He was a year or two under forty, tall, slender, and so distinguished-looking that some people—they were not his friends—were accustomed to say that it was impossible that he could ever attain to political distinction.
He assured Miss Craven that, sitting in the stern sheets of the boat, idly rocking on the smooth swell that rolled through the Lough from the Atlantic, was by far the most profitable way of spending two hours of the afternoon. Miss Craven doubted if this was a fact. “Where did the profit come in except to the boatman?” she inquired.
Mr. Airey, who knew that Miss Craven was anxious to know if Harold had been of the profitable boating-party, had no idea of allowing his powers of travesty to be concealed by the account, for which the young woman was longing, of Harold and the topics upon which he had conversed. He assured her that it was eminently profitable for anyone interested in comparative mythology, to be made acquainted with the Irish equivalent to the Mantuan fable.
“Fable!” almost shrieked Miss Craven. “Mantuan fable! Do you mean to suggest that there never was a Romeo and Juliet?”
“On the contrary, I mean to say that there have been several,” said Mr. Airey. “They exist in all languages. I have come unexpectedly upon them in India, then in Japan, afterwards they turned up, with some delicate Maori variations, in New Zealand when I was there. I might have been prepared for them at such a place as this You know how the modern melodramas are made, Miss Craven?”
“I have read somewhere, but I forget. And you sat alone in the boat smoking, while the boatman droned out his stories?” remarked the young woman, refusing a cold entrée.
“I will tell you how the melodramas are made,” said Mr. Airey, refusing to be led up to Harold as a topic. “The artist paints several effective pictures of scenery and then one of the collaborateurs—the man who can’t write, for want of the grammar, but who knows how far to go with the public—invents the situation to work in with the scenery. Last of all, the man who has grammar—some grammar—fills in the details of the story.”
“Really! How interesting! And that’s how Shakespeare wrote ‘Romeo and Juliet’? What a fund of knowledge you have, Mr. Airey!”
Mr. Airey, by the method of his disclaimer, laid claim to a much larger fund than any that Miss Craven had attributed to him.
“I only meant to suggest that traditional romance is evolved on the same lines,” said he, when his deprecatory head-shakes had ceased. “Given the scenic effects of ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ the romance on the lines of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ will be forthcoming, if you only wait long enough. When you pay a visit to any romantic glen with a torrent—an amateurish copy of an unknown Salvator Rosa—ask for the ‘Lover’s Leap’ and it will be shown to you.”