Читать книгу Priscilla's Spies - George A. Birmingham - Страница 6

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Rosnacree House, the home of Sir Lucius Lentaigne and his ancestors since the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes brought the family to Ireland in search of religious freedom, stands high on a wooded slope above the southern shore of a great bay. From the dining-room windows, so carefully have vistas been cut through the trees, there is a broad prospect of sea and shore. For eight miles the bay stretches north to the range of hills which bound it. For five or six miles westward its waters are dotted over with islands. There are, the people say, three hundred and sixty-five of them, so that a fisher-man with a taste for exploration, could such a one be found, might land on a different island every day for a whole year. Long promontories, some of them to be reckoned with the three hundred and sixty-five islands when the tide is high, run far out from the mainland. Narrow channels, winding bewilderingly, eat their way for miles among the sea-saturate fields of the eastward lying plain. The people, dwelling with pardonable pride upon the peculiarities of their coast line, say that any one who walked from the north to the south side of the bay, keeping resolutely along the high-tide mark, would travel altogether 200 miles. He would reach after his way-faring a spot which, measured on the map, would be just eight miles distant from the point of his departure. Sir Lucius, who loved his home, while he sometimes affects to despise it, says that he believes this estimate of the extent of the sea’s meanderings to be approximately correct, but adds that he has never yet met any one with courage enough to attempt the walk. You do, in fact, come suddenly on salt-water channels in the midst of fields at long distances from the sea, and find cockles on stretches of mud where you might expect frog spawn or black slugs. Therefore, it is quite likely that the high-tide line would really, if it were stretched out straight, reach right across Ireland and far out into St. George’s Channel.

In Rosnacree House, along with Sir Lucius, lives Juliet Lentaigne, his maiden sister, elderly, intellectual, dominating, the competent mistress of a sufficient staff of servants. She lived there in her girlhood. She returned to live there after the death of Lady Lentaigne. Priscilla, Sir Lucius’ only child, comes to Rosnacree House for such holidays as are granted by a famous Dublin school. She was sent to the school at the age of eleven because she rebelled against her aunt. Having reached the age of fifteen she rebels more effectively, whenever the coming of holidays affords opportunity.

Being a young woman of energy, determination and skill in rebellion, she made an assault upon her Aunt Juliet’s authority on the very first morning of her summer holidays. She began at breakfast time.

“Father,” she said, “I may go to meet Cousin Frank at the train, mayn’t I?”

“Certainly,” said Sir Lucius.

It was right that some one should meet Frank Mannix on his arrival. Sir Lucius did not want to do so himself. A youth of seventeen is a troublesome guest, difficult to deal with. He is neither man enough to associate on quite equal terms with grown men nor boy enough to be turned loose to play according to his own devices. Sir Lucius did not look forward to the task of entertaining his nephew. He was pleased that Priscilla should take some part, even a small part, of the business off his hands.

Priscilla glanced triumphantly at her aunt.

“There is no possible objection,” said Miss Lentaigne, “to your meeting your cousin at the train, but if you are to do so you cannot spend the morning in your boat.”

Priscilla thought she could.

“I’m only going as far as Delginish to bathe,” she said. “I’ll be back in lots of time.”

“Be sure you are,” said Sir Lucius.

“After being out in the boat,” said Miss Lentaigne, “you will be both dirty and untidy, certainly not fit to meet your cousin at the train.”

Priscilla, who had a good deal of experience of boats, knew that her aunt’s fears were well founded. But she had not yet reached the age at which a girl thinks it desirable to be clean, tidy and well dressed when she goes to meet a strange cousin. She treated Miss Lentaigne’s opposition as beneath contempt.

“I must bathe,” she said, “It’s the first day of the hols.”

“Holidays,” said Miss Lentaigne.

“Sylvia Courtney,” said Priscilla, “who won the prize for English literature at school calls them ‘hols.’ ”

“That,” said Sir Lucius, “settles it. The authority of any one who wins a first prize in English literature——”

“And besides,” said Priscilla, “she said it, hols that is, to Miss Pettigrew when she was asking when they began. She didn’t object.”

Miss Lentaigne poured out her second cup of tea in silence. Against Miss Pettigrew’s tacit approval of the word there was no arguing. Miss Pettigrew, the head of a great educational establishment, does more than win, she awards prizes in English literature.

Priscilla, released from the tedium of the breakfast table, sped down the long avenue on her bicycle. Across the handle bars was tied a bundle, her towel and scarlet bathing dress. From the back of the saddle, wobbling perilously, hung a much larger bundle, a new lug sail, the fruit of hours and hours of toilsome needlework on the wet days of the Christmas “hols.”

From the gate at the end of the avenue the road runs straight and steep into the village. At the lower end of the village is the harbour, with its long, dilapidated quay. This is the centre of the village life. Here are, occasionally, small coasting steamers laden with coal or flour, and heavy brigantines or topsail schooners which have felt their way from distant English ports round a wildly inhospitable stretch of coast. Here, almost always, are the bluff-bowed hookers from the outer islands, seeking cargoes of flour and yellow Indian meal, bringing in exchange fish, dried or fresh, and sometimes turf for winter fuel. Here are smaller boats from nearer islands which have come in on the morning tide carrying men and women bent on marketing, which will spread brown sails in the evening and bear their passengers home again. Here at her red buoy lies Sir Lucius’ smartly varnished pleasure boat, the Tortoise, reckoned “giddy” in spite of her name by staid, cautious island folk; but able, with her centre board and high peaked gunter lug to sail round and round any other boat in the bay. Here, brilliantly green, lies Priscilla’s boat, the Blue Wanderer, a name appropriate two years ago when she was blue, less appropriate last year, when Peter Walsh made a mistake in buying paint, and grieved Priscilla greatly by turning out the Blue Wanderer a sober grey. This year, though the name still sticks to her, it is less suitable still, for Priscilla, buying the paint herself at Easter time, ordained that the Blue Wanderer should be green.

Above the quay, at the far side of the fair green, stands Brannigan’s shop, a convenient and catholic establishment. To the left of the door as you enter, is the shop of a publican, equipped with a bar and a sheltering partition for modest drinkers. To the right, if you turn that way, is a counter at which you can buy anything, from galvanised iron rowlocks to biscuits and jam. On the low window sills of both windows sit rows of men who for the most part earn an honest living by watching the tide go in and out and by making comments on the boats which approach or leave the quay. It is difficult to find out who pays them for doing these things, but it is plain that some one does, for they are not men of funded property, and yet they live, live comfortably, drink, smoke, eat occasionally and are sufficiently clothed. Of only one among them can it be said with certainty that he is in receipt of regular pay from anybody. Peter Walsh earns five shillings a week by watching over the Tortoise and the Blue Wanderer.

Priscilla leaped off her bicycle at the door of Bran-nigan’s shop. The men on the window sills took no notice of her. They were absorbed in watching the operation of warping round the head of a small steamer which lay far down the quay. The captain had run out a hawser and made the end of it fast to a buoy at the far side of the fair-way. A donkey-engine on the steamer’s deck was clanking vigorously, hauling in the hawser, swinging the head of the steamer round, a slow but deeply interesting manoeuvre. “Peter Walsh,” said Priscilla, “is that you?” “It is, Miss,” said Peter, “and it’s proud and pleased I am to see you home again.” “Is the Blue Wanderer ready for me?” “She is, Miss. The minute you like to step into her she’s there for you. There’s a new pair of rowlocks and I’ve a nice bit of rope for a halyard for the little lug. Is it it you have tied on the bicycle?”

“It is,” said Priscilla, “and it’s a good sail, half as big again as the old one.”

“I’d be glad now,” said Peter, “if you’d make that same halyard fast to the cleat on the windward side any time you might be using the sail.”

“Do you think I’m a fool, Peter?”

“I do not, Miss; but sure you know as well as I do that the mast that’s in her isn’t over and above strong, and I wouldn’t like anything would happen.”

“There’s no wind any way.”

“There is not; but I wouldn’t say but there might be at the turn of the tide.”

“Haul her up to the slip,” said Priscilla. “I’ll be back again long before the tide turns.”

The steamer swung slowly round. The rattle of her donkey-engine was plainly audible. The warp made fast to the buoy dipped into the water, strained taut dripping, and then dipped again. Suddenly the captain on the bridge shouted. The engine stopped abruptly. The warp sagged deep into the water. A small boat with one man in her appeared close under the steamer’s bows, went foul of the warp and lay heavily listed while one of her oars fell into the water and drifted away.

“That’s a nice sort of fool to be out in a boat by himself,” said Priscilla.

“He was damn near having to swim for it,” said Peter, as the boat righted herself and slipped over the warp.

“Who is he?”

“I don’t rightly know who he is,” said Peter, “but he paid four pounds for the use of Flanagan’s old boat for a fortnight, so I’m thinking he has very little sense.”

“He has none,” said Priscilla. “Look at him now.”

The man, deprived of one of his oars, was pushing his way along the steamer’s side towards the quay. The captain was swearing heartily at him from the bridge.

“Anyhow,” said Priscilla, “I haven’t time to stay here and see him drown, though of course it would be interesting. I’m going to bathe and I have to get back again in time to meet the train.”

Peter Walsh laid the Blue Wanderer alongside the slip. He laced the new lug to its yard, made fast the tack and hoisted it, gazing critically at it as it rose. Then he stepped out of the boat. Priscilla flung her bathing-dress and towel on board and took her seat in the stern.

“You’ll find the tiller under the floor board, Miss. With the little air of wind there is from the south you’ll slip down to Delginish easy enough if it’s there you’re thinking of going.”

“Shove her head round now, Peter, and give her a push off. I’ll get way on her when I’m out a bit from the slip.”

The sail flapped, bellied, flapped again, finally swung over to starboard. Priscilla settled herself in the stern with the sheet in her hand.

“The tide’s under you, Miss,” said Peter Walsh, “You’ll slip out easy enough.”

The Blue Wanderer, urged by the faint southerly breeze, slid along. The water was scarcely rippled by the wind but the tide ran strongly. One buoy after another was passed. A large black boat lay alongside the quay, loaded heavily with gravel. The owner leaned over his gunwale and greeted Priscilla. She replied with friendly familiarity.

“How are you, Kinsella? How’s Jimmy and the baby? I expect the baby’s grown a lot.”

“You’re looking fine yourself, Miss,” said Joseph Antony Kinsella. “The baby and the rest of them is doing grand, thanks be to God.”

The Blue Wanderer slipped past. She reached one and then another of the perches which mark the channel into the harbour. The breeze freshened slightly. Little wavelets formed under the Blue Wandere’s bow and curled outwards from her sides, spreading slowly and then fading away in her wake. Priscilla drew a biscuit from her pocket and munched it contentedly.

Right ahead of her lay the little island of Delginish with a sharply shelving gravel shore. On the northern side of it stood two warning red perches. There were rocks inside them, rocks which were covered at full tide and half tide, but pushed up their brown sea-weedy backs when the tide was low. Priscilla put down her tiller, hauled on her sheet and slipped in through a narrow passage. She rounded the eastern corner of the island and ran her boat ashore in a little bay. She lowered the sail, slipped off her shoes and stockings and pushed the boat out. A few yards from the shore, she dropped her anchor and waited till the boat swung shorewards again to the length of her anchor rope. Then, with her bathing-dress in her hand she waded to the land. The tide was falling. Priscilla had been caught more than once by an ebbing tide with a boat left high and dry. It was not an easy matter to push the Blue Wanderer down a stretch of stony beach. Precautions had to be taken to keep her afloat.

A few minutes later, a brilliant scarlet figure, she was wading out again, knee deep, waist deep. Then with a joyful plunge she swam forward through the sun-warmed water. She came abreast of the corner of her bay, the eastern point of Delginish, turned on her back and splashed deliciously, sending columns of glistening foam high into the air. Standing upright with outspread hands and head thrown back, she trod water, gazing straight up into the sky. She lay motionless on her back, totally immersed save for eyes, nostrils and mouth. A noise of oars roused her. She rolled over, swam a stroke or two, and saw Flanagan’s old boat come swiftly down the channel. The stranger, who had courted disaster by fouling the steamer’s warp, tugged unskilfully at his oars. He headed for the island. Priscilla shouted to him.

“Keep out,” she said. “You’re going straight for the rocks.”

The young man in the boat turned round and stared at her.

“Pull your right oar,” said Priscilla.

The young man pulled both oars hard, missed the water with his right and fell backwards to the bottom of the boat. His two feet stuck up ridiculously. Priscilla laughed. The boat, swept forward by the tide, grounded softly on the sea wrack which covered the rocks.

“There you are, now,” said Priscilla. “Why didn’t you do what I told you?”

The young man struggled to his feet, seized an oar and began to push violently.

“That’s no use,” said Priscilla, swimming close under the rocks. “You’ll have to hop out or you’ll be stuck there till the tide rises, and that won’t be till swell on in the afternoon.”

The young man eyed the water doubtfully. Then he spoke for the first time.

“Is it very deep?” he said.

“Where you are,” said Priscilla, “it’s quite shallow, but if you step over the edge of the rock there’s six foot of water and more.”

The young man sat down and began to unlace his boots.

“If you wait to do that,” said Priscilla, “you’ll be high and dry altogether. Never mind your boots. Hop out and shove.”

He stepped cautiously over the side of his boat, seized his gunwale and shoved. The boat slipped off the rock, stern first. The young man staggered, loosed his hold on her and then stood gaping helplessly, ankle deep in water perched on a very slippery rock, while the boat slipped away from him, stemming the tide as long as the impulse of his push lasted.

“What shall I do now?” he asked.

“Stand where you are,” said Priscilla. “She’ll drift down to you again. I’ll give her a shove so that she’ll come right up to you.”

She swam after the boat and laid a hand on her gunwale. Then, kicking and splashing, guided her back to the young man on the rock. He climbed on board.

“Where do you suppose you’re going?” asked Priscilla.

“To an island,” said the young man.

“If one island is the same to you as another,” said Priscilla, “and you haven’t any particular one in your mind, I’d advise you to stop at this one.”

“But I have.”

“Which one?”

The young man looked at her suspiciously and then took his oars.

“I hope your island is quite near,” said Priscilla, “For if it isn’t you’re not likely to get there. Were you ever in a boat before?”

The young man pulled a few strokes and got his boat into the channel beyond the red perches.

“I think,” said Priscilla, “that you might say ‘thank you,’ Only for me you’d have been left stranded on that rock till the tide rose again and floated you off somewhere between four and five o’clock this afternoon.”

“Thank you,” said the young man, “thank you very much indeed.”

“But where are you going?”

The question seemed to frighten him. He began to row with desperate energy. In a few minutes he was far down the channel. Priscilla watched him. Then she swam to her bay, pushed the Blue Wanderer a little further from the shore and landed.

The island of Delginish is a pleasant spot on a warm day. Above its gravel beach rises a slope of coarse short grass, woven through with wild thyme and yellow crowtoe. Sea-pinks cluster on the fringe of grass and delicate groups of fairy-flax are bright-blue in stony places. Red centaury and yellow bed-straw and white bladder campion flourish. Tiny wild roses, clinging to the ground, fleck the green with spots of vivid white. The sun reaches every yard of the shadeless surface of the island. Here and there grey rocks peep up, climbed over, mellowed by olive green stonecrops. Priscilla, glowing from her bath, lay full stretch among the flowers, drawing deep breaths of scented air and gazing at the sky. But nothing was further from her mind than soulful sentimentalising over the beauties of nature. She was puzzling about the young man who had left her, endeavoring to arrive at some theory of who he was and what he could be doing in Rosnacree. After awhile she turned over on her side, fumbled in her pocket and drew out two more biscuits in crumbly fragments. She munched them contentedly.

At eleven o’clock she raised herself slowly on one elbow and looked round. The tide had nearly reached its lowest, and the Blue Wanderer lay half in, half out of the water; her stern perched high, her bow with the useless anchor rope depending from it, dipped deep. Priscilla realised that she had no time to lose. She put her shoulder to the stern of the boat and pushed, springing on board as the boat floated. The Blue Wanderer, even with her new lug sail, does not work well to windward. It is possible by very careful steering to make a little by tacking if the breeze is good and the tide is running favourably. With a light wind and in the slack water of the ebb the most that can be done is not to go to leeward. Priscilla, with the necessity of meeting a train present in her mind, unstepped the mast and took her oars. In twenty minutes she was alongside the slip where Peter Walsh stood waiting for her.

“I was talking to Joseph Anthony Kinsella,” he said, “since you were out—him that lives beyond in Inishbawn.”

“Were you?” said Priscilla. “I saw him in his boat as I was going out, with a big load of gravel on board. He says the baby’s all right.”

“It may be,” said Peter. “Any way, he said nothing to the contrary when he was with me. It wasn’t the baby we were speaking of. Will you mind yourself now, Miss. That slip is terribly slippery at low tide on account of the green weed that does be growing on it. Take care but you might fall.”

The warning came a little too late. Priscilla stepped from the boat and immediately fell forward on her hands and knees. When she rose there was a large, damp green patch on the front of her dress.

“Will you look at that, now?” said Peter. “Didn’t I tell you to go easy? Are you hurted, Miss?”

“If it wasn’t the new baby you were talking about,” said Priscilla, “what was it?”

“Joseph Anthony Kinsella is just after telling me that he’s seen that young fellow that has Flanagan’s old boat out beyond among the islands.”

“Which island? I asked him, but he wouldn’t tell me.”

“Joseph Anthony didn’t rightly know, but it’s his belief that he’s on Ilaunglos, or Ardilaun, or one of them to the north of Carrowbee.”

“He can’t be living there, then. There isn’t a house on any of those islands.”

“Joseph Anthony was saying that he might maybe have a tent with him and be sleeping in it the same as the tinkers would. I’ve heard of the like.”

“Did he see the tent?”

“He did not; but there could be a tent without his seeing it. What I seen myself was the things the young fellow bought in Brannigan’s and put into Flanagan’s old boat. He had a can of paraffin oil with a cork drove into the neck of it, and he’d two loaves of bread done up in brown paper, and he’d a couple of tins that might be meat of one kind or another, and along with them he had a pound of tea and maybe two of sugar. I misdoubted when I saw him carrying them down the quay, but it was some kind of a picnic he was out for. Them kind of fellows has very little sense.”

“I expect,” said Priscilla, “that he’ll be drowned before long, and then they’ll find some papers on his body that’ll tell us who he is. I must be off now, Peter, or I’ll be late for the train.”

“You’re time enough, Miss. Sure them trains is never punctual.”

“They are not,” said Priscilla, “except on the days when you happen to be late for them. Then they make a point of being up to the minute just to score off you.”