Priscilla's Spies Part 41

"It would not suit you a bit," said Priscilla.

"What made her want to go there?" said Frank.

The bare southern hill of Inishbawn seemed to him a singularly unattractive camping ground. It was a windswept, desolate spot.

"She took a notion into her head," said Kinsella, "that his Reverence might catch the fever if he stopped on this end of the island."

"Good gracious!" said Frank, "how can any one catch fever here?"

"On account of Mrs. Kinsella and the children having come out all over large yellow spots," said Priscilla. "I hope that will be a lesson to you, Joseph Antony."

"What I said was for the best," said Kinsella.

"How was I to know she'd be here at the latter end?"

"You couldn't know, of course. n.o.body ever can; which is one of the reasons why it's just as well to tell the truth at the start whenever possible. If you make things up you generally forget afterwards what they are, and then there's trouble. Besides the things you make up very often turn against you in ways you'd never expect. It was just the same with a mouse-trap that Sylvia Courtney once bought, when she thought there was a mouse in our room, though there wasn't really and it wouldn't have done her any harm if there had been. No matter how careful she was about tying the string down it used to bound up again and nip her fingers. But Sylvia Courtney never was any good at things like mouse-traps. What she likes is English Literature."

"How did you stop her going to the far end of the island?" said Frank, "if she thought there was an infectious fever for Mr. Pennefather to catch??"

"I dare say you mentioned the wild heifer," said Priscilla.

"I did not then. What I said was rats."

"Rather mean of you that," said Priscilla. "The rats were Peter Walsh's originally. You shouldn't have taken them. That's what's called?What is it called, Cousin Frank? Something to do with plagues, I know. Is there such a word as plague-ism? Anyhow it's what poets do when they lift other poets' rhymes and it's considered mean."

"It was me told Peter Walsh about the rats," said Kinsella, repelling an unjust accusation. "The way they came swimming in on the tide would surprise you, and the gulls picking the eyes out of the biggest of them as they came swimming along. But that wouldn't stop them."

"I'll just run up and have a word with Barnabas," said Priscilla. "It'll be as well for him to know that father and Lord Torrington are out after him today in the _Tortoise_."

"Do you tell me that?" said Kinsella.

"It'll be all right," said Priscilla. "They'll never get here. But of course Barnabas may want to make his will in case of accidents. Just you help the young gentleman ash.o.r.e, Kinsella. He can't get along very well by himself on account of the way Lord Torrington treated him. Then you'd better haul the boat up a bit. It's rather beginning to blow and I see the wind really has got round to the southeast I hardly thought it would, but it has. Winds so seldom do what everybody says they're going to. I'm sure you've noticed that."

She walked up the rough stony beach. A fierce gust, spray-laden and eloquent with promise of rain, swept past her.

"If I'd known," said Kinsella sulkily, "that half the country would be out after them ones, I'd have drownded them in the sea and their tents along with them before I let them set foot on Inishbawn."

"Lord Torrington won't do you any harm," said Frank. "He's only trying to get back his daughter."

"I don't know," said Kinsella, still in a very bad temper, "what anybody'd want with the likes of that girl. You'd think a man would be glad to get rid of her and thankful to anybody that was fool enough to take her off his hands. She's no sense. Miss Priscilla has little enough, but she's young and it'll maybe come to her later. But that other one?The Lord saves us."

He helped Frank on sh.o.r.e as he talked. Then he called Jimmy from the cottage. Between them they hauled the _Blue Wanderer_ above high-tide mark.

"There she'll stay," said Kinsella vindictively, "for the next twenty-four hours anyway. Do you feel that now?"

Frank felt a sudden gust of wind and a heavy splash of rain. The sky looked singularly dark and heavy over the southeastern sh.o.r.e of the bay.

Ragged scuds of clouds, low flying, were tearing across overhead.

The sea was almost black and very angry; short waves were getting up, curling rapidly over and breaking in yellow foam. With the aid of Jimmy Kinsella's arm Frank climbed the beach, pa.s.sed the Kinsella's cottage and made his way to the place where the two tents were pitched.

Priscilla was sitting on a camp stool at the entrance of Lady Isabel's tent. The Reverend Barnabas Pennefather, looking cold and miserable, was crouching at her feet in a waterproof coat. Lady Isabel was going round the tents with a hammer in her hand driving the pegs deeper into the ground.

"I'm just explaining to Barnabas," said Priscilla, "that he's pretty safe here so far as Lord Torrington is concerned. He doesn't seem as pleased as I should have expected."

"It's blowing very hard," said Mr. Pennefather, "and it's beginning to rain. I'm sure our tents will come down and we shall get very wet Won't you sit down, Mr.?Mr???"

"Mannix," said Priscilla. "I thought you were introduced yesterday.

Hullo! What's that?"

She was gazing across the sea when she spoke. She rose from her camp stool and pointed eastwards with her finger. A small triangular patch of white was visible far off between Inishrua and Knockilaun. Frank and Mr.

Pennefather stared at it eagerly.

"It looks to me," said Priscilla, "very like the _Tortoise_. There isn't another boat in the bay with a sail that peaks up like that. If I'm right, Barnabas?But I can't believe that Peter Walsh and Patsy the smith and all the rest of them would have been such fools as to let them start."

A rain squall blotted the sail from view.

"Perhaps they couldn't help it," said Frank. "Perhaps Uncle Lucius??"

"Lady Isabel," shouted Priscilla, "come here at once. She won't come,"

she said to Frank, "if she can possibly help it, because she's furiously angry with me for asking her why on earth she married Barnabas. Rather a natural question, I thought Barnabas, go and get her."

Mr. Pennefather, who seemed cowed into a state of profound submissiveness, huddled his waterproof round him and went to Lady Isabel. She was hammering an extra peg through the loop of one of the guy lines of the further tent.

"Why do you suppose she did it?" said Priscilla. "I couldn't find that out. It's very hard to imagine why anybody marries anybody else. I often sit and wonder for hours. But it's totally impossible in this case??"

"Perhaps he preaches very well," said Frank. "That might have attracted her."

"Couldn't possibly," said Priscilla. "No girl?at the same time, of course, she has, which shows there must have been some reason. I say, Cousin Frank, she must be absolutely mad with me. She's dragged Barnabas into the other tent. Rather a poor lookout for me, considering that I shall have to sleep with her. There's the _Tortoise_ again. It is the _Tortoise_. There's no mistake about it this time."

The rain squall had blown over. The _Tortoise_, now plainly visible, was tearing across the foam-flecked stretch of water between Inishrua and Knockilaun. Priscilla ran to the other tent.

"Lady Isabel," she said, "if you want to see your father drowned you'd better come out."

Lady Isabel scrambled to the door of her tent and stood, her hair and clothes blown violently, gazing wildly round her. Mr. Pennefather, looking abjectly miserable, crawled after her and remained on his hands and knees at her side.

"Where's father?" she said.

"In that boat," said Priscilla, "but he won't be drowned. I only said he would so as to get you out of your tent."

The _Tortoise_ stooped forwards and swept along, the water foaming at her bow and leaping angrily at her weather quarter. A fiercer squall than usual rushed at her from the western corner of Inishrua as she cleared the island. She swerved to windward, her boom stretched far out to the starboard side dipped suddenly and dragged through the water.

She paid off again before the wind in obedience to a strong pull on the tiller. Priscilla grew excited in watching the progress of the boat.

"Barnabas," she said, "give me your gla.s.ses, quick. I know you have a pair, for I saw you watching us through them that day on Inishark."

Mr. Pennefather had the gla.s.ses slung across his shoulder in the leather case. He handed them to Priscilla. The squall increased in violence. The whole sea grew white with foam. A sudden drift of fine spray, blown off the face of the water, swept over Inishbawn, stinging and soaking the watchers at the tents.

"Lord Torrington is on board all right," said Priscilla, "but it's not father who's steering. It's Peter Walsh."

The _Tortoise_ flew forward, dipping her bow so that once or twice the water lipped over it. She looked pitiful, like a frightened creature from whose swift flight all joy had departed. She reached the narrow pa.s.sage between Ardilaun and Inishlean. Before her lay the broad water of Inishbawn Roads, lashed into white fury. But the worst of the squall was over. The showers of spray ceased for a moment. It was still blowing strongly, but the fierceness had gone out of the wind.

"She's all right now," said Priscilla, "and anyway there are two life buoys on board."