CHAPTER XII. ON THE MYSTERY OF MAN.

HE meant to ask her at night. He had felt convinced, on returning after his adventure in his dinner dress, that nothing could induce him to think of Miss Craven as a possible wife. While sitting at breakfast, he had felt even more confident on this point; and yet now his mind was made up to ask her to marry him.

It must be admitted that his mood was a singular one, especially as, with his mind full of his resolution to ask Miss Craven to marry him, he was wandering around the rugged coastway, wondering by what means he could bring himself by the side of the girl with whom he had crossed the lough on the previous night.

His mood will be intelligible to such persons as have had friends who occasionally have found it necessary to their well-being to become teetotallers. It is well known that the fascination of the prospect of teetotalism is so great for such persons that the very thought of it compels them to rush off in the opposite direction. They indulge in an outburst of imbibing that makes even their best friends stand aghast, and then they ‘take the pledge’ with the cheerfulness of a child.

Harold Wynne felt inclined to allow his feelings an outburst, previous to entering upon a condition in which he meant his feelings to be kept in subjection.

To engage himself to marry Miss Craven was, he believed, equivalent to taking the pledge of the teetotaller so far as his feelings were concerned.

Meantime, however, he remained unpledged and with an unbounded sense of freedom.

And this was why he laughed loud and long when he saw in the course of his stroll around the cliffs, a small oar jammed in a crevice of the rocks a hundred feet below where he was walking.

He laughed again when he had gone—not so cautiously as he might have done—down to the crevice and released the oar.

It was, he knew, the one that had gone adrift from the boat the previous night.

He climbed the cliff to the Banshee’s Cave and deposited the piece of timber in the recesses of that place. Then he lay down on the coarse herbage at the summit of the cliff until it was time to drift to the Castle for lunch. Life at the Castle involved a good deal of drifting. The guests drifted out in many directions after breakfast and occasionally drifted back to lunch, after which they drifted about until the dinner hour.

While taking lunch he was in such good spirits as made Lady Innisfail almost hopeless of him.

Edmund Airey had told her the previous night that Harold intended asking Miss Craven to marry him. Now, however, perceiving how excellent were his spirits, she looked reproachfully across the table at Edmund.

She was mutely asking him—and he knew it—how it was possible to reconcile Harold’s good spirits with his resolution to ask Helen Craven to marry him? She knew—and so did Edmund—that high spirits and the Resolution are rarely found in association.

An hour after lunch the girl with the Brow entreated Harold’s critical opinion on the subject of a gesture in the delivery of a certain poem, and the discussion of the whole question occupied another hour. The afternoon was thus pretty far advanced before he found himself seated alone in the boat which had been at the disposal of himself and Edmund during the two previous afternoons. The oar that he had picked up was lying at his feet along the timbers of the boat.

The sun was within an hour of setting when Brian appeared at the Castle bearing a letter for Lady Innisfail. It had been entrusted to him for delivery to her ladyship by Mr. Wynne, he said. Where was Mr. Wynne? That Brian would not take upon him to say; only he was at the opposite side of the lough. Maybe he was with Father Conn, who was the best of good company, or it wasn’t a bit unlikely that it was the District Inspector of the Constabulary he was with. Anyhow it was sure that the gentleman had took a great fancy to the queer places along the coast, for hadn’t he been to the thrubble to give a look in at the Banshee’s Cave, the previous night, just because he was sthruck with admiration of the story of the Princess that he, Brian, had told him and Mr. Airey in the boat?

The letter that Lady Innisfail received and glanced at while drinking tea on one of the garden seats outside the Castle, begged her ladyship to pardon the writer’s not appearing at dinner that night, the fact being that he had unexpectedly found an old friend who had taken possession of him.

“It was very nice of him to write, wasn’t it, my dear?” Lady Innisfail remarked to her friend Miss Craven, who was filtering a novel by a popular French author for the benefit of Lady Innisfail. “It was very nice of him to write. Of course that about the friend is rubbish. The charm of this neighbourhood is that no old friend ever turns up.”

“You don’t think that—that—perhaps—” suggested Miss Craven with the infinite delicacy of one who has been employed in the filtration of Paul Bourget.

“Not at all—not at all,” said Lady Innisfail, shaking her head. “If it was his father it would be quite another matter.”

“Oh!”

“Lord Fotheringay is too great a responsibility even for me, and I don’t as a rule shirk such things,” said Lady Innisfail. “But Harold is—well, I’ll let you into a secret, though it is against myself: he has never made love even to me.”

“That is inexcusable,” remarked Miss Craven, with a little movement of the eyebrows. She did not altogether appreciate Lady Innisfail’s systems. She had not a sufficient knowledge of dynamics and the transference of energy to be able to understand the beauty of the “switch” principle. “But if he is not with a friend—or—or—the other—”

“The enemy—our enemy?”

“Where can he be—where can he have been?”

“Heaven knows! There are some things that are too wonderful for me. I fancied long ago that I knew Man. My dear Helen, I was a fool. Man is a mystery. What could that boy mean by going to the Banshee’s Cave last night, when he might have been dancing with me—or you?”

“Romance?”

“Romance and rubbish mean the same thing to such men as Harold Wynne, Helen—you should know so much,” said Lady Innisfail. “That is, of course, romance in the abstract. The flutter of a human white frock would produce more impression on a man than a whole army of Banshees.”

“And yet the boatman said that Mr. Wynne had spent some time last night at the Cave,” said Miss Craven. “Was there a white dress in the question, do you fancy?”

Lady Innisfail turned her large and luminous eyes upon her companion. So she was accustomed to turn those orbs upon such young men as declared that they adored her. The movement was supposed to be indicative of infinite surprise, with abundant sympathy, and a trace of pity.

Helen Craven met the luminous gaze with a smile, that broadened as she murmured, “Dearest Lilian, we are quite alone. It is extremely unlikely that your expression can be noticed by any of the men. It is practically wasted.”

“It is the natural and reasonable expression of the surprise I feel at the wisdom of the—the—”

“Serpent?”

“Not quite. Let us say, the young matron, lurking beneath the harmlessness of the—the—let us say the ingenue. A white dress! Pray go on with ‘Un Cour de Femme’.”

Miss Craven picked up the novel which had been on the ground, flattened out in a position of oriental prostration and humility before the wisdom of the women.