Priscilla's Spies
“What shall I do now?” he asked.
“Stand where you are,” said Priscilla. “She’ll drift down to you again.
I’ll give her a shove so that she’ll come right up to you.”
She swam after the boat and laid a hand on her gunwale. Then, kicking
and splashing, guided her back to the young man on the rock. He climbed
on board.
“Where do you suppose you’re going?” asked Priscilla.
“To an island,” said the young man.
“If one island is the same to you as another,” said Priscilla, “and you
haven’t any particular one in your mind, I’d advise you to stop at this
one.”
“But I have.”
“Which one?”
The young man looked at her suspiciously and then took his oars.
“I hope your island is quite near,” said Priscilla, “For if it isn’t
you’re not likely to get there. Were you ever in a boat before?”
The young man pulled a few strokes and got his boat into the channel
beyond the red perches.
“I think,” said Priscilla, “that you might say ‘thank you,’ Only for me
you’d have been left stranded on that rock till the tide rose again and
floated you off somewhere between four and five o’clock this afternoon.”
“Thank you,” said the young man, “thank you very much indeed.”
“But where are you going?”
The question seemed to frighten him. He began to row with desperate
energy. In a few minutes he was far down the channel. Priscilla watched
him. Then she swam to her bay, pushed the Blue Wanderer a little further
from the shore and landed.
The island of Delginish is a pleasant spot on a warm day. Above its
gravel beach rises a slope of coarse short grass, woven through with
wild thyme and yellow crowtoe. Sea-pinks cluster on the fringe of grass
and delicate groups of fairy-flax are bright-blue in stony places. Red
centaury and yellow bed-straw and white bladder campion flourish. Tiny
wild roses, clinging to the ground, fleck the green with spots of
vivid white. The sun reaches every yard of the shadeless surface of the
island. Here and there grey rocks peep up, climbed over, mellowed by
olive green stonecrops. Priscilla, glowing from her bath, lay full
stretch among the flowers, drawing deep breaths of scented air and
gazing at the sky. But nothing was further from her mind than soulful
sentimentalising over the beauties of nature. She was puzzling about the
young man who had left her, endeavoring to arrive at some theory of who
he was and what he could be doing in Rosnacree. After awhile she turned
over on her side, fumbled in her pocket and drew out two more biscuits
in crumbly fragments. She munched them contentedly.
At eleven o’clock she raised herself slowly on one elbow and looked
round. The tide had nearly reached its lowest, and the Blue Wanderer lay
half in, half out of the water; her stern perched high, her bow with the
useless anchor rope depending from it, dipped deep. Priscilla realised
that she had no time to lose. She put her shoulder to the stern of
the boat and pushed, springing on board as the boat floated. The Blue
Wanderer, even with her new lug sail, does not work well to windward. It
is possible by very careful steering to make a little by tacking if the
breeze is good and the tide is running favourably. With a light wind and
in the slack water of the ebb the most that can be done is not to go to
leeward. Priscilla, with the necessity of meeting a train present in her
mind, unstepped the mast and took her oars. In twenty minutes she was
alongside the slip where Peter Walsh stood waiting for her.
“I was talking to Joseph Anthony Kinsella,” he said, “since you were
out--him that lives beyond in Inishbawn.”
“Were you?” said Priscilla. “I saw him in his boat as I was going out,
with a big load of gravel on board. He says the baby’s all right.”
“It may be,” said Peter. “Any way, he said nothing to the contrary when
he was with me. It wasn’t the baby we were speaking of. Will you mind
yourself now, Miss. That slip is terribly slippery at low tide on
account of the green weed that does be growing on it. Take care but you
might fall.”
The warning came a little too late. Priscilla stepped from the boat and
immediately fell forward on her hands and knees. When she rose there was
a large, damp green patch on the front of her dress.
“Will you look at that, now?” said Peter. “Didn’t I tell you to go easy?
Are you hurted, Miss?”
“If it wasn’t the new baby you were talking about,” said Priscilla,
“what was it?”
“Joseph Anthony Kinsella is just after telling me that he’s seen that
young fellow that has Flanagan’s old boat out beyond among the islands.”
“Which island? I asked him, but he wouldn’t tell me.”
“Joseph Anthony didn’t rightly know, but it’s his belief that he’s on
Ilaunglos, or Ardilaun, or one of them to the north of Carrowbee.”
“He can’t be living there, then. There isn’t a house on any of those
islands.”
“Joseph Anthony was saying that he might maybe have a tent with him
and be sleeping in it the same as the tinkers would. I’ve heard of the
like.”
“Did he see the tent?”
“He did not; but there could be a tent without his seeing it. What I
seen myself was the things the young fellow bought in Brannigan’s and
put into Flanagan’s old boat. He had a can of paraffin oil with a cork
drove into the neck of it, and he’d two loaves of bread done up in
brown paper, and he’d a couple of tins that might be meat of one kind
or another, and along with them he had a pound of tea and maybe two of
sugar. I misdoubted when I saw him carrying them down the quay, but it
was some kind of a picnic he was out for. Them kind of fellows has very
little sense.”
“I expect,” said Priscilla, “that he’ll be drowned before long, and then
they’ll find some papers on his body that’ll tell us who he is. I must
be off now, Peter, or I’ll be late for the train.”
“You’re time enough, Miss. Sure them trains is never punctual.”
“They are not,” said Priscilla, “except on the days when you happen to
be late for them. Then they make a point of being up to the minute just
to score off you.”
CHAPTER IV
The train, as Priscilla prophesied, was strictly punctual. It was drawn
up at the platform when she leaped off her bicycle in front of the
station. As she passed through the gate she came face to face with Frank
Mannix supported by the station master and the guard.
“Hullo!” she said. “You’re my cousin Frank, I suppose. You look rather
sick.”
Frank gazed at her.
“Are you Priscilla?” he asked.
He had formed no very definite mental picture of his cousin beforehand.
Little girls of fifteen years of age are not creatures of great interest
to prefects who have made remarkable catches in the long field and look
forward to establishing their manhood among the salmon and the grouse.
So far as he had thought of Priscilla at all he had placed her in the
background, a trim, unobtrusive maiden, who came down to dessert after
dinner and was kept under proper control at other times by a governess.
It shocked him a little to see a girl in a tousled blue cotton frock,
with a green stain on the front of it, with a tangle of damp fair hair
hanging round her head in shining strings, with unabashed fearless eyes
which looked at him with a certain shrewd merriment.
“You look wobbly,” said Priscilla. “Can’t you walk by yourself?”
“I’ve met with an accident,” said Frank.
“That’s all right. I was afraid just at first that you might be the sort
that collapsed altogether after being seasick. Some people do, you know,
and they’re never much good for anything. I’m glad you’re not one of
them. Accidents are different of course. Nobody can ever be quite sure
of not meeting an accident.”
She glanced at the stain on the front of her dress as she spoke. It was
the result of an accident.
“I’ve sprained my ankle,” said Frank.
“It’s my belief,” said the guard, “that the young gentleman’s leg is
broke on him. That’s what the ticket-collector was after telling me at
the junction any way.”
“Would you like me to cut off your sock?” said Priscilla. “The
station-master’s wife would lend me a pair of scissors. She’s sure to
have a pair. Almost everybody has.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” said Frank.
There had been trouble enough in getting the sock on over the damp table
napkin. He had no wish to have it taken off again unnecessarily.
“All right,” said Priscilla, “I won’t if you’d rather not of course; but
it’s the proper thing to do for a sprained ankle. Sylvia Courtney told
me so and she attended a course of Ambulance lectures last term and
learnt all about first aid on the battle-field. I wanted to go to those
lectures frightfully, but Aunt Juliet wouldn’t let me. Rather rot I
thought it at the time, but I saw afterwards that she couldn’t possibly
on account of her principles.”
Frank, following Priscilla’s rapid thought with difficulty, supposed
that Ambulance lectures, dealing necessarily with the human body, might
be considered by some people slightly unsuitable for young girls, and
that Aunt Juliet was a lady who set a high value on propriety. Priscilla
offered a different explanation.
“Christian Science,” she said. “That’s Aunt Juliet’s latest. There’s
always something. Can you sit on a car?”
“Oh yes,” said Frank. “If I was once up I could sit well enough.”
“Let you make your mind easy about getting up,” said the station-master.
“We’ll have you on the side of the car in two twos.”
They hoisted him up, Priscilla giving advice and directions while they
did so. Then she took her bicycle from a porter who held it for her.
“The donkey-trap will bring your luggage,” she said. “It will be all
right.”
She turned to the coachman.
“Drive easy now, James,” she said, “and mind you don’t let the cob shy
when you come to the new drain that they’re digging outside the court
house. There’s nothing worse for a broken bone than a sudden jar. That’s
another thing that was in the Ambulance lectures.”
The car started. Priscilla rode alongside, keeping within speaking
distance of Frank.
“But my ankle’s not broken,” he said.
“It may be. Anyhow I expect a jar is just as bad for a sprain. Very
likely the lecturer said so and Sylvia Courtney forgot to tell me.
Pretty rotten luck this, for you, Cousin Frank, on account of the
fishing. You can’t possibly fish and the river’s in splendid order.
Father said so yesterday. But perhaps Aunt Juliet will be able to cure
you. She thinks she can cure anything.”
“I shall be all right,” said Frank, “when I can rest my leg a bit--I
don’t think it’s really bad I daresay at the end of a week----”
“If Aunt Juliet cures you at all she’ll do it quicker than that. She had
Father out of bed the day after he got influenza last Easter hols. He
very nearly died afterwards on account of having to travel up to Dublin
to go to a nursing home when his temperature was 400 and something, but
Aunt Juliet said he was perfectly well all the time; so she may be able
to fix up that ankle of yours.”
They have, so it is understood, tried experiments in vegetarianism
at Haileybury; but Christian Science is not yet part of the regular
curriculum even on the modern side. Frank Mannix had only the vaguest
idea of what Miss Lentaigne’s beliefs were. He knew nothing at all about
her methods. Priscilla’s account of them was not very encouraging.
“All I want,” he said, “is simply to rest my ankle.”
“Do you think,” said Priscilla, “that you could sit in a boat? That’s
mine, the green one beside the slip. If you turn your head you’ll see
her. But perhaps it hurts you to turn your head. If it does you’d better
not try. The boat will be there all the same even if you don’t see her.”
They were passing the quay while she spoke, and Priscilla, who was
a little behind at the moment, pointed to the Blue Wanderer. Frank