A Gray Eye or So. In Three Volumes—Volume II

by Frank Frankfort Moore

Thus it was that he cried, “A Fool’s Paradise—a Fool’s Paradise!” as he thought over the whole matter.

What were the exact elements of the Paradise in which his exclamation suggested that he was living, he might have had some difficulty in defining.

But then the site of the original Paradise is still a matter of speculation.

The next day he went to take lunch with her and her father—he had promised to do so before he had left her, when they had had their interview.

It so happened, however, that he only partook of lunch with Beatrice; for Mr. Avon had, he learned, been compelled to go to Dublin for some days, to satisfy himself regarding a document which was in a library in that city.

Harold did not grumble at the prospect of a long afternoon by her side; only he could not help feeling that the ménage of the Avon family was one of the most remarkable that he had ever known. The historical investigations of Mr. Avon did not seem to induce him to take a conventional view of his obligations, as the father of an extremely handsome girl—assuming that he was aware of the fact of her beauty—or a pessimistic view of modern society. He seemed to allow Beatrice to be in every way her own mistress—to receive whatever visitors she pleased; and to lay no narrow-minded prohibition upon such an incident as lunching tête-à-tête with a young man, or perhaps—but Harold had no knowledge of such a case—an old man.

He wondered if the historian had ever been remonstrated with on this subject, by such persons as had not had the advantage of scrutinizing humanity through the medium of state papers.

Harold thought that, on the whole, he had no reason to take exception to the liberality of Mr. Avon’s system. He reflected that it was to this system he was indebted for what promised to be an extremely agreeable afternoon.

What he did not reflect upon, however, was, that he was indebted to Mr. Avon’s peculiarities—some people would undoubtedly call the system a peculiar one—for a charmingly irresponsible relationship toward the historian’s daughter. He did not reflect upon the fact, that if the girl had had the Average Father, or the Vigilant Mother, to say nothing of the Athletic Brother, he would not have been able, without some explanation, to visit her, and, on the strength of promising to love her, to kiss her, as he had now repeatedly done, on the mouth—or even on the forehead, which is somewhat less satisfying. Everyone knows that the Vigilant Mother would, by the application of a maternal thumb-screw which she always carries attached to her bunch of keys, have extorted from Beatrice a full confession as to the incidents of the seal-hunt—all except the hunting of the seals—and that this confession would have led to a visit to the study of the Average Father, in one corner of which reposes the rack, in working order, for the reception of the suitor. Everyone knows so much, and also that the alternative of the paternal rack, is the fist of the Athletic Brother.

But Mr. Harold Wynne did not seem to reflect upon these points, when he heard the lightly uttered excuses of Beatrice for her father’s absence, as they seated themselves at the table in the large dining-room.