CHAPTER IX

Frank learned several things while the sails were being hoisted. The

word halyard became familiar to him and connected itself definitely

with certain ropes. He discovered that a sheet is, oddly enough, not an

expanse of canvas, but another rope. He impressed carefully on his mind

the part of the boat in which he might, under favourable circumstances,

expect to find the centreboard tackle.

The wind, which had dropped completely at low water, sprang up again,

this time from the west, with the rising tide. This was pleasant and

promised a fair run home, but Priscilla eyed the sky suspiciously. She

was weather-wise.

“It’ll die clean away,” she said, “towards evening. It always does on

this kind of day when it has worked round with the sun. Curious things

winds are, Cousin Frank, aren’t they? Rather like ices in some ways, I

always think.”

Frank had considerable experience of ices, and had been obliged, while

playing various games, to take some notice of the wind from time to

time; but he missed the point of Priscilla’s comparison. She explained

herself.

“If you put in a good spoonful at once,” she said, “it gives you a pain

in some tooth or other and you don’t enjoy it. On the other hand, if you

put in a very little bit it gets melted away before you’re able to

taste it properly. That’s just the way the wind behaves when you’re out

sailing. Either it has you clinging on to the main sheet for all you’re

worth or else it dies away and leaves you flapping. It’s only about once

a month that you get just what you want.”

It seemed to Frank, when the boat got under way, that they had happened

on the one propitious day. The Tortoise slipped pleasantly along, her

sails well filled, the boom pressed forward against the shroud, the main

sheet an attenuated coil at Priscilla’s feet.

“I’m feeling a bit bothered,” said Priscilla.

“We ought to have been back for luncheon,” said Frank. “I know that.”

“It’s not luncheon that’s bothering me; although it’s quite likely that

we won’t be back for dinner either. What I can’t quite make up my mind

about is what we ought to do next about those spies.”

“Go after them again to-morrow.”

“That’s all well enough; but things are much more mixed up than that. In

some ways I rather wish we had Sylvia Courtney with us. She’s president

of our Browning Society and tremendously good at every kind of

complication. What I feel is that we’re rather like those boys in the

poem who went out to catch a hare and came on a lion unaware. I haven’t

got the passage quite right but you probably know it.”

Frank did. He could not, since English literature is still only fitfully

studied in public schools, have named the author. But he quoted the

lines with fluent confidence. It was by turning them into Greek Iambics

that he had won the head-master’s prize.

“That’s it,” said Priscilla. “And that’s more or less what has happened

to us. We went out to chase a simple, ordinary German spy and we have

come on two other mysteries of the most repulsively fascinating kind.

First there’s Miss Rutherford, if that’s her real name, who says she’s

fishing for sponges, which is certainly a lie.”

“I don’t know about it’s being a lie,” said Frank. “She explained it to

me after you’d gone.”

“Oh, that about zoophytes. You don’t believe that surely?”

“I do,” said Frank. “There are lots of queer things in the British

Museum. I was there once.”

“My own belief is,” said Priscilla, “that she simply trotted out those

zoophyte things and the British Museum when she found that we weren’t

inclined to swallow the ordinary sponge. At the same time I can’t

believe that she’s a criminal of any kind. She struck me as being an

uncommonly good sort. The wind’s dropping. I told you it would. Very

soon now we shall have to row. Can you row, Cousin Frank?”

Frank replied with cheerful confidence that he could. He had sat at

Priscilla’s feet all day and bowed to her superior knowledge of sailing.

When it came to rowing he was sure that he could hold his own. He

understood the phraseology of the art, had learned to take advantage of

sliding seats, could keep his back straight and had been praised by a

member of a University eight for his swing.

“The other mystery,” said Priscilla, “is Inishbawn. The Kinsellas won’t

let the spies land on the island. They won’t let Miss Rutherford. They

won’t let you, They tell every kind of ridiculous story to head people

off.”

The thought of his prowess as an oarsman had restored Frank’s

self-respect. He recollected the reason given by Jimmy Kinsella for not

allowing Miss Rutherford to land on Inishbawn.

“I don’t see anything ridiculous about it,” he said. “Young Kinsella

simply said that it wasn’t a suitable place for ladies. There are lots

of places we men go to where we wouldn’t take-------”

His sentence tailed away. Priscilla’s eyes expressed an amount of

amusement which made him feel singularly uncomfortable.

“That,” she said, “is the most utter rot I’ve ever heard in my life.

And in any case, even if it was true, it wouldn’t apply to us. Jimmy

Kinsella distinctly said that I might land on the island as much as I

like, but that he jolly well wouldn’t have you. We may just as well row

now as later on. The breeze is completely gone.”

She got out the oars and dropped the rowlocks into their holes. She

pulled stroke oar herself. Frank settled himself on the seat behind her.

He found himself in a position of extreme discomfort. The Tortoise

was designed and built to be a sailing boat. It was not originally

contemplated that she should be rowed far or rowed fast. When Frank

leaned back at the end of his stroke he bumped against the mast. When he

swung forward in the proper way he hit Priscilla between the shoulders

with his knuckles. When the boat shot forward the boom swung inboard. If

this happened at the end of a stroke Frank was hit on the shoulder. If

it happened at the beginning of a stroke the spar struck him on the ear.

However he shifted his position he was unable to avoid sitting on some

rope. The centreboard case was between his legs and when he tried to get

his injured foot against anything firm he found it entangled in ropes

which he could not kick away. Priscilla complained.

“Put a little more beef into it, Cousin Frank,” she said. “I’m pulling

her head round all the time.”

Frank put all the energy he could into a series of short jerky strokes,

using the muscles of his arms, failing altogether to get the weight of

his body on the oar. At the end of twenty minutes Priscilla gave him a

rest.

“There’s no use our killing ourselves,” she said. “The tide’s under us.

It’s a jolly lucky thing it is. If it was the other way we wouldn’t

get home to-night. I wonder now whether the Kinsellas think you’ve any

connection with the police. You don’t look it in the least, but you

never can tell what people will think. If they do mistake you for

anything of the sort it might account for their not wanting you to land

on Inishbawn.”

“Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know why exactly--not yet. But there often are things

knocking about which it wouldn’t at all do for the police to see. That

might happen anywhere. There’s an air of wind coming up behind us. Just

get in that oar of yours. We may as well take the good of what’s going.”

A faint ripple on the surface of the water approached the Tortoise.

Before it reached her the boom swung forward, lifting the dripping main

sheet from the water, and the boat slipped on.

“But of course,” said Priscilla, “that idea of your being a policeman

in disguise doesn’t account for their telling Miss Rutherford that there

was something on the island which it wouldn’t be nice for a lady to

see. And it doesn’t account for the swine-fever story that Joseph Antony

Kinsella told the spies.”

“What was that?”

“Oh, nothing much. Only that his wife and children had come out all over

in bright yellow spots.”

“But perhaps they have.”

“Not they. You might just as well believe in Peter Walsh’s rats. That

leaves us with three different mysteries on hand.” Priscilla hooked her

elbow over the tiller and ticked off the three mysteries on the fingers

of her right hand. “The sponge lady, whose name may be Miss Rutherford,

one. Inishbawn Island, that’s two. The original spies, which makes

three. I’m afraid we’ll have to row again. Do you think you can, Cousin

Frank?”

“Of course I can.”

“Don’t be offended. I only meant that you mightn’t be able to on account

of your ankle. How is your ankle?”

“It’s all right,” said Frank, “That is to say it’s just the same.”

No other favouring breeze rippled the surface of the bay. For rather

more than an hour, with occasional intervals for rest, Frank tugged at

his oar, bumped his back, and was struck on the side of the head by the

boom. He was very much exhausted when the Tortoise was at length brought

alongside the slip at the end of the quay. Priscilla still seemed fresh

and vigorous.

“I wonder,” said Frank, “if we could hire a boy.”

“Dozens,” said Priscilla, “if you want them... What for?”

“To wheel that bath-chair. I can’t walk, you know. And I don’t like to

think of your pushing me up the hill. You must be tired.”

“That,” said Priscilla, “is what I call real politeness. There are lots

of other kinds of politeness which aren’t worth tuppence. But that kind

is rather nice. It makes me feel quite grown up. All the same I’ll wheel

you home.”

She pushed the bath-chair up the hill from the village without any

obvious effort. At the gate of the avenue she stopped. Two small

children were playing just inside it. A rather larger child set on the

doorstep of the gate lodge with a baby on her knee.

“What time is it, Cousin Frank?” said Priscilla.

“It’s ten minutes past seven.”

“Susan Ann, where’s your mother?”

The girl with the baby on her knee struggled to her feet and answered:

“She’s up at the house beyond, Miss.”

“I just thought she must be,” said Priscilla, “when I saw William Thomas

and the other boy playing there, and you nursing the baby. If your

mother wasn’t up at the house you’d all be in your beds.”

She wheeled the bath-chair on until she turned the corner of the avenue

and was lost to the sight of the children who peered after her. Then she

paused.

“Cousin Frank,” she said, “it’s just as well for you to be prepared for

some kind of fuss when we get home.”

“We’re awfully late, I know.”

“It’s not that. It’s something far worse. The fuss that’s going on up

there at the present moment is a thunderstorm compared to what there

would be over our being late.”

“How do you know there’s a fuss?”

“Before she was married,” said Priscilla, “Mrs. Geraghty--that’s the

woman at the gate lodge, the mother of those four children--was our

upper housemaid. Aunt Juliet simply loved her. She rubs her into all

the other servants day and night. She says she was the only sufficient

housemaid. I’m not sure that that’s quite the right word. It may be

efficient. Any how she says she’s the only something-or-other-ficient

housemaid she ever had; which of course is a grand thing for Mrs.

Geraghty, though not really as nice as it seems, because whenever

anything perfectly appalling happens Aunt Juliet sends for her. Then

she and Aunt Juliet rag the other servants until things get smoothed

out again. The minute I saw those children sporting about when by rights

they ought to be in bed I knew that Mrs. Geraghty had been sent for. Now

you understand the sort of thing you have to expect when we get home. I

thought I’d just warn you, so that you wouldn’t be taken by surprise.”

Frank felt that he still might be taken by surprise and urged Priscilla

to give him some further details about the catastrophe.

“We’ll find out soon enough,” said Priscilla. “At least we may. If it’s

the kind of thing that’s visible, streams of water running down the

front stairs or anything like that, we’ll see for ourselves, but if it

happens to be a more inward sort of disaster which we can’t see--and

that’s the kind there’s always the worst fuss about--then it may take us

some time to find out. Aunt Juliet doesn’t think it’s good for children

to know about inward disasters, and so she never talks of them when

I’m there except in what she calls French, and not much of that because

Father can’t understand her. They may, of course, confide in you. It all

depends on whether they think you’re a child or not.”

“I’m not.”

“I know that, of course. And Aunt Juliet saw you in your evening coat

last night at dinner, so she oughtn’t to. But you never can tell about

things of that kind. Look at the sponge lady for instance. She said you

were the nicest child she ever saw. Still they may tell you.”

Frank did not like being reminded of Miss Rutherford’s remark.

Priscilla’s repetition of it goaded him to a reply which he immediately

afterwards felt to be unworthy.

“If they do tell me,” he said, “I won’t tell you.”

“Then you’ll be a mean, low beast,” said Priscilla.

Frank pulled himself together with an effort. He realised that it would

never do to bandy schoolboy repartee with Priscilla. His loss of dignity

would be complete. And besides, he was very likely to get the worst

of the encounter. He was out of practise. Prefects do not descend to

personalities.

“My dear Priscilla,” he said, “I only meant that I wouldn’t tell you if

it was the sort of thing a girl oughtn’t to hear.”

“Like what Jimmy Kinsella has on Inishbawn,” said Priscilla. “Do you

know, Cousin Frank, you’re quite too funny for words when you go in for

being grand. Now would you like me to wheel you up to the hall-door

and ring the bell, or would you rather we sneaked round through the

shrubbery into the yard, and got in by the gunroom door and so up the

back stairs?”

“I don’t care,” said Frank.

“The back way would be the wisest,” said Priscilla, “but in the state of

grandeur you’re in now----”

“Oh, do drop it, Priscilla.”

“I don’t want to keep it up.”

“Then go by the back door.”

“Do you promise to tell me all about it, supposing they tell you, and

they may? You can never be sure what they’ll do.”

“Yes, I promise.”

“A faithful, solemn oath?”

“Yes.”

“Whether it’s the sort of thing a girl ought to be told or not?”

“Yes. Only do go on. It’ll take me hours to dress, and we’re awfully

late already.”

Priscilla trotted briskly through the shrubbery, crossed the yard and

helped Frank out of the chair at the gunroom door. She gave him her arm

while he hobbled up the back stairs. At the top of the first flight she

deserted him suddenly. She darted forward, half opened a baize covered

swing door and peeped through.

“I just thought I heard them at it,” she said. “Mrs. Geraghty and the

two housemaids are rioting in the long gallery, dragging the furniture

about and, generally speaking, playing old hokey. That gives us a

certain amount of information, Cousin Frank.”