boldly, my dear Harold,” said Edmund.

“What’s the use of doing anything else?” inquired Harold. “You know how I am situated.”

“I know your father.”

“That is enough. He writes to me that he finds it impossible to continue my allowance on its present scale. His expenses are daily increasing, he says. I believe him.”

“Too many people believe in him,” said Edmund. “I have never been among them.”

“But you can easily believe that his expenses are daily increasing.”

“Oh, yes, I am easily credulous on that point. Does he go the length of assigning any reason for the increase?”

“It’s perfectly preposterous—he has no notion of the responsibilities of fatherhood—of the propriety of its limitations so far as an exchange of confidences is concerned. Why, if it were the other way—if I were to write to tell him that I was in love, I would feel a trifle awkward—I would think it almost indecent to quote poetry—Swinburne—something about crimson mouths.”

“I dare say; but your father—”

“He writes to tell me that he is in love.”

“In love?”

“Yes, with some—well, some woman.”

“Some woman? I wonder if I know her husband.” There was a considerable pause.

Brian pointed a ridiculous, hooked forefinger toward a hollow that from beneath resembled a cave, half-way up the precipitous wall of cliffs.

“That’s where she comes on certain nights of the year. She stands at the entrance to that cave, and cries for her lover as she cried that night when she came only to find his dead body,” said Brian, neutralizing the suggested tragedy in his narrative by keeping exhibited that comical crook in his index finger. “Ay, your honours, it’s a quare story of pity.” Both his auditors looked first at his face, then at the crook in his finger, and laughed. They declined to believe in the pity of it.

“It is preposterous,” said Harold. “He writes to me that he never quite knew before what it was to love. He knows it now, he says, and as it’s more expensive than he ever imagined it could be, he’s reluctantly compelled to cut down my allowance. Then it is that he begins to talk of the crimson mouth—I fancy it’s followed by something about the passion of the fervid South—so like my father, but like no other man in the world. He adds that perhaps one day I may also know ‘what’tis to love.’”

“At present, however, he insists on your looking at that form of happiness through another man’s eyes? Your father loves, and you are to learn—approximately—what it costs, and pay the expenses.”

“That’s the situation of the present hour. What am I to do?”

“Marry Helen Craven.”

“That’s brutally frank, at any rate.”

“You see, you’re not a working man with a vote. I can afford to be frank with you. Of course, that question which you have asked me is the one that was on your mind two days ago, when you began to talk about what you called ‘woman in the abstract.’”

“I dare say it was. We have had two stories from Brian in the meantime.”

“My dear Harold, your case is far from being unique. Some of its elements may present new features, but, taken as a whole, it is commonplace. You have ambition, but you have also a father.”

“So far I am in line with the commonplace.”

“You cannot hope to realize your aims without money, and the only way by which a man can acquire a large amount of money suddenly, is by a deal on the Stock Exchange or at Monte Carlo, or by matrimony. The last is the safest.”

“There’s no doubt about that. But—”

“Yes, I know what’s in your mind. I’ve read the scene between Captain Absolute and his father in ‘The Rivals’—I read countless fictions up to the point where the writers artlessly introduce the same scene, then I throw away the books. With the examples we have all had of the success of the mariage de convenance and of the failure of the mariage d’amour it is absurd to find fault with the Johnsonian dictum about marriages made by the Lord Chancellor.”

“I suppose not,” said Harold. “Only I don’t quite see why, if Dr. Johnson didn’t believe that marriages were made in heaven, there was any necessity for him to run off to the other extreme.”

“He merely said, I fancy, that a marriage arranged by the Lord Chancellor was as likely to turn out happily as one that was—well, made in heaven, if you insist on the phrase. Heaven, as a match-maker, has much to learn.”

“Then it’s settled,” said Harold, with an affectation of cynicism that amused his friend and puzzled Brian, who had ears. “I’ll have to sacrifice one ambition in order to secure the other.”

“I think that you’re right,” said Edmund. “You’re not in love just now—so much is certain.”

“Nothing could be more certain,” acquiesced Harold, with a laugh. “And now I suppose it is equally certain that I never shall be.”

“Nothing of the sort. That cynicism which delights to suggest that marriage is fatal to love, is as false as it is pointless. Let any man keep his eyes open and he will see that marriage is the surest guarantee that exists of the permanence of love.”

“Just as an I O U is a guarantee—it’s a legal form. The money can be legally demanded.”

“You are a trifle obscure in your parallel,” remarked Edmund.

“I merely suggested that the marriage ceremony is an I O U for the debt which is love. Oh, this sort of beating about a question and making it the subject of phrases can lead nowhere. Never mind. I believe that, on the whole, the grain of advice which I have acquired out of your bushel of talk, is good, and is destined to bear good fruit. I’ll have my career in the world, that my father may learn ‘what’tis to love.’ My mind is made up. Come, Brian, to the shore!”

“Not till I tell your honour the story of the lovely young Princess Fither,” said the boatman, assuming a sentimental expression that was extremely comical.

“Brian, Prince of Storytellers, let it be brief,” said Edmund.

“It’s to his honour I’m telling this story, not to your honour, Mr. Airey,” said Brian. “You’ve a way of wrinkling up your eyes, I notice, when you speak that word ‘love,’ and if you don’t put your tongue in your cheek when anyone else comes across that word accidental-like, you put your tongue in your cheek when you’re alone, and when you think over what has been said.”

“Why, you’re a student of men as well as an observer of nature, O Prince,” laughed Edmund.

“No, I’ve only eyes and ears,” said Brian, in a deprecating tone.

“And a certain skill in narrative,” said Harold. “What about the beauteous Princess Fither? What dynasty did she belong to?”

“She belonged to Cashelderg,” replied Brian. “A few stones of the ruin may still be seen, if you’ve any imagination, on the brink of the cliff that’s called Carrigorm—you can just perceive its shape above the cove where his lordship’s boathouse is built.”

“Yes; I see the cliff—just where a castle might at one time have been built. And that’s the dynasty that she belonged to?” said Harold.

“The same, sir. And on our side you may still see—always supposing that you have the imagination—”

“Of course, nothing imaginary can be seen without the aid of the imagination.”

“You may see the ruins of what might have been Cashel-na-Mara, where the Macnamara held his court—Mac na Mara means Son of the Waves, you must know.”

“It’s a matter of notoriety,” said Edmund.

“The Macnamaras and the Casheldergs were the deadliest of enemies, and hardly a day passed for years—maybe centuries—without some one of the clan getting the better of the other. Maybe that was how the surplus population was kept down in these parts. Anyhow there was no talk, so far as I’ve heard, of congested districts in them days. Well, sir, it so happened that the Prince of the Macnamaras was a fine, handsome, and brave young fellow, and the Princess Fither of Cashelderg was the most beautiful of Irish women, and that’s saying a good deal. As luck would have it, the young people came together. Her boat was lost in a fog one night and drifting upon the sharp rocks beyond the headland. The cries of the poor girl were heard on both sides of the Lough—the blessed Lough where we’re now floating—but no one was brave enough to put out to the rescue of the Princess—no one, did I say? Who is it that makes a quick leap off the cliffs into the rolling waters beneath? He fights his way, strong swimmer that he is! through the surge, and, unseen by any eye by reason of the fog, he reaches the Princess’s boat. Her cries cease. And a keen arises along the cliffs of Carrigorm, for her friends think that she has been swallowed up in the cruel waves. The keen goes on, but it’s sudden changed into a shout of joy; for a noble young figure appears as if by magic on the cliff head, and places the precious burden of her lovely daughter in the arms of her weeping mother, and then vanishes.”

“And so the feud was healed, and if they didn’t live happy, we may,” said Edmund.

“That’s all you know about the spirit of an ancient Irish family quarrel,” said Brian pityingly. “No, sir. The brave deed of the young Prince only made the quarrel the bitterer. But the young people had fallen in love with each other, and they met in secret in that cave that you see there just above us—the Banshee’s Cave, it’s called to this day. The lovely Princess put off in her boat night after night, and climbed the cliff face—there was no path in them days—to where her lover was waiting for her in the cave. But at last some wretch unworthy of the name of a man got to learn the secret and told it to the Princess’s father. With half-a-dozen of the clan he lay in wait for the young Prince in the cave, and they stabbed him in twelve places with their daggers. And even while they were doing the murder, the song of the Princess was heard, telling her lover that she was coming. She climbed the face of the cliff and with a laugh ran into the trysting-place. She stumbled over the body of her lover. Her father stole out of the darkness of the cave and grasped her by the wrist. Then there rang out over the waters the cry, which still sounds on some nights from a cave—the cry of the girl when she learned the truth—the cry of the girl as, with a superhuman effort, she released herself from her father’s iron grasp, and sprang from the head of the cliff you see there above, into the depths of the waters where we’re now floating.”

There was a pause before Edmund remarked, “Your story of the Montague-Macnamaras and the Capulet-Casheldergs is a sad one, Brian. And you have heard the cry of the young Princess with your own ears, I dare say?”

“That I have, your honour. And it’s the story of the young Princess Fither and her lover that I tell to gentlemen that put their tongues in their cheeks when they’re alone, and thinking of the way the less knowing ones talk of love and the heart of a woman.”

Both Edmund and Harold began to think that perhaps the Irish boatman was a shrewder and a more careful listener than they had given him.