CHAPTER XVI
To reach the corner of the shrubbery it was necessary to cross the lawn. Lord Torrington and Sir Lucius, having lit fresh cigars, were pacing up and down in earnest conversation. Frank hobbled across their path and received a kindly greeting from his uncle.
“Well, Frank, out for a breath of fresh air before turning in? Sorry you can’t join our march. Lord Torrington is just talking about your father.”
“Thanks, Uncle Lucius,” said Frank, “but I can’t walk. There’s a hammock chair in the corner. I’ll sit there for a while and smoke another cigarette.”
Sir Lucius and Lord Torrington walked briskly, turning each time they reached the edge of the grass and walking briskly back again. Frank realised that Priscilla, if she was to keep her appointment, must cross their track. He watched anxiously for her appearance. The stable clock struck ten. In the shadow of the verandah in front of the dining-room window Frank fancied he saw a moving figure. Sir Lucius and Lord Torrington crossed the lawn again. Half-way across they were exactly opposite the dining-room window, A few steps further on and the direct line between the window and a corner of the shrubbery lay behind them. Priscilla seized the most favourable moment for her passage. Just as the two men reached the point at which their backs were turned to the line of her crossing she darted forward. Half-way across she seemed to trip, hesitated for a moment and then ran on. Before the walkers reached their place of turning she was safe in a laurel bush beside Frank’s chair.
“My shoe,” she whispered. “It came off slap in the middle of the lawn. I always knew those were perfectly beastly shoes. It was Sylvia Courtney made me buy them, though I told her at the time they’d never stick on, and what good are shoes if they don’t. Now they are sure to see it; though perhaps they won’t. If they don’t I can make another dart and get it.”
To avoid all risk of the loss of the second shoe Priscilla took it off before she started. Lord Torrington and Sir Lucius crossed the lawn again. It seemed as if one or other of them must tread on the shoe which lay on their path; but they passed it by. Priscilla seized her chance, rushed to the middle of the lawn and returned again successfully. Then she and Frank retreated, for the sake of greater security, into the middle of the shrubbery.
“Everything’s all right,” said Priscilla. “I’ve got lots and lots of food stored away. I simply looted the dishes as they were brought out of the dining-room. Fried fish, a whole roast duck, three herrings’ roes on toast, half a caramel pudding—I squeezed it into an old jam pot—and several other things. We can start at any hour we like tomorrow and it won’t in the least matter whether Brannigan’s is open or not. What do you say to 6 a.m.?”
“I’m not going on the bay tomorrow.”
“You must. Why not?”
“Because I want to score off that old beast who sprained my ankle.”
The prefect in Frank had entirely disappeared. Two days of close companionship with Priscilla erased the marks made on his character by four long years of training at Haileybury. His respect for constituted authorities had vanished. The fact that Lord Torrington was Secretary of State for War did not weigh on him for an instant. He was, as indeed boys ought to be at seventeen years of age, a primitive barbarian. He was filled with a desire for revenge on the man who had insulted and injured him.
“You don’t know,” he said, “what Lord Torrington is here for.”
“Oh, yes, I do,” said Priscilla. “I’m not quite an ass. I was listening to Aunt Juliet and Lady Torrington shooting barbed arrows at each other after dinner. Aunt Juliet got rather the worst of it, I must say. Lady Torrington is one of those people whose garments smell of myrrh, aloes and cassia, and yet whose words are very swords; you know the sort I mean.”
“Lord Torrington is chasing his daughter,” said Frank, “who has run away from home. I vote we find her first and then help her to hide.”
“Of course. That’s what we’re going to do. That’s why we’re going off in the boat tomorrow.”
“But she’s not on the bay,” said Frank. “Miss Rutherford is too fat to be her. He said so.”
“Who’s talking about Miss Rutherford? She’s simply sponge-hunting. Nobody but a fool would think she was Miss Torrington.”
“Lady Isabel,” said Frank. “He’s a marquis.”
“Anyhow she’s not the escaped daughter.”
“Then who is?”
“The lady spy, of course. Any one could see that at a glance.”
“But she has a man with her. Lord Torrington said—”
“If you can call that thing a man,” said Priscilla, “she has. That’s her husband. She’s run away with him and got married surreptitiously, like young Lochinvar. People do that sort of thing, you know. I can’t imagine where the fun comes in; but it’s quite common, so I suppose it must be considered pleasant. Anyhow Sylvia Courtney says that English literature is simply stock full of most beautiful poems about people who do it; all more or less true, so there must be some attraction.”
Frank made no reply. Priscilla’s theory was new to him. It seemed to have a certain plausibility. He wanted to think it over before committing himself to accepting it.
“It’s not a thing I’d care to do myself,” said Priscilla. “But then people are so different. What strikes me as rather idiotic may be sweeter than butter in the mouth to somebody else. You never can tell beforehand. Anyhow we can count on Aunt Juliet as a firm ally. She can’t go back on us on account of her principles.”
This was another new idea to Frank. He began to feel slightly bewildered.
“The one thing she’s really keen on just at present,” said Priscilla, “is that women should assert their independence and not be mere tame parasites in gilded cages. That’s what she said to Lady Torrington anyhow. So of course she’s bound to help us all she can, so long as she doesn’t know that they’re married, and nobody does know that yet except you and me. Not that I’d be inclined to trust Aunt Juliet unless we have to; but it’s a comfort to know she’s there if the worst comes to the worst.”
“What do you intend to do?” said Frank.
“Find them first. If we start off early tomorrow well probably get to Curraunbeg before they’re up. My idea would be to hand over the young man to Miss Rutherford for a day or two. She’s sure to be somewhere about and when she understands the circumstances she won’t mind pretending that he, the original spy, I mean, is her husband, just for a while, until the first rancour of the pursuit has died away. She strikes me as an awfully good sort who won’t mind. She may even like it. Some people love being married. I can’t imagine why; but they do. Anyhow I don’t expect there’ll be any difficulty about that part of the programme. We’ll simply tranship him, tent and all, into Jimmy Kinsella’s boat.”
“I don’t see the good of doing all that,” said Frank.
“Why not——?”
“The good of it is this. We must keep Aunt Juliet on our side in case of accidents. She’s got a most acute mind and will throw all kinds of obstacles in the way of the pursuers. As long as she thinks that Miss Torrington—Lady Isabel, I mean—is really going in for leading a beautiful scarlet kind of life of her own; but if she once finds out that she’s gone and got married to a man, any man, even one who can’t manage a boat, she’ll be keener than any one else to have her dragged back.”
“What do you mean to do with her?” said Frank.
“We’ll plant her down on Inishbawn. That’s the safest place in the whole bay for her to be. Of course Joseph Antony Kinsella will object; but we’ll make him see that it’s his duty to succor the oppressed, and anyhow we’ll land her there and leave her. I don’t exactly know what it is that they’re doing on that island, though I can guess. But whatever it is you may bet your hat they won’t let Lord Torrington or the police or any one of that kind within a mile of it. If once we get her there she’s safe from her enemies. Every man, woman and child in the neighbourhood will combine to keep that sanctuary—bother! there’s a word which exactly expresses what a sanctuary is kept; but I’ve forgotten what it is. I came across it once in a book and looked it out in the dict. to see what it meant. It’s used about sanctuaries and secrets. Do you remember what it is?”
Frank did not give his mind to the question. He was thinking, with some pleasure, of the baffled rage of Lord Torrington when he was not allowed to land on Inishbawn. Lady Isabel would be plainly visible sitting at the door of her tent on the green slope of the island. Lord Torrington, with violent language bursting from him, would approach the island in a boat, anticipating a triumphant capture. But Joseph Antony Kinsella would sally like a rover from his anchorage and tow Lord Torrington’s boat off to some distant place. With invincible determination the War Lord would return again. From every inhabited island in the bay would issue boats, Flanagan’s old one among them. They would surround Lord Torrington, hustle and push him away. Children from cottage doors would jeer at him. Peter Walsh and Patsy, the drunken smith, would add their taunts to the chorus when at last, baffled and despairing, he landed at the quay. The vision was singularly attractive. Frank ran his hand over his bandaged ankle and smiled with joy.
“I know it’s used of secrets as well as sanctuaries,” said Priscilla, “because Aunt Juliet used to say it about the Confessional when she was thinking of being a Roman Catholic. I told you about that, didn’t I?”
“No,” said Frank. “But will they be able to stop him landing, really?”
“Of course they will. That was one of the worst times we ever had with Aunt Juliet. Father simply hated it, expecting the blow to fall every day, especially after she took to fasting frightfully hard with finnan haddocks. That was just after the time she was tremendously down on all religion and wouldn’t let him have prayers in the morning, which he didn’t mind as much; though, of course, he pretended. Fortunately she found out about uric acid just before she actually did the deed, so that was all right. It always is in the end, you know. That’s one of the really good points about Aunt Juliet. All the same I wish I could remember that word.”
“I don’t quite see,” said Frank, “how they’ll stop him landing on Inishbawn if he wants to.”
“Nor do I; but they will. If Peter Walsh and Joseph Antony Kinsella and Flanagan and Patsy the smith—they’re all in the game, whatever it is—if they determine not to let him land on Inishbawn he won’t land there.”
“But even if they keep him off for a day or two they can’t for ever.”
“Well,” said Priscilla, “he can’t stay here for ever either. There’s sure to be a war soon and then he’ll jolly well have to go back to London and see after it. You told me it was his business to look after wars, so of course he must. Now that we’ve got everything settled I’ll sneak off again and get to bed. If I recollect that word during the night I’ll write it down.”
Priscilla, leaving Frank to make his own way back to the house as best he could, crept through the laurel bushes to the edge of the lawn. Lord Torrington and Sir Lucius had gone indoors. She could see them through the open window of the long gallery. She stole carefully across the lawn and entered the house by way of the dining-room window. She went very quietly to her bedroom. Before undressing she opened her wardrobe, lifted out two dresses which lay folded on a shelf and took out the store of provisions which she had secured at dinner time. She wrapped up the duck and the fish in paper, nice white paper taken from the bottoms of the drawers in her dressing table. The herrings’ roes on toast, originally a savoury, she put in the bottom of the soap dish and tied a piece of paper over the top of it. The caramel pudding rather overflowed the jam pot. It was impossible to press it down below the level of the rim. Priscilla sliced off the bulging excess of it with the handle of her tooth brush and dropped it into her mouth. Then she tied some paper over the top of the jam pot, and wrote, “pudding” across it with a blue pencil. The remainder of her spoil—some rolls, two artichokes and a sweetbread—she wrapped up together.
Then she undressed and got into bed. Half an hour later she woke suddenly. Without a moment’s hesitation she got out of bed and lit a candle. The blue pencil was still lying on top of the jam pot which stood on the dressing table. Priscilla took it, and to avoid all possibility of mistake in the morning, wrote word “inviolable” on every one of her parcels.