CHAPTER IV

THE PRINCESS

Dinner, and a little piano-music and a song closed an evening that was

not dull to Patrick in spite of prolonged silences. The quiet course of

things within the house appeared to him to have a listening ear for big

events outside. He dreaded a single step in the wrong direction, and

therefore forbore to hang on any of his conjectures; for he might

perchance be unjust to the blessedest heroine on the surface of the

earth--a truly awful thought! Yet her name would no longer bear the

speaking of it to himself. It conjured up a smoky moon under confounding

eclipse.

Who was Schinderhannes?

Mr. Adister had said, her Schinderhannes.

Patrick merely wished to be informed who the man was, and whether he had

a title, and was much of a knave: and particularly Patrick would have

liked to be informed of the fellow's religion. But asking was not easy.

It was not possible. And there was a barrel of powder to lay a fiery head

on, for a pillow!

To confess that he had not the courage to inquire was as good as an

acknowledgment that he knew too much for an innocent questioner. And what

did he know? His brother Philip's fair angel forbade him to open the door

upon what he knew. He took a peep through fancy's keyhole, and delighted

himself to think that he had seen nothing.

After a turbulent night with Schinderhannes, who let him go no earlier

than the opening of a December day, Patrick hied away to one of the dusky

nooks by the lake for a bracing plunge. He attributed to his desire for

it the strange deadness of the atmosphere, and his incapacity to get an

idea out of anything he looked on: he had not a sensation of cold till

the stinging element gripped him. It is the finest school for the cure of

dreamers; two minutes of stout watery battle, with the enemy close all

round, laughing, but not the less inveterate, convinced him that, in

winter at least, we have only to jump out of our clothes to feel the

reality of things in a trice. The dip was sharpening; he could say that

his prescription was good for him; his craving to get an idea ceased with

it absolutely, and he stood in far better trim to meet his redoubtable

adversary of overnight; but the rascal was a bandit and had robbed him of

his purse; that was a positive fact; his vision had gone; he felt himself

poor and empty and rejoicing in the keenness of his hunger for breakfast,

singularly lean. A youth despoiled of his Vision and made sensible by the

activity of his physical state that he is a common machine, is eager for

meat, for excess of whatsoever you may offer him; he is on the highroad

of recklessness, and had it been the bottle instead of Caroline's

coffee-cup, Patrick would soon have received a priming for a delivery of

views upon the sex, and upon love, and the fools known as lovers, acrid

enough to win the applause of cynics.

Boasting was the best relief that a young man not without modesty could

find. Mr. Adister complimented him on the robustness of his habits, and

Patrick 'would like to hear of the temptation that could keep him from

his morning swim.'

Caroline's needle-thrust was provoked:

'Would not Arctic weather deter you, Mr. O'Donnell?' He hummed, and her

eyes filled with the sparkle.

'Short of Arctic,' he had to say. 'But a gallop, after an Arctic bath,

would soon spin the blood-upon an Esquimaux dog, of course,' he pursued,

to anticipate his critic's remark on the absence of horses, with a bow.

She smiled, accepting the mental alertness he fastened on her.

We must perforce be critics of these tear-away wits; which are, moreover,

so threadbare to conceal the character! Caroline led him to vaunt his

riding and his shooting, and a certain time passed before she perceived

that though he responded naturally to her first sly attacks, his gross

exaggerations upon them had not been the triumph of absurdity she

supposed herself to have evoked.

Her wish was to divert her uncle. Patrick discerned the intention and

aided her.

'As for entertainment,' he said, in answer to Mr. Adister's courteous

regrets that he would have to be a prisoner in the house until his legal

adviser thought proper to appear, 'I'll be perfectly happy if Miss

Caroline will give me as much of her company as she can spare. It 's

amusing to be shot at too, by a lady who 's a good marksman! And birds

and hares are always willing to wait for us; they keep better alive. I

forgot to say that I can sing.'

'Then I was in the presence of a connoisseur last night,' said Caroline.

Mr. Adister consulted his watch and the mantelpiece clock for a minute of

difference between them, remarking that he was a prisoner indeed, and for

the whole day, unless Camminy should decide to come. 'There is the

library,' he said, 'if you care for books; the best books on agriculture

will be found there. You can make your choice in the stables, if you

would like to explore the country. I am detained here by a man who seems

to think my business of less importance than his pleasures. And it is not

my business; it is very much the reverse but I am compelled to undertake

it as my own, when I abhor the business. It is hard for me to speak of

it, much more to act a part in it.'

'Perhaps,' Caroline interposed hurriedly, 'Mr. O'Donnell would not be

unwilling to begin the day with some duets?'

Patrick eagerly put on his shame-face to accept her invitation,

protesting that his boldness was entirely due to his delight in music.

'But I've heard,' said he, 'that the best fortification for the exercise

of the a voice is hearty eating, so I 'll pay court again to that

game-pie. I'm one with the pigs for truffles.'

His host thanked him for spreading the contagion of good appetite, and

followed his example. Robust habits and heartiness were signs with him of

a conscience at peace, and he thought the Jesuits particularly forbearing

in the amount of harm they had done to this young man. So they were still

at table when Mr. Camminy was announced and ushered in.

The man of law murmured an excuse or two; he knew his client's eye, and

how to thaw it.

'No, Miss Adister, I have not breakfasted,' he said, taking the chair

placed for him. 'I was all day yesterday at Windlemont, engaged in

assisting to settle the succession. Where estates are not entailed!'

'The expectations of the family are undisciplined and certain not to be

satisfied,' Mr. Adister carried on the broken sentence. 'That house will

fall! However, you have lost no time this morning.--Mr. Patrick

O'Donnell.'

Mr. Camminy bowed busily somewhere in the direction between Patrick and

the sideboard.

'Our lawyers have us inside out, like our physicians,' Mr. Adister

resumed, talking to blunt his impatience for a private discussion with

his own.

'Surgery's a little in their practice too, we think in Ireland,' said

Patrick.

Mr. Camminy assented: 'No doubt.' He was hungry, and enjoyed the look of

the table, but the look of his client chilled the prospect, considered in

its genial appearance as a feast of stages; having luminous extension;

so, to ease his client's mind, he ventured to say: 'I thought it might be

urgent.'

'It is urgent,' was the answer.

'Ah: foreign? domestic?'

A frown replied.

Caroline, in haste to have her duties over, that she might escape the

dreaded outburst, pressed another cup of tea on Mr. Camminy and groaned

to see him fill his plate. She tried to start a topic with Patrick.

'The princess is well, I hope?' Mr. Camminy asked in the voice of

discretion. 'It concerns her Highness?'

'It concerns my daughter and her inheritance from her mad grandmother!'

Mr. Adister rejoined loudly; and he continued like a retreating thunder:

'A princess with a title as empty as a skull! At best a princess of

swamps, and swine that fight for acorns, and men that fight for swine!'

Patrick caught a glance from Caroline, and the pair rose together.

'They did that in our mountains a couple of thousand years ago,' said Mr.

Camminy, 'and the cause was not so bad, to judge by this ham. Men must

fight: the law is only a quieter field for them.'

'And a fatter for the ravens,' Patrick joined in softly, as if carrying

on a song.

'Have at us, Mr. O'Donnell! I'm ashamed of my appetite, Miss Adister, but

the morning's drive must be my excuse, and I'm bounden to you for not

forcing me to detain you. Yes, I can finish breakfast at my leisure, and

talk of business, which is never particularly interesting to

ladies--though,' Mr. Camminy turned to her uncle, 'I know Miss Adister

has a head for it.'

Patrick hummed a bar or two of an air, to hint of his being fanatico per

la musica, as a pretext for their departure.

'If you'll deign to give me a lesson,' said he, as Caroline came away

from pressing her lips to her uncle's forehead.

'I may discover that I am about to receive one,' said she.

They quitted the room together.

Mr. Camminy had seen another Miss Adister duetting with a young Irishman

and an O'Donnell, with lamentable results to that union of voices, and he

permitted himself to be a little astonished at his respected client's

defective memory or indifference to the admonition of identical

circumstances.