CHAPTER XXVI.—ON FRANKNESS AND FRIENDSHIP.

BRIAN took care that no moment was lost. In the course of a very few minutes Lord Fotheringay was seated on the windward thwarts of the boat, his hands grasping the gunwale to right and left, and his head bowed to mitigate in some measure the force of the shower of sea-water that flashed over the boat as her hows neatly clipped the crest off every wave.

Lord Fotheringay held on grimly. He hated the sea and all connected with it; though he hated the House of Lords to almost as great an extent, yet he had offered the promoter of the Channel Tunnel to attend in the House and lend the moral weight of his name to the support of the scheme. It was only the breadth and spontaneousness of Brian’s assurance that the breeze was no more than a draught, that had induced him to carry out his cherished idea of crossing the lough.

“Didn’t I tell your lardship that the boat could sail with the best of them?” said the man, as he hauled in the sheet a trifle, and brought the boat closer to the wind—a manouvre that did not tend to lessen the cascade that deluged his passenger.

Lord Fotheringay said not a word. He kept his head bowed to every flap of the waves beneath the bows. His attitude would have commended itself to any painter anxious to produce a type of Submission to the Will of Heaven.

He was aging quickly—so much Brian perceived, and dwelt upon—with excellent effect—in his subsequent narrative of the voyage to some of the servants at the Castle. The cosmetic that will withstand the constant application of sea-water has yet to be invented, so that in half an hour Lord Fotheringay would not have been recognized except by his valet. Brian had taken aboard a well-preserved gentleman with a rosy complexion and a moustache almost too black for nature. The person who disembarked at the opposite side of the lough was a stooped old man with lank streaky cheeks and a wisp of gray hair on each side of his upper lip.

“And it’s a fine sailor your lardship is entirely,” remarked the boatman, as he lent his tottering, dazed passenger a helping hand up the beach of pebbles. “And it’s raal enjoyment your lardship will be after having among the Castles of the ould quality, after your lardship’s sail.”

Not a word did Lord Fotheringay utter. He felt utterly broken down in spirit, and it was not until he had got behind a rock and had taken out a pocket-comb and a pocket-glass, and had by these auxiliaries, and the application of a grain or two of roseate powder without which he never ventured a mile from his base of supplies, repaired some of the ravages of his voyage, that he ventured to make his way to the picturesque white cottage, which Miss Avon had once pointed out to him as the temporary residence of her father and herself.

It was a five-roomed cottage that had been built and furnished by an enthusiastic English fisherman for his accommodation during his annual residence in Ireland. One, more glance did Lord Fotheringay give to his pocket-mirror before knocking at the door.

He would have had time to renew his youth, had he had his pigments handy, before the door was opened by an old woman with a shawl over her shoulders and a cap, that had possibly once been white, on her straggling hairs.

She made the stage courtesy of an old woman in front of Lord Fotheringay, and explained that she was a little hard of hearing—she was even obliging enough to give a circumstantial account of the accident that was responsible for her infirmity.

“Miss Avon?” said the old woman, when Lord Fotheringay had repeated his original request in a louder tone. “Miss Avon? no, she’s not here now—not even her father, who was a jewel of a gentleman, though a bit queer. God bless them both now that they have gone back to England, maybe never to return.”

“Back to England. When?” shouted Lord Fotheringay.

“Why, since early in the morning. The Blessed Virgin keep the young lady from harm, for she’s swater than honey, and the Saints preserve her father, for he was—”

Lord Fotheringay did not wait to hear the position of the historian defined by the old woman. He turned away from the door with such words as caused her infirmity to be a blessing in disguise.

When Brian greeted his return with a few well-chosen phrases bearing upon the architecture of the early Celtic nobles, Lord Fotheringay swore at him; but the boatman, who did a little in that way himself when under extreme provocation, only smiled as Lord Fotheringay took his seat in the boat once more, and prepared for the ordeal of his passage.

There was a good deal in Brian’s smile.

The wind had changed most unaccountably, he explained, so that it would, he feared, be absolutely necessary to tack out almost to the entrance of the lough in order to reach the mooring-place. For the next hour he became the exponent of every system of sailing known to modern navigators. After something over an hour of this manoeuvring, he had compassion upon his victim, and ran the boat before the wind—he might have done so at first if Lord Fotheringay had not shown such a poor knowledge of men as to swear at him—to the mooring-place.

“If it’s not making too free with your lardship, I’d offer your lardship a hand up the track,” said Brian. “It’s myself that has to go up to the Castle anyway, with a letter to her ladyship from Miss Avon. Didn’t the young lady give it to me in the morning before she started with his honour her father on the car?”

“And you knew all this time that Miss Avon and her father had left the neighbourhood?” said Lord Fotheringay, through his store teeth.

“Tubbe sure I did,” said Brian. “But Miss Avon didn’t live in one of the Castles of the ould quality that your lardship was so particular ready to explore.”

Lord Fotheringay felt that his knowledge of the world and the dwellers therein had its limits.

It was at Lord Fotheringay’s bedside that Harold said his farewell to his father the next day. Lord Fotheringay’s incipient rheumatism had been acutely developed by his drenching of the previous afternoon, and he thought it prudent to remain in bed.

“You’re going, are you?” snarled the Father.

“Yes, I’m going,” replied the Son. “Lord and Lady Innisfail leave to-morrow.”

“Have you asked Miss Craven to marry you?” inquired the Father.

“No,” said Harold.

“Why not—tell me that?”

“I haven’t made up my mind on the subject of marrying.”

“Then the sooner you make it up the better it will be for yourself. I’ve been watching you pretty closely for some days—I did not fail to notice a certain jaunty indifference to what was going on around you on the night of your return from that tomfoolery in the boats—seal-hunting, I think they called it. I saw the way you looked at Helen Craven that night. Contempt, or something akin to contempt, was in every glance. Now you know that she is to be at Ella’s in October. You have thus six weeks to make up your mind to marry her. If you make up your mind to marry anyone else, you may make up your mind to live upon the three hundred a year that your mother left you. Not a penny you will get from me. I’ve stinted myself hitherto to secure you your allowance. By heavens, I’ll not do so any longer. You will only receive your allowance from me for another year, and then only by signing a declaration at my lawyer’s to the effect that you are not married. I’ve heard of secret marriages before now, but you needn’t think of that little game. That’s all I’ve to say to you.”

“And it is enough,” said Harold. “Good-bye.” He left the room and then he left the Castle, Lady Innisfail only shaking her head and whispering, “You have disappointed me,” as he made his adieux.

The next day all the guests had departed—all, with the exception of Lord Fotheringay, who was still too ill to move. In the course of some days, however, the doctor thought that he might without risk—except, of course, such as was incidental to the conveyance itself—face a drive on an outside car, to the nearest railway-station.

Before leaving him, as she was compelled to do owing to her own engagements, Lady Innisfail had another interesting conversation—it almost amounted to a consultation—with her friend Mrs. Burgoyne on the subject of the Reform of the Hardened Reprobate. And the result of their further consideration of the subject from every standpoint, was to induce them to believe that, with such a powerful incentive to the Higher Life as an acute rheumatic attack, Lord Fotheringay’s reform might safely be counted on. It might, at any rate, be freely discussed during the winter. If, subsequently, he should become a backslider, it would not matter. His reform would have gone the way of all topics.

Helen Craven and Edmund Airey had also a consultation together on the subject upon which they had previously talked more than once.

Each of them showed such an anxiety to give prominence to the circumstance that they were actuated solely for Harold’s benefit in putting into practice the plan which one of them had suggested, it was pretty clear that they had an uneasy feeling that they required some justification for the course which they had thought well to pursue.

Yes, they agreed that Harold should be placed beyond the power of his father. Mr. Airey said he had never met a more contemptible person than Lord Fotheringay, and for the sake of making Harold independent of such a father, he would, he declared, do again all that he had done during the week of Miss Avon’s sojourn at the Castle.

It was, indeed, sad, Miss Craven felt, that Harold should have such a father.

“Perhaps it was because I felt this so strongly that I—I—well, I began to ask myself if there might not be some way of escape for him,” said she, in a pensive tone that was quite different from the tone of the frank communication that she had made to Mr. Airey some time before.

“I can quite understand that,” said Edmund. “Well, though Harold hasn’t shown himself to be wise—that is—”

“We both know what that means,” said she, anticipating his definition of wisdom so far as Harold was concerned.

“We do,” said Edmund. “If he has not shown himself to be wise in this way, he has not shown himself to be a fool in another way.”

“I suppose he has not,” said she, thoughtfully.

“Great heavens! you don’t mean to think that—”

“That he has told Beatrice Avon that he loves her? No, I don’t fancy that he has, still—”

“Still?”

“Well, I thought that, on their return from that awful seal-hunt, I saw a change in both of them. It seemed to me that—that—well, I don’t quite know how I should express it. Haven’t you seen a thirsty look on a man’s face?”

“A thirsty look? I believe I have seen it on a woman’s face.”

“It may be the same. Well, Harold Wynne’s face wore such an expression for days before the seal-hunt—I can’t say that I noticed it on Beatrice Avon’s face at the same time; but so soon as they returned from the boats on that evening, I noticed the change on Harold’s—perhaps it was only fancy.”

“I am inclined to believe that it was fancy. In my belief none of us was quite the same after that wild cruise. I was beside Miss Avon all the time that we were sailing out to the caves, and though she and Harold were in the boat together, yet Lord Innisfail and Durdan were in the same boat also. I can’t see how they could have had any time for an understanding while they were engaged in looking after the seals.”

Miss Craven shook her head doubtfully. It was clear that she was a believer in the making of opportunities in such matters as those which they were discussing.

“Anyhow, we have done all that we could reasonably be expected to do,” said she.

“And perhaps a trifle over,” said he. “If it were not that I like Harold so much—and you, too, my dear”—this seemed an afterthought—“I would not have done all that I have done. It is quite unlikely that Miss Avon and I shall be under the same roof again, but if we should be, I shall, you may be certain, find out from her whether or not an understanding exists between her and Harold. But what understanding could it be?”

Miss Craven smiled. Was this the man who had made such a reputation for cleverness, she asked herself—a man who placed a limit on the opportunities of lovers, and then inquired what possible understanding could be come to between a penniless man and a girl with “a gray eye or so.”

“What understanding?” said she. “Why, he may have unfolded to her a scheme for becoming Lord High Chancellor after two year’s hard work at the bar, with a garden-party now and again; or for being made a Bishop in the same time; and their understanding may be to wait for one another until the arrival of either event. Never mind. We have done our best for him.”

“For them,” said Edmund.

Yes, he tried to bring himself to believe that all that he had done was for the benefit of his friend Harold and for his friend Beatrice—to say nothing of his friend Helen as well. After a time he did almost force himself to believe that there was nothing that was not strictly honourable in the endeavour that he had made, at Helen’s suggestion, to induce Beatrice Avon to perceive the possibility of her obtaining a proposal of marriage from a rich and distinguished man, if she were only to decline to afford the impecunious son of a dissolute peer an opportunity of telling her that he loved her.

Now and again, however, he had an uneasy twinge, as the thought occurred to him that if some man, understanding the exact circumstances of the case, were to be as frank with him as Helen Craven had been (once), that man might perhaps be led to say that he had been making a fool of Beatrice for the sake of gratifying his own vanity.

It was just possible, and he knew it, that that frank friend—assuming that frankness and friendship may exist together—might be disposed to give prominence in this matter to the impulses of vanity, to the exclusion of the impulses of friendship, and a desire to set the crooked straight.

Even the fortnight which he spent in Norway with one of the heads of the Government party—a gentleman who would probably have shortly at his disposal an important Under-Secretaryship—failed quite to abate these little twinges that he had when he reflected upon the direction that might be taken by a frank friend, in considering the question of the responsibility involved in his attitude toward Miss Avon.

It was just a week after Lord Fotheringay had left Castle Innisfail that a stranger appeared in the neighbourhood—a strange gentleman with the darkest hair and the fiercest eyes ever seen, even in that region of dark hair and eyes. He inquired who were the guests at the Castle, and when he learned that the last of them—a distinguished peer named Lord Fotheringay—had gone some time, and that it was extremely unlikely that the Castle would be open for another ten months, his eyes became fiercer than ever. He made use of words in a strange tongue, which Brian declared, if not oaths, would do duty for oaths without anyone being the wiser.

The stranger departed as mysteriously as he had come.