The Disentanglers Part 21

'The bustard?' asked Logan.

'It is a big fluffy fly, like a draggled mayfly, fished wet, in the dark.

I used to be fond of it, but age,' sighed the Earl, 'and fear of rheumatism have separated the bustard and me.'

'I should like to try it very much,' said Logan. 'I often fished Tweed and Whitadder, at night, when I was a boy, but we used a small dark fly.'

'You must be very careful if you fish at night here,' said Lady Mary. 'It is so dark in the valley under the woods, and the Coquet is so dangerous.

The flat sandstone ledges are like the floor of a room, and then a step may land you in water ten feet deep, flowing in a narrow channel. I am always anxious when anyone fishes here at night. You can swim?'

Logan confessed that he was not dest.i.tute of that accomplishment, and that he liked, of all things, to be by a darkling river, where you came across the night side of nature in the way of birds, beasts, and fishes.

'Mr. Logan can take very good care of himself, I am sure,' said Lord Embleton, 'and Fenwick knows every inch of the water, and will go with him. Fenwick is the water-keeper, Mr. Logan, and represents man in the fishing and shooting stage. His one thought is the destruction of animal life. He is a very happy man.'

'I never knew but one keeper who was not,' said Logan. 'That was in Galloway. He hated shooting, he hated fishing. My impression is that he was what we call a "Stickit Minister."'

'Nothing of that about Fenwick,' said the Earl. 'I daresay you would like to see your room?'

Thither Logan was conducted, through a hall hung with pikes, and guns, and bows, and clubs from the South Seas, and Zulu shields and a.s.segais, while a few empty figures in tilting armour, lance in hand, stood on pedestals. Thence up a broad staircase, along a little gallery, up a few steps of an old 'turnpike' staircase, Logan reached his room, which looked down through the trees of the cliff to the Coquet.

Dinner pa.s.sed in the silver light of the long northern day, that threw strange blue reflections, softer than sapphire, on the ancient plate--the amba.s.sadorial plate of a Jacobean ancestor.

'It should all have gone to the melting-pot for King Charles's service,'

said the Earl, with a sigh, 'but my ancestor of that day stood for the Parliament.'

Logan's position at dinner was better for observation than for entertainment. He sat on the right hand of Lady Mary, where the Prince ought to have been seated, but Lady Alice sat on her father's left, and next her, of course, the Prince. 'Love rules the camp, the court, the grove,' and Love deranged the accustomed order, for the Prince sat between Lady Alice and Logan. Opposite Logan, and at Lady Mary's left, was the Jesuit, and next him, Scremerston, beside whom was Miss Willoughby, on the Earl's right. Inevitably the conversation of the Prince and Lady Alice was mainly directed to each other--so much so that Logan did not once perceive the princely eyes attracted to Miss Willoughby opposite to him, though it was not easy for another to look at anyone else. Logan, in the pauses of his rather conventional entertainment by Lady Mary, _did_ look, and he was amazed no less by the beauty than by the spirits and gaiety of the young lady so recently left forlorn by the recreant Jephson. This flower of the Record Office and of the British Museum was obviously not destined to blush unseen any longer.

She manifestly dazzled Scremerston, who seemed to remember Miss Bangs, her charms, and her dollars no more than Miss Willoughby appeared to remember the treacherous Don.

Scremerston was very unlike his father: he was a small, rather fair man, with a slight moustache, a close-clipped beard, and little grey eyes with pink lids. His health was not good: he had been invalided home from the Imperial Yeomanry, after a slight wound and a dangerous attack of enteric fever, and he had secured a pair for the rest of the Session. He was not very clever, but he certainly laughed sufficiently at what Miss Willoughby said, who also managed to entertain the Earl with great dexterity and _aplomb_. Meanwhile Logan and the Jesuit amused the excellent Lady Mary as best they might, which was not saying much. Lady Mary, though extremely amiable, was far from brilliant, and never having met a Jesuit before, she regarded Father Riccoboni with a certain hereditary horror, as an animal of a rare species, and, of habits perhaps startling and certainly perfidious. However, the lady was philanthropic in a rural way, and Father Riccoboni enlightened her as to the reasons why his enterprising countrymen leave their smiling land, and open small ice-shops in little English towns, or, less ambitious, invest their slender capital in a monkey and a barrel-organ.

'I don't so very much mind barrel-organs myself,' said Logan; 'I don't know anything prettier than to see the little girls dancing to the music in a London side street.'

'But do not the musicians all belong to that dreadful Camorra?' asked the lady.

'Not if they come from the North, madam,' said the Jesuit. 'And do not all your Irish reapers belong to that dreadful Land League, or whatever it is called?'

'They are all Pap---' said Lady Mary, who then stopped, blushed, and said, with some presence of mind, 'paupers, I fear, but they are quite safe and well-behaved on this side of the Irish Channel.'

'And so are our poor people,' said the Jesuit. 'If they occasionally use the knife a little--_naturam expellas furca_, Mr. Logan, but the knife is a different thing--it is only in a homely war among themselves that they handle it in the East-end of London.'

'_Coelum non animum_,' said Logan, determined not to be outdone in cla.s.sical felicities; and, indeed, he thought his own quotation the more appropriate.

At this moment a great silvery-grey Persian cat, which had sat hitherto in a stereotyped Egyptian att.i.tude on the arm of the Earl's chair, leaped down and sprang affectionately on the shoulder of the Jesuit. He shuddered strongly and obviously repressed an exclamation with difficulty, as he gently removed the cat.

'Fie, Meriamoun!' said the Earl, as the puss resumed her Egyptian pose beside him. 'Shall I send the animal out of the room? I know some people cannot endure a cat,' and he mentioned the gallant Field Marshal who is commonly supposed to share this infirmity.

'By no means, my lord,' said the Jesuit, who looked strangely pale. 'Cats have an extraordinary instinct for caressing people who happen to be born with exactly the opposite instinct. I am like the man in Aristotle who was afraid of the cat.'

'I wish we knew more about that man,' said Miss Willoughby, who was stroking Meriamoun. 'Are _you_ afraid of cats, Lord Scremerston?--but you, I suppose, are afraid of nothing.'

'I am terribly afraid of all manner of flying things that buzz and bite,'

said Scremerston.

'Except bullets,' said Miss Willoughby--Beauty rewarding Valour with a smile and a glance so dazzling that the good little Yeoman blushed with pleasure.

'It is a shame!' thought Logan. 'I don't like it now I see it.'

'As to horror of cats,' said the Earl, 'I suppose evolution can explain it. I wonder how they would work it out in _Science Jottings_. There is a great deal of electricity in a cat.'

'Evolution can explain everything,' said the Jesuit demurely, 'but who can explain evolution?'

'As to electricity in the cat,' said Logan, 'I daresay there is as much in the dog, only everybody has tried stroking a cat in the dark to see the sparks fly, and who ever tried stroking a dog in the dark, for experimental purposes?--did you, Lady Mary?'

Lady Mary never had tried, but the idea was new to her, and she would make the experiment in winter.

'Deer skins, stroked, do sparkle,' said Logan, 'I read that in a book. I daresay horses do, only n.o.body tries. I don't think electricity is the explanation of why some people can't bear cats.'

'Electricity is the modern explanation of everything--love, faith, everything,' remarked the Jesuit; 'but, as I said, who shall explain electricity?'

Lady Mary, recognising the orthodoxy of these sentiments, felt more friendly towards Father Riccoboni. He might be a Jesuit, but he was _bien pensant_.

'What I am afraid of is not a cat, but a mouse,' said Miss Willoughby, and the two other ladies admitted that their own terrors were of the same kind.

'What I am afraid of,' said the Prince, 'is a banging door, by day or night. I am not, otherwise, of a nervous const.i.tution, but if I hear a door bang, I _must_ go and hunt for it, and stop the noise, either by shutting the door, or leaving it wide open. I am a sound sleeper, but, if a door bangs, it wakens me at once. I try not to notice it. I hope it will leave off. Then it does leave off--that is the artfulness of it--and, just as you are falling asleep, _knock_ it goes! A double knock, sometimes. Then I simply _must_ get up, and hunt for that door, upstairs or downstairs--'

'Or in my--' interrupted Miss Willoughby, and stopped, thinking better of it, and not finishing the quotation, which pa.s.sed unheard.

'That research has taken me into some odd places,' the Prince ended; and Logan reminded the Society of the Bravest of the Brave. What _he_ was afraid of was a pair of tight boots.

These innocent conversations ended, and, after dinner, the company walked about or sat beneath the stars in the fragrant evening air, the Earl seated by Miss Willoughby, Scremerston smoking with Logan; while the white dress of Lady Alice flitted ghost-like on the lawn, and the tip of the Prince's cigar burned red in the neighbourhood. In the drawing-room Lady Mary was tentatively conversing with the Jesuit, that mild but probably dangerous animal. She had the curiosity which pious maiden ladies feel about the member of a community which they only know through novels. Certainly this Jesuit was very unlike Aramis.

'And who _is_ he like?' Logan happened to be asking Scremerston at that moment. 'I know the face--I know the voice; hang it!--where have I seen the man?'

'Now you mention it,' said Scremerston, '_I_ seem to remember him too.

But I can't place him. What do you think of a game of billiards, father?' he asked, rising and addressing Lord Embleton. 'Rosamond--Miss Willoughby, I mean--'

'Oh, we are cousins, Lord Embleton says, and you may call me Rosamond. I have never had any cousins before,' interrupted the young lady.

'Rosamond,' said Scremerston, with a gulp, 'is getting on wonderfully well for a beginner.'

'Then let us proceed with her education: it is growing chilly, too,' said the Earl; and they all went to billiards, the Jesuit marking with much attention and precision. Later he took a cue, and was easily the master of every man there, though better acquainted, he said, with the foreign game. The late Pope used to play, he said, nearly as well as Mr. Herbert Spencer. Even for a beginner, Miss Willoughby was not a brilliant player; but she did not cut the cloth, and her arms were remarkably beautiful--an excellent but an extremely rare thing in woman. She was rewarded, finally, by a choice between bedroom candles lit and offered by her younger and her elder cousins, and, after a momentary hesitation, accepted that of the Earl.

'How is this going to end?' thought Logan, when he was alone. 'Miss Bangs is out of the running, that is certain: millions of dollars cannot bring her near Miss Willoughby with Scremerston. The old gentleman ought to like that--it relieves him from the bacon and lard, and the dollars, and the a.s.sociations with a Straddle; and then Miss Willoughby's family is all right, but the girl is reckless. A demon has entered into her: she used to be so quiet. I'd rather marry Miss Bangs without the dollars. Then it is all very well for Scremerston to yield to Venus Verticordia, and transfer his heart to this new enchantress. But, if I am not mistaken, the Earl himself is much more kind than kin. The heart has no age, and he is a very well-preserved peer. You might take him for little more than forty, though he quite looked his years when I saw him first. Well, _I_ am safe enough, in spite of Merton's warning: this new Helen has no eyes for me, and the Prince has no eyes for her, I think.

But who is the Jesuit?'

Logan fought with his memory till he fell asleep, but he recovered no gleam of recollection about the holy man.

It did not seem to Logan, next day, that he was in for a very lively holiday. His host carried off Miss Willoughby to the muniment-room after breakfast; that was an advantage he had over Scremerston, who was decidedly restless and ill at ease. He took Logan to see the keeper, and they talked about fish and examined local flies, and Logan arranged to go and try the trout with the bustard some night; and then they pottered about, and ate cherries in the garden, and finally the Earl found them half asleep in the smoking-room. He routed the Jesuit out of the library, where he was absorbed in a folio containing the works of the sainted Father Parsons, and then the Earl showed Logan and Father Riccoboni over the house. From a window of the gallery Scremerston could be descried playing croquet with Miss Willoughby, an apparition radiant in white.

The house was chiefly remarkable for queer pa.s.sages, which, beginning from the roof of the old tower, above the Father's chamber, radiated about, emerging in unexpected places. The priests' holes had offered to the persecuted clergy of old times the choice between being grilled erect behind a chimney, or of lying flat in a chamber about the size of a coffin near the roof, where the martyr Jesuits lived on suction, like the snipe, absorbing soup from a long straw pa.s.sed through a wall into a neighbouring garret.