Priscilla's Spies Part 26

"Afeard of what?"

"Afeard of Patsy the smith. Sure it's a madman he is when his temper's riz."

"Let you come along with me," said Kinsella, "and I'll wake him up if it takes the brand of a hot iron to do it. He can be as mad as he likes after, but he'll put an iron on that rudder before ever he gets leave to kill you or any other man."

CHAPTER XV

Priscilla wheeled the bath-chair up the hill from the town, chatting cheerfully as she went.

"It'll be rather exciting," she said, "to see these Torrington people. I don't think I've ever come across a regular, full-blown Marquis before.

Lord Thormanby is a peer of course, but he doesn't soar to those giddy heights. I suppose he'll sit on us frightfully if we dare to speak.

Not that I mean to try. The thing for me to do is to be 'a simple child which lightly draws its breath, and feels its life in every limb.'

That's a quotation, Cousin Frank. Wordsworth, I think. Sylvia Courtney says it's quite too sweet for words. I haven't read the rest of it, so of course, can't say, but I think that bit's rather rot, though I daresay Lord Torrington will like it all right when I do it for him."

Frank felt a certain doubt about the policy. Lord Torrington was indeed pretty sure to prefer a simple child to Priscilla in her ordinary mood; but there was a serious risk of her over-doing the part. He warned Priscilla to be exceedingly careful. She brushed his advice aside with an abrupt change of subject.

"I expect," she said, "that Mrs. Geraghty will be up at the house again.

Aunt Juliet wouldn't trust anybody else to hook up Lady Torrington's back. I can do my own, of course; but n.o.body can who is either fat or dignified. I'm pretty lean, but even I have to wriggle a lot."

Mrs. Geraghty was up at the house. This became plain to Priscilla when she reached the gate-lodge. Mr. Geraghty, who was a gardener by profession, was sitting on his own doorstep with the baby in his arms.

The baby, resenting the absence of his mother, was howling. Priscilla stopped.

"If you like," she said, "I'll wheel the baby up to the house and give him to Mrs. Geraghty. Aunt Juliet won't like it if I do. In fact she'll dance about with insatiable fury. But it may be the right thing to do all the same. We ought always to do what's right, Mr. Geraghty, even if other people behave like wild boars; that is to say if we are quite sure that it is right; I think it's nearly sure to be right to give a baby to its mother; though there may be times when it's not. Solomon did, and that's a pretty good example; though I don't suppose that even Solomon always knew for certain when he was doing the rightest thing there was.

Anyhow, I'll risk it if you like, Mr. Geraghty. You won't mind having the baby on your knee for a bit, will you, Cousin Frank?"

Frank did mind very much. The ordinary healthy-minded, normal prefect dislikes having anything to do with babies even more than he dislikes being called a child by maiden ladies.

He looked appealingly at Mr. Geraghty. The baby, misunderstanding Priscilla's intentions, yelled louder than before.

Mr. Geraghty, fortunately for Frank, was not a man of the heroic kind.

Abstract right was less to him than expediency and he missed the point of the comparison between his position and King Solomon's. He thought it better that his baby should suffer than that Miss Lentaigne's anger should be roused. He declined Priscilla's offer.

Near the upper end of Rosnacree avenue there is a corner from which a view of the lawn is obtained. Sir Lucius and another gentleman were pacing to and fro on the gra.s.s when Priscilla and Frank reached the corner and caught sight of them.

"Stop," said Frank, suddenly. "Turn back, Priscilla. Go round some other way."

"Priscilla stopped. The eager excitement of Frank's tone surprised her.

"Why?" she asked. "It's only father and that Lord of his. We've got to face them some time or other. We may as well get it over at once."

"That's the beast who shoved me over the steamer's gangway," said Frank, "and sprained my ankle."

Sir Lucius and Lord Torrington turned at the end of the lawn and began to walk towards Priscilla and Frank.

"Now I can see his face," said Priscilla, "I don't wonder at your rather loathing him. I think you were jolly lucky to get off with a sprained ankle. A man with a nose like that would break your arm or stab you in the back."

Lord Torrington's nose was fleshy, pitted in places, and of a purple colour.

"Curious taste the King must have," said Priscilla, "to make a man like that a Marquis. You'd expect he'd choose out fairly good-looking people.

But, of course, you can't really tell about kings. I daresay they have to do quite a lot of things they don't really like, on account of being const.i.tutional. Rather poor sport being const.i.tutional, I should say; for the King that is. It's pleasanter, of course, for the other people."

Frank knew that the present King was blameless in the matter of Lord Torrington's marquisate. It was inherited from a great-grandfather, who may have had an ordinary, possibly even a beautiful nose. But he attempted no explanation. His anxiety made him disinclined for a discussion of the advantages of having an hereditary aristocracy.

"Do turn back, Priscilla," he said.

"If he is the man who sprained your ankle," she said, "it's far better for you to have it out with him now when I'm here to back you up. If you put it off till dinner time you'll have to tackle him alone. I'm sure not to be let in. Anyhow, we can't go back now. They've seen us."

Lord Torrington and Sir Lucius approached them. Frank plucked nervously at his tie, unb.u.t.toned and then re-b.u.t.toned his coat. He felt that he had been entirely blameless during the scrimmage on the gangway of the steamer, but Lord Torrington did not look like a man who would readily own himself to be in the wrong.

"Your daughter, Lentaigne?" said Lord Torrington. "H'm, fifteen, you said; looks less. Shake hands, little girl."

Priscilla put out her right hand demurely. Her eyes were fixed on the ground. Her lips were slightly parted in a deprecating smile, suggestive of timid modesty.

"What's your name?" said Lord Torrington.

"Priscilla Lentaigne."

Nothing could have been meeker than the tone in which she spoke.

"H'm," said Lord Torrington, "and you're Mannix's boy. Not much like your father. At school?"

"Yes," said Frank. "At Haileybury."

"What are you doing in that bath-chair with the young lady wheeling you?

Is that the kind of manners they teach at Haileybury?"

"Please," said Priscilla, speaking very gently. "It's not his fault."

"He has sprained his ankle," said Sir Lucius. "He can't walk."

"Oh," said Lord Torrington. "Sprained ankle, is it?"

He turned and walked back to the lawn. Sir Lucius followed him.

"Rather a bear, I call him," said Priscilla. "But, of course, he may be one of those cases of a heart of gold inside a rough skin. You can't be sure. We did 'As You Like It' last Christmas?dramatic club, you know?and Sylvia Courtney had a bit to say about a toad ugly and venomous which yet wears a precious jewel in his head. I'd say he's just the opposite.

If there is a precious jewel?and there may be?it's not in his head.

Anyhow one great comfort is that he doesn't remember spraining your ankle."

Frank, who recollected Lord Torrington with disagreeable distinctness, did not find any great comfort in being totally forgotten. He would have liked, though he scarcely expected, some expression of regret that the accident had occurred.

"It'll be all the easier," said Priscilla, "to pay him back if he hasn't any suspicion that we have an undying vendetta against him. I rather like vendettas, don't you? There's something rather n.o.ble in the idea of pursuing a man with implacable vengeance from generation to generation."

"I don't quite see," said Frank, "what good a vendetta is. We can't do anything while he's in your father's house. It wouldn't be right."

"All the same," said Priscilla, "well score off him. For the immediate present we've got to wait and watch his every movement with glittering eyes and cynical smiles concealed behind our ingenuous brows. You needn't say 'ingenuous' isn't a real word, because it is. I put it in an English comp. last term and got full marks, which shows that it must be a good word."