The Project Gutenberg eBook, Mount Music, by E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
MOUNT MUSIC
By
E. Œ. SOMERVILLE and MARTIN ROSS
AUTHORS OF
The Real Charlotte, Some Experiences of An Irish R.M., All On The Irish Shore, etc., etc.
1920
By the same Authors
Some Experiences of An Irish R.M.
Further Experiences of An Irish R.M.
In Mr. Knox's Country
All On The Irish Shore
Some Irish Yesterdays
An Irish Cousin
The Real Charlotte
The Silver Fox
Irish Memories
PREFACE
This book was planned some years ago by Martin Ross and myself. A few portions of it were written, and it was then put aside for other work.
Without her help and inspiration, it would not have been begun, and could not have been completed. I feel, therefore, that to join her name with mine on the title-page is my duty, as well as my pleasure.
E. Œ. SOMERVILLE.
Table of Contents
Mount Music
"Christian, dost them see them?" sang an elder brother, small enough to be brutal, large enough to hurt, while he twisted Christian's arm as though it were indeed the rope that it so much resembled.
"I won't say I saw them, because I didn't!" replied Christian, who had ceased to struggle, but was as far as ever from submission; "but if I had, you might twist my arm till it was like an old pig's tail and I wouldn't give in!"
Possibly John realised the truth of this defiance. He administered a final thump on what he believed to be Christian's biceps, and released her.
"Pretty rotten to spoil the game, and then tell lies," he said, with severity.
"I don't tell lies," said Christian, flitting like a gnat to the open window of the schoolroom. "You sang the wrong verse! It ought to have been 'hear them,' and I do!"
Having thus secured the last word, Miss Christian Talbot-Lowry, aged nine in years, and ninety in spirit, sprang upon the window-sill, leapt lightly into a flower-bed, and betook herself to the resort most favoured by her, the kennels of her father's hounds.
What person is there who, having attained to such maturity as is required for legible record, shall presume to reconstruct, either from memory or from observation, the mind of a child? Certain mental attitudes may be recalled, certain actions predicated in certain circumstances, but the stream of the mind, with its wayward currents, its secret eddies, flows underground, and its course can only be guessed at by tokens of speech and of action, that are like the rushes, and the yellow king-cups, and the emerald of the grass, that show where hidden waters run. Nothing more presumptuous than the gathering of a few of these tokens will here be attempted, and of these, only such as may help to explain the time when these children, emerging from childhood, began to play their parts in the scene destined to be theirs.
This history opens at a moment for Christian and her brethren when, possibly for the last time in their several careers, they asked nothing more of life. This was the beginning of the summer holidays; the sky was unclouded by a governess, the sunny air untainted by the whiff of a thought of a return to school. Anything might happen in seven weeks. The end of the world, for instance, might mercifully intervene, and, as this was Ireland, there was always a hope of a "rising," in which case it would be the boys' pleasing duty to stay at home and fight.
"Well, and Judith and I would fight, too," Christian would say, thinking darkly of the Indian knife that she had stolen from the smoking-room, for use in emergencies. She varied in her arrangements as to the emergency. Sometimes the foe was to be the Land Leaguers, who were much in the foreground at this time; sometimes she decided upon the English oppressors of a down-trodden Ireland, to whose slaughter, on the whole, her fancy most inclined. But whatever the occasion, she was quite determined she was not going to be outdone by the boys.
At nine years old, Christian was a little rag of a girl; a rag, but imbued with the spirit of the rag that is nailed to the mast, and flaunts, unconquered, until it is shot away. She had a small head, round and brown as a hazel-nut, and a thick mop of fine, bright hair, rebellious like herself, of the sort that goes with an ardent personality, waved and curled over her little poll, and generally ended the day in a tangle only less intricate than can be achieved by a skein of silk. Of her small oval face, people were accustomed to say it was all eyes, an unoriginal summarising, but one that forced itself inevitably upon those who met Christian's eyes, clear and shining, of the pale brown that the sun knows how to waken in a shallow pool in a hill-stream, set in a dark fringe of lashes that were like the rushes round the pool. Before she could speak, it was told of her eyes that they would quietly follow some visitor, invisible to others, but obvious to her. Occasionally, after the mysterious power of speech—that is almost as mysterious as the power of reading—had come to her, she had scared the nursery by broken conversation with viewless confederates, defined by the nursery-maid as "quare turns that'd take her, the Lord save us!" and by her mother, as "something that she will outgrow, and the less said about it the better, darlings. Remember, she is the youngest, and you must all be very wise and kind——" (a formula that took no heed of punctuation, and was practically invariable).
But as Christian grew older the confederates withdrew, either that, or the protecting shell of reserve that guards the growth of individuality, interposed, and her dealings with things unseen ceased to attract the attention of her elders. It was John, her senior by two years, who preserved an interest, of an inquisitorial sort, in what he had decided to call the Troops of Midian. There was a sacerdotal turn about John. He had early decided upon the Church as his vocation, and only hesitated between the rôles of Primate of Ireland and Pope of Rome. He had something of the poet and enthusiast about him, and something also of the bully, and it was quite possible that he might do creditably in either position, but at this stage of his development his ecclesiastical proclivities chiefly displayed themselves in a dramatic study, founded upon that well-known Lenten hymn that puts a succession of searching enquiries, of a personal character, to a typical Christian. A missionary lecture on West Africa had supplied some useful hints as to the treatment of witches, and Christian's name, and the occult powers with which she was credited, had indicated her as heroine of the piece.
On this particular afternoon the game had begun prosperously, with Christian as the Witch of Endor, and John as a blend of the Prophet Samuel and the Head Inquisitor of Spain. A smouldering saucer of sulphur, purloined by the witch herself from the kennels medicine-cupboard, gave a stimulating reality to the scene, even though it had driven the fox terriers, who habitually acted as the Witch's cats, to abandon their parts, and to hurry, sneezing and coughing indignantly, to the kitchen. The twins, Jimmy and Georgy, however, obligingly took their parts, and all was going according to ritual, when one of the sudden and annoying attacks of rebellion to which she was subject, came upon the Witch of Endor. The orthodox conclusion involved a penitential march through the kitchen regions, the Witch swathed in a sheet, and carrying lighted candles, while she was ceremonially flagellated by the Prophet with one of his father's hunting crops. This crowning moment was approaching, Christian had but to reply suitably to the intimidating riddles of the hymn, and the final act would open in all its solemnity. For, as has been said, the spirit of revolt whispered to her, and ingeniously persuaded her that the required recantation committed her to a falsehood.
As she told John, when the formal inquisition had passed through acrid dispute to torture, she didn't tell lies.
In the days when Christian Talbot-Lowry was a little girl, that is to say between the eighties and nineties of the nineteenth century, the class known as Landed Gentry was still pre-eminent in Ireland. Tenants and tradesmen bowed down before them, with love sometimes, sometimes with hatred, never with indifference. The newspapers of their districts recorded their enterprises in marriage, in birth, in death, copiously, and with a servile rapture of detail that, though it is not yet entirely withheld from their survivors, is now bestowed with equal unction on those who, in many instances, have taken their places, geographically, if not their place, socially, in Irish every-day existence. There is little doubt but that after the monsters of the Primal Periods had been practically extinguished, a stray reptile, here and there, escaped the general doom, and, as Mr. Yeats says of his lug-worm, may have-sung with "its grey and muddy mouth" of how "somewhere to North or West or South, there dwelt a gay, exulting, gentle race" of Plesiosauridæ, or Pterodactyli. Even thus may this record be regarded; as partial, perhaps, but as founded on the facts of a not wholly to be condemned past.
Christian's father, Richard Talbot-Lowry, was a good-looking, long-legged, long-moustached Major, who, conforming beautifully to type, was a soldier, sportsman, and loyalist, as had been his ancestors before him. He had fought in the Mutiny as a lad of nineteen, and had been wounded in the thigh in a cavalry charge in a subsequent fight on the Afghan Frontier. Dick, like Horatius, "halted upon one knee" for the rest of his life, but since the injury gave him no trouble in the saddle, and did not affect the sit of his trousers, he did not resent it, and possibly enjoyed its occasional exposition to an enquirer. When his father died, he left the Army, and, still true to the family traditions, proceeded to "settle down" at Mount Music, and to take into his own hands the management of the property.
Of the Talbot-Lowrys it may be truly said that the lot had fallen to them in a fair ground. Their ancestor, the Gentleman Adventurer of Queen Elizabeth's time, had had the eye for the country that, in a slightly different sense, had descended to his present representative. Mount Music House stood about midway of a long valley, on a level plateau of the hill from which it took its name, Cnocán an Ceoil Sidhe, which means the Hill of Fairy Music, and may, approximately, be pronounced "Knockawn an K'yole Shee." The hill melted downwards—no other word can express the velvet softness of those mild, grassy slopes—to the shore of the River Broadwater, a slow and lordly stream, that moved mightily down the wide valley, became merged for a space in Lough Kieraun, and thence flowed onwards, broad and brimming, bearded with rushes, passing like a king, cloaked in the splendours of the sunset, to its suicide in the far-away Atlantic. The demesne of Mount Music lay along its banks; in woods often, more often in pastures; with boggy places ringed with willows, lovely, in their seasons, with yellow flags, and meadowsweet, kingcups, ragwort and loosestrife. Its western boundary was the Ownashee, a mountain stream, a tributary of the great river, that came storming down from the hills, and, in times of flood, snatching, like a border-reiver, at sheep, and pigs, and fowl, tossing its spoils in a tumble of racing waves into the wide waters of its chieftain.
Mount Music House was large, intensely solid, practical, sensible, of that special type of old Irish country-house that is entirely remote from the character of the men that originated it, and can only be explained as the expiring cry of the English blood. How many Anglo-Irish great-great-grandfathers have not raised these monuments to their English forbears, and then, recognising their obligations to their Irish mothers' ancestry, have filled them, gloriously, with horses and hounds, and butts of claret, and hungry poor relations unto the fourth and fifth generations? That they were a puissant breed, the history of the Empire, in which they have so staunchly borne their parts, can tell; their own point of view is fairly accurately summed up in Curran's verse:—
"If sadly thinking, with spirits sinking,
Could more than drinking my cares compose,
A cure for sorrow from sighs I'd borrow,
And hope to-morrow would end my woes.
But as in wailing there's nought availing,
And Death unfailing will strike the blow,
Then for that reason, and for a season,
Let us be merry before we go."
For Dick Talbot-Lowry, however, and many another like him, the merriment of his great-grandfather was indifferent compensation for the fact that his grandfather's and his father's consequent borrowings were by no means limited to cures for sorrow. Mortgages, charges, younger children (superfluous and abhorrent to the Heaven-selected Head of a Family)—all these had driven wedges deep into the Mount Music estate. But, fortunately, a good-looking, long-legged, ex-Hussar need not rely exclusively on his patrimony, while matrimony is still within the sphere of practical politics. When, at close on forty-one years of age (and looking no more than thirty), Dick left the Army, his next step was to make what was universally conceded to be "a very nice marriage," and on the whole, regarding it from the impartial standpoint of Posterity, the universe may be said to have been justified in its opinion.
Lady Isabel Christian was the daughter of an English Earl, and she brought with her to Mount Music twenty thousand golden sovereigns, which are very nice things, and Lady Isabel herself was indisputably a nice thing too. She was tall and fair, and quite pretty enough (as Dick's female relatives said, non-committally). She was sufficiently musical to play the organ in church (which is also a statement provided with an ample margin); she was a docile and devoted wife, a futile and extravagant house-keeper, kindly and unpunctual, prolific without resentment; she regarded with mild surprise the large and strenuous family that rushed past her, as a mountain torrent might rush past an untidy flower garden, and, after nearly fourteen years of maternal experience, she had abandoned the search for a point of contact with their riotous souls, and contented herself with an indiscriminate affection for their very creditable bodies. Lady Isabel had—if the saying may be reversed—"les qualités de ses défauts," and these latter could have no environment less critical and more congenial than that in which it had pleased her mother to place her. It was right and fitting that the wife of the reigning Talbot-Lowry of Mount Music, should inevitably lead the way at local dinner-parties; should, with ladylike inaudibleness, declare that "this Bazaar" or "Village Hall" was open. It was no more than the duty of Major Talbot-Lowry (D.L., and J.P.) to humanity, that his race should multiply and replenish the earth, and Lady Isabel had unrepiningly obliged humanity to the extent of four sons and two daughters. Major Dick's interest in the multiplication was, perhaps, more abstract than hers.
"Yes," he would say, genially, to an enquiring farmer, "I have four ploughmen and two dairymaids!"
Or, to a friend of soldiering days: "Four blackguard boys and only a brace of the Plentiful Sex!"
A disproportion for which, by some singular action of the mind, he took to himself considerable credit.
Miss Frederica Coppinger (who will presently be introduced) was accustomed to scandalise Lady Isabel by the assertion that paternal affection no more existed in men than in tom-cats. An over-statement, no doubt, but one that was quite free from malice or disapproval. Undoubtedly, a father should learn to bear the yoke in his youth, and Dick was old, as fathers go. It cannot be denied that when the Four Blackguards began to clamour for mounts with the hounds, and the representatives of the Plentiful Sex outgrew the donkey, Major Talbot-Lowry had moments of resentment against his offspring, during which his wife, like a wise doe-rabbit, found it safest to sweep her children out of sight, and to sit at the mouth of the burrow, having armed herself with an appealing headache and a better dinner than usual. The children liked him; not very much, but sufficient for general decency and the Fifth Commandment. They loved their mother, but despised her, faintly; (again, not too much for compliance with the Commandment aforesaid). Finally, it may be said that Major Dick and Lady Isabel were sincerely attached to one another, and that she took his part, quite frequently, against the children.
If, accepting the tom-cat standard of paternity, Dick Talbot-Lowry had a preference for one kitten more than another, that kitten was, indisputably, Christian.
"The little devil knows the hounds better than I do!" he would say to a brother M.F.H. at the Puppy Show. "Her mother can't keep her out of the kennels. And the hounds are mad about her. I believe she could take 'em walking-out single-handed!"
To which the brother M.F.H. would probably respond with perfidious warmth: "By Jove!" while, addressing that inner confidant, who always receives the raciest share of any conversation, he would say that he'd be jiggered before he'd let any of his children mess the hounds about with petting and nonsense.
In justice to Lady Isabel, it should be said that she shared the visiting M.F.H.'s view of the position, though regarding it from a different angle.
"Christian, my dearest child," she said, on the day following the Puppy Show that had coincided with Christian's eighth birthday, when, after a long search, she had discovered her youngest daughter, seated, tailor-wise, in one of the kennels, the centre of a mat of hounds. "This is not a not a place for you! You don't know what you may not bring back with you——"
"If you mean fleas, Mother," replied Christian, firmly, "the hounds have none, except what I bring them from Yummie." (Yummie was Lady Isabel's dog, a sickly and much despised spaniel). "The Hounds!" Christian laughed a little; the laugh that is the flower of the root of scorn. Then her eyes softened and glowed. "Darlings!" she murmured, kissing wildly the tan head of the puppy who, but the day before, had been rest from her charge.
There are certain persons who are born heralds and genealogists; there are many more to whom these useful gifts have been denied. With apologies to both classes, to the one for sins of omission, to the other in the reverse sense, I find that an excerpt from the Talbot-Lowry pedigree must be inflicted upon them.
With all brevity, let it be stated that Dick Talbot-Lowry possessed a father, General John Richard, and General John Richard had an only sister, Caroline. Caroline, fair and handsome, like all her family, was "married off," as was the custom of her period, at the age of seventeen, to elderly Anthony Coppinger, chiefly for the reason that he was the owner of Coppinger's Court, with a very comfortable rent-roll, and a large demesne, that marched, as to its eastern boundaries, with that of Mount Music, and was, as it happened, divided from it by no more than the Ownashee, that mountain river of which mention has been made. It was, therefore, exceedingly advisable that the existing friendly relations should be cemented, as far as was practicable, and the fair and handsome Caroline was an obvious and suitable adhesive. To Anthony and Caroline, two children were born; Frederica, of whom more hereafter, and Thomas. By those who lay claim to genealogic skill, it will now be apparent that these were the first cousins of Dick Talbot-Lowry. Thomas went into the Indian Army, and in India met and married a very charming young lady, Theresa Quinton, a member of an ancient Catholic family in the North of England, and an ardent daughter of her Church. In India, a son was born to them, and Colonel Tom, who adored his wife, remarking that these things were out of his line, made no objection to her bringing up the son, St. Lawrence Anthony, in her own religion, and hoped that the matter would end there. Mrs. Coppinger, however, remembering St. Paul's injunctions to believing wives and unbelieving husbands, neither stopped nor stayed her prayers and exhortations, until, just before the birth of a second child, she had succeeded in inducing Tom Coppinger—(just "to please her, and for the sake of a quiet life," as he wrote, apologetically, to his relations and friends, far away in Ireland) to join her Communion. She then died, and her baby followed her. Colonel Tom, a very sad and lonely man, came to England and visited St. Lawrence Anthony at the school selected for him by his mother; then he returned to his regiment in India, and was killed, within a year of his wife's death, in a Frontier expedition. He left Larry in the joint guardianship of his sister, Frederica, and his first cousin, Dick Talbot-Lowry, with the request that the former would live with the boy at Coppinger's Court, and that the latter would look after the property until the boy came of age and could do so himself; he also mentioned that he wished his son's education to continue on the lines laid down by his "beloved wife, Theresa."
It must, with regret, be stated, that the relatives and friends in far-away Ireland, instead of admiring "poor Tom's" fidelity to his wife's wishes, murmured together that it was very unfortunate that "poor Theresa" had not died when Larry was born, as, in that case, this "disastrous change of religion" would not have taken place. Taking into consideration the fact that Larry was to live among his Irish cousins, it is possible that from the point of view of expediency, the relations and friends were in some degree justified.
Ireland, it is almost superfluous to observe, has long since decided to call herself The Island of Saints, an assertion akin to the national challenge of trailing the coat-tails, and believers in hereditary might, perhaps, be justified in assuming a strictly celibate sainthood. Be that as it may, Irish people have ever been prone to extremes, and, in spite of the proverb, there are some extremes that never touch, and chief among them are those that concern religion. Religion, or rather, difference of religion, is a factor in every-day Irish life of infinitely more potency than it is, perhaps, in any other Christian country. The profundity of disagreement is such that in most books treating of Ireland, that are not deliberately sectarian, a system of water-tight compartments in such matters is carefully established. It is, no doubt, possible to write of human beings who live in Ireland, without mentioning their religious views, but to do so means a drastic censoring of an integral feature of nearly all mundane affairs. This it is to live in the Island of Saints.
In this humble account of the late Plesiosauridæ and their contemporaries, it is improbable that any saint of any sect will be introduced; one assurance, at least, may be offered without reservation. Those differing Paths, that alike have led many wayfarers to the rest that is promised to the saints, will be treated with an equal reverence and respect. But no rash undertakings can be given as touching the wayfarers, or even their leaders, who may chance to wander through these pages. Neither is any personal responsibility accepted for the views that any of them may express. One does not blame the gramophone if the song is flat, or if the reciter drops his h's.
After this exhaustive exordium it is tranquillising to return to the comparative simplicities of the existence of the young Talbot-Lowrys. Those summer holidays of the year 1894 were made ever memorable for them by the re-inhabiting of Coppinger's Court. Mount Music was a lonely place; it lay on the river, about midway between the towns of Cluhir and Riverstown, either of which meant a five or six mile drive, and to meet such friends and acquaintances as the neighbourhood afforded, was, in winter, a matter confined to the hunting-field, and in summer was restricted, practically, to the incidence of lawn-tennis parties. Possibly the children of Mount Music, thus thrown upon their own resources, developed a habit of amusing themselves that was as advantageous to their caretakers as to their characters. It certainly enhanced very considerably their interest in the advent of Master St. Lawrence Coppinger. He became the subject of frequent and often heated discussions, the opinion most generally held, and stated with a fine simplicity, being that he would prove to be "a rotter."
"India," John said, "had the effect of making people effemeral."
"Effeminate, ass!" corrected Richard, shortly.
"Anyhow," said a Twin, charitably, "we can knock that out of him!"
"Anyhow," said Judith, next to Richard in age and authority, "if he is a rotter, he can go into the Brats' band. You want someone decent," she added, addressing the Twin, whose remark she felt to have savoured of presumption.
This family had, for purposes of combat and of general entertainment, divided itself into two factions, that fought endlessly among the woods and shrubberies. A method had been recently introduced by Richard of utilising the harmless, necessary pocket-handkerchief as a sling for the projection of gravel, and its instant popularity had resulted in the denuding of the avenues of ammunition, and in arousing a great and just fury in the bosom of the laundress. "God knows it isn't me has all the hankershiffs holed this way!" she pointed out. "Thim children is the divil outlawed. Thim'd gallop the woods all the night, like the deer!"
The assortment of the family had been decided rather on the basis of dignity, than on that of a desire to equalise the sides, and thus it befel that Richard, Judith, and John, with the style and title of The Elder Statesmen, were accustomed to drive before them the junior faction of The Brats, consisting of the Twins, Christian, and the dogs, Rinka and Tashpy, with a monotony of triumph that might have been expected to pall, had not variety been imparted by the invention of the punishments that were inflicted upon prisoners. There had been a long and hot July day of notable warfare. The Twins, if small, were swift and wily; even Christian had justified her adoption by a stealthy and successful raid upon the opposition gravel heap. A long and savage series of engagements had ensued, that alternated between flights, and what Christian, blending recollections of nursery doctoring with methods of Indian warfare, designated "stomach-attacks." It was while engaged in one of the latter forms of assault that Christian was captured, and, being abandoned by her comrades, was haled by the captors before Richard, the Eldest Statesmen. A packed Court-martial of enemies speedily found the prisoner guilty, and the delicious determining of the punishment absorbed the attention of the Court. John, with a poet's fancy, suggested that the criminal should be compelled to lick a worm. Judith, more practical, advocated her being sent to the house to steal some jam. "I forgot to," she said.
The Court was held in the Council Chamber, a space between the birches and hazels on the bank of the Ownashee; a fair and green room, ceiled with tremulous leaves, encircled and made secret by high bracken, out of which rose the tarnished-silver stems of the birch trees and the multitudinous hazel-boughs, and furnished with boulders of limestone, planted deep in a green fleece of mingled moss and grass. On one side only was it open to the world, yet on that same side it was most effectively divided from it, by the swift brown stream, speeding down to the big river, singing its shallow summer song as it sped.
Richard, Eldest Statesman, gazed in dark reflection upon the prisoner, meditating her sentence; the prisoner, young enough to tremble in the suspense, old enough to enjoy the nerve-tension and the moment of drama, gazed back at him. Her hair lay in damp rings, and hung in rats'-tails about her forehead. Her small face, with the silver-clear skin, stippled here and there with tiny freckles, was faintly flushed, and moist with the effort of her last great but unavailing run for freedom; her wide eyes were like brown pools scooped from the brown flow of the Ownashee.
"I adjudge," said Richard, in an awful voice, "that the prisoner shall amass three buckets of the best gravel. The same to be taken from the shallow by the seventh stepping-stone."
The prisoner's little brown arm, with a hand thin and brown as a monkey's, went up; the recognised protest.
"Not the seventh, most noble Samurai," she said, anxiously; "Won't it do from the strand?"
"I have spoken," replied the Eldest Statesman, inflexibly.
"Then I won't!" exclaimed Christian; "I—I couldn't! The river giddys me so awfully when I stand still on the stones—"
"Prisoner!" returned Richard, "once the law is uttered, it can't be unuttered! Off you go!"
"Well then, and I will go!" said Christian, with a wriggle so fierce and sudden that it loosed the grip of her guards. It is even possible that the ensuing lightning dart for freedom might have succeeded, but for the unfortunate fidelity of her allies, Rinka and Tashpy. The one sprang at her brief skirt and caught it, the other got between her legs. She fell, and was delivered again into the hands of the enemy.
Richard was not a bully, but Mrs. Sarah Battle was not more scrupulous than he in observing the rigour of the game. Christian was manacled with the belt of her own overall, and was hauled along the golden, but despised, gravel of the river strand, to the spot whence the stepping-stones started.
"I'll do this much for you," said the Eldest Statesman, relaxing a little, "I'll go first and carry the bucket."
He dragged Christian on to the first of the big, flat, old stepping-stones, Judith assisting from the rear, and, with increasing difficulty, two more stones were achieved. Then they paused for breath, and a sudden whirlwind of passion came upon the captive. She began to struggle and dance upon the flat stone, madly endeavouring to free her hands, while she shrieked to the dastard Twins to come to her rescue.
"Cowards! Cowards! I hate you all——"
"Better let her go," whispered Judith, who knew better than her Chief what Christian's storms meant.
Richard hesitated, and, as in a mediaeval romance, at this moment a champion materialised.
Not the Twins, lying like leopards along the higher boughs of a neighbouring alder, deeply enjoying the spectacle, but a boy, smaller than Richard, who came crashing through the bushes on the Coppinger's Court side of the Ownashee. Arrived, at the ford, he stayed neither his pace nor his stride, and before the Eldest Statesman, much hampered by his prisoner and the bucket, could put up any sort of defence, the unknown rescuer had sprung across the stepping-stones, and, catching him by the shoulders, had, by sheer force of speed and surprise, hurled him into the river.
Thus did Larry Coppinger, informally but effectively, introduce himself to his second-cousins, the Talbot-Lowrys.
A fortnight or so after the moving incidents that have just been recited, Miss Frederica Coppinger, and her nephew, St. Lawrence of that ilk, were spending a long and agreeable Sunday afternoon with their relatives at Mount Music, elders and youngsters being segregated, after their kind, and to their mutual happiness.
Major Talbot-Lowry, very well pleased with himself, very tall and authoritative, was standing, from force of habit, on the rug in front of the fire-place in the Mount Music drawing-room, and was cross-examining Miss Coppinger on her proposed arrangements for herself and her nephew, while he drank his tea in gulps, each succeeded by burnishing processes, with a brilliant silk bandanna handkerchief, such as are necessitated by a long and drooping moustache.
All good-looking people are aware of their good looks, but the gift of enjoying them, that had been lavishly bestowed on Dick, is denied to many; on the other hand, the companion gift, of realising when they are becoming pleasures of memory, had been withheld from him. Dick was of the happy temperament that believes in the exclusive immortality of his own charms, and he was now enjoying his conversation with his cousin none the less for the discovery that Miss Coppinger, who was younger than he, had preserved her youth very much less successfully than he had done.
The cross-examination had moved on to the subject of Larry's religion, and the combative fervour of Major Dick's Protestantism might have edified John Knox.
"But look here, Frederica," he said, putting down his cup and saucer, with a crash, on the high mantelpiece, "you don't mean to tell me that the boy has to go to Mass with the servants—on the cook's lap, I suppose—on the outside car! Good Heeavens! Poor old Tom! Talk about turning in his grave! I should think he was going head over heels in it by this time!"
This referred to the late Colonel Coppinger, the genuineness of whose conversion to his wife's Church had never been accepted by Major Talbot-Lowry.
"My dear Dick!" said Lady Isabel.
Miss Coppinger closed her lips tightly with an air of high self-control.
"That is a matter of opinion!" she said blandly. "Tom was perfectly aware of what changing his religion involved, in this country—though it's probably quite different in India. In any case, the thing is done, and as I believe it to be my Duty to send Larry to his chapel, to his chapel he shall go!"
Unimaginative people, or those of limited vocabulary, affixed to Miss Coppinger the ancient label: "A typical old maid," and considered that no further definition was required; and, since her appearance conformed in some degree with stage traditions, there is something to be said for them. If labels are to be employed, even the least complex of human beings would suggest a much-travelled portmanteau, covered with tags and shreds from hotels and railways. Frederica shall not be labelled; let it suffice to say that she was tall and thin, and nearer fifty than forty (which was a far greater age thirty years ago than it is now), and that she had a sense of fair play that was proof against her zeal as an Irish Church-woman. It is true that she mentioned what she regarded as the disaster of Larry's religion in her prayers, but she did so without heat, leaving the matter, without irreverence, to the common sense of Larry's Creator, who, she felt must surely recognise the disadvantages of the position as it stood.
"I cannot possibly interfere with Larry's religion," pursued Miss Coppinger, with a defiant eye on her cousin, "and as soon as we are a little more settled down I shall ask the priest to lunch. Farther than that I don't feel called upon to go."
"Draw the line at dinner, eh?" said Major Dick, with large and humorous tolerance: "I know very little about the feller—he's newly come to the parish—he mayn't be a bad sort for all I know—I'm bound to say he's got a black-muzzled look about him, but we might go farther and fare worse. I should certainly have him to lunch if I were you. Have a good big joint of roast beef, and don't forget to give him his whack of whisky!"
"I never have whisky in the house," said Miss Coppinger repressively. "Claret, I could give him—?"
Major Talbot-Lowry looked down at his cousin with the condescending amusement that he felt to be the meed of female godliness especially when allied with temperance principles.
"Well, claret might do for once in a way," he conceded, shaking his long legs to take the creases out of his trousers, "and you mightn't find Father Sweeny so anxious to repeat the dose—and that mightn't be any harm either! I daresay you wouldn't object to that, Frederica! Well, good-bye, ladies! I'm going down to the kennels—"
Lady Isabel's and Miss Coppinger's eyes followed him, as he swung, with that light halt in his leisurely stride, down the long drawing-room, trolling in the high baritone, that someone had pleased him by likening to a cavalry trumpet,
"Oh, Father McCann was a beautiful man,
But a bit of a rogue, a bit of a rogue!
He was full six feet high, he'd a cast in his eye,
And an illigant brogue, an illigant brogue!"
In both his wife's and his cousin's faces was the same look, the look that often comes into women's faces when, unperceived, they regard the sovereign creature. Future generations may not know that look, but in the faces of these women, born in the earlier half of the nineteenth century, there was something of awe, and of indulgence, of apprehension, and of pity. Dick was so powerful, so blundering, so childlike. Miss Frederica expressed something of their common thought when she said:
"Dick seems to forget that he is Larry's guardian as well as I. Also that Larry is a Roman Catholic, and it is not only useless but dishonourable to ignore it!"
It has been said that Lady Isabel had les qualitiés de ses défauts; in Miss Coppinger's case the words may be restored to their rightful sequence. She had the inevitable défauts de ses qualités. The sense of duty was as prominent a feature of her soul as a hump on her long straight back would have been, but toleration was inconspicuous. She ran straight herself, and though she could forgive deviations on the part of others, she could not forget them. She was entirely and implacably Protestant, a typical member of that Church that expects friendship from its votaries, but leaves their course of action to their own consciences. It was a very successful example of the malign humour of Fate that Miss Coppinger's ward should belong to the other Church, that exacts not only obedience, but passion, and it was a master-stroke that Frederica's sense of duty should compel her to enforce her nephew to compliance with its demands.
"Dear Frederica, Dick will leave all religious things to you, I know—" warbled Lady Isabel, in her gentle, musical voice, that suggested something between the tones of a wood pigeon and an ocarina. "And they couldn't be in better hands!"
"But my dear Isabel, that is precisely what I complain of! Dick's solitary suggestion has been that we should send Larry to Winchester, which is perfectly impracticable! I entirely agree with him, but, unfortunately, I know that it is our duty to send him to one of those—" Miss Coppinger hesitated, swallowed several adjectives, and ended with Christian tameness—"one of those special schools for Roman Catholics."
"Well, dear, I daresay it won't make very much difference," consoled Lady Isabel. "I have always heard that Monkshurst was a charming school, and dear Larry will be so well off—I don't suppose his religion will interfere in any way. It seldom does, does it?"
"Not, I admit, unless he wanted a job in this country!" began Miss Coppinger grimly, and again remembered that intolerance was not to be encouraged. "The end of it is that I shall endeavour to do my duty—which is, apparently, to do everything that I most entirely disapprove of—and that on the day Larry is twenty-one, I shall march out of Coppinger's Court, and dance a jig, and then he may have the Pope to stay with him if he likes!"
While Miss Coppinger was thus belabouring and releasing her conscience in the drawing-room, quite another matter was engaging the attention of her ward, and of his entertainers at the school-room tea-table. This was no less a thing than the dissolving of the existing Bands, and the formation of a new society, to be known as "The Companions of Finn."
Larry Coppinger's entrance, literally at a bound, into the Talbot-Lowry family group, had landed him, singularly enough, into the heart of their affection and esteem. He was now the originator of this revolutionary scheme, and having in him that special magnetic force that confers leadership, the scheme was being put through.
"The point is," he said, eagerly, "that when we are split up into two bands, we can do nothing much, but the lot of us together might—might make quite a difference."
"Difference to what?" said Richard, ex-chief of the Elder Statesmen, unsympathetically. Like his father before him, he disliked change.
"Well, hold on!" said Larry, quickly, "wait just one minute, and I'll tell you. I got the notion out of a book I found in the library. I don't expect I'd have thought of it myself——" Larry's transparent sky-blue eyes sought Richard's appealingly. "It's—it's only poems, you know, but it's most frightfully interesting—I brought it with me——"
"Oh—poems!" said Richard, without enthusiasm. "Are they long ones?"
"I don't seem to care so awfully much about poetry," abetted Judith, late Second-in-command.
John looked sapient, and said, neutrally, that some poetry wasn't bad.
The Twins, who were engaged in a silent but bitter struggle for the corpse of a white rabbit, recently born dead, made no comment. Only Christian, her small hands clenched together into a brown knot, her eyes fastened on Larry's flushed face, murmured:
"Go on, Larry!"
Larry went on.
"It's called the Spirit of the Nation," he said. "It's full of splendid stuff about Ireland, and the beastly way England's treated her. It sort of—sort of put the notion into my head that we might start some sort of a Fenian band, and that some day we might—well," he turned very red, and ended with a rush, "we might be able to strike a blow for Ireland!"
"Moy oye!" said Richard, intensifying his favourite invocation in his surprise, "but what's wrong with Ireland?"
The position wanted but the touch of opposition. Larry rather well bet Richard that there was plenty wrong with her! Penal laws! Persecution! Saxon despots grinding their heels into a down-trodden people! Revolution! Liberation! Larry had a tongue that was hung loosely in his head and was a quick servant to his brain.
"Of course I know we're rather young—well, you're nearly fourteen, Richard, and I'm thirteen and three months, that's not so awfully young. Anyway, everything's got to have a beginning——" He glowed upon his audience of six, his fair hair in a shock, his eyes and his cheeks in a blaze, and one, at least, of that audience caught fire.
The Revolutionary or Reformer, who hesitates at becoming a bore, is unworthy of his high office; and Larry, like most of his class, required but little encouragement. He produced a large book, old and shabby, the green and gold of its covers stained and faded, but still of impressive aspect.
"There are heaps of them, and they're all jolly good. It's rather hard to choose——" began the Revolutionary with a shade of nervousness. Then he again met Christian's eyes, shining and compelling, and took heart from them.
"Well, there's 'Fontenoy,' of course that's a ripper—Well, I don't know what you'll all think, but I think this is a jolly good one," he said with a renewal of defiance, and began to read, at first hurriedly, but gathering confidence and excitement as he went on:
"Did they dare, did they dare, to slay Owen Roe O'Neill?
Yes, they slew with poison, him they feared to meet with steel.
May God wither up their hearts! May their blood cease to flow!
May they walk in living death, who poisoned Owen Roe!
We thought you would not die—we were sure you would not go,
And leave us in our utmost need to Cromwell's cruel blow—
Sheep without a shepherd, when the snow shuts out the sky—
Oh! Why did you leave us, Owen? Why did you die?"
The Elder Statesmen listened in critical silence, while Larry, not without stumbles, stormed on through the eight verses of the poem. When he had finished it, there was a pause. The audience was impressed, even though they had no intention of admitting the fact. Christian gave a tremendous sigh. The contest for the defunct rabbit, that had been arrested, broke out again, fiercely, but with caution. Then Richard said, dubiously:
"Well, that's all right, Larry—I meant it's jolly sad, and awfully good poetry, I'm sure—but how on earth are you going to work a show out of it? I can't see——"
"Unless," interrupted Judith, thoughtfully, "unless we sort of acted it——?"
John, who loved "dressing up," woke to life; even Richard began to see daylight.
"That's not a bad notion, Judy!" he said briskly: "bags I Cromwell! Larry, you can be Owen what's-his-name."
Larry came down like a shot bird from the sphere of romance to which the poem had borne him.
"I hadn't thought of any scheme," he said, pulling himself together; "I only wanted to give you a kind of notion of the rotten way England's always treated Ireland——"
"But let's!" cried Christian; "let's act the whole book!"
Truisms are of their essence dull, but they must sometimes be submitted to, and the truism as to a book's possible influence on the young and impressionable cannot here be avoided. What it is that decides if the book is to stamp itself on the plastic mind, or if the mind is to assert itself and stamp on the book, is a detail that admits less easily of dogmatism. The Companionage of Finn remained in being for but two periods of holiday. Before the boys had returned to school, it had seen its best days; the scheme for an armed invasion of England had been abandoned, even the more matured project of storming Dublin Castle was set aside; by the end of the Christmas holidays it had been formally dissolved.
It is not easy to understand, it is still harder to explain what it was in those fierce denunciations and complaints, outcome of that time of general revolt, the "Roaring Forties" of the nineteenth century, that made them echo in Larry's heart, nor why the restless, passionate spirit that inspired them should have remained with him, a perturbing influence from which he never wholly escaped. His young soul burned with hatred of England, borrowed from the Bards of "The Nation" Office; he lay awake at nights, stringing rhymes in emulation of their shouts of fury, or picturing rebellions, of which he was to be the leader and hero. Larry's enthusiasms were wont to devour not him only, but also his friends. It is impossible to escape from the conclusion that the career of the Companionage of Finn was abbreviated by Larry's determination to recite to the Companions of the Order, in season and out of season, the poems by which, during his first Irish summer, he was possessed. There came a time when he had, as he believed, put away childish things, that, returning to these venerable trumpet-blasts, he asked himself, in the arrogance of youth, how these stale metaphors, these conventional phrases, these decorations as meretricious as stage jewellry, and metres that cantered along, as he told himself, like solemn old circus-horses, could have had the power to shake his voice and fill his eyes with tears, as he spoke them to Christian, who had so soon become his sole audience.
The strange thing was, as he acknowledged to himself, that while he could mock at them as poetry, he could not ignore their power. The intensity of their hatred, and of their sincerity, made itself felt, as the light of the sun will shine through the crude commonness of a vulgar stained-glass window.
There was one person who viewed the enthusiastic intimacy that had sprung up between the houses of Coppinger and Talbot-Lowry, with a disapproval as deep as it was prejudiced. It was a person whose opinion might, by the thoughtless, be considered unimportant, but in this the thoughtless would greatly err. Robert Evans was the butler at Mount Music. He had held that position since the year 1859, from which statement a brief and unexacting calculation will establish the fact that he had taken office when his present master was no more than twenty-one years old and, it being now 1894, he had so continued for 35 years. Possibly a vision of an adoring and devoted retainer may here present itself. If so, it must be immediately dispelled. In Mr. Evans' opinion, such devotion and adoration as the case demanded, were owed to him by the House on which he had for so long a time bestowed the boon of his presence, and those who were privileged with his acquaintance had no uncertainty in the matter, since his age, his length of service, his fidelity, and the difficulties with which he daily contended, formed the main subjects of his conversation.
In the palmier days of the Irish gentry there were many households in which the religion of the servants was a matter of considerable importance, and those who could afford exclusiveness, were accustomed to employ only Protestants as indoor servants. This may seem like an unwarrantable invasion of the inner fortress of another individual, making his views spiritual responsible for his fortunes temporal. But in Ireland, in the earlier half of the troubled nineteenth century, such differentiation was inspired not by bigotry, but by fear. When a man's foes might be, and often were, those of his own household, that his servants should be of his own religion was almost his only safeguard against espionage. There is somewhat to be said on both sides; it will not be said here, but that there have been times in Ireland when such precautions were required, cannot be ignored.
Robert Evans was a survivor of such a period. Time was when he strutted, autocratic and imperious as a turkey-cock, ruler of a flock of lesser fowl, all of his own superior creed; brave days when he and Mrs. Dixon, the housekeeper, herded and headed, respectively, a bevy of "decent Protestant maids" into Family Prayers every morning, and packed "the full of two covered cars" off to the Knockceoil Parish Church on Sundays. Evans rarely went to church, believing that such disciplines were superfluous for one in a state of grace, but the glory of the House of Talbot-Lowry demanded a full and rustling pew of female domestics, while the coachman, and a footman or a groom, were generally to be relied on to give a masculine stiffening to the party. With Lady Isabel's régime had come a slackening of moral fibre, a culpable setting of attainments, or of convenience, above creed, in the administration of the household. Once had Lady Isabel been actually overheard by Evans, offering to a friend, in excuse for the indifferent show made by her household in the parish church, the offensive explanation that "R.C.'s were so sympathetic, and so easy to find, while Protestants were not only scarce, but were so proud of being Protestants, and expected so much admiration"—here she had perceived the presence of Evans, and had unavailingly begun upon the weather, but Evans' deep-seated suspicions as to the laxity of the English Church had been confirmed.
It is possible that the greatest shock that Evans was capable of sustaining was administered when he heard of the secession to the enemy of Colonel Tom Coppinger. Only second to it was the discovery that Colonel Tom's poisoned offspring was to be received at Mount Music and admitted to the fellowship of its children.
"No!" Evans said to Mrs. Dixon, standing on the hearthrug in the sanctuary of the housekeeper's room, one wet afternoon, shortly after the Coppinger return: "I see changes here, better and worse, good and bad, but I didn't think I'd live to see what I seen to-day—the children of this house consorting with a Papist!"
"Fie!" said Mrs. Dixon, without conviction. She was fat and easy-tempered, and though ever anxious to conciliate him whom she respected and feared as "Mr. Eevans," her powers of dissimulation often failed at a pinch of this kind.
Mr. Evans looked at his table-companion with a contempt to which she had long been resigned. He was a short, thin, bald man, with a sharp nose curved like a reaping-hook, iron-grey whiskers and hair, and fierce pale blue eyes. Later on, Christian, in the pride of her first introduction to Tennyson, had been inspired by his high shoulders and black tailed coat to entitle him "The many-wintered crow," and the name was welcomed by her fellows, and registered in the repository of phrases and nicknames that exists in all well-regulated families.
"'Fie!'" he repeated after Mrs. Dixon, witheringly. "I declare before God, Mrs. Dixon, if I was to tell you the Pope o' Rome was coming to dinner next Sunday, it's all you'd say would be 'Fie!'"
Mrs. Dixon received this supposition of catastrophe with annoying calm, and even reverted to Mr. Evans' earlier statement in a manner that might have bewildered a less experienced disputant than he.
"Well, indeed, Mr. Eevans," she said, appeasingly, "I'd say he was a nice child enough, and the very dead spit of the poor Colonel. I dunno what harm he could do the children at all?"
The Prophet Samuel could scarcely have regarded Saul, when he offered those ill-fated apologies relative to King Agag, with a more sinister disfavour than did Evans view Mrs. Dixon.
"I'll say one thing to you, Mrs. Dixon," he said, moving to the door with that laborious shuffle that had inspired one of the hunted and suffering tribe of his pantry-boys to the ejaculation: "I thank God, there's more in his boots than what's there room for!"—"and I'll say it once, and that's enough! As sure as God made little apples, trouble and disgrace will follow jumpers!"
Mrs. Dixon, no less than Evans, disapproved of those who changed their religion, but this denunciation did not seem to her to apply.
"That poor child's no jumper!" she called after her antagonist; "'twasn't his fault he was born the way he was!"
Evans slammed the door.
Mrs. Dixon dismissed the controversy from her easy mind, looked at the clock, and laid down her knitting.
"Miss Christian'll be looking for her birthday cake!" she said to herself, hoisting her large person from her chair. Even as she did so, there came a rapping, quick and urgent, at the window. "Look at that now!" said Mrs. Dixon. "I wouldn't doubt that child to be wanting the world in her pocket before it was made!"
"Dixie! Dixie! Open the window! Hurry! I want you!"
Christian's face, surmounted by a very old hunting-cap, and decorated with a corked moustache, appeared at the window.
"The Lord save us, child! What have you done to yourself? And what are you doing out there in the wet?" answered Mrs. Dixon, reprovingly; "sure the cake won't be baked for ten minutes yet."
"I don't want the cake. I only want some biscuits, please. Dixie, and hurry! Amazon's bolted, and Cottingham's asked me to catch her! If you had a bone, Dixie, she'd simply——"
Mrs. Dixon was gone. She disapproved exceedingly of Christian's rôle as kennel-boy, but as, since Christian's first birthday, she had never refused her anything, she was not prepared on her tenth to break so well-established a habit.
"I dunno in the world why Mr. Cottingham should make a young lady like you do his business!" she said, putting the requisition bait into Christian's eager, up-stretched hands, "and if your Mamma could see you—"
"Oh, well done, Dixie! What a lovely bone! Oh, thank you most awfully!" interrupted Christian, snatching at the dainties provided, and flitting away through the grey veils of the rain, a preposterous little figure, clad in a ragged kennel-coat, that had been long since discarded by the huntsman, a pair of couples slung round her neck, and a crop in her hand.
It was a chilly, wet August afternoon. It had rained for the past three days, and was, by all appearances, prepared to continue to do so for three more. Christian ran across the fields to the kennels, regardless of wet overhead or underfoot, and oblivious of the corked moustache, which ran too, almost as fast as she did. She had made a détour to avoid the schoolroom windows. Her birthday party was toward, and charades (accounting for her moustache) were in full swing. But the message from Cottingham, secretly conveyed together with the couples, by the pantry boy, transcended in importance all other human affairs. She had slipped away from her fellows, and having endured the hunting cap and the kennel coat, as the wear suitable to such an occasion, she had not lost a minute in coming to the horn.
Cottingham, Major Talbot-Lowry's First Whip and kennel huntsman, a single-souled little Devonshire man, whose dyed hair was the solitary indication of the age it was intended to conceal, awaited her outside the kennels.
"Well, Missie, I knew you'd come," he said, approvingly. "It's Amazon that's away—that little badger-pye bitch we got last week—I 'ad to give 'er a bit of a 'iding—she tried to run a sheep when we was walkin' out last evening—she's a revengeful sort, she is, and very artful, and when we gets near kennels, her took an' bolted past Jimmy over the 'ill, an' I says to Jimmy, 'Why you fool' I says—"
The tale continued at length, and with those repetitions and recapitulations peculiar to the simple, but by no means short annals of the poor, and especially of the English poor. Yet, Christian, the impatient, the ardent, stood and listened with respectful and absorbed interest. Cottingham might be elderly, egotistic, long-winded, but at this period of her career, Christian's hot heart beat throb for throb with his, and the thought, as he said, of "that pore little bitch stoppin' out, and maybe spoilt, so that there'd be nothin' for us but to shoot her, through learnin' to run sheep," had precisely the same horror for her as for him.
"I couldn't, so to speak, lay me 'and on 'er now; her wouldn't let me go anear 'er, nor she wouldn't let Jimmy neither, but she ain't far away, and she'd 'ave what I might call cawnfidence in you, Missie—" Cottingham had at length concluded: "Her's that sly we mightn't never see 'er again! But you take and go up that 'ill, Missie, that's where I seen 'er last, I'll lay you get 'er if anyone can!"
Christian, "still," as Rossetti says, "with the whole of pleasure," received these instructions reverently, and with the pockets of the kennel-coat further loaded with broken biscuit, "took and went" according to instructions. She climbed the fence behind the kennels, and addressed herself lightly to the ascent of the hill. It was a long hill, that began with pasture fields, that were merged imperceptibly into moorland, heather and furze. There were sheep, and donkeys and goats on it, and a melancholy old kennel-horse or two, all feeding peacefully. Amazon could not be accused in connection with them, so Christian reflected, and prepared herself to rebut any such slander. The rain was lighter, and the soaking mist that had all day filled the valley, was slowly thinning, and revealing the mighty scroll of silver that was the river, while the woods and hillsides came and went, illusive as the grey hints of landscape in a Japanese water-colour. But at the mature age of ten years, Christian cared for none of these things. She saw the smoke from the Mount Music kitchen chimney blending bluely with the mist, and thought with a momentary pang of the birthday cake. She wondered if the Companions of Finn would so far forget honour and fidelity as to devour it without her. She thought of the ten candles that would gutter to their end, untended by the heroine of the celebration; she wondered if Cottingham would tell Papa, and if Papa would tell Mother (thus did this child of the 'eighties speak of her parents, the musical abbreviations of a later day, "Mum," and "Dad," not having penetrated the remoteness in which her home was placed); she also wondered if there would be a row about her getting wet. All these things seemed but too probable, but she was in for it now.
Near a ridge of the hill, in one of the shallow valleys that furrowed, like ploughshares, its long slant, there was a dolmen, three huge stones, with a fourth poised on it. Their grey brows rose over the billows of bracken, and briers, laden with the promise of fruit, made garlands for their ancient heads. Christian's straying advance brought her along the lip of the little valley in which they reposed, and quite suddenly there rose in her the conviction that her quest was nearing success. She was of that mysteriously-gifted company to whom the lairs of things lost are revealed. She "found things"; she was "lucky." She was regarded by the servants as one enfolded in the cloak of St. Anthony, that inestimable saint, whose mission it is to find and protect the lost. It had become a household habit to appeal to Christian when one of every day's most common losses occurred. She would hearken; her little thin body would stiffen, like a dog setting his game, a spark would light in her brown eyes, and—how led who can say?—she would fly like a wireless message to the thing sought for.
So it was now, on the furzy side of Cnocán an Ceoil Sidhe; she knew that the moment had come. She sat down on a ledge of rock, and waited, throbbing with anticipation, and had not long to wait. A brown shadow moved in the bracken near the dolmen, a brown face peered with infinite caution, round a flank of the great stones.
"Yoop! the little bitchie!" said Christian to the horizon. Christian was an apt scholar, and Cottingham's tone and idiom were alike accurately rendered.
The lady thus addressed gazed with a greater intensity, but did not move. Christian took a piece of dog-biscuit from the ragged pocket of the kennel-coat, and, still walking closely in Cottingham's steps, bit it, ate a part of it, and carelessly flung the remainder in the direction of the shadow. This stole forth, and, having snapped up the biscuit, sank back into the covert. Christian did not move.
"Amazon!" she crooned, in tones in which a doting wood-pigeon might apostrophise a sickly fledgling; "Amazon, my darling!"
Another piece of biscuit accompanied the apostrophe, and poor Amazon, who was indeed very lonely and very hungry, capitulated, and came sidling up to the charmer, with propitiatory smiles, and deprecating stern wagging, beneath her, and in advance of her hind legs, instead of above her and behind them.
"'Olding the buckle in the right 'and," said Christian to herself, in faithful quotation from the great ensample, as with a swiftness and decision that were creditable to her training, she put the couples on Amazon.
Then she produced the bone that had been "Dixie's" bright achievement, and it was while, in contentment and friendship, Amazon was crunching it, that Larry Coppinger appeared.
He rose from behind a spur of rock and furze, and came towards Christian.
"Oh, good for you!" he said, admiringly, "I was afraid to show up till you had got her."
Christian was not sure that she was pleased at this intervention.
"How did you know where I was?"
"The servants told me you had gone to the kennels, and Jimmy showed me the hill, and then I spotted your white coat—not that it's so awfully white!—I thought it was rather rotten to let you go alone."
"And why not, pray?" enquired Christian, haughtily. Male assumption of the duties of guardianship was a thing she found highly offensive; "I always go about alone!"
"Well, I wanted to come, anyway," said Larry, with a placating grin. "I say, that is an awful nice dog!"
"You never call foxhounds 'dogs'!" said Christian, still with hauteur; "Larry, you are an owl!"
But she enjoyed the consciousness of knowing more than he did; she even forgave him his superfluousness. She thought it was rather decent of him to have come, and she let him lead Amazon for a part of the way, only reserving to herself the entry into the presence of Cottingham, bringing her sheaf with her.
Are childhood and youth indeed Vanity? When Christian looks back upon her childhood at Mount Music, it seems to her that the World, and Life, and Time, could hardly have bettered it for her, however they might have put their heads together over the job.
All her memories are steeped in sunlight. It was all fun and fights, and strawberries and dogs, and donkey-riding, and hot evenings on the big river, with the hum of flies in her ears, and Larry, hailing her from the farther bank of the Ownashee, across the stepping-stones. And whenever she thought about the schoolroom, it was always warm and rather jolly, especially in the Christmas holidays. They used to have drawing competitions, of which Larry was, of course, the promoter, in the old schoolroom, during the long winter evenings. Larry always had a pencil in his hand, and was renowned as an artist of horses and hounds, and Finn's wolf-dog, Bran, besides wielding a biting pen as a caricaturist. Christian could only compete in architectural designs that demanded neatness and exactness, but Georgy, the elder twin, had some skill in marine subjects, and, since he was going to the "Britannia," arrogated to himself the position of being an authority on shipping; so much so, indeed, that general satisfaction was felt when he was, one evening, worsted by Christian. The subject selected for competition was "A Haunted Ship."
"Where shall I put the ghost?" Georgy debated, chewing the end of his pencil, with his head on one side.
"In the shrouds, of course!" said Christian.
"Funny dog!" sneered Georgy, who considered that his artistic efforts were no fit subject for jesting. "You'd better come and shove in one of your Midianites for me!"
Then Christian, with the disconcerting swiftness of action, mental and physical, that was peculiarly hers, snatched, in a flash, the mug of painted-water from Larry's elbow, and poured its contents over Georgy's fair bullet-head; with which, and with a triumphing cry (learnt from a County Cork kitchenmaid, and very fashionable in the schoolroom) of "A-haadie!" she fled, "lighter-footed than the fox," and equally subtle and daring.
Christian was not easily roused to wrath, but when this occurred, youngest of the party though she was, it was but rarely that victory did not rest with her. Two subjects were marked dangerous among these children, during the combative years of "growing-up," and were therefore specially popular; of these, the one was Christian's reputed occult power, coupled with gibes based on that hymn to which reference has been made; the other was Larry's religion.
To the Talbot-Lowry children, their own religion was largely a matter of fetishes, with fluctuating restrictions as to what might or might not be done on Sundays, but they found Larry's a more stimulating subject. It was impossible for them to refrain from speculations as to what Larry said when he went to confession; equally impossible not to propose to the prospective penitent an assortment of sins to be avowed at his next shriving, even though the suggestions seldom failed to provoke conflict of the intensity usually associated with religious warfare.
Lady Isabel, confronted with these problems, fell back on the manuals of her own youth, with their artless pronouncements on the Righteous, the Wicked, their qualifications, their prospects; and, since the manuals had an indisputable flair for the subjects most likely to seize the attention of the young, Lady Isabel was generally able to divert her offspring's attention from the Errors of Rome, with digested narratives of "Adamaneve" (pronounced as one word) and the Serpent, Balaam's Ass, Jonah's Whale, and similar non-controversial matters.
"Wiser people than you and me, darlings," she would say, with a slight stagger in grammar, but none in orthodoxy, "have explained it all for us——"
"Larry's papa and mamma didn't quite think the same as we do, but we needn't think about that, my pet!"
"But, mother, Evans says that the Pope——" appalling prognostications as to the future of that dignitary would probably follow.
Unfortunate Lady Isabel! But parents and guardians have, at least, the power of the closure.
"We needn't talk about it now," says the hard-pressed mother, "when you're grown up you will understand it all better——"
With Christian, however, this formula was less efficacious than with her elder brothers and sister. Her questioning, analysing, unwearying brain ignored the closure, and evaded poor Lady Isabel's evasions. Her religious life had been singularly vivacious, and the scope and variety of the petitions that she nightly offered caused considerable embarrassment to her mother. What was any good Church of England, or Ireland, mamma to do when an infant of four years implores its Deity:
"Make me to have a good, fat, lively conscience, and even if God curses me, help me not to mind a bit!"
The scandalised mamma decided that extempore prayer must be discouraged, and seeking out in one of the manuals a form of prayer of strictly limited range, repressed all additions and emendations.
Obedient to the traditions of her own youth, Lady Isabel, as her children successively attained the mature age of six years, bestowed Bibles upon them, but it was Christian, alone of the family, that applied herself with any diligence to the study of the Scriptures. She began with the Book of Esther (in which she found a satisfaction that in after life remained something of a bewilderment to her), and thence, but this was a year or two later, for no reason that can be assigned, she passed lightly to the Book of Revelation. With it, it may be said, the artistic side of her, that had leaped to sympathy with Larry's emotion over "Dark Rosaleen" and "The Spirit of the Nation," awakened, and her artistic life began. That glittering, prismatic chapter, that tells of the rainbow round about the Throne, in sight like unto an emerald, and the Sea of glass, like unto crystal, that was before the Throne, and the thunderings and the voices, and the Voice as it were a trumpet talking. Christian read the chapter over and over again, for the sheer glory of the beautiful words. She, also, knew of Voices, and Music, that other people did not seem to hear. She could understand, and could tremble to those strange shouts, and trumpet-blasts, and thunderings.
The Pale Horse that happened after the Fourth Seal was broken!
She would sit as still as if she were frozen, while she thought of the Pale Horse coming crashing through Dharrig Wood, with Death on his back, and Hell following with him—she always thought of him in that black wood of pine trees——
"Wake up, Christian!" Miss Weyman, the governess, would say.
One of the Twins would hiss between his teeth: "Christian, dost thou see them?"
Christian would feel a spiritual bump, as though she had been flung off her chair on to the schoolroom floor, and Miss Weyman (always enviously spoken of by adjacent mammas as "that most sensible little Englishwoman") would say:
"I wonder how much you heard of what I was reading! I wish I could see you learning to have a little more concentration!"
Whereas, did the excellent Miss Weyman only know it, a very little more concentration on Christian's part, and it is possible that she, and Judith, and the Twins, might all have seen the Pale Horse thundering past the schoolroom windows. Stranger things have happened. The Indian rope and basket trick, for instance.
"A most curious child—a perfect passion for animals, and so dreamy, if you know what I mean," Miss Weyman would say to a comrade visitor. "And the things that she seems to have learnt from the huntsman! But really a nice little thing, and clever, too, though a most erratic worker! Now, Judith——" Miss Weyman felt there was some satisfaction in teaching Judith. She could concentrate, if the comrade visitor liked! Nothing was a difficulty to her! And her memory! And her energy—Miss Weyman freely admitted that Judith was three years older than Christian, but still——
In short, Judith was a credit to any sensible little Englishwoman, but Christian had a way of knowing nothing (as touching arithmetic, for example), or too much (as touching Shakespeare and the Book of Revelation), that implied considerable independence as to the instructions of Miss Weyman, and no sensible little Englishwoman could be expected to enjoy that.
It is not peculiar to Irish incomes to fail to develop in response to increasing demands upon them. It was, however, a distinctive feature of the incomes of those who were Irish landlords during the latter years of the Victorian era, to shrink in steady response to the difficulties of English government in Ireland. Only Irish people can understand the complicated processes of erosion to which Dick Talbot-Lowry's resources were subjected, or can realise the tests of fortitude and endurance to a man of spirit, that were involved by the visitations of "Commissioners," with their fore-ordained mission of lowering Dick's rents, rents that, in Dick's opinion, were already philanthropically low. Major Talbot-Lowry, like many of his tribe, though a pessimist in politics, was an optimist in most other matters, and found it impossible to conceive a state of affairs when he would be unable to do—approximately—whatever he had a mind for. At the age of fifty-eight, fortitude and endurance are something of a difficulty for a gentleman unused to the exercise of either of these fine qualities, and after keeping the Broadwater Vale Hounds, for seventeen years, as hounds should be kept, regardless of the caprices of the subscription list, Major-Talbot-Lowry felt that he had deserved better of his country than that he should now have to institute minor economies, such as putting his men into brown breeches, foregoing the yearly renewal of their scarlet coats, and other like humiliations. Farther than details such as these, his sense of right and wrong did not permit him to go.
"There are some things that they can't expect a gentleman to do," he would say to his cousin, Miss Coppinger, "and as long as I keep the hounds—"
"Then, my dear Dick, if you can't afford them, why keep them?" Frederica would rejoin, with unsparing common-sense.
Unmarried ladies of mature age, have, as a rule, learned not only fortitude and endurance, but have also mastered the fact that ways are governed by means. Those processes of erosion, however, to which reference has been made, were, comparatively speaking, slow in operation, and there remained always Lady Isabel's twenty thousand golden sovereigns, as safe and secluded in the hands of trustees (who had a constitutional disbelief in Irishmen), as if they were twenty thousand nuns under the rule of a royal abbess.
Therefore did Major Talbot-Lowry, M.F.H., and the Broadwater Vale Hounds, make a creditable show, brown breeches and last season's pink coats notwithstanding, at the meet at Coppinger's Court, on December 26th of the year 1897. The weather was grey and silver, with a light southeast wind and a rising glass. Sunshine was filtering down, as it were through muslin curtains that might at any moment be withdrawn; some crocuses and snowdrops had appeared in the grass round the wide gravel sweep in front of the house; there was a perplexed primrose or two, deceived by the sun as to the date; the scent of the violets in the bed under the drawing-room windows, came in delicate whiffs round the corner of the house. It would have been impossible to believe that but twenty-four hours ago, Christmas hymns had been shouted, and Christmas presents presented, had not a group of "Wran-boys" offered irrefutable testimony that this was indeed the Feast of Stephen. These, a ragged and tawdry little cluster of mummers, shabby survivors of mediæval mysteries, were gathered round their ensign holly-bush in front of the hall-door steps. From the holly-bush swung the corpse of the wren, and from the throats of the Wran-Boys came the song that recounts the wicked wren's pursuit and slaughter:
"The Wran, the Wran, the King of all birds,
On Stephenses' Day was cot in the furze,
And though he is little, his family is great,
Rise up, good gentlemen, and give us a thrate—Huzzay!"
Wherever in South Munster two or three boys were gathered together, that song was being sung, and Major Talbot-Lowry and his staff had already met so many of such companies on their way to the Meet, that their horses' indignation at finding a further collection of nightmares at Coppinger's Court was excusable.
On the high flight of hall-door steps, stood Larry and Miss Coppinger, the former pale with excitement, the latter doggedly resigned to the convention that compelled her to offer intoxicating drinks to people who, as she said, had but just swallowed their breakfasts. Larry had learned many things since that day of abysmal ignorance when he had spoken of Amazon as a "nice dog." Among his many enthusiasms he now included a passion for the chase, and all that appertains to its elaborate cult, that complied with Christian's, and even Cottingham's, sense of what was becoming, and, having dedicated a shelf in the library to books on hunting, he had read them all, with the same ardour that, four years earlier, he had brought to bear on The Spirit of the Nation and Irish history.
Major Talbot-Lowry looked down, from the top of his tall, white-faced chestnut, on his young cousin, and accepted the glass of port that Larry reverently offered to him, with a pleased appreciation of the reverence. Cousin Dick was not invariably pleased with his young cousin. He had gathered, hazily, from his wife, such of the tenets of the Companions of Finn as she, instructed by Miss Weyman, had been able to impart, and had not approved of them, nor of Larry's part in introducing them to his young; also it was annoying (especially when he remembered the brown breeches, etc.) to think of a young cub of a boy having more money than he knew what to do with; and, finally, and all the time, there was that almost unconscious, inbred distrust of Larry's religion.
Nevertheless, it has been said that "wise men live in the present, for its bounties suffice them," and Dick, if not very wise, was very good-natured, and was wise enough to realise that the fine weather, and the good horse under him, and even Larry's homage, were bounties sufficient unto the day.
"Got a fox for me, Larry? That's right. Good boy. Where d'ye think we'll find him?"
"He's using the Quarry Wood earth, Cousin Dick," said Larry, breathlessly, with the anxiety of the owner of the coverts alight in his eyes. "I'm certain he's there. I went round with Sullivan myself last night, and we stopped the whole place. I bet he'll not get in anywhere!"
"Good! I'll draw the Quarry Wood first," said Cousin Dick, with royal benignity. "You get away outside at the western end, and keep a look-out for him."
A heavy man, on an enormous grey horse, had approached the Master, having edged his way through the hounds with ostentatious care. He was of a type sufficiently common among southern Irishmen, with thick, strong-growing, black hair, a large, black moustache, and heavy brows, over-shadowing eyes of precisely the same shade of blunted blue as his shaven chin.
"He's a credit to his breeding, Major!" said the heavy man, indicating Larry with a sandwich from which he had taken a bite of the size of one of his horse's hoofs; "I wish we had a few more lads coming on in the country like him!"
"What good are they going to do?" responded the Master, reverting to the pessimistic mood that was daily becoming more frequent with him; "what chance is there for a gentleman in this damned country? You might as well have a mill-stone round your neck as an Irish property these times! What do you suppose will be left to us after the next 'Revision of Rents,' as they call it?"
"Well, deuce a much indeed," returned Doctor Mangan, equably, "but it mightn't be so bad as that altogether! I have my little girl out for the first time to-day, Major. I wonder might I ask your man, that's looking after your young ladies, to have an eye to her, too?"
Doctor Mangan withdrew with the required permission, and with his daughter at his heels, proceeded through the assembling riders and carriages, distributing greetings as he went.
Doctor Francis Aloysius Mangan was one of the leading doctors in the district of which the towns of Cluhir and Riverstown each felt itself to fill the most important place. Ireland grows doctors and clergymen with almost equal success and profusion. There is in the national character a considerable share of the constituents that are valuable in both professions. Power of sympathy, good-nature, intuition, adroitness, discernment of character, and a gift for taking every man in his humour. Qualities that are perhaps beside the specialised requirements, but are equally indispensable.
In what degree these attributes were bestowed upon Doctor Mangan may gradually be ascertained by the patient reader, but in the case of Father David Hogan, P.P., of Riverstown, at this juncture in lively converse with the Misses Talbot-Lowry, the reader may be spared the exercise of that tiresome virtue, and may feel confident that Father Hogan failed in none of the qualities that have been enumerated. Father David was, indeed, the most popular man in the country with all classes and creeds; he was universally known as the Chaplain of the B.V.H., and was accounted one of the chiefest glories of the hunt. Major Talbot-Lowry was accustomed to boast, in places where such as he congregate, that He, in His country, had the best priest in Ireland! A real good man. Kept the farmers civil and friendly. Managed a district for the Fowl Fund. And a topper to ride—always at the top of the hunt!
"Trust a priest to have a good horse!" is the rejoinder prescribed in such cases, and Major Dick's fellows seldom failed to comply with the ritual.
Father David, stout, jolly, and, like his namesake, of a ruddy countenance, mounted upon a black mare as stout and sporting-looking as himself, was, as Doctor Mangan drew near to the Misses Talbot-Lowry, beaming upon these two lambs from another fold, and having congratulated Miss Judith on the appearance of the grey mare that she was riding (reft from Lady Isabel and the victoria), was endearing himself to Miss Christian by tales of the brace of hound puppies that he was walking for the hunt.
The advantage of being the youngest member of a large family is one that takes a considerable time to mature. Christian was thirteen years old before what was left of one of the Hunt horses, after seven strenuous seasons of official work, was placed at her sole disposal. This residue, battered though it was, and a roarer of remarkable power and volume, was incapable of falling, and with anything under eight stone on its piebald back (piebald from incessant and sedulously concealed saddle-galls) could always be trusted to keep within reasonable distance of hounds when they ran. It was fortunate for Christian that Judith, now sixteen, and far from a feather-weight, had renounced her share in "Harry," and had established a right in the grey mare. Judith was a buccaneer. Charles, the coachman, (in connection with the commandeering of the grey mare, which he resented) had said of her to his respected friend, Mr. Evans: "Ah, ah! That's the young lady that'll get her whack out of the world!"
And Mr. Evans' reaping-hook nose had sniffed assent.
Yet, though Judith was averted, the Christmas holidays always held the menace of brothers to be reckoned with as rival claimants for Harry.
"The boys, darling!" "Unselfishness, darling!" "After the holidays, my child!"
Lady Isabel was of the school that inculcated self-denial for its daughters, but never for its sons; (whether from a belief that such was inherent in the male sex, or from a fear that the effort would be misplaced, it is difficult to say). Christian was ever quick to respond to the call for martyrdom, but that the Twins should both maltreat and despise the venerable Harry, added a poignancy to renunciation that placed it almost beyond attainment. On this day of festival, happily, renunciation was not exacted; other attractions had absorbed the Twins, and Christian's rights were unchallenged.
Therefore, it was that the youngest Miss Talbot-Lowry, perched on old Harry's broad back, and looking of about the same size in relation to it as the "Wran" to the holly-bush, was now blissfully discussing hound-puppies with her trusted friend, Father David, and was asking nothing more that life could offer.
Dr. Mangan, meantime, waited, with a permissive smile, for the moment to make his "little girl" known to the young ladies from Mount Music, and to their cousin, young Larry Coppinger. He was in no hurry, and he had often had occasion to agree with Milton (though he had been quite unaware of so doing) in thinking that they also serve who only stand and wait.
It may be permissible to introduce a meet of hounds at or about the end of a chapter, but I feel sure that the ensuing run must be given elbow-room. Alarming to many though this statement may be, yet it may be said that its foundations are laid in truth and equity, and in the necessities of this history may be found the justification of the chapter.
The Quarry Wood had not failed. Larry's fox had been in it. To Larry, seated on his stout, bay cob, with a heart banging against his ribs, and a soul absorbed into a single supplication, had come, suddenly and beautifully, the answer to prayer, the ineffable spectacle of a large and lovely fox, sliding quietly away, at the right place, at the right moment. Life could offer Larry no more; not then, at all events.
"My coverts—my fox!"
Not many boys of sixteen, enthusiasts, endowed with just that touch of the poetic temperament that can set the brain reeling, could know a more wondrous moment.
Then to see Cousin Dick, blazing and splendid, charging out of the wood, "like the man on the red horse in Revelation," as Christian said afterwards—(Christian had sneaked away from Charles, the coachman, and had followed Larry)—with the hounds flashing around and ahead of him, and Cottingham's rasping "Forrad! Forrad!" from the wood behind, like the blast of a bellows upon flames!
Larry had been past speech when that apocalyptic vision had materialised in response to his halloa. He had waved his hat and cheered the hounds to the line of the fox, but it had been unnecessary; they had not had an instant's uncertainty, and had taken hold on their own account without reference to anyone.
That the hold taken by the hounds was a firm and assured one was due, not only to their own virtues, but also to the fact that where the fox had broken, a tract of turf bog met the wood, and carried a scent of entire efficiency. What, however, it was incapable of carrying were the horses. The hounds, uttering their ecstasy in that gorgeous chorus of harmonious discordance called Full Cry, sped across the bog like a flock of seagulls; but for the riders, a narrow track between deep ditches left by the turf-cutters for their carts, was the sole hope, and a string of horses, galloping in single file, was soon following hard on the heels of the Master. Foremost of them all were Christian and Larry, filled with an elation beyond the power of words to convey. The hounds were holding steadily right-handed across the bog, and were ever widening the distance between them and the riders, but it was enough for these two children to be able to keep their proud place, next after the Master, and to know that no one, not even Cottingham, could deprive them of it. It may gravely be questioned if Tommy, the stout bay cob, and Harry, the residue of a hunt horse, appreciated a position to which they were so little accustomed. Harry, whose heart, indisputably in the right place, was possibly the only sound item in his outfit, pounded gallantly on, roaring as he went, like a lion seeking after his prey; but Tommy, whose labours were, as a rule, limited to mild harness-work, was kept going mainly by stress of circumstances, in which category Larry's spurs took a prominent part. The bog-track at length became merged in a rushy field, and then indeed did the pent waters of the hunt break forth. Major Dick's tall chestnut had gradually increased his lead, and by the time the track was clear of riders, he was two fields ahead, with Cottingham not far behind, and a few indignant young men riding like maniacs to overtake them. To have been held back by a schoolboy and a little girl is an indignity not easily to be borne. The Broadwater Vale field was a hard-going one, including a strengthening of young soldiers from the regiment quartered at Riverstown, and it was not long before Tommy and Harry were beginning to find themselves in a more familiar and less exigent position. Judith, on the grey mare, went by them like a flash; Doctor Mangan overtook them heavily, and heavily passed them. Father David, riding a little wide of the crowd, waved a friendly hand to Christian, as the black mare, composed and discreet, as became a daughter of the Church, dwelt for an instant on the top of a wide bank, before she struck off into the next field. Worst indignity of all, Charles, the coachman, on the elderly carriage horse, drew alongside, and presumed to offer directions and admonitions. "As if," thought Christian, as she drove Harry at the bank in the wake of the black mare, "I cared a pin what he says!"
Gone for poor Charles were the days when Miss Christian had revered him above all other created things; days such as the one on which, after a ride round the yard on an unharnessed carriage horse, Christian, in gratitude too great for words, had attempted to kiss him. Charles had repelled the embrace, saying tactfully: "No pleasures in Lent, Miss!" and Christian had accepted the excuse. Then Miss Christian had been three years old, now she was thirteen, and Charles had, in the interval, married a cook, and lost his figure, and with it, had departed his nerve, and the reverance of Miss Christian, and he knew it.
Close behind Charles came Dr. Mangan's "little girl," who had been confided with a lubricating half-crown, to his care. Miss Letitia Mangan was far from considering herself a little girl. She was sixteen and a half, and conceived herself to be of combatant rank, even though her thick, dark hair banged on her back in a ponderous pigtail, and her education at the Cluhir Convent School was still uncompleted. The fat, piebald pony that she was riding would have a sore back before she got home. Christian, perched wren-like on her ancient steed (but a wren placed with mathematical accuracy of directness with relation to the steed's ears), noted with disfavour the crooked seat, the heavy hand on the curb. Larry, hot and pink, with hat hanging by its guard, his fair hair looking like storm-tossed corn-stooks, noted nothing, being wholly engrossed in bitter conflict with Tommy. The art of keeping a good start with hounds is not given to many, and least of all to the young and inexperienced. From having been first of the first, it had fallen to Larry and Christian to find themselves last, and last in the despised company of Charles and "the Mangan girl."
The unexacting position of being at the heel of the hunt may have a charm for the philosophic or unambitious, but so black a continuation of so great a start was a trial quite beyond the endurance of a young gentleman possessed of the artistic temperament. And then the abominable Mangan girl came into play, and joined in the circling performance at the big bank. Always, when Larry felt that this time the cob was going to "have it," that cow-like red and white beast would jam itself in the way, so he thought, raging. In this matter of hunting, Dr. Mangan had not been well advised in his scheme for his little girl's social advantage.
In the meantime the hounds had run their fox into Drumkeen Wood, and the riders, arriving in small and breathless companies, thanked God for a check, and tightened their girths and took courage. The latter would undoubtedly be needed if the run continued; Drumkeen Wood was hung like a cloak upon the side of a steep hill, and was the invariable prelude to the worst going within the bounds of the hunt.
"If he's into the big earth here, I'm afraid it's good-bye to him!" said Dr. Mangan, taking courage in a liquid form. "It was a sweet gallop while it lasted! Sweet and short, like this toothful of cherry brandy I'm after drinking!"
"Ah, that's poor stuff, Doctor," said Mr. Hallinan, proprietor of Hallinan's Hotel, a prosperous hostelry, much patronised by salmon-fishers. "Give me a sup of good old John Jameson in its purity!"
"'Twas for Tishy I brought this out," replied the Doctor, apologetically; "but I lost sight of her. She's back somewhere with little Christian Lowry and young Coppinger."
"What sort of a lad is that?" asked Mr. Hallinan. "Is he as big a pup as them young Lowrys?"
"Ah, they're not so bad altogether," said Dr. Mangan, indulgently. "Young sprigs like them are none the worse for a little tashpy, as the people say!" The Doctor's heavy voice relaxed a little over the world tashpy (which, it should perhaps be explained, is Irish, and implies a blend of impudence and high spirits). He was quite aware that his friend Hallinan and he regarded the Talbot-Lowrys from a different standpoint.
"I was having a bit of lunch there the other day," he went on, "and I thought they were nice boys enough."
"I hope you got enough to eat!" said Mr. Hallinan, disagreeably; "I'm told that their butcher's sick and tired trying to get what he's owed, out of them! There should be drink enough, anyway! I'm just after sending in a case of whisky there. God knows when I'll be ped for it!"
At this moment the two gentlemen, whose horses were nibbling the grass of the bank that surrounded the wood, were shaken by the sudden appearance of the white nose of the Master's chestnut on the other side of the bank.
"I'd be obliged if there was less noise!" said the Master's voice, with threatening in it.
Mr. Hallinan's jaw dropped unaffectedly.
"Merciful God!" he murmured; "did he hear me, d'ye think?"
"Ah, no fear, man!" whispered the Doctor, encouragingly. "And if he did itself, maybe you'd get your cheque a bit quicker!"
In the silence that followed, a whimpering whistle from a hound, invisible, yet near at hand, sent a thrill through the waiting riders. There followed the rustling rush of hounds through the undergrowth, as they gathered to enquire into the whimper. Then another whimper, merging into a squeal, and Cottingham's voice:
"Hark to Dulcet! Forrad to Dulcet!"
"Begad, they have him again," said Dr. Mangan, without enthusiasm. "I wonder where is Tishy gone to? I suppose they'll run these blasted hills now——"
The big grey horse, and his seventeen stone rider, moved off in the opposite direction to the tread of the hunt, which was slowly and steadily pushing upwards through the wood. Dr. Mangan was one of the select company of followers of hounds who know when they have had enough.
A narrow, stony passage, more resembling a drain than a lane, ran round the wood; the riders hustled along it, like a train in a cutting, too tightly packed for the most vindictive kicker to injure his neighbour, too hampered by impeding rocks to make more speed than can be accomplished by a jog. The drain ended at a V-shaped fissure between two slants of rock, and, by the time the last horse had clattered and scrambled up it, the hounds were away again, steering up, across heathery fields, enclosed by fences and stone walls of all sorts and sizes, for a great double-headed hill on the sky-line, three or more miles away.
"Carrigaholt as usual!" said Major Dick, over his shoulder, to the Hon. Sec., young Kirby of Castle Ire. "If you get a chance, try and head him off the western rocks—and Bill! Tell those infernal children of mine they're to keep with Charles and look out for bogs!"
His conscience as a parent thus appeased, the Master applied himself to the no small task of keeping his hounds in sight, and of evading the equal difficulties presented by rocks and bog holes. The offspring in question were now, with Larry, in comparative and undesired safety beneath the fluttering wing of Charles, and Bill Kirby, having faithfully delivered his message, found himself immediately adopted as an alternative protector, and repented him of his fidelity.
The hounds stormed on through the hills, running hard across the frequent boggy tracts, more slowly, and with searchings, over the intervening humps of rock and furze. The fox was making a well-known point, and running a well-known line, but the fences in their infinite variety, defied the staling force of custom, and the difficulties of the going were intensified by the pace. The hounds gained at length the ridge of the high country, and as they flitted along the skyline, the riders, labouring among the rocks, skirting the bogs, pounding at the best pace they could raise over the intervals of heather and grass, felt that their hold on the hunt had become distinctly insecure.
"'Christian dost thou see them?'" quoted Larry, kicking his heels into the bay cob's well-covered ribs without effect, "for I don't!"
"They'll check at Carrigaholt," called back Bill Kirby; "that'll be our chance——"
They were far up on the slope of the hills now; the country swung in long, dipping lines, down to the Vale of the Broadwater, and spread, in great and generous curves, away to the far range of the Mweelin Mountains, that brooded, in colour a deep and sullen sapphire, on the horizon. The town of Cluhir, a little puff of smoke, cut in two by the wide river, lay below. The spires of the two churches rose above the smoke, one on either side of the bridge that spanned the river. The sound of bells, faintly rising from one of them, summoned the faithful to the mid-day Mass in honour of St. Stephen.
Larry, pushing Tommy along at a dogged canter, lifted his bowler hat as he heard the bells, and Christian and Judith looked at each other. The tradition of the Protestant, "No demonstrations!" with its singular suspicion and distrust of manifestations of reverence or poetry, had been early implanted in them, and Judith murmured to Christian: "How on earth does he remember?"
"I know I couldn't," admitted Christian; yet some feeling that, though crushed, had survived the heavy feet of Lady Isabel's trusted manuals, stirred in her in accord with the faint clash of the chapel bells, making her envy Larry his accredited salutation, making her feel something of the beauty, if not of holiness, of, at least, the recognition that there were holy things in the world.
On the nearer head of Carrigaholt the check, predicted by Bill Kirby, came. A narrow and level plateau ran between the twin crests; above it on both sides, rose successive shelves of cliff, with swathes of russet bracken muffling their fierce outline. Flung about on the shelves, looking like tumbled piles of giant books in a neglected library, were immense rectangular rocks; one would say that only the grey and knotted cords of the ivy that had crept over them, held them in their place upon those rugged shelves. At one end of the level place the ground fell steeply to a wild stream, the Feorish, from whose farther bank another hill, but little less formidable than Carrigaholt, rose like an enemy tower, threatening its defences. The hounds swarmed like bees among the rocks, jumping or falling from shelf to shelf, burrowing and thrusting through the bracken, their heads appearing suddenly in quite improbable places, with glowing eyes and glistening pink tongues, demanding from their huntsman the information that no one but themselves could give.
It was a place in which not one, but a hundred places of safety presented themselves to a fox, but this good fox had despised them all, and, of all the hounds, it was Amazon, Christian's beloved foundling, who was first to recognise the fact. Far down, from the bottom of the gorge, she called to her fellows, and it was Christian, of all the riders, who first heard her voice. If Larry had had his great moment, when the fox broke, it was Christian's turn now, when Amazon fresh-found him. I suppose there are not very many people who, as well as being perfectly happy, are conscious of their perfect happiness. This little girl was of that privileged company, as, in answer to her call, her father threw the pack over the edge of the plateau and cheered them to Amazon.
In two minutes, a frenzied chorus was filling the narrow gorge, the cry of the hounds, the hurrying reiterated notes of the horn, the shouts of the Whips rating on stragglers, echoing and re-echoing from cliff to cliff. Before the riders had committed themselves to the descent, the leading hounds were straining up the opposite cliff face; slithering, and slipping, the horses were hurried down a track that goats had made between rocks and bracken, and, at the base, found themselves confronted with the problem of the river. The River Styx could hardly look less attractive than did the Feorish, as it swirled, swollen and foaming, among its rocks, its dark torrent plunging from steep to steep in roaring waterfalls. Some country men, high on the cliffs, howled directions, and the Master, his eye on his hounds struggling with the fierce stream, went on down the gorge until the howls changed their metre, thus indicating to the experienced that the moment had come to cross the river. The ford, such as it was, permitted some half dozen of the horses to cross it, splashing and floundering, wobbling perilously from the round and slimy back of one sunken rock to another.
Judith and the grey mare, following close on Bill Kirby's heels, got over neatly, and were away after him over the top of the hill before Christian's turn came. The ancient and skilled Harry addressed himself to the task with elderly caution, feeling his way with suspicion, creeping across with slow-poised feet, and was so delicate over the effort, that Larry's cob, following too close on him, was checked at a critical moment. He struggled, slipped, recovered, found himself still hindered by Harry, and, with a final stagger, lost footing altogether, and rolled over.
Cottingham, subsequently recounting the incident, declared that he thought, he did, that the young genel'm was done for; but "that little Miss Christeen—she's a nummer she is!—she off'n 'er 'oss before I fair sees what's 'appened, and she ketches the young chap by the 'ed, and pulls 'im clear! Her did indeed! A lill' gurl like what she is too! Her's wuth more than ten big men!"
What a singular encomium, "a nummer" might mean, was a fact known only to Cottingham, but it was incontrovertibly Christian's eel-like swiftness of action that had saved Larry from a worse accident. Small and slender though she was, she was wiry, and she had the gift of being able instantly to concentrate every force of mind and body upon a desired point—a rare gift and a precious one.
But when she and Larry, dripping and hatless, were hauled into safety by other helpers, less swift but more powerful, it was found that Larry had not come out of the Feorish unscathed. His left hand was hanging, helpless, with a broken wrist.
The hunt swept on after the manner of hunts, full of sympathy, having, as to one man, contributed a silver cigarette case, with which another, a resourceful medical student, had improvised a splint, but feeling, not without relief, that they could do nothing more; feeling also, with depression, that the Lord only knew where the devils had run to by this time, but that that couldn't be helped; with which philosophic reflection and many valedictory shouts of commiseration, the last of them had vanished over the hill.
The unfortunate Charles restored to guardianship, now found himself with Miss Judith, lost; Miss Christian soaked to the skin, eight miles or more from her home; Master Larry ditto, in much pain, no nearer to his, and unable to mount his horse, which latter would have to be led over a succession of fences to the nearest road; (and no matter with what distinction an elderly coachman can drive a pair of horses on a road, it is very far from being the same thing to get a pair of horses across a country). It was, therefore, a very gloomy party that set face for the nearest highway. The intricacies of procedure at each jump need not here be dealt with, but it may be said that a more thankful man than Charles, when he again felt the good macadam under his feet, is not often met with. He would at that moment have said that he could not have felt an intenser gratitude than suffused him as he saw his convoy safe off the hills; but there he would have over-stated the case, since, scarcely five minutes after the road had been reached, an even more supreme thankfulness was his. Coming rapidly towards him, he beheld Dr. Mangan's outside car, and upon it was the large person of Dr. Mangan himself.
"Well," said Charles that evening, to Mr. Evans, "if it was the Angel Gabriel I seen flying down to me, I wouldn't be as glad as what I was when I seen the Big Doctor on the side-car!"
And Mr. Evans had caustically rejoined: "It'll be the funny day when you'll see wings on him!" meaning Dr. Mangan, of whom he had a low opinion.
Wings or no wings, no angel of mercy and succour was ever more welcome or more needed than was the Big Doctor at this moment. Larry, very white, shivering with pain and cold, was lifted on to the car; Christian was told to gallop away home as fast as she could, and Charles was directed to let Miss Coppinger know that her nephew would be put up for the night at the Doctor's own house at Cluhir.
"You can say to her that I met the Hunt, and one of them told me what happened," said the Big Doctor, "and I knew then what to do."
It might, indeed, habitually be said of Dr. Mangan that he knew very well what to do. There were, indeed, but two occasions on record when it might have seemed that he had not so known. The first of these was when he had abandoned an improving practice in Dublin to work as his father's partner in his native Cluhir, the second, when, preliminary to that return, he had married a lady, alleged, by inventive and disagreeable people, to have been his cook. The disagreeable people had also said disagreeable things as to the nature of the stress that had prompted the marriage. But it was now twenty years since the Mangans had been established at Number Six, The Mall, Cluhir; the Doctor had come in for his father's money as well as his practice, and was respected as "a warm man"; the disagreeable ones had grown old, and people who are both old and disagreeable cannot expect to command a large audience. Mrs. Mangan, on the contrary, was neither the one nor the other, being, at this time, but little over forty, and as kindly, lazy, and handsome a creature as ever lived down spiteful gossip by good-nature. When "The Dawkthor" (as she called him, with a drowsy drag on the first syllable) had galloped in at one o'clock to command Barty's room to be got ready at once, Mrs. Mangan was still in what she called "dishable," and was straying between her bedroom and the kitchen, pleasurably involved in the cares of both.
"They say young Coppinger fell in the river, and he's broken his wrist," said the Doctor rapidly, stamping into his wife's room, bringing the wind of the hills with him. "I'll bring him here as soon as I can get hold of him."
"The creature!" replied Mrs. Mangan, sympathetically.
"Well, don't be waiting to pity him now!" said her husband, stuffing bandages into his pocket, "but hurry and put hot jars into the bed—and clean sheets. Don't forget now, Annie!"
He lumbered in his long boots and spurs, down to the surgery, still issuing directions.
"Tishy'll be back directly—she'll give you a hand—and Annie! tell Hannah to have some hot soup ready. Now, hurry, for God's sake!"
The front door into the Mall, Cluhir's most fashionable quarter, banged.
"Well, well!" said Mrs. Mangan, still sympathetic, while she removed the curling-pins from her bison fringe; "wasn't it the will of God that I had a headache this morning and couldn't go to Mass! I'll have something to say to Father Greer now if he draws it up to me that I was backward in my duty!"
Much fortified by this reflection, Mrs. Mangan hurriedly proceeded with her toilette, squalling meanwhile to her bench-woman in the kitchen a summary of the Doctor's orders. She had no more than achieved what she called her "Sunday dress," a complimentary effort to be equally divided between Saint Stephen and young Mr. Coppinger, when the back-door into the yard from the house slammed, and her daughter's voice announced her return.
"Come up, Tishy, till I talk to you!" shouted Mrs. Mangan, slinging a long gold watch-chain over her head and festooning it upon her ample bosom: "Did you meet Pappy?" she continued, as her daughter's steps drew near.
"I did to be sure," returned Miss Letitia, coming into her mother's room and flinging herself into an armchair, "when I was crossing the bridge it was. He roared to me to hurry you and Hannah. Holy Mary Joseph! How stiff I am! That old horn on the saddle has the right leg cut off me!"
"Well, never mind your legs now," replied Mrs. Mangan, peremptorily, "what I want to know is what sort is this young man that Pappy's bringing in on top of us? In God's name, why couldn't he be let go home to his own?"
"'Young man' is it!" retorted Tishy; "he's nothing but a boy at school, and a cross boy too! Such beating of his pony as he had when he wouldn't jump for him! Didn't I try and make poor Zoé go before him, and th' eye he cast at her! I thought he'd beat me, too!"
"Oh, and is a boy all he is then?" said Mrs. Mangan, with relief in her voice: "you'd think by the work your father had 'twas the Lord Leftenant was in it! Run away now, Tishy, like a good girl, and get those clothes off you, and help Hannah with Barty's room. Boy or man or whatever he is, he must have a bed under him!"
It was a very deplorable boy who presently arrived at No. 6, The Mall, Cluhir, and was practically lifted off the car by the Big Doctor. Francis Aloysius Mangan had many aspects of character of an undesirable kind, but they were linked with one virtue, the Irish gift, of a good-natured heart. With his enormous thick hands, that made Larry think of a tiger's paws, he undressed the boy as cleverly and gently as he had set the broken bones of his wrist. Mrs. Mangan and Hannah had not failed; the soup and the jars were, as the latter authority had pronounced, "as hot as love," similarly passioned was the ardour of the whisky-punch, with which the proceedings had opened. Combined with a subsequent sleeping-draught, it conferred the boon of sleep, and for some hours, at all events, Larry forgot his recently-acquired knowledge of what pain was. But not for many hours. In the long darkness of the winter morning he lay with a fast mounting temperature, while he made the discovery, common to all in his case, that upon the particular bone that has been broken, the entire existence pivots. And, in addition to the broken bone, by the time that Miss Frederica had driven in from Coppinger's Court, there was but little doubt that what Dr. Mangan called, lightly, "a touch of pneumonia," would keep young Mr. Coppinger in Barty's room for a time unspecified.
Miss Frederica drove home again in a seriously perturbed frame of mind, and with indignation against the decrees of Providence hot within her.
"I wired for a nurse for him!" she said to Lady Isabel, "I could not plant myself upon them! It's all most uncomfortable and unavoidable. Of course they've been extremely kind——"
At the back of Miss Coppinger's mind was the wish, that she trampled on whenever it stirred, that the Mangans had been less unexceptionally kind and Good Samaritan-like. "Such an obligation!" she groaned; "they've turned their own son out of the house to make room for Larry! But oh, my dear Isabel, if you could imagine what the house is like! The untidiness! The dirt! Of course they're unspeakably kind, and Dr. Mangan is certainly very clever, and has managed Larry wonderfully," went on Frederica, repenting her of her evil speaking, "and I must say I can't help liking Mrs. Mangan, but the girl——!" Miss Coppinger shut her mouth so tightly that her lips became thin, white lines. "Keep the door of your lips" was a text which she had in her youth illuminated for herself. She often found that nothing save a sudden and violent slam would keep that door shut, and, to do her justice, the slams, when the conversation turned on the Mangan household, were both frequent and violent.
This was later, when Larry was getting better, and when his aunt had begun to find the daily drive to Cluhir something of a strain. It was not until he was practically convalescent that he was permitted to receive other visitors. Even the daughter of the house, and that unknown son, into whose bedroom he had been thrust, were, for him, beneath the surface, and their presence only inferential. Barty was domiciled at a friend's, and Miss Tishy held aloof, the hushed voices, and general restraint imposed by illness, being not at all to her taste. Lady Isabel came once, with his aunt, and Christian crept shyly in behind them. Christian was wont to be silent in the presence of her elders. That great and admirable maxim, once widely instilled into the young, whose purport is that children should seldom be seen and never heard, had early been accepted by Christian, without resentment, even, as she grew older, with gratitude. Having diffidently taken Larry's listless and pallid paw, she had slipped into the background, and waited silently, while her eager brain absorbed and stored every detail for future meditation. Long after Larry had lightly forgotten all save the large facts of his illness and incarceration, Christian could describe the Pope, whose highly-coloured presentment beatified (rather than beautified) the wall over Larry's bed, and could imitate, with the accuracy of a phonograph, the voice of Mrs. Mangan, as she issued her opinions on the state of the weather to her distinguished visitors.
The "touch of pneumonia," prophesied by Dr. Mangan, had proved to be a sufficiently emphatic one. Larry's recovery was slow, and during his languid convalescence, he found himself becoming sincerely attached to the Big Doctor and Mrs. Mangan, and their high place in his affections was shared by the nurse provided by Miss Coppinger. The bond of a common faith was one that, at this stage of his development, had but little appeal to Larry, but he was, at all events, spared any possibility of suffering from the feelings of sub-friction, if not of antagonism, that inevitably stirred in his aunt's breast, if she found herself brought into relation closer than that of employer and employed with those of the older creed.
His sense of beauty, now beginning to acquire consciousness, and sorely afflicted by the decorative scheme that had been adopted in Barty's bedroom, found solace in the faces of these two women. Even the lazy consideration of the contrast between their types, was a comfort to Larry, and distracted his mind from the wall-paper (which suggested the contents of Dr. Mangan's surgery, rhubarb, and mustard-leaves predominating), and from Barty's taste in art, which in its sacred and profane aspects was alike deplorable.
Nurse Brennan, slight and fair, with the clearest of blue eyes, and a Dresden china complexion—Larry was already artist enough to study and adore the shadow of her white coif, with its subtle, reflected lights, on her pink, rose-leaf cheek—and Mrs. Mangan, just a little over-blown, but heavily, darkly handsome, with deep-lidded shadowy eyes, and—as Master Coppinger pleased himself by discovering—a slight suggestion of a luxurious Chesterfield sofa, upholstered in rich cream velvet. When he was getting better, and the rigours of the sick room were relaxing, these two provided him with interest and entertainment of which they were delightfully unaware.
"Well, and what will I give him for his dinner to-day, Norrse?"—(impossible to persuade the English alphabet to disclose Mrs. Mangan's pronunciation of this word)—his hostess would say, drifting largely into Larry's room, and seating herself on the side of his bed.
"Don't be making an invalid of him at all, Mrs. Mangan!" Nurse Brennan would rejoin briskly; "I'm just telling him I'd be sorry to get a thump from that old wrist of his, he and the Doctor think so much about! And he hasn't as much as a point of temperature those three days!"
"Oh, I say, Nurse!" Larry would protest, "then why won't you let me get up?"
"Be quite now"—(in Ireland the "e" in "quiet" is not infrequently thus transposed)—"and don't be bothering me, like a good child!" Nurse would reply, with a sidelong flash of her charming eyes, a recognition of Larry's age and sex that atoned for the opprobrious epithet.
"Would he like a bit of fish now? I'm going down the town, and I might meet one of the women in from Broadhaven." Thus Mrs. Mangan, coaxingly.
"Oh, Mrs. Mangan, please don't bother!" says Larry.
"Ah, no bother at all! Sure I was going down anyway to the chapel to get a sup of holy water. I declare the house is bone dry! Not a drop in it!"
After dreary winter mornings spent in reading, by the light of a misplaced window, or age-long afternoons, drowsed through in that torpor, mental as well as physical, that overwhelms the victim of a prolonged sojourn in bed, Larry used to find himself looking forward to the conversations between Nurse Brennan and Mrs. Mangan that arose at tea-time, and followed, stimulated by the early darkness of January, in the firelight; the southern voices rising and falling like the flickering flames, becoming soon self-engrossed, and forgetful of the silent listener in the bed. Sometimes sleep would lap him in slow, stealthy peace, and the voices would die away, or come intermittently, as the sound of a band marching through a town fades and recurs at the end of a street. But without being aware of it, he was absorbing knowledge, learning a new point of view, breathing a new atmosphere that was to influence him more deeply than he could have any conception was possible.
One evening the talk fell on the congenial topic of illness, doctors and patients, nurses and nuns, all spinning in the many-coloured whirlpool of talk, now one and now another cresting the changing wave. The fact that Larry was of their own religion, counterbalanced his belonging to an alien class, and if their consciences sometimes hinted at a lack of discretion, they quieted them with the assurance that "the poor child was asleep!"
"Ah, the nuns are wonderful!" said Mrs. Mangan, languishingly. "Look how lovely they have the Workhouse Infirmary! I was taking some flowers to Reverend Mother, and she was telling me what a beautiful death old Catherine Macsweeny made. Reverend Mother rained tears when she told me."
Nurse Brennan sniffed.
"Reverend Mother's a sweet woman, and the nuns are very attentive when a person'd be dying, but indeed Mrs. Mangan, if you ask me, I'd say 'twas the only time they were much use to their patients! Up at that infirmary what have patients at night to look after them only an old inmate, and she 'wanting' maybe!"
Larry began to giggle, and was moved to try his wit.
"Nurse! What's the difference between a stale mate and an old inmate? And what does it want?"
"It wants the very same as yourself—brains!" returned Nurse, swiftly. "Now may be!" She wagged her head at him triumphantly, turning aside to hide the smile of victory, and Larry thought how lovely was her profile, as the firelight etched it in incandescent lines on the smoky background.
"Well, indeed, the Poor have a deal to put up with!" said Mrs. Mangan, lazily, leaning back in her basket-chair, with her big grey cat purring like an aeroplane engine on her knee. "The Doctor says no one but himself knows the way he's dragged all over the country, patching up after some of them young fellows that get dispensaries before they're fit to doctor the cat!"
The reformer, that underlay the artist in Larry, awoke.
"But, Mrs. Mangan," he said, hotly, sitting up in bed, and glaring into the gloom at Mrs. Mangan's half-seen face, "why do they give dispensaries to chaps that can't doctor a cat?"
"Because their fathers can spend four or five hundred pounds to buy votes!" returned Mrs. Mangan, laughing at him. "Is that news to you? Lie down child, and don't be looking at me like that! I haven't a vote to sell!"
Larry subsided with vague splutterings. Nurse came to his bedside and smoothed the clothes.
"Listen to me now," she said impressively, "and I'll tell you something to make you angry, if you like!"
She leaned against the foot of the bed, with her hands in the pockets of her apron, looking down at him. "I was in charge of th' infirmary at Mellifont one time, and late one evening a young farm-boy was brought in to me with a dislocated foot and a 'Pott's Fracture'——"
"In the name o' God, what's that?" enquired Mrs. Mangan.
"Fracture of the fibula, but the case I'm speaking of had the two bones broken at the ankle," explained Nurse Brennan, in her most professional manner; "sure I thought anyone'd know that! And I can tell you," she leaned towards Larry, striking the palm of her left hand with her little clenched right fist, as if to hammer the words into him, "I can assure you, that as bad as you thought you were, you don't know what pain is beside what that boy suffered! Well, I sent for the doctor—a young brat of a fella that hadn't but just left college. 'He'll want an anaesthetic,' says he, 'I'll send down for Doctor ____' (I'll not tell you his name—Smith, I'll call him!) 'Do you give him some brandy, nurse,' says he, 'Dr. Smith'll be here soon.' Sure enough he was, and glad I was to see him, for the patient was suffering greatly, and the leg swelling every minyute. It was a long ward he was in, and no one at all in it but himself. At the far end there was a table and a lamp, and down at the table me gentlemen sat, and commenced to talk."
Nurse Brennan paused, and Mrs. Mangan gave the fire a well-directed poke, that set the flames branching upwards. The tale was resumed, in those cool and equable tones that express a more perfected indignation than any heat or haste could convey.
"Well, that was nine o'clock, and they talked there for two hours, and I giving the patient brandy, and expecting every minyute he'd collapse. And what do you suppose they were talking about? Fighting they were! Disputing which of them would perform the operation, and which would administer the chloroform!"
Mrs. Mangan laughed lightly, and said: "I wouldn't at all doubt it!"
"Impossible!" exclaimed Larry.
"Not a bit impossible!" said Nurse Brennan, "and how d'ye think they settled it in the end? They arranged one of them would begin th' operation and go on for five minutes, and then he should stop and give the anaesthetic, and the other would go on with the leg! Oh, it's the case, I assure you! It was twelve o'clock at night before they were done!"
She paused, laughing a little at the hot questions with which Larry assailed her, but he could see the unshed tears gleaming in her eyes. "I was summoned to a private case next day; I don't know what happened to the unfortunate poor creature of a patient."
"A stiff leg he has, I'll be bound!" said Mrs. Mangan.
Larry lay silent. He saw it all. The long, dark ward, the white angel figure (he thought, romantically) bending over the tortured creature on the bed, and, far away, the pool of yellow light and in it those two—he sought in vain for adjectives to express what he thought of Dr. I'll-not-tell-you-his-name, and his young colleague.
In the years that followed, "Larry's cads" came to be, for the young Talbot-Lowrys, a convenient designation for the friends into whose bosom Providence had seen fit to fling their cousin. But Larry never either approved or accepted it. He was entirely pleased with his new friends, and especially with that son of the house whose position he had usurped, Mr. Bartholomew Mangan.
Barty was a lengthy, languid, gentle youth, of nearly nineteen, darkly, pallidly handsome, sweet natured, and slovenly, like his mother, and, unlike her, poetical, idealistic, unpractical, shy, and self-conscious. He was, at this period, working in the office of one of the two solicitors, who, with the aid of a branch of a bank, a Petty Sessions Court, and the imposing, plate-glass bow-windows of Hallinan's hotel, enabled Cluhir to convince itself of its status as a town. Further proof of the civic importance of Cluhir was found in the existence of a debating club of very advanced political views among its young men, of which Barty Mangan was secretary. Its membership, if small, was select, since its Republican principles did not compel it to admit to its privileges shop-assistants, or artisans, while they automatically excluded members of the class that were usually referred to in the club discussions as "Carrion Crows," or if the orator's mood was mild, "the garrison." In Ireland the attitude of mind that is termed, alternately, Disloyalty or Patriotism, is largely a matter of class, and Barty Mangan's introduction of Master St. Lawrence Coppinger, as an honorary member of the club, partook of the nature of a shock to those of the faithful who were present at his first appearance in the club room, a severely plain apartment, that offered no impediment in the matter of luxury to high thinking. But the faithful of the "Sons of Emmet" Club had nothing to fear from this half-fledged young Carrion Crow. The English school to which Larry had been sent had dulled the fire lit by the poems of The Spirit of the Nation, but it had not extinguished it. It had flickered for a time, during which Hunting had superseded Patriotism, and Mr. Jorrocks had reigned alone; but the oratory of the Sons of Emmet, to which Larry was now privileged to listen, had had the effect of restoring to life and vigour the long-neglected, half-forgotten tenets of the Companionage of Finn. Larry's store of enthusiasm was quite equal to supplying motive power for running two engines; hunting still held its own, and after a club debate in which he had taken an energetic part, even the most exclusive of the Sons of Emmet admitted that Barty's importation was worthy of the privilege that had been extended to him.
A spell of cold weather had compelled a postponement of Larry's return to his own home. When snow and frost visit a country unused to their attentions, they are treated with a respect that they do not receive elsewhere. The Doctor's orders were strict, and Larry spent the last days of his stay at No. 6, The Mall, seated in semi-invalid state by the dining-room fire, occupied, mainly, in the consumption of literature provided by his new friend, Mr. Barty Mangan, that consisted of poems, books, and pamphlets of precisely that shade of politics of which his family most thoroughly disapproved, and absorbing what would be, in their opinion, the most entirely poisonous points of view.
The Big Doctor, smoking a comfortable evening pipe over the fire, would join in the discussions between his son and his visitor, offering just as much opposition to Larry's revolutionary flights as was stimulating, and flattering his sense of youth and daring.
"We mustn't send him back to his auntie too much of a rebel altogether!" The Doctor would say, grinning at the enthusiast with his pipe wedged under a tooth; "isn't it good enough for you to be a poor decent old Nationalist like myself? I'm sure there's no one would disapprove of me, is there, Annie?"
"Don't be too sure of that at all!" Mrs. Mangan would reply coquettishly, trying to look as if she did not agree with him; "wait till his auntie hears the notions Larry's taking up with, and she'll think we're all the worst in the world! And the Major! The Major'll go cracked-mad!"
"It doesn't matter where he goes!" says Larry, defiantly, "I've had these 'notions,' as you call them, for ages and ages!"
"Ah, God help you, child!" Mrs. Mangan would probably say, "keep quiet now, till I get you a glass of hot milk!"
Politics did not form the only point of contact that had been established between Larry and the Mangan household. Since his promotion to comparative convalescence, Tishy, daughter of the house, had entered more actively into his scheme of life, and the point of entrance was music. Some divergence in view as to music is more easily condoned, on both sides, than in the other realms of the spirit. It matters not from how far countries the travellers may come, or how widely sundered may be their ideals, there are rest-houses at which they can draw rein and find agreement. One of these, possibly the greatest of them, is folk song. Ireland, whose head is ever turned over her shoulder, looking to the past, has, in her folk song, at least, reason and justification for her preoccupation with what has been in her music, rather than with what is, or is to come. It is difficult to reconcile the eternal beauty of traditional Irish melody with the lack of musical interest and feeling that distinguishes the mass of modern Irish life. But, here and there, a string of the harp that has hung, mute, on Tara's walls for so many centuries, utters a sigh of sweet sound, and at Number 6, The Mall, Cluhir, the soul of music had still some power of inspiration.
This is, perhaps, a rather elaborate method of intimating that Dr. Mangan played the violin, moderately as to technique, but soundly as to intonation, and that he and his family sang, as a quartet, not only at charity concerts, but also for their own pleasure, in their own home. Music, more than the other arts, demands sympathy, and an audience. In Larry, the Mangan Quartet recognised that both requirements were supplied, together with a glorifying enthusiasm of appreciation—though this they scarcely recognised—that gilded for him their achievements, as the firelight had edged the profile of Nurse Brennan with pure gold. Larry, it has already been said, had the artistic temperament; he had also a generous heart, and he was of an age when appreciation is spontaneous, and criticism is either unborn, or is only an echo of some maturer mind. Therefore, as he lay on the Mangan blue rep-covered drawing-room sofa, with a satin cushion adorned with Tishy's conception of roses, in water-colour, under his head, while pretty Nurse Brennan gently massaged his wrist, and the Mangan Quartet warbled: "O, believe me if all those endearing young charms," or "When thro' life unblest we rove," Larry passed into ecstasy, that, had he been one degree less of a schoolboy, might have been exhaled in tears; even as the sun draws water from the sea, in a mist of glory, and returns it to the world again in rain.
Tishy was accompanist, and sang alto; her mother, who knew nothing of notation, and sang by ear, sang treble; Barty had a supple and pleasing tenor, and the Doctor possessed a solemn bass, deep and dark as a thundercloud, yet mellow as the hum of a hive of honey-bees on a summer morning; a rare voice and a beautiful one, that had its counterpart in the contralto that already, at sixteen and a half, had given Tishy power and distinction among her fellows.
At this time, Miss Letitia Mangan's views, and those of her parents, as to her future, musical or otherwise, were entirely divergent. Hers held as central figure a certain medical student, with an incipient red moustache, and a command of boxes of chocolate that was bewildering to those acquainted with his income. Quite other were Dr. Mangan's intentions with regard to his daughter, but he was satisfied to keep them out of sight; he was aware that, in all solid buildings, the deeper and farther out of sight the foundation, the more assured is the result.
It is possible that the idea of a farewell entertainment in Larry's honour emanated from the Big Doctor; if so, he had erased his tracks very thoroughly, and it was regarded by Mrs. Mangan's intimates as a final brandishing of her trophy before she was forced to relinquish it. Larry was indisputably a trophy, and Heaven was considered to have exercised a very undue discrimination in Mrs. Mangan's favour when it threw him into her house and her hands. It was a very select party, only a score or so of boys and girls, with the elders appertaining to them. Nurse Brennan had departed, taking with her Larry's young affections, and a gift, costly and superfluous, of a silver-mounted mirror, which was accompanied by some chaste lines, expressive of Master Coppinger's desire to share its privileges, whose composition had kept him happy throughout a long, wet afternoon.
The party, having opened with lemonade, tea and innumerable cakes, moved on through "a little music," (contributed exclusively by the Mangan Quartet) to games. Larry, afflicted by the discovery that he had, during his illness, outgrown his evening clothes, found himself fated to do conspicuous things in the centre of a space, cleared as for a prize-fight, in the Mangan drawing-room. Problems in connection with a ship that came from China. Exhausting efforts in guessing absurdities, that usually necessitated withdrawal to the landing outside the door with a giggling schoolgirl, and collaboration with her in a code of complicated signals. And, blackest feature of all, mistakes in any of these arduous matters entailed "forfeits," and the process entitled "paying the forfeits," meant a concentration of attention upon a young gentleman, conscious to agony of the fact that his trousers left his ankle-bones unshielded from the public gaze.
It was sufficiently distressing to lie at full length on the carpet, and declare oneself to be the length of a looby, and the breadth of a booby, but what was that as compared with sitting, blindfolded, on a chair, and guessing, among many kisses, which had been bestowed by "the girl he loved best?" As if he loved any of them! These pert and blowsy schoolgirls, with hideous voices, and arrogant curls, or crimped lion-manes of aggressive hair! He, with "his heart set all upon a snowy coif!" (as he chose to wrest Mr. Yeats' line to his own purposes).
It was singular in how many of these exercises, of which the greater number included kissing, he found himself involved with Tishy Mangan. Tishy was in a bad temper. The red-headed medical student had not been honoured with an invitation. Dr. Mangan had struck his name from the list of guests saying that they had enough without him, and Tishy knew her father too well to protest. Dr. Mangan was in the habit of saying that he always left all household affairs "in the hands of the ladies." He did not add, as he might have done, that these hands lay within his, and that their owners had long since realised that it was advisable to respond to any indication of pressure. His daughter, however, while she submitted to the inevitable, saw no reason why she should deny herself the solace of sulking, nor of avenging herself of his tyranny on "his fine pet," as she, in high indignation, described Larry to herself. Master Coppinger might be a man of property and the owner of Coppinger's Court, yes, or Dublin Castle, for all she cared! Pappy might say what he liked, but she wouldn't be bothered with a boy like that! And there was Ned Cloherty—(this was the medical student)—that she had as good as asked to come—and what could she say to him now, she wondered? So Tishy sulked, and resented the Hidden Hand, that so inevitably linked her with the owner of Coppinger's Court, as much as did that man of property himself.
The evening wore on; with romping, with screaming, with enormous consumption of various foods, and with an ever-heightening temperature, that was specially noticeable among those seniors who had not disdained the brew of punch that had coincided with the announcement of midnight, made, with maddening deliberation, by Mrs. Mangan's cuckoo-clock. The usual delirium of cracker-head-dresses had befallen the company. Larry, decorated with a dunce's cap, placed upon his yellow head by a jovial matron, found himself fated, by a final effort of penalising fancy on the part of another matron, to select "a young lady," to conduct her to the topmost step of the staircase, and there, on his knees, to kiss either her shoe-buckle or her lips; "whichever he likes best!" decreed the matron, archly.
It is strange how the reserves and reticences of childhood, the things that offend, the things that bring agony, are forgotten by so many of those who have left childhood behind. In extenuation of this lively and kindly lady, it may be said that the manners and customs of her early youth were not those to which Larry was habituated. Yet, one might have thought that a glance at Larry's face would have sufficed to induce Rhadamanthus himself to remit the penalty. Not so Mrs. Whelply, the arbitrator.
"Oh, look at the pout on him! What a naughty boy! If you don't take care, I'll put a worse task on you!"
Larry, oblivious of the dunce's cap, feeling himself in the grip of a social machine that was too strong for him, looked round upon the company. Hot, pink faces, shining eyes and teeth, Moenad hair, on all sides. Then he caught sight of Tishy's eyes, scornful and amused, regarding him as he stood irresolute, and his spirit responded to the spur of contempt. He crossed the open space of floor to where she was seated on the blue rep sofa, took off the dunce's cap with a flourish, and, with a low bow, offered her his arm.
A chorus of approval, weighted by the Big Doctor's big laugh, greeted the action. Tishy, cornered, accepted the arm, the door was swung open for them, and ostentatiously slammed behind them.
Larry, silent, and very angry, mounted the stairs quickly, and Tishy perforce, her hand gripped by his elbow, followed him. At the highest step but one, Larry stood aside, and Tishy ascended, and turning, faced him from the top. They looked at each other for a moment in silence. Both were furiously angry, resenting the compulsion that had forced them into an absurd position.
Then Tishy said insolently: "Well! Which will you have? My shoe-buckle or my lips? Take your choice!"
She poked her foot out over the edge of the step confidently.
A spark shot from Larry's angry heart to his blue eyes. He looked up at Tishy, and something suddenly masterful awoke in him. Confound her! He wouldn't have her laughing at him!
"I'll have your lips, please!" he said, mounting to the step beside her.
With schoolboy roughness he flung his arm round her shoulders. She was a little taller than he, but she did not withdraw herself; she was curiously aware that her point of view was changing. She looked for an instant in his eyes, and then she laid her lips on his.
Larry found, with surprise, that they returned the pressure of his own as he kissed her. The spark that had been in his eyes seemed to have flown to his lips, and met another spark in hers.
There was a moment of silence. Larry found himself a little out of breath, and somehow bewildered. There was more in it than he thought. He didn't quite know what to do next.
"Thank you very much," he said, stiffly, and offered his arm.
In silence they walked down the stairs again. The piano had begun, and "Sir Roger de Coverley" was being thundered forth. At the door they met the Doctor. Larry released Tishy's arm.
"If you don't mind," he said to the Doctor, "I think I'll go up to bed. I'm tired."
After he had got to his room he shook himself, much as a dog renews its vitality by shaking its ears. Then he poured some water into the basin and washed his hot face, scrubbing his lips with the sponge.
Yet, to his infinite annoyance, he seemed still to feel the pressure of Tishy's warm mouth on his.
It is, or should be, superfluous to say that Miss Frederica Coppinger viewed with disfavour, that was the more poignant for its helplessness, Larry's adoption and assimilation by the Mangan family.
"Disastrous!" she said in a tragic voice, to the Rector of Knockceoil parish. "If he were a Protestant it wouldn't matter so much; but, as things are, for him to be thrown among these second-rate, Nationalistic, Roman Catholics——!"
The intensity of Miss Coppinger's emotions silenced him. She had indeed beaten her biggest drum, and she knew it.
The Rector, the Reverend Charles Fetherston, nodded his head with solemnity, and made a conscientious effort to remember what she was speaking of. He was not much in the habit of attending to what was said to him, finding his own thoughts more interesting than those of his parishioners. The parishioners, being aware of this peculiarity, put it down, very naturally, to eccentricity for which he was rather to be pitied than condemned, and his popularity was in no way abated by it. Mr. Fetherston was unmarried, in age about sixty; tall, stout, red-faced, of good family, a noted woodcock shot and salmon fisher, a carpenter, and an incessant pipe-smoker. These being his leading gifts, it will probably, and with accuracy, be surmised by persons conversant with the Irish Church, that he was a survival of its earliest days, when it was still an avocation suitable for gentlemen, and one in which they could indulge without any taint of professionalism being laid to their charge. He was immensely respected and admired by the poor people of the parish (none of whom were included in his small and well-to-do congregation), the fact that he was what is known as "old stock," giving him a prestige among the poorer Roman Catholics, that they would have denied to St. Peter. He shared with Major Talbot-Lowry the position of consultant in feuds, and relieving officer in distress, and, being rich, liberal, easily bored, and not particularly sympathetic to affliction, he was accustomed to stanch the flow of tears and talk alike, with a form of solace that rarely failed to meet the case, and was always acceptable. With Miss Coppinger, he felt, regretfully, that five shillings could in no way be brought to bear upon her problem, and with an effort he withdrew his mind from a new hinge that he thought of fitting to a garden-gate, and applied it to Larry.
"How old is the boy now? Sixteen last October? He doesn't look as much—you'll see he'll outgrow all that nonsense of Nationalism! Send him to Oxford as soon as you can. He'll soon get hold of some other tomfoolery there, and forget this. Seven devils worse than the first, in fact!"
The Reverend Charles laughed, wheezily, and began, automatically, to fill a pipe, an indication of a change of mental outlook.
"Worse?" cried Miss Frederica, ardently; "no indeed, Mr. Fetherston! Better! Far better! Anything is preferable to this—this Second-rate Sedition!"
When Frederica perorated, and this remark partook of the nature of peroration, it was as though she took a header into deep water. By the time she had again risen to the surface of her emotions, the Reverend Charles Fetherston had returned to the hinge of the garden-gate, and Miss Coppinger, knowing her man, made no attempt to recall him. She had a very special regard for her rector, of a complex sort that is not quite easy to define. There was veneration in it, the veneration that was inculcated in her youth for the clergy; there was the compassion that many capable and self-confident women bestow upon any man to whom Providence has denied a feminine protector; there was a regretful pity for his shortcomings—(but half-acknowledged, even to herself)—as a Minister of the Word, counterbalanced by respect for his worldly wisdom; above all, there was the deep, peculiar interest that was excited in her by any clergyman, merely in virtue of his office, a person whose trade it was to occupy himself with the art and practice of religion, which was a subject that had, quite apart from its spiritual side, the same appeal for her that the art and practice of the theatre has for many others. (It is hard to imagine any simile that would have shocked Frederica more than this; in all her years of strenuous, straightforward life, she had never, as she would have said, set foot in a theatre.)
Frederica had been born at Coppinger's Court, and she had passed her childhood there, but her youth had been spent in Dublin, in the hot heart of a parish devoted to good works, and to a pastor whose power and authority was in no degree less absolute than that of any of the "Romish priests" whom he so heartily denounced. She was brought up in that school of Irish Low Church Protestantism that makes more severe demands upon submission and credulity than any other, and yet more fiercely arraigns other creeds on those special counts. It is quite arguable that Irish people, like the Israelites who so ardently desired a king, enjoy and thrive under religious oppression, and it is beyond dispute that among the oppressed, of both the rival creeds, are saints whose saintliness has gained force from the systems to which they have given their allegiance. To Frederica the practice of her cult both inwardly in her heart, and outwardly in the work of St. Matthew's Parish, was the mainspring of her existence. It was also her pastime. She would analyse a sermon, as Dick Lowry would discuss a run, and with the same eager enjoyment. She assented with enthusiasm to the Doctrine of Eternal Damnation, and a gentler-hearted creature than she never lived. She would have gone to the stake for the Verbal Inspiration of the Bible; she was as convinced that the task of Creation was completed in a week, as she was that she paid the Coppinger's Court workmen for six days' work every Saturday evening. In short, the good Frederica was a survival of an earlier and more earnest period, and her religious beliefs were only comparable, in their sincerity and simplicity, with those of the Roman Catholic poor people, whose spiritual prospects were to her no less black (theoretically) than were hers to them.
Those who know Ireland will have no difficulty in believing that Miss Coppinger had no warmer sympathisers in her feelings concerning Larry and the Mangan household than the Coppinger's Court retainers, despite the fact that none of them were of her communion, nor did they share her political views. And no less will those who know Ireland, recognise that in the Irish countryside it is the extremes that touch, and that there is a sympathy and understanding between the uppermost and the lowest strata of Irish social life, which is not extended, by either side, to the intervening one. Thus, it was that Frederica could, and did converse with her work-people and her peasant neighbours, with a freedom and an implicit confidence in their good breeding, that it is to be feared she was incapable of extending to Larry's new acquaintances in Cluhir. Possibly the outdoor life, and the mutual engrossment in outdoor affairs, explain, in some degree, this sympathy, but at the root of it is the certainty on both sides, that the well-bred, even the chivalrous point of view, will govern their intercourse.
It may seem somewhat excessive to use the word chivalry in connection with Mrs. Twomey, the Coppinger's Court dairy-woman. Yet, I dare to say that as great a soul filled the four feet four inches that comprised her excessively plain little person, as ever inspired warrior or fighting queen in the brave days of old. Bred and born under the Talbot-Lowrys, she had crossed the river when she married one of the Coppinger's Court workmen, and for close on thirty-five years she had milked the cows and ruled the dairy according to her own methods, which were as rigorous as they were remarkable, and altered not with modern enlightenment, or conformed with hygienic laws. Her husband was a feeble creature, whose sole claim to distinction was his inability to speak English. At the time that "The Family," (which is, say, Frederica and Larry) returned, he had become quite blind, and he passed a cloistered existence in a dark corner of his little cottage, sitting, with his hat always upon his head, a being seemingly as withdrawn from the current of life as one of the smoky brown and white china dogs on the shelf above the wide hearth.
The legend ran that when he was young, a marriage had been arranged for him. On the appointed wedding-day he had gone to the chapel, the priest was there, and the wedding-guests, but no bride came. Michael Twomey therefore, after a fruitless exercise of patience, left the chapel in deep wrath and humiliation, and proceeded to walk home again. On the road he was faced by a string of laughing girls, and among them there was little Mary Driscoll. Mary had then, no doubt, such grace as youth can give, and that she had, at least, good teeth, was obvious to the disgruntled Michael Twomey, as she was grinning at him from ear to ear. Also, possibly, his sight may not even then have been of the best. Be that as it may, Michael caught at Mary's arm.
"Come on to the chapel, Mary!" he shouted at her, in the Irish that was a more common speech in those days than it is now; "The priest is there yet, and the money is in my pocket. I'll marry you!"
Michael had made a luckier hit than he knew. Little Mary Driscoll recognised the sporting quality of the suggestion, and being a girl of spirit acceded to it.
Mary had been to America. She was one of the many of her class who put forth fearlessly for the United States, adventuring upon the unknown without any of the qualms that would beset them were the bourne London, or even one of the cities of their native land. Wasn't Mary's mother's sisther's daughter, and Maggie Brian from Tullagh, and the dear knows how many more cousins and neighbours, before her in it? Didn't her brother that was marrit in it, send her her ticket, and wasn't there good money to be airned in it?
These queries, that, as may be seen by anyone with half an eye, answered themselves, having been propounded by little Mary Driscoll, she, roaring crying, and keened by all her relatives to the coach-door—no railway being within thirty miles of her home—departed to America, and was swallowed up by "Boyshton" for the space of five years, during the passage of which, since she could neither read nor write, no communication passed between her and her parents, save only the postal orders that, through an intermediary, she unfailingly sent them. Then there was a month that the postal order came not, and while the old father and mother were wondering was Mary dead, or what ailed her, Mary walked in, uglier than ever in her Boyshton clothes, and it was gloriously realised that not only was not Mary dead at all, but that she had as much saved as would bury the old people, or maybe marry herself.
Mary had not enjoyed America. She wouldn't get her health in it, she said.
("Ye wouldn't see a fat face or a red cheek on one o' thim that comes back," assented Mary's mother); and for as little as she was, Mary continued, she'd rather bring her bones home with herself to Cunnock-a-Ceoil. (A cryptic phrase signifying that though she recognised, humorously, her own unworthiness, she still attached sufficient importance to her person to wish to bestow it upon the place of her birth.) Not long after her return and restoration to health, the episode of her marriage had occurred, and she had settled down into the soil of Ireland again, with, possibly, a slightly increased freedom of manner, but, saving this, with no more token on her of her dash into the new world, than has the little fish that lies and pants on the river bank for a moment, before the angler contemptuously chucks him into the stream again.
Michael and Mary Twomey had been on the staff of Coppinger's Court for a full thirty years when, in the fullness of time, Frederica returned to her ancient home, bringing with her the young heir to it, and all its accessory tenanted lands. Not Green Dragon or The Norreys King-at-Arms, or any other pontiff of pedigrees, could attach a higher importance to gentle blood than did little elderly Mary Twomey, elderly, but still as indomitably nimble and resolute as when in Frederica's childhood she would catch the donkey for her, and run after it, belabouring it in its rider's interest, for half an afternoon.
In spite of the fact that Miss Coppinger's youth had been spent, chiefly, in a town, the love of the country, ingrained during her first years, was merely dormant, and it revived with her return to Coppinger's Court. The garden, the farm, the hens, the cattle, the dairy, were all interests to which she returned with that renewal of early passion, that has in it the fervour of youth as well as the depth of maturity. She read agricultural papers insatiably, and believed all that she read, accepting the verbal inspiration of their advertisements with the enthusiasm of her religious beliefs. She was a doctrinaire farmer, and she applied to the garden, the farm and the poultry-yard, the same zeal and intensity that had made her in earlier days the backbone of committees, and the leading exponent of the godly activities of St. Matthew's. She was regarded by the heretofore rulers of these various provinces with a mixture of respect, contempt, and apprehension. She was an incalculable force, with a predisposition towards novelty, and novelty, especially if founded on theory, is abhorrent to such as old Johnny Galvin the steward, or Peter Flood the gardener, or, stiffest in her own conceit of all, Mrs. Twomey of the dairy.
"Master Larry's coming home from Cluhir tomorrow, Mary," Miss Coppinger announced, with satisfaction, to the peculiar confection of grey hair and black chenille net that represented the back of Mrs. Twomey's head, her forehead being pressed against the side of the cow that she was milking.
"Thang-aade!" replied Mrs. Twomey fervently, expressing in this concise form her gratitude to her Creator for what she considered to be Larry's release from a very vile durance "He's long enough in it already!"
"The Doctor wouldn't let me move him any sooner," replied Miss Coppinger, apologetically.
"The divil doubt him, what a fool he'd be!" said Mrs. Twomey with a bitter laugh. "Aren't they all sayin' as sure as gun is iron it's what he wants that he'll see his daughter in Coppinger's Court before he dies!"
"What nonsense!" said Miss Coppinger, warmly; "I should like to know who is saying it!"
Mrs. Twomey, milking ceaselessly, slewed her head a little and looked at her employer out of the corner of an eye as bright and as cunning as a hen's, and said: "As rich as your Honour is, you couldn't put a penny into the mouth of every man that's sayin' it!"
"I'm surprised at you, Mary," said Frederica, indignantly, "You ought to have more sense than to repeat such rubbish!"
To this reproach, Mrs. Twomey responded with a long and jubilant crow of laughter.
"Yerra, gerr'l alive——!" she corrected herself quickly. "My lady alive, I should say—sure a little thing like me'd tell lies as fast as a hen'd pick peas!"
The modesty, as well as the accuracy, of this statement silenced Miss Coppinger for a moment.
"Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself!" she resumed with much severity. "It is amazing to me how a decent, respectable little woman like you can not only tell lies, but boast of it!"
"Ah ha! I'm the same owld three and fourpince, an' will be till I die!" triumphed Mrs. Twomey, with another screech of laughter, removing her tiny person, her milk-pail, and her stool from under the cow. "An' I won't be long dyin'!" another screech; "an' it won't take many to carry me to Cunnock-a-Ceoil Churchyard!"
A final and prolonged burst of mirth succeeded this announcement, during which the unrepentant Three and Fourpence swung the pail on to the hook of the swinging-balance for weighing the milk that was Miss Coppinger's latest and most detested innovation.
"Look at that now what she has for you, Miss! Shixteen pints! An' I'll engage I'll knock thirteen ounces o' butther out of it! That's the little bracket cow that yourself and Johnny Galvin wanted to sell, an' I withstood ye!"
This was of the nature, jointly, of a counter-attack and of a truckle to the system of milk-records, but Frederica heeded it not As a matter of fact, she was still somewhat discomposed by the insinuations that were more numerous than the pennies she was believed to possess.
"I hope, Mary," she said, repressively, "that if you should hear any more talk of that kind about Dr. Mangan, you will do your best to contradict it. He has been extremely kind to Master Larry, and it annoys me very much that such things should be said."
Mrs. Twomey's supple mind was swift to realise that a change of attitude was advisable.
"Why then, upon my truth and body, I'd blame no one that wanted Master Larry! That little fella is in tune with all the world!" she declared; "but those people do be always gibbing and gabbing! Give them a smell, and they're that suspeecious they'll do the rest! Sure I said to that owld man below, Mikey Twomey"—thus dispassionately was Mrs. Twomey wont to speak of her husband—"I says to him, that your Honour was satisfied to leave Master Larry back in Cluhir till he'd be well agin. They were all sayin' the child wouldn't be said by ye to come back! Didn't I have to put the heighth o' the house o' curses to it before he'd believe me!"
"Intolerable nonsense!" said Frederica, hotly.
People have said, retrospectively, that the rise of the Mangan family dated from the fall of Larry Coppinger into the Feorish River. This may, or may not have been the case but it is certain that Mrs. Mangan's way through the world took at about this time an upward trend, and one of the most perceptible ascending jerks was the result of Lady Isabel Talbot-Lowry's Sale of Work.
This function had been ordained with, for object, the provision of a fund for the renovation of the parish church of Knock Ceoil, and was obviously a matter without interest for persons of another denomination. Lady Isabel, and Miss Coppinger, and others of their friends and neighbours slaved at the provision of munitions for it, as good women will slave at such enterprises, squandering energy on the construction of those by-products of the rag-bag that wen specially consecrated to charitable purposes by the ladies of their period.
"No one will want to buy this rubbish," said Miss Coppinger, who never tried to deceive even herself, "but people will have to spend their money on something, and we're not going to raffle bottles of brandy—as they did at that R.C. Bazaar in Riverstown!"
Frederica could be just, but when a question of religion intervened, she found it hard to be generous.
The Sale of Work took place during the September that followed the winter of Larry's disaster, and it was indisputable that the Mangan family contributed materially to its success. Mrs. Mangan was of a class that is accustomed to get its money's worth, and was herself known and respected as an able and inveterate haggler. Yet, at the Mount Music Sale, she was content to hide her talent beneath innumerable chair-backs and night-dress cases, purchased, uncomplainingly, at the prices marked on them, and to permit the contents of an apparently inexhaustible purse to flow in a golden stream from stall to stall. Her family were no less in evidence, the Big Doctor offering himself a cheerful victim on the shrine of raffles, even attaching himself to Christian as a coadjutor in the sale of tickets for the disposal of one of Rinka's latest progeny. Mrs. Mangan's son and daughter, something subdued by unfamiliar surroundings, were, on the disposal of the puppy-tickets, taken in hand by their father, and were, with an eloquence that seemed meant for a larger audience, made acquainted with the notable objects of the house.
"If I could get hold of your mother, now," the Big Doctor would say, "I'd like her to see this," or "Look at that picture, Tishy! That's a lovely woman! The Major's grandmother, I believe. We'll ask Miss Judith—'pon my honour, it might have been done of herself!"
Miss Judith, with a fruit and flower stall near the portrait in question, coldly admitted the relationship, and ignored the question of the likeness. Judith was of the age of intolerance; moreover, she was at that moment in the act of selling a button-hole to Bill Kirby, and the Doctor's enthusiasm was undesired.
The little family party moved on, while Dr. Mangan, with the ease of an habitué, indicated to his son and daughter the ancestral portraits in the dining-room, the Cromwellian arms on the staircase, the coats-of-arms, the Indian weapons, the foxes' masks in the hall. The son and daughter received the information coldly. It was their first introduction to the interior of Mount Music, and while Tishy was filled with a great resolve to be impressed by nothing, Barty was silenced by those tortures that unfamiliar surroundings have power to inflict upon the shy.
In his determination to instruct his young in all the possible objects of interest, Dr. Mangan strolled away from the crowded scene of the sale, and led them down the long passage, dedicated to sporting prints, that led to the library.
"There's a picture there that's worth seeing, of a Meeat Coppinger's Court in the time of Larry's grandfather," he announced impressively, as he opened the door. "The Talbot-Lowrys and the Coppingers were always fine sports men——"
A tall old screen stood between the door and the fireplace from behind it a hunted voice said:
"Who the devil's there now?"
Dr. Mangan thought, complacently: "My diagnosis was correct!" Aloud he said to his son and daughter, in a tone of hoarse consternation: "To think of our blundering in on the Major like this! Here! Away now, the pair of you!"
He advanced from behind the screen.
"Major! My most humble apologies! I never thought of you being here! I was showing that boy and girl of mine some of your beautiful things."
Major Talbot-Lowry was unlike his daughter Judith in many things, and not least in his easy sufferance of those whom she, in youthful arrogance, called cads.
"Come in, Doctor, and have a cigar in peace," he said, hospitably, putting on one side the novel he was reading. "I thought you were Evans, or one of the maids, coming to bother me. This damned show has turned the house upside down!"
"Well, it seems a great success," said Dr. Mangan cordially.
"Very good of you to come," responded his host, "more especially when it's—er—it's—er—such a purely local affair——"
Dr. Mangan understood that he was receiving the meed of religious tolerance.
"Well, Major," he said, expansively, "I lived long enough one time in England to learn that we mustn't give in too much to the clerical gentlemen! My own instinct is to be neighbourly, and to let my friends mind their own religion."
"Quite so, quite so," said Major Dick, magnanimously, forgetting, for the moment, those epithets that, in his more heated moments, he was accustomed to apply to the ministers of the Church to which he did not belong. "Quite so, Doctor. I'm all for toleration, and let the parsons fight it out among 'em! Busy men, like you and me, haven't time to worry about these affairs—we've other things to think about!" He stretched a long arm for a box of cigars, and handed it to his visitor; "sit down for a bit. There's no hurry. The ladies can have it all their own way for a while!"
Dr. Mangan lowered his huge person into an armchair of suitable proportions, and for some moments smoked his cigar in appreciative silence. As a matter of fact, he was planning an approach to the subject that had instigated his visit to the library, but he was in no hurry to begin upon it, remembering that the longest way round is often the shortest way home.
"By the way, Major," he said, taking the cigar from his mouth, and regarding it with affection, "did some one tell me that you were looking for a farming horse?"
"If they didn't, they might have," replied Dick. "McKinnon's at me to get another. I was going to ask you if you knew of anything?"
"Well, now, that's funny. I was wondering to myself this morning what I'd do with that big brown horse of mine. He'll not go hunting again, he never got the better of that hurt he got. But he's the very cut of a farm-horse. You see, the poor devil had to carry me!" ended the Big Doctor, with a laugh at himself.
"I'll tell McKinnon of him. He wants a horse that will—" a recital of the accomplishments exacted by Dick's steward followed.
Dr. Mangan listened with attention.
"Tell McKinnon he'd better have him over on trial. I know him and his requirements! The horse mightn't be able to play the piano for him!" said the Doctor, facetiously. "I'm not afraid of you, Major, but I've a great respect for Mr. McKinnon!"
"Oh, I'll tell old Mack he'll be lucky to get him," said Dick, with his pleasant laugh; "you and I will strike the bargain!"
The approach had been pegged out, and Dr. Mangan turned, for the moment, to other subjects.
It was a damp and sodden day near the beginning of September, and a comfortable turf fire centralised and gave point to the room, as a fire inevitably does. Major Talbot-Lowry was in the habit of saying that the day of the month never warmed anybody yet, and if it was only for the sake of the books—the truth being that the library fire at Mount Music had never, in the memory of housemaid, been extinguished save only when "the Major was out of home." Dick, like most out-of-door men, considered that fresh air should be kept in its proper place, outside the walls of the house, and an ancient atmosphere, in which the varied scents of turf, tobacco, old books, and old hound-couples, all had their share, filled the large, dingy old room. Dusty and composite squirrel-hoards of objects that defy classification, covered outlying tables, and lay in heaps on the floor, awaiting that resurrection to useful life that Major Talbot-Lowry's faith held would some day be theirs, and were, in the meantime, the despair and demoralisation of housemaids.
Deep in the bearskin rug in front of the fire (a trophy of one of the rifles that filled a glass-fronted case over the mantel-shelf) lay the two little fox-terriers, Rinka and Tashpy, in moody and determined repose. For a brief period of suffering they had attempted to cleave to Christian; but as the throng grew, and the time for tea lingered, they had, in high offence, betaken themselves to their ultimate citadel, the library.
"I suppose it was her pup I was raffling awhile ago," remarked Dr. Mangan, presently, as Rinka languidly rose, and having stretched herself, and yawned, musically and meretriciously, put her nose on his broad knee, deliberating as to whether the distinction of a human lap outweighed the lowly comfort of the bearskin.
"Doggie! Poor doggie! Down, now, down!" Dr. Mangan had no idea how to talk to dogs, and he did not wish Rinka to sit on his best grey trousers.
"Hit her a smack!" said Major Dick; "don't let her bother you. Christian has spoilt these dogs till they're perfect nuisances! Yes, it's her pup. Who won it? It ought to be a clinker; it was the best of the lot——"
"I d'no did they draw for it yet. I took three tickets for it myself," said the Doctor. "I want it for a sort of a cousin of me own—a very sporting chap that's coming to Cluhir; he asked me could I get him a dog."
"What's he going to do in Cluhir?" asked Dick, carelessly.
The approach was now clear, and Dr. Mangan began to advance.
"Well, he's just taken his degree. He's a doctor, and he's coming here for a while. He can give me a help while he's looking out for a dispensary. He'd like some place where he'd get a little hunting now and then. I expect you know his father, Major—old Tom Aherne, of Pribawn——"
Major Talbot-Lowry became more interested.
"You don't say old Tom's son is a doctor! By Jove! That's very creditable to him—a decent old fellow Tom was—and you say he wants to hunt? That's the right sort of doctor! Look here!"
Dick sat up, the light of inspiration woke in his ingenuous blue eyes, he wrinkled his forehead with the super-intelligent concentration of a not very brilliant intellect. "Didn't I hear that old Fogarty is giving up the Dispensary here? Why don't you run him for that?"
The shepherding of Dick Lowry was really an affair of a simplicity unworthy of preparation made by that rusé old collie, the Big Doctor. Nevertheless, being an artist, he continued to play the game.
"Knock Ceoil! Begad, that's a great notion! Now I come to think of it, I did hear something of old Fogarty giving up, but somehow I never thought of young Danny Aherne in connection with it. I thought I was as well able as any man to put two and two together, but I declare I might never have thought of it if it hadn't been for you! They say, if you're too close to a thing, you can't see it!"
Thus did the collie yap, while the sheep (who was a member of the Dispensary Committee) gratified, and pleasantly conscious of originality, trotted up the path and into the fold that had been prepared for it.
Meanwhile, in what house-agents call the reception-rooms, the Sale of Work raged on, with auctions, with raffles, with card-fortunes, told in a cave of rugs by a devoted sorceress, in a temperature that would inure her to face with composure the witch's destiny at the stake; with "occasional music," that fell upon the turmoil of talk more softly than any petals from blown roses on the grass, and was just sufficiently perceptible to impart the requisite flavour of festivity. One item of the musical programme had indeed had power to still the storm, but since it was contributed by the Mangan Quartet, it must be admitted that, charming though it was, it owed something of its success to surprise. The countryside had rallied to Lady Isabel with a response that did credit to her as to them, yet, thronged though the rooms were the Mangan family shone with a unique lustre as alone representing the mighty Church of Rome.
"Wonderful of them to come!" said the Church of Ireland ladies approvingly; "the only R.C.'s here!"
Yet the Mangan family was not quite alone in this representative position; young Mr. Coppinger, their (as it were) inventor and patentee, shared it with them, and was, moreover, beginning, for the first time, and not without displeasure, to realise something of the social complications that are involved by the difference of creed. It was a matter of atmosphere; quite intangible, and quite perceptible. Larry was discovering that he was something of an anomaly. "Only an R.C. by accident," as he had heard someone say, in apparent extenuation (a benevolence that he found irritating). He was learning the meaning of the sudden silences, the too obvious changes of the course of conversation, that seemed to occur when he drew near. He had not, as yet, formulated these things to himself, but, on this turbulent afternoon, it was possibly some livelier apprehension of them that made him gravitate towards Barty Mangan, as towards a fellow pariah, and induced him to seek with him the far asylum of the schoolroom. There, save for the schoolroom cat, they were alone, and they sat for some minutes in grateful silence, looking out, across misty stretches of grass, to the river, and beyond it to the dense green of the trees of Coppinger's Court. The sky was very low and grey; by leaning out of the window a little, a far-off reach of river, at the western end of the valley, could be descried; above it there was a narrow slit in the clouds, and through it a faint and lovely primrose light fell, like a veil, that hid, while it told of the deathbed repentance of the dying day. Larry dragged his chair into the corner of the window, and watched the growing glory of the sunset with all his ardent soul in his eyes.
Whatever this boy did, he did vividly, and to Barty Mangan, seated on the shadow side, watching him, he was, as ever, a pageant, a being of incalculable impulse, of flashing intensity and splendour.
"Where on earth did you go, Barty? I looked about for you for ages before I found you; but there was such an awful crowd of women—I'm jolly glad to get out of it!" Larry leaned back in his chair and proceeded to light a cigarette, as an assertion of the rights of a man of nearly seventeen.
"My father was taking Tishy and me about, showing us the house," replied Barty, apologetically. (As a matter of fact, he said "me fawther," but if this, and similar details of pronunciation, are not known by nature, it is labour in vain to attempt to indicate them by means of the wholly inadequate English alphabet.) "Larry," he went on, with the candour that made a gentleman of him, "I never was in a house like this before. I declare to you it frightens me! I feel like a rat gone astray! I was in the dining-room by myself, looking at the pictures, and that old fella' of a butler came in and frightened the heels off me! He kept an eye on me that was like a flame from a blow-pipe! You'd say he thought I was going to steal the house!"
"I expect he did, too," said Larry, "especially if he thought that you were a pal of mine. He hates me like blazes. He's one of those damned Orangemen. I say, do you remember that thing in The Spirit of the Nation, 'Orange and Green will carry the Day'? I bet old Evans would rather lose, any day, than be 'linked in his might' with a Papist like you or me! It's a most extraordinary thing how religion plays the devil with Ireland!"
There are certain standard truisms that must be rediscovered by each successive generation (possibly because they have bored the preceding one to extinction), and Larry was of the age at which truisms reveal themselves as new ideas, and sing and shine with the radiancy of morning stars. He was also young enough, and just sufficiently interested in religion, to find it exciting to denounce it. The fervour of his indictment lifted him from his chair, and he stood, with the evening light on his hot face, enjoying his theme, and his audience.
"I stayed with some people in England last holidays, friends of my people's; Protestants they were, too—Sour-faces,' as the 'Leader' calls them!—and they didn't give a blow what religion I was! That was my affair, they thought—and so it was, too! Not like this crowd here—I don't mean my own people, you know," he added hastily, "they're all right!"
"Oh, I'm sure!" said Barty, in instant assent.
"I hate England, of course," continued the student of The Spirit of the Nation, hurriedly, "but I must say I get sick of this eternal blackguarding of Catholics by Protestants, and Protestants by Catholics——"
"Ah, they don't mean it half the time!" put in Barty, pacifically; "it's just a trick they have!"
"Well, I don't care," said Larry, who didn't like being interrupted, with a fling of his head; "they shouldn't do it! I hear people shutting up when I come into the room—just as if I didn't jolly well know they were abusing the priests or something like that. And if they only knew it, I don't care a curse how much they abuse them!"
He took an angry pull at his cigarette, glaring at the unoffending Barty. "''Tisn't the man I respects, 'tis the office!' That's what Mrs. Twomey said, when I was chaffing her for dragging gravel up from the river to put in front of her house, because the priest, whom she loathes, was going to have a 'station' there!"
The orator paused for breath, as well as for the duty of keeping his cigarette alight.
"Well, and isn't she quite right, too?" said Barty. "I've no great fancy for Father Greer, but that doesn't affect my feeling for the Church."
He rose, and resting his elbows on the window-sill, leaned out into the still air.
"By Jingo! You don't often see the beat o' that for a sky! Look at it, Larry. There's Orange and Green for you, if you like! God! I wish we could get them to work together like that!"
One of those transformation scenes that sometimes follow on an overcast and rainy day, was happening in the west. The sun had sunk behind the hills, the grey clouds had vanished; the higher heaven was green, clear and pale, but low in the west, long and fleecy rollers of golden cloud lay in a sea of burning orange.
At about the same time, the golden stream that had flowed so generously from Mrs. Mangan's purse, had failed, and Mrs. Mangan, her arms full of the fruit of those Christian graces of Faith, Hope and Charity, that are indispensable to the success of a bazaar, was asking Evans to order for her her "caw," by which term she indicated the vehicle that had conveyed her to the scene of her triumph.
For it was evident to the meanest capacity that Mrs. Mangan had now paid her footing in society.
"Go away from me, Miss Christian!" shouted Mrs. Twomey (but this was merely an ejaculation of pleased surprise, not to be taken literally). "Go-to-God-he-did-not!"
"He did, indeed, Mrs. Twomey!" replied Christian, rooting at her habit pocket, and extracting her purse. "He said that he'd won the scholarship, and he knew you were praying hard for him or he wouldn't have got it, and he said I was to give you this, with his love."
"This" was a golden sovereign, a coin that did not often in its beauty and entirety come Mrs. Twomey's way.
She curtseyed so low that since—as has been said—she was but little over four feet, Christian had to lean low over Harry's withers in order to drop the sovereign into her hand.
"That the sun may shine on his soul, my lovely gentleman! That he may never want crown, pown', nor shi'n, nor you nayther! The Kingdom o' Heaven is your due, the pair of yee, and may yee be long going there! Amin!"
A silent and prayerful moment followed on the benedictions, and Mrs. Twomey's bright little eyes rolled devoutly heavenwards. This concession to the solemnity of the occasion disposed of, the beneficiary became normal again.
"Look!" she resumed, while she bestowed the sovereign in an incredibly old bag-purse with a brass rim; "tell him there's always one foolish in a family, and what it is with Masther Larry, he's too give-ish! That's what he is!"
"You can tell him so yourself," replied Christian. "He'll be home in a week."
"Very good, faith! There's a welcome before him whatever time he'll come! Sure I thought he'd be kept back in England till the Christmas?"
"He's finished with school now," said Christian. "He's going abroad for a bit after Christmas, and then he's going to Oxford!"
The glory in Christian's voice conveyed more to Mrs. Twomey than any statement of fact could achieve.
"Well, well! I'm proud out of him, the poor child! But I wisht it was home in his own house he was to be," she replied, raising her skirt, and stuffing the purse into a large pocket that hung round her waist over a red flannel petticoat; "han't he lessons enought learnt?"
"Oh, but he loves going to Oxford, Mrs. Twomey," said Christian; "he's looking forward to it awfully; and I'm going to France to do lessons, too! I'll be talking French to you, Mrs. Twomey, when I come back!"
Mrs. Twomey uttered a screech of well-simulated horror.
"For God's sake, child, do not!" she exclaimed; "didn't I know one o' thim in Boyshton, a docther he was, and a German. He had as many slishes and sloshes as'd fill a book! Sure I thought I'd lose me life thrying could I make off at all what he said to me!"
"Well, I shall be slishing and sloshing to you when I come home, Mrs. Twomey!" said Christian, who was skilled in converse with such as Mrs. Twomey; "but it will be in French. I suppose you talked German to your Boston doctor?"
"H'th indeed! Little enough I said to him! I never had anny wish for thim docthors at all. Look at the little rakeen that's after gettin' the Dispinsary at Cunnock-a-Ceoil! Three hundred pound the father ped for it for him! A low, hungry little fella, that'd thravel the counthry for the sake of a ha'penny—God!"
The flow of Mrs. Twomey's eloquence ceased in shock, as Major Talbot-Lowry and Miss Coppinger emerged from the dairy behind her.
"Well, Mary," said Dick, "who is it who's so hard up for ha'pence?"
Mrs. Twomey's equanimity was not slow to re-establish itself. She and the Major were "the one age," and they had grown up together.
"Why then, your Honour knows him well, and too well!" she snapped at him, looking up his long length to his handsome, good natured face, much as a minute female cur-dog might look and snap, presuming on her sex, at a Great Dane. "It's the new little docthor, Danny Aherne, that your Honour is afther putting in the Dispinsary!"
"Oh, that poor little fellow?" said Dick, laughing, but with a touch of discomposure; "I didn't put him there. What's the matter with him, any how? Why, he hasn't been at the job three months! Give the man time, Mary, give him time! I'll engage you'll all be in love with him by this time next year!"
Mrs. Twomey glanced at Miss Coppinger, and replied with decorous piety:
"God grant it!"
She then, with an admirable assumption of respect for her superiors, and zeal for her office, moved past her visitors into the dairy.
Dick Talbot-Lowry hesitated a moment or two, then he laughed again, and strode after her into the dark dairy; Miss Coppinger followed him. Mrs. Twomey, a tiny and almost imperceptible bundle, was already on her knees in a corner, scrubbing a glistening metal churn, and so engrossed in her task as to be unaware of her visitors.
"Look here, Mary," began the Major, with a touch of severity; "what's all this about Doctor Aherne?"
Mrs. Twomey rose from her knees, dried her little scarlet claws in her apron, and stood to attention. Having opened the debate by calling fervently upon her God to witness that she knew nothing of the matter, she proceeded, like a solo pianist, to run her fingers, as it were, lightly over the keys. Passing swiftly from her own birth, upbringing, invincible respectability, and remoteness from all neighbours, or knowledge of neighbours, she coruscated in a cadenza in which the families of Talbot-Lowry and Coppinger, and her devotion to both, were dazzlingly blended, and finished in a grand chord on the apparently irrelevant fact that she would die dead before she would put down any dirty stain before the Major's honour.
"But Mary," interposed Frederica, with an inartistic directness that was in painful contrast to the cadenza, "what has the Major got to say to Doctor Aherne?"
The question was ignored; the artist dashed on into a presto movement, in which, as far as any direct theme was discernible, Dr. Mangan, his cupidity, his riches, the riches of Dr. Aherne's parents were the leading motives. Also, parenthetically, that Danny Aherne was without shoe or stocking to his foot when he was going to school in Pribawn with her own poor little boy. "And look at him now!" continued Mrs. Twomey, on a high reciting note, and still presto, "with his car and his horse, and his coat with an owld cat skin for a collar on it, and his Tommy-shirts without tails!"
There was an instant of pause, and Frederica breathed the words "'Dicky' shirt-fronts!" to her bewildered cousin.
"Himself and the Big Docthor walking the streets of Cluhir like two paycocks!" went on Mrs. Twomey with ever-increasing speed and fury. "Ha! Ha! Didn't I meet him back in Pribawn ere yistherday. 'How great you are in yourself!' says I to him. 'It done you no harm to kill a woman!' says I. 'Mind your own business!' says he to me. 'Throth then, an' I will mind it!' says I, 'an' I'll have plenty to mind it without you! I'll have plenty to mind it without yourself! Dannileen alay!'"
"What on earth are you talking about?" Dick broke in impatiently.
Mrs. Twomey flung a glance to the doorway. Christian was no longer there. On a lower key, and directed to Miss Coppinger, a fresh stream flowed. A young woman had died; a young woman who had been privileged to marry a relative, of a degree of relationship obscure, but still honoured, of Mikey Twomey's; "and she afther having a young son, and the boy that marrit her as proud!—and a very good baby, and what misfortune came to her no one'd know, only the Lord God Almighty, but she died on them. And she a fine, hard, hearty, blushy, big lump of a gerr'l. And 'tis true what they said——"
The details that followed were hissed, prestissimo, into the ear of Miss Coppinger, but that Dr. Aherne was to be blamed, was made as clear to Dick Talbot-Lowry as to his cousin.
The tale was concluded in tears.
"Look! I has to cry when I thinks of it!"
It is impossible with Mrs. Twomey, and her like, to argue a point, or to attempt an appeal to reason. A flat and dictatorial contradiction may have some temporary effect, and Major Talbot-Lowry adopted this method, for lack of better, in defence of his nominee. Mrs. Twomey, however, continued to weep.
"But Mary," urged Frederica, "there isn't a doctor in the world who doesn't lose a patient sometimes. It may not have been this unfortunate young man's fault in the least——"
"'Tisn't that I'm crying for at all," sobbed Mrs. Twomey, a deplorable little figure, her head bent down, while she wiped violently and alternately her nose and her eyes in her sacking apron. "But it is what the people is sayin' on the roads about" (sob) "about" (sniff)——
"About what?' said Dick, who was being bored.
"About your Honour!" returned Mrs. Twomey, in a sort of roar.
"And what the devil are they saying about me?"
"God forbid that I'd put down any dirty stain before your Honour," sobbed Mrs. Twomey, recurring to her earlier metaphor; "it's that big horse that ye're afther buyin' from Docthor Mangan; they say that he gave him to ye too cheap on the head of it——"
"On the head of what, woman?" shouted Dick, now passing, by the well-worn channel of anxiety, from boredom to anger.
"On the head of the Dispinsary! Sure they says 'twas your Honour gave it to Danny Aherne!"
It is unnecessary to record Major Talbot-Lowry's indignation on hearing this charge. The dairy, with its low ceiling and paven floor, echoed, submissively, his well-justified strictures on the lies and evil speaking of his humbler neighbours, and Mrs. Twomey dried her eyes (much as she would scrub out one of her milk-pans) and hearkened.
Who shall say if she believed him? There is a standard of honour, rigid and stern, for gentlemen, just as there is quite another standard for those who do not, in the opinion of a people, Austrian in their definition of what is or is not gentle birth, merit that title. Dick Talbot-Lowry was a gentleman, and, in her own words, no "dirty stain" would ever be attributed to him by Mary Twomey, but even she knew that the ethics of buying and selling a horse apply to no other transaction, and she knew also that in the disposal of a "place," more may occur than meets the eye. She resented the slur on her chieftain, but, in spite of her wrath, she could not feel quite certain that the accusation was entirely unfounded.
The town of Cluhir had more features than those that have already been enumerated, to entitle it to respect. There was, primarily, the great river, that moved majestically in its midst, bearing a church, impartially, on its either bank, and hiding and nourishing in its depths the salmon that gave the town its reason for existence. There was the tall and noble bridge that spanned the river, and joined the rival churches together (a feat of which it is safe to say no other power in Ireland was capable). It was made of that blue-grey limestone that builds bridges, and churches, and houses, with an equal success, and it was the equivalent of a profession for many of the inhabitants of the town, who were accustomed to spend long, meditative hours upon it, criticising the fishermen on the bank below, watching the fish, talking of fish, thinking of fish, without haste, and with a good deal of rest. There was also Hallinan's Hotel, that was very far from being a mere country hotel. The stately bow-windows of its coffee-room have already been mentioned, but its wide verandah must not be forgotten, stone-paven, glass-roofed, umbrageous with tropic vegetation, beneath whose shade, on the sunny days that are enjoyed by the lesser world of men, sad anglers, in ancient tweed suits, lolled, broken-heartedly, in basket-chairs. And, finally, on the town's highest level, was The Mall, reserved, dignified, with a double row of great beech-trees, and behind them, on both sides of the wide roadway, the reserved and dignified houses of the magnates of Cluhir. Eminent in both these qualities was No. 6; almost too much so, Mrs. Mangan thought sometimes. On a wet day she would say, it would be as good for you to be in the Back of Beyond itself, as here, where you might be flattening your nose all day and not see as much as a bike going by.
Dr. Mangan, however, fully recognised the value of this seclusion. His surgery was at the back of the house, and its unbroken quiet was grateful to a man who had much to do, and plenty to think of. He was seated in it, one mild February evening, some months after the election of Dr. Aherne. It had been market-day in Cluhir; patients had been many, and fees satisfactory. The Doctor reclined in front of a good turf and wood fire, and smoked a mellow pipe, and reviewed the run of events. Danny Aherne had been in, to speak to him about a case, that afternoon, and Dr. Mangan's thoughts ran back to that little affair of the Knock Ceoil Dispensary, and of Major Talbot-Lowry's part in the matter. Danny had just nipped in before the Local Government Bill took the power away from the old Dispensary Committees. Dam' luck for Danny. The Major had been useful enough. It hadn't been his vote, so much as his influence, that had got the boy the job. The affair, as far as the Doctor was concerned, was of quite minor importance, but it had been useful in promoting the feeling of intimacy between the houses of Mangan and Talbot-Lowry. That omniscient composite authority, "The people on the roads," whose views had been quoted by Mrs. Twomey, had not been wrong in hinting that the Doctor had permitted the Major to have the best of the bargain about the big brown horse. Old Tom Aherne had made it well worth his while to do so, so everyone had come comfortably out of the transaction. Nor had Dr. Mangan, in diagnosing Major Talbot-Lowry, been wrong in his assumption that Dick, generous, and elated by his success in bargaining, would wish to indemnify his opponent for having had the worst of it, and would consider the support of Danny Aherne as a suitable expression of the wish.
The Big Doctor's intimacy with Dick had progressed of late with remarkable rapidity. During one of those friendly talks over the Mount Music library fire, that had latterly been recurring with increasing frequency, an opportunity had risen for the Doctor—"a warm man," as has been said—to offer to the Major a tangible proof of his friendship.
"After all, there's the money lying idle at my bank," the Doctor had said, breezily.
Dick, in a moment of irritation and perplexity, had expatiated on the expenses consequent on launching sons into professions, and also on the pig-headed determination of annuitants to "hang on," regardless of the inconveniences occasioned to a heavily burdened property by this want of consideration.
"Three half-sisters of my father's," says Dick, "as old as three men each of 'em, and not a notion of dying among 'em! They'll see me out, I'll swear!"
It was then that that idle money had been tactfully referred to.
"I'll knock better interest out of you, Major, than the bank'll give me!" said the Big Doctor, jovially. "I want no security from you! Your word——"
"Oh, that will never do, my dear fellow," Dick had replied, as he was meant to reply. "Of course it must be a pukka business deal. I'll give you——"
In his relief, Dick was ready to give to this kind William of Deloraine any security that he would suggest. It was, of course, a purely nominal affair—but still—what about a mortgage on the house and demesne? How would that do?
The Doctor thought it would do very well.
It should be established, while it was still possible to induce the reader to accept such a statement, that the Big Doctor was, as he himself might have said, "not too bad a fellow altogether!" In public life, a fighter, wily and skilled; compassionate to the poor, yet exacting, implacably, practical recognition of his compassion. In his own house, easy-going and autocratic; in his Church, a slave; a confidential slave, whose gladiatorial gifts were valued, and whose idiosyncrasies might be humoured, but none the less, a slave. He was like an elephant in his hugeness, and suppleness, his dangerousness, and his gentleness. His head was not crowned with the bald benevolence that an elephant wears, but seated on his neck was a mahout, and the mahout was Father Greer, the Parish Priest of Cluhir.
Now, on this quiet evening, he sat and smoked by the fire, and, touching "the tender stops of various quills," his eager thought paused longest on the note that stood for Tishy. Tishy was, in her own way, as sound an asset as any that he possessed, a thoroughly well-made article, a right-down handsome girl, the Big Doctor thought complacently, good enough for any position, and for any man.
"But she's not for any man, I can tell them!" thought Tishy's father; "that's just where the difference of it is! I'll see to that, you may take your oath!"
Then he began to consider his son. He could not feel the same confidence in Barty that Tishy inspired. Where Barty got hold of all his dam-silly notions was more than anyone, least of all his father, could imagine. Nevertheless, they had had their uses, and might still justify themselves "in a sense," he thought; "if not in one way, maybe in another." He moved on to his wife. How could she contribute to the Great Ideas? Ideas were not much in her line, but if you told her what to do, she'd do it. After all, that was the main thing. Women's own notions were often more bother than they were worth. Poor Annie! His big mouth, under the coarse black moustache, spread into a smile, and his blue-grey eyes smiled with it. "I was a fool once about her, and b' Jove, I think I'm not much better now!" he said to himself, indulgently. The handsomest woman this minute in the barony, and she had never so much as looked crooked at any man since the day he married her. After all, she had been a credit at that Mount Music show. There wasn't a woman to touch her in the place; she had held her own with them; she had spent his money as he had told her to spend it. Like a lady. "I like that; how much? Here's your money!" That was what he had told her to say, and she had said it all right. No damned huxterings. And those women whom he wished her to get on with, she had got on with. They liked her. It was easy to see that; and Lady Isabel had often come in to see her since the show, and had stayed for tea, as friendly as you please. Annie was all right.
The gossip of Cluhir had been as mistaken in the matter of the Mangans as gossip often is. Francis Mangan had married his wife for the entirely unjudicious reason that her beauty had mastered his common sense. After his marriage his common sense, having regained the upper hand, was satisfied that, even though her
"Charms were to change by to-morrow
And fleet in his arms,"
she would still be the only wife in the world for him. None the less he did not pretend indifference to the knowledge that his wife was the handsomest woman in Cluhir, and there was, indeed, no reason why he should do so. And thus the Big Doctor had a double triumph.
There came a fumbling tap on the door, it opened a little, and Hannah's head came twisting round it.
"Docthor!" spoke the head, like a Teraph, "the Misthress says to have ye come in. The supper's ready, and the priest is in it."
This remarkable statement was accepted by the Doctor with composure, as expressing the fact that Father Greer had arrived.
"Tell her I'm coming this minute," he said, rising ponderously to his feet; "say to them to go down without me."
He locked up the fees that were lying on the table, being a careful man, and washed his huge, pale hands with the particularity that a doctor brings to that task. Huge though they were, they had the sensitiveness that is the gift of music, and is also part of the endowment of the surgeon.
"Ah, here he is now!" said Mrs. Mangan, as the Doctor came, enormously, into the small dining-room. "For shame for you, Francis, to be so late."
"Ah, don't scold him, Mrs. Mangan!" said the priest simpering conventionally. "Wasn't it ministering to the afflicted that delayed him! Doctors mustn't be subjected to the rules that bind ordinary people!"
"That's right, Father," said the Doctor, beginning to carve a large, cold goose, with the skill that his trade bestows; "stand up for me now! Don't let her bully me—though indeed I might be used to it by this time!"
"Doesn't he look like it, the poor fella!" scoffed Mrs. Mangan, directing a melting look at her husband; "starved and pairsecuted! That's what he is!"
Father Greer smiled permissively over the rim of his glass of whisky and water; it was strong and good, and the food was good also, and abundant. Mrs. Mangan's suppers were as generous as her own contours, and were noted for their excellence. She herself was not so much to the priest's taste. He was celibate by nature as well as by profession. Women were antagonistic to him, and Mrs. Mangan, godly matron though she was, seemed to him to symbolize a very different ordering of life to that which he approved; but the Big Doctor was an asset of the Church who must be simpered upon, and for whose sake a little social boredom must be unrepiningly endured. He was an older man, by a good many years, than the Doctor, and was nearer sixty than fifty, but his figure was slight and active, and his scant hair was dark and silky, though there was a light dust of grey in it over the ears, which were thin and outstanding, and shared with his nostrils and eyelids the tinge of red that was denied to the rest of his face. He had the wide, brains-carrying forehead of a fox, as well as a fox's narrow jaw, but his eyes were small and black, and as quick as a bird's.
Barty and Tishy, who were not agreed in many things, were agreed in being afraid of him. They sat in perfect silence, while their mother occupied herself with directions to Hannah, who hovered, indeterminately, near the door, and their father discoursed the visitor. Father Greer was something of a traveller, and he was now giving an instructive account of a recent visit to Switzerland, and of the "winter sports" that had occupied the energies of all in the hotel save himself.
"I found the air as bracing and as serviceable to me as you had led me to expect," he said to his host, "but the sports seemed to me to make a toil of pleasure, and the dancing that went on every night—'twas impossible to sleep! Well! Youthful frivolity, I suppose, must be condoned, but I may say I was greatly annoyed at an incident that occurred at a neighbouring hotel. Mostly English, the visitors were, and they held a Protestant service on Sunday in the saller-mongy."
Barty looked secretly at his sister. His expression said: "And why shouldn't they?"
Father Greer ignored the look, and continued his recital: "As was quite right and proper for them to do."
There was a blink of the black eyes, and Barty recognised that he had not been unobserved.
"There was what is called a Reading-party of young min, with a tutor, at the hotel," went on the priest. "Protestants they were—so far as they had any religion—but only wun of them attended that service. It was said he was the wun and only person able to play the piano in the hotel. Some English ladies requested him to play—I believe there was some very unsuitable joking about it—and he consented. He attended that service; he played their English hymns," Father Greer paused, and gathered up the table with a glance before his climax. "That young man, I regret to say, was an Irish Catholic, one whom you all know—young Mr. St. Lawrence Coppinger!"
Mrs. Mangan, who had been too much harassed by Hannah's failure to decode her signals, to attend, heard the name only, and said lovingly:
"The dear boy! How nice for him and you to meet so far away from home, Father!"
Barty's satisfaction at his mother's unexpected comment took the form of kicking his sister, heavily. Tishy, who sang in the chapel choir, and was at this time inclined to regard herself as a pillar of the Church, returned the kick with a viciousness that indicated a hostile point of view, and said loftily:
"But to think they'd ask him! The English are very lax. Don't you think so, Father?"
Dr. Mangan laughed apologetically.
"Well, it's a wonder that a party of sheep would let a poor goat into their fold at all!" he said, in a voice that asked for forgiveness for the erring goat. "I suppose the young ladies got him in a corner, and 'twas hard for him to refuse. You'd hardly blame him for that!"
Father Greer looked bleakly down his nose and said nothing.
Barty scowled, considering that his hero stood in no need of apology. Dr. Mangan continued his endeavour to save the situation.
"But there's no understanding of Protestants!" he resumed, good-humouredly; "I met an old fellow on the train th' other day, old William Henderson of Glen Brickeen, and he was telling me of a row he had with his clergyman, the Reverend Wilson. 'Oh,' says he, 'I gave up going to church on the head of it!' 'And isn't that a great sin for you,' says I, 'to give up going to church?' 'Oh,' says he, 'I explain that to God every Saturday. He understands well what Mr. Wilson done to me, and why I wouldn't go to church as long as he was in it.' 'Maybe,' said I, funning him, 'some day he might be before you in Heaven with his story, and what'll you do then?' 'Oh,' said he, I'll make out a place for myself, never fear! There's places of all sorts in it!' says he. 'I suppose it's the many mansions you're thinking of!' said I. 'You think the poor Roman Catholics don't know their Bibles, but I know that much!'"
"Well, Francis," said Mrs. Mangan, admiringly, "I never knew you that you'd be without an answer, no matter what anyone'd say to you! 'Many mansions,' says you! I declare I'd never have thought of that! Father, wouldn't you say he answered him well!"
Father Greer, having made his point, smiled indulgently, and, as he was deeply involved in a mouthful of tough goose, the smile, blended with the act of mastication, made him look more than ever like a fox, a fox in a trap, gnashing at his captors.
"I always knew the Doctor could be trusted to 'give a knave an answer,' as Shakespeare says," he said, when the power of speech was restored to him; "I'm often surprised at the liberty, I might almost say the licence, that is met with in Protestants in connection with their religion. Take the case of young Mr. Coppinger that I was speaking of. That was a melancholy instance of evil communications corrupting good manners. I may say that I regard with anxiety a too great freedom, what I may call an unrestrained intercourse, between members of the two churches—that is, indeed, if I am justified in describing as a church that which I have heard stigmatised as 'a fortuitous concourse of atheistic atoms'!"
Father Greer's nose came down over his upper lip, the corners of his mouth went up, and a succession of sniffs indicated that he was laughing.
"That may be rather severe," he conceded, "but I may say that, for my part, I consider that Catholics have a sufficiency of pleasing society within their own communion, without striving to go beyond it!"
Father Greer paused, looked round the table as if to receive the general assent, and put his sharp nose into the tumbler of brown whisky and water, to whose replenishing the Doctor had not failed to attend.
A rather stricken silence followed. Mrs. Mangan's large and handsome brown eyes turned guiltily to her husband, and moved on from his face to one of the many trophies of the Mount Music Sale, a Protestant chair back, now flaunting itself on a Catholic chair, under the very eyes of the Parish Priest!
Barty glowered at his plate; Tishy, who had not enjoyed herself at the Sale, felt, in consequence, that she was now justified in doing so at the expense of her family, and held up her head, and looked at her father. It was plain to see that the elephant had felt the prick of the Mahout's ankus. The Big Doctor's face was perturbed. Tishy saw him look at the little priest's glass, and knew that he wished it were empty, in order that he might pour into it a propitiatory oblation. He cleared his throat once or twice before he spoke.
"Very true, Father, very true. I used to think the same thing in England. The chaps I used to meet there—no one would know what religion they belong to, no more than if they were heathens. That young lad that you weren't pleased with—young Coppinger—I believe he's as good a Catholic as any of us, but he happens to be thrown mostly among Protestants. I often think it's no more than our duty as Catholics to try and see as much as we can of him. He and Barty here, got to be very great with each other the time he was with us, but it's only an odd time now that we get a sight of him."
"I was talking to him a long while, the last time he was home," said Barty, looking up, with something smouldering in his voice, "he told me he was going to Oxford next October. It's well to be him!" he ended defiantly.
"Now, I wouldn't be too sure of that at all!" said Father Greer, with a smoothness that implied the laying aside of the ankus; "I think, my young friend, that your good father's house is as safe and happy a place for you as you could wish for!" He turned to the Doctor. "I may say that there is a belief among certain classes that no one is properly edjucated without they've been sent to England. I thought my friend Barty, was a better Irishman than it seems he is!"
"I'm as good an Irishman as any man!" said Barty, in a sudden blaze, "and may-be better than some!"
His face had turned white, and his eyes, that were as large and dark as his mother's, met those of Father Greer with the courage of anger.
"What harm is it to want to get a better education than what I have? I don't see why I shouldn't want to go to Oxford, or Switzerland either, for the matter o' that—as well as another!"
Father Greer, as Dr. Mangan remarked subsequently, took Barty's making a fool of himself very well. He put his head on one side, his black eyebrows went up, and he again uttered that succession of sniffs that served him for a laugh.
"It seems that I have made a railing accusation without meaning it, and brought down fire from heaven, like the Prophet Elijah, only to find that I am myself to forrum the burnt offering!" he said, pleasantly. "Well, well, Barty, don't consume me entirely in your just indignation, and I'll promise you to make no insinuendoes in future as to whether you're a good or bad Irishman!"
I am unable to determine if Father Greer deliberately devised this felicitous amalgamation of the two words that were in his mind, or if it was unintentional, and an indication that Barty's brief flare of revolt had flustered him a little. I am inclined to the latter theory. In any case, the word is a useful one.
Christian was in the kennels, in their innermost depths. She was, in fact, seated on the bench of "the ladies" lodging-house, on the dry and rustling cushion of bracken on which Major Talbot-Lowry bedded his pack.
Yearning to her, sitting all over her, covering her with their ponderous affection, were the hounds. Two large ladies had each a head on each of her shoulders; two more had laid their chins on her knees, and were gazing raptly into her face. The less favoured stood, and squeezed, and pushed, and panted, with glowing eyes and waving sterns, in as close a circle round her as it was possible to form.
"Dearest things!" apostrophised Christian, "I feel like Nero—I wish you had only one lovely head, so that I might kiss you all at once!"
"Rot!" said Larry, who was leaning against the wall, facing her, and saying: "Down, you brute!" at intervals, to hounds, who, having failed to force their way to Christian, were directing their attention to him, to the detriment of his grey flannel trousers. "And look at your dress from their filthy paws!"
"Good Gawd, Mr. Larry Sir! Don't say paws! 'Ounds 'ave feet" responded Christian, whose imitation of Cottingham was no less accurate now than it had been some eight years earlier; "and I don't care a pin for this old skirt anyway——"
"I'm as fond of hounds as anyone," said Larry, reprovingly, "but I must say I should draw the line at their licking my face!"
"They don't!" said Christian, indignantly; "that's the beauty of them, They never lick—except perhaps my darling Nancy, because I nursed her when she had pneumonia."
"If I were you, Cottingham, I wouldn't let Miss Christian into the kennels," said Larry, with severity, "she makes lap-dogs of the hounds!"
Cottingham had joined the party, and was leaning on the half-door of the kennel, watching his hounds with the never-failing interest of a good kennel-huntsman.
"I couldn't be too 'ard on Miss Christeen, sir," replied Cottingham; "her's the best walk I have. That there Nancy was a sickly little thing enough when I sent 'er to Miss Christeen, and look at 'er now! A slapping fine bitch!"
Christian turned a slow and expressionless eye upon her accuser, indicating triumph.
"It's like this with that Nancy," continued Cottingham, with whom the preaching habit, fostered by years of laying down the law on subservient fields, was inveterate. "Her got that fond of Miss Christeen, her follered 'er about, the way the ole lamb followed Mary, as they say. And that artful she got! Wouldn't try a yard! An' she 'ad the 'ole o' the young entry like 'erself. Any sort of a check, and back they all comes an' looks at me, wi' their 'eads a one side, and their sterns agoin' like this," he wagged a stubby fore-finger to and fro in so precisely the right rhythm, that, stubby as it was, no magic wand could evolve more instantly the scene to be presented; "an' that's 'ow it'd be, th' old 'ounds workin' 'ard, and the young uns lookin' like they 'as nothin' to do only admire of me!"
"Quite right, too!" truckled Christian.
"Ah, Miss Christeen, I'm too used to soft soap, I am!"
"Well, you know, Cottingham, it was I cured Nancy when she took to following me about." She turned to Larry. "Luckily, I broke my wrist, and by the time I was able to ride again she had given me up and taken to hunting."
"That's what you says, Miss," said Cottingham; "but I reckon what her wanted was what her got from me—a good 'idin'!"
Having made his point, Cottingham, a true artist, departed at the little toddling run that in kennels indicates devotion to duty, combined with a slippery floor.
"I had forgotten about your breaking your wrist—I remember about my own, right enough!" said Larry. "What rotten luck!"
"Oh, it's dead sound now," said Christian. "Look!" She stood up, and held out both her slender hands to him across the intervening hounds' backs. "I bet you don't know which is which!"
Larry took a hand in each of his, and flexed the wrists. "The left, wasn't it?" he said, without releasing them. "Not that I see any difference, only I remember now that I heard you had smashed the same one that I did."
"It did hurt—horribly! I expect you know. It hurts still a little, sometimes." She looked at him for sympathy. She was nearly eighteen now, and had caught him up in height, so that her brown eyes looked straight into his blue ones.
"Poor little paw!" said Larry patronizingly; he was going to be twenty-one in a week, and felt immeasurably older than Christian. "Oh, by the way, I forgot! I mustn't say paw. Must I call it 'foot'? I'll make it well, anyhow!" he ended, and, in what he felt to be the manner of a kind uncle, he kissed the injured wrist.
"Quite well now, thank you!" said Christian, mockingly, withdrawing her hands. "If I had only thought of it, I could have got Nancy to lick it! It might have done just as well!" Her colour had risen a little. "Let's come out; it's rather stuffy in here."
At a little distance from the kennel precincts were waiting two small, smooth, white dogs, daughters of the adored companions of Christian's childhood, themselves scarcely less adored than were their parents. Seated, as was their practice, in a well-chosen position, that combined seclusion with a commanding view of the detested hounds, they had not ceased (as was also their practice) from loud and desolate barking, an exercise that in the case of Dooley, the younger and more highly-strung of the couple, was accustomed to develop into a sustained contralto wail. As Christian and Larry left the kennel yard, this moment had been reached. Dooley's nose was in the air, her mouth was as round as the neck of a bottle, her white throat looked as long as a swan's throat, and the bark was softening into sobs. Christian flung herself down, and gathered her and her sister, the second Rinka, into her arms.
"Let's sit down here," she said, sending her hat spinning down the grassy slope; "it's too lovely to go in, and I want a cigarette."
"Haven't got one," said Larry. "Sorry. I gave them up in Lent, and now I'm doing as well without 'em."
"Nerve gone already," said Christian. "That's what comes of missing a season!" She laughed up at him.
"Don't know," said Larry, dropping down beside her on the dry, sun-hot grass; "quite likely; but it wasn't that. The fact was"—he hesitated—"I met a very decent Padre at Mürren. We used to talk a lot about—oh, no end of things! When he found I was Irish he was awfully pleased. He congratulated me on belonging to the Old Faith—he's Irish himself, but he's never lived over here. He said it was such a wonderful link with the people and the past—such a romantic religion! And so it is, you know. It hadn't struck me, somehow, till Father Nugent talked of it. I'm sorry for you, Christian! Don't you feel being a Protestant is a bit—well—stodgy—and respectable—no sort of poetry?"
"I like stodge," said Christian, serenely.
Larry paid this frivolity no attention. He had only recently discovered that he possessed a soul, and he was as much pleased with it as he had been with his first watch, and he found much the same enjoyment in producing and examining it, that had been afforded to him by the watch.
"It was Father Nugent's suggestion to give up smoking," he said, unable to eliminate from his voice a touch of pride, "I knocked off whiskies and sodas, too—but that was off my own bat."
"'Smite them by the merit of the Lenten Fast!'" murmured Christian. Unlike Larry, she evaded personalities and especially those that involved a discussion of religion. "Larry do you remember the awful rags we used to have over that hymn! What ages it is since you were at home! Not since I've had my hair up!"
"By Jove, I hardly knew you when I saw you first!" responded Larry, his sails filling on a fresh tack with characteristic speed. "It's not as light as it used to be. I'm not sure that I like it up."
He looked at her critically. Her hair, thick and waving lay darkly on her forehead, and was stacked in masses upon her small head on a system known only to herself.
"That's a pity," said Christian, coolly, "and I hate it, too. But unluckily, whether you and I hate it or not, it's got to stay up now—that's to say, when it will. I am supposed to be 'out.' I'm nearly eighteen, you know. I never thought I'd live to such an age."
"Oh, wait till you're 'of age,' like me!" said Larry, impressively. "Then you'll know the horrors of longevity. I've got to take over the show—the tenants and all the rest of it—from your father, and Aunt Freddy, next week! An awful job it's going to be! Cousin Dick says that these revisions of rent have played the deuce all round. I shall make old Barty Mangan my agent. He's a solicitor now all right. He can run the show. I like old Barty, don't you?"
"I hardly ever see him," said Christian, cautiously. "He has rather nice looks—more like a poet than a solicitor."
"You see, I want to go abroad, and do some music, and paint," said Larry, pressing on with his own subject. "Take painting on seriously, you know——"
"I know," said Christian, thoughtfully, "I don't envy Barty Mangan! I know Papa's having botheration with our people——"
"All the more reason for me to earn my living by painting!" responded Larry cheerfully.
They were sitting at the edge of a patch of plantation. It was the middle of May, and the young larches behind them were clad in a cloud of pale emerald; the clumps of hawthorn, that were dotted about the park, between the kennels and the river, were sending forth the fragrance of their whiteness; the new green had come into the grass, though it was almost smothered in the snow of daisies; primroses and wild hyacinths had strayed from the little wood, and straggling down the hillside, had joined hands and agreed, the first, to linger, the latter, to hasten into blow, and so to share the month between them. Just below, on the turn of the hill, was a big thicket of furze bushes, more golden than gold, sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. From Larry's woods across the Ownashee, the cuckoo's voice came, as melodiously monotonous and as full of associations as the bell of a village church. Silvery clouds were sailing very high in a sky of thinnest, sweetest blue; little jets of sparkling sound, rising and falling in it, bespoke the invisible, rapturous larks, tireless as a playing fountain; and the sun blazed down on the boy and the girl and the two little dogs seated there in the full of it.
Larry rolled over and over on the grass like a young colt.
"Oh, murder-in-Irish!" he groaned, in sheer ecstasy, "isn't it gorgeous! I always forget how entirely stunning Ireland is, till I come back to it!"
He could say no more, as both dogs had sprung from Christian's arms, and were feverishly licking his face.
"Your own fault!" said Christian, answering his expostulations. "Kind little things, they thought you asked for it."
"I repeat," said Larry, lying on his back, and holding off his assailants with difficulty, "eliminating badly brought-up dogs, that Ireland is the finest country in the world, and—listen to this, Christian!—the Irish are the finest people, and the worst governed!"
"'The foinest pisanthry in Europe'!" said Christian, in gibing exaggeration. "Larry, you've got awfully English!" Larry rolled over and came into play again, sitting bolt upright; "I'm a Home Ruler!"
"Don't be absurd," said Christian, tranquilly.
"I'm not the least absurd," returned Larry. "I mean it. If not a Republican!" he added, ostentatiously, and began to chant:
"And Ireland shall be free,
From the centre to the sea,
And huzza for Libertee,
Says the Shan Van Voght!"
"I say, you remember the old companions of Finn? Well they're rolling up again! I've started them at Oxford. Six members already! Two men in my college, and——"
"English, of course!" interrupted Christian, with an effective tone of elderly superiority. "People like yourself, who know nothing about it!"
This was an insult not easily to be tolerated; the gage of battle did not lie long at Larry's feet, and it may be admitted that the challenger would have been ill pleased had it been ignored.
In the five years that had passed since the curtain of this narrative went down on Christian, she had changed more than had Larry. It was as though that extra-worldly endowment of her childhood having ceased to manifest in external ways, had turned its light inwards. The power of hearing what others could not hear, had faded, but a subtlety of mind, a clarity, a sort of pondering, intellectual self-consciousness (that had no kinship with that other form of self-consciousness that is only inverted self-conceit) had taken the place of those voices that she had once refused to deny to the inquisitorial John.
The battle, with regard to the resurrected Companions of Finn, having waxed and waned in a course that need not here be followed, the argument took on another phase.
"You know, Larry," Christian said, half-absently twisting and arranging Dooley's little tan ears, in order to express, on Dooley's behalf, with them, various emotions, "it seems to me that all these political revolutions that you are so anxious to start, for the good of Ireland, are like putting the cart before the horse."
"What do you mean?" asked Larry, eyeing her with undisguised surprise.
"Well," said Christian, slowly, gazing across the valley with eyes more than ever like the clearest brown stream, "you've got to begin with the individual. After all, Ireland is made up of individuals, and each of them contributes in some way to the big result. It seems to me that the real Spirit of the Nation is—is——"
Her gaze at the far woods became fixed, and her hands ceased to play with the soft, tan ears.
"Is what?" said Larry, rather impatiently. He was bewildered by this grave, young debater, and was trying to reconcile her with the child he had left behind him last year, or even with the child who, five minutes ago, had wished to impress a comprehensive kiss on all the hounds at once. Moreover, a young gentleman on the imminent verge of official manhood, is justified in resenting ideas, in opposition to his own, being offered to him by a little girl, with her hair only just "up," whom he regards as no more than a niece, or thereabouts.
"Well," said Christian, still more slowly, her eyes lifting from the woods and resting on a shining snowball of a cloud, "it's Religious Intolerance, I think! That seems to me the Spirit of the Nation—my side as bad as yours, and yours as bad as mine——"
"Oh, the parsons and the priests," said Larry, airily. "Oh you wait, Christian! You don't know! You've been stuck down here in a hole. If you met Father Nugent——"
"But I don't mean them only," said Christian, standing to her guns; "I mean the individual—you and me! Just anybody—we're all the same. The Shan van Voght has got to free us from each other before she takes on England!" She looked at Larry; the seriousness left her face, and she shook back the dark hair from her forehead with just the same gay, mutinous toss of the head that a young horse will give when the rider picks up the reins. "I may have been stuck down here in a hole!" said Christian, mocking him; "but anyhow, I haven't lived in England and lost my eye!"
"What about seeing from a distance, and seeing the whole and not the part?" retorted Larry. "What about a bird's eye view?" He had risen to his feet and was looking down at her, feeling the moral support of physical elevation.
"That depends on the bird!" said Christian. "Now, if it were a goose, for example! Like——Hi! Dogs! Look, Larry! Look! Down by the furze bushes! A huge rabbit!"
The discussion closed abruptly, as such discussions will, when the disputants are at the golden age, and views and opinions are winged, and have not yet become ballast, or, which is worse, turned to mooring-stones.
The origin of the Coppinger's Court picnic was complicated and has remained obscure. Whether its author had been Mrs. Mangan, or her friend, Mrs. Whelply, or young Mr. Coppinger himself, was uncertain, but the fact remained that a picnic, with indirect reference to the blossoming of the bluebells (i.e., the wild hyacinths) was decided upon, and that Larry, in the course of the visit that he never failed to pay to the Mangan household, had placed the demesne of Coppinger's Court at the disposal of the ladies of Cluhir, as a scene for the entertainment.
Larry's fidelity to the Mangans was a matter that was undoubtedly something of a trial to his Aunt Freddy. She was too inflexibly conscientious to attempt to deny, even to Lady Isabel, still less to herself, that such fidelity was creditable, but she felt justified in considering it superfluous; when, as now, it took the form of inviting a party of unknown size, under the patronage of Mrs. Mangan, to accept the Ownashee as its washpot, and (as it were) to cast forth its shoe over Coppinger's Court, Aunt Freddy may be forgiven the manoeuvre that arranged a séance with her Dublin dentist for the date decided upon for the picnic, and may be felt to deserve the sympathy of those who can appreciate the inwardness of her position. And this last, improbable though it may seem to some people, was made immensely more difficult by the simple and irrelevant fact that she, on Sundays, betook herself to the Knock Ceoil Protestant church, while Larry went to the white chapel on the hill. It was to the grey, stone Protestant church that Larry's forbears had gone for one hundred and fifty years or more, even since the then reigning Coppinger had fallen in love with an English heiress, and, agreeing with Henri Quatre, that Paris was well worth a Mass, had 'verted to marry her. Never in living memory had the congregations that filled full the white chapel on the hill, included in their dutiful ranks any being of higher degree than might have been found in those other congregations, that, some nineteen hundred years earlier, were gathered in the hills of Galilee; those humble crowds who came to hear Christ preach, of whom it was said that they were of the common people, and that they heard Him gladly. Miss Frederica was as good a Christian—in some ways probably a better one—as might have been found in the white chapel, but it was impossible for her not to feel, what was, indeed, felt, with a singular mixture of satisfaction and disapproval, by the majority of the white chapel's congregation, that Larry's parents had, socially, been ill-advised when they "made a Roman of him." In the creed of Mary Twomey, and her fellows, it was only in conformity with natural law in the spiritual world that ginthry should go to church, and the like of herself to chapel. She, no more than Frederica, could subdue the feeling of incongruity imparted by the fact of Master Larry and herself worshipping together; it was as though, if she had run into the kitchen to get a sup of hot water, or the wetting of her mouth o' tay, she had found him sitting among the maids in the servants' hall. Mary Twomey, and her fellows, would have indignantly repudiated the idea of taking service with one of their own church. "No! Thank God! I never sank to that!" Mary had once said, when such had been imputed to her. There was no question of religion in it. Merely of fitness. So inveterate in the older Ireland is, or was, what Christian might have considered to be the outcome of The Spirit of the Nation, but that, in this special connection, may with, perhaps, greater accuracy, be ascribed to the aristocratic instinct.
Something like a sheet of thin ice had come into existence between Larry's life and that of his aunt. It had come gradually, almost imperceptibly. There had been a time, after his First Communion, when Larry had confided in Frederica. He had even told her of the anxieties he had felt before his first Confession, and of how difficult he had found it to decide upon the sins that he could, without arrogance lay to his own charge. He told her that he had invented several crimes, in order to dignify the occasion. Frederica wondered secretly how that charming Jesuit Father, to whom, at Monkshurst, she had been introduced as her nephew's spiritual director, had dealt with the sinner; but this, Larry had not divulged. There were, from that time forward, an increasing number of things that Larry did not divulge to his Aunt Freddy, and the sheet of ice slowly became thicker. It was "the religious aspect of the case," as Miss Coppinger complained to Mr. Fetherston, that made it so impossible for her to speak her mind to Larry about the Mangans.
"Do you remember you advised us to send him to Oxford?" she reproached him. "I'm afraid it has only had the effect of making him take his religion more seriously—for which, I suppose, one ought to be thankful——"
"And why not?" the Reverend Charles had replied. "They say all roads lead to Rome, so no doubt the converse holds good, and out of Rome some road must lead to Heaven!"
The Reverend Charles was pleased with his aphorism, but Frederica could not enjoy it. Not even Mr. Fetherston could console her on this matter.
"His very niceness and simplicity make him a prey for undesirables," she mourned, "and he has that peculiar gift of making every one fond of him. I suppose it is his looks——"
"Then you cannot blame the undesirables," her rector responded.
Larry's looks had, certainly, a spell that was something in excess of what may be called their "face-value." Though legal manhood was so soon to be his status, he had still some of the radiance of childhood about him. His hair was of the same pure and infantine gold that it had been when he charged down on the Eldest Statesman on the stepping-stones of the Ownashee; his blue eyes had lost none of their candour; the touch of gilding on his upper lip was effective only at short range, but, when taken in connection with a very white and even set of teeth, and a beaming and ever-ready smile, it carried considerable weight. His fair skin had not yet taken on its summer scorch of carmine, and its soft and babyish pinkness softened the salience of his short nose, and induced the critic to condone the want of decision in his chin.
"Not a handsome boy, exactly," people said, "but," and here people would smile relentingly, "if he had been a girl, one would certainly quite have said 'pretty'—so attractive-looking, and so—so clean!" which might seem to be the condemnation of faint praise, but was, in reality, merely the tribute that Larry's new-minted goldenness of aspect startled from the beholder.
He was no more than five foot nine in height, which was a trial that at times he felt deeply, but there are practical advantages for a young man who rides, in being able to do so at something considerably under eleven stone. At boxing, rowing, and games, what he lost in weight and reach, he made up for in speed and elasticity and endurance. Finally, it may be said that his figure had the gift of making old clothes like new, and new clothes look unaggressive, and when to these attributes is added a faculty for wearing hunting kit with accuracy and finish, it will be understood that Larry had early achieved standing in his college.
The Cluhir picnic, that had so justifiably perturbed Miss Frederica, debouched, like a mighty river, from its wagonettes and outside cars, upon the lawns of Coppinger's Court, at about four of the clock, of a beautiful, balmy May afternoon, and to Larry fell the task of deciding upon its course of procedure. Clad in very white flannels and a prismatic blazer, and looking, as his most tepid supporter would have to allow, a picture of cleanliness, he advanced upon Mrs. Mangan's wagonette, and proffered an arm, fortunately of steel, to facilitate her descent. The five years that had elapsed since Larry was her guest, had effected less change in her than in him. Save that the bisonian fringe now held a grey hair or two in its dark depths, and the curves, that had suggested a Chesterfield sofa to her young friend, were now something more opulent than they had been, Mrs. Mangan's progress along the corridor of eternity had made no perceptible mark on her. Still, in assisting her descent from a high wagonette, an arm of steel was not out of place.
Larry was at the age that, believing itself critical to the point of extinction of the rejected, yet accepts with enthusiasm any female creature that can wear a smart hat with assurance, and wag a flattering tongue with address. The Cluhir ladies were proficient in these arts. Mr. Coppinger was congratulated on his weather; arranged by his skill, poured forth of his benevolence! On his demesne, so green with young leaves, so gay with spring flowers! Kind Mr. Coppinger to have created them in such profusion! And what warmth was there in the Coppinger's Court sun! The second rate luminary dedicated to Cluhir was no more than a candle to it! Mr. Coppinger's Ant was enquired for (this, it should, perhaps, be explained, referred to Frederica, and had no entomological application) suitable regrets at her absence from home were expressed, with a delicate implication that with such a host, and in such weather, the loss was the Ant's, and was practically negligible, so far as the ladies of Cluhir were concerned. And who were these, coming up the path from Mr. Coppinger's lovely river? Ah, yes, the youngest Miss Talbot-Lowry, of course, and which brother was it? Oh, the youngest one? Mrs. Cassidy had thought the youngest of Lady Isabel's family was a twins—or were a twins? Which ought she to say?
"Well, this is half of it, anyhow!" says young Mr. Coppinger, facetiously, with which Mrs. Cassidy, like the Miss Flamboroughs, thought she would have died with laughing.
With the arrival of the youngest Miss Talbot-Lowry, and half the twins, a slight change fell upon Mr. Coppinger's voluble guests. A stiffening faint, almost imperceptible, yet electric, enforced the circle round Larry. Even Mrs. Whelply's confluent simper, that suggested an incessant dripping from the tap of loving kindness, failed a little. A young Mr. Coppinger was a simple affair, but a Miss Talbot-Lowry, however young, might want watching.
The youngest Miss Talbot-Lowry was, happily for herself, quite unaware of the estimation in which she was held. She had, like Larry, that quality of selflessness that is so rare and so infinitely engaging; what was she (she would have thought) that respect should be paid to her? It was a tenet of her eccentric creed that age was not only honourable but was also pathetic, so, when the picnic at large had begun its leisurely advance through the woods to the promised land, Christian selected the oldest and least promising of the Cluhir matrons for her special attention, and made herself so agreeable to her, that Barty Mangan, "mooching" (as his mother afterwards reproached him) solitary, in the rear of the procession, found himself in the remarkable position of wishing that he were his own great-aunt, Mrs. Cantwell.
Barty Mangan's opportunities for meeting Christian had been but few, but they had sufficed to light a fatal star in his sky, and to induce in him, when, as now, he found himself in her vicinity, an attitude towards the rest of the world that justified his mother's employment of the verb to "mooch" (a word that may be taken as implying a moody and furtive aloofness).
There was, Mrs. Mangan was pleased to observe, no mooching about her daughter. On the launching of the picnic, Tishy had immediately assumed the lead, with an aplomb and assurance justified by her family's special intimacy with young Mr. Coppinger, and all who knew Tishy, knew also that she meant to keep it. Dr. Mangan had not over-stated the case when, three years earlier, he had said to himself that she was a right-down handsome girl. Now, at twenty-one and a half, his paternal pride was well justified. Like him, she was tall and strongly built, tall, that is to say, for a class that rarely excels in height, and Tishy's five and a half feet enabled her to look down on most of her friends. Her broad, dark eyebrows grew straight and low over brilliant grey eyes, and were nearly reached by thick upward curled black eyelashes. If her mouth was large, it was well-shaped, and if her nose did not possess the classic severity of her brother's, its challenging tilt was not unattractive. To these charms must be added shining masses of dark hair, and a complexion of so vivid a tone, that it seemed sometimes as though a fog of carmine coloured the very atmosphere about her glowing face. She radiated vitality, the richness and abundance of high summer; she suggested a darkly gorgeous peacock-butterfly, and in the delicate radiance of the spring woods, she seemed out of key with their slender elegance of leaf and spray the soft reticence of their faint greens and greys.
It is indeed hardly fair to expect of Tishy Mangan that she should be worthy of such a setting as southern Irish woods can offer in the month of May. It is the month of the Mother of God, and in the fair demesne of Coppinger's Court, Heaven had truly visited the earth, and was chiefly and specially manifest in the Wood of the Ownashee. The trees stood with their feet bathed in the changeful, passionate blue of the wild hyacinths, a blue that lay sometimes in deep pools, sometimes in thin drifts, like the azure of far skies; the pale ferns rose in it, "like sweet thoughts in a dream"; the grey stems of the beeches were chequered with the sunlight that their thin branches and little leaves tried in vain to baffle and keep at bay. From the unseen river came varying voices; sometimes a soft chuckle that had the laughing heart of the spring in it, sometimes a rich and rushing harmony, that told of distant heights and the wind on the hills. There was a blackbird who was whistling over and over again the opening bar of the theme of a presto, that, only last week, Larry had heard, whipped out with frolic glee by the violins of a London orchestra. He wondered if, with such themes, it is the blackbirds who inspire the musicians, or if both have access to the same secret well of music, in which each can dip his little bucket, and bring listeners in the outer world a taste of the living water of melody. But since (in spite of the Artistic Temperament) he was a normal boy, what he said was:
"Stunning! Isn't it!" while he stood still, waiting, for the hidden artist to favour them with another flourish of that gay string of jewels. "He's 'recapturing' it all right, eh?"
The much-quoted quotation passed by Tishy as the idle wind. Even had she recognised the allusion, she would have considered the professional raptures of a blackbird a rather dull subject of conversation. The gallants of Cluhir did not deal in such matters in tête à tête with her, and she thought, as she had thought at the children's party, long ago, that Larry, if not quite a bore, might, in spite of Coppinger's Court, rather easily become one.
"Oh, he's stunning enough!" she replied, with her full-throated, contralto laugh; "It must be his first cousin we have in the garden behind Number Six! Dad says he doesn't know, does him or me sing the loudest!"
By Jove! She sings! thought Larry (as he was meant to think). Of course! What a fool he was to have forgotten it! And as, at this period of his career, of the three arts, who were always riding a pace in his soul, Music, Painting, and Literature, Music happened to be the leading horse, Larry looked upon Tishy with eyes in which a new ardour had awakened, and proceeded with his accustomed speed to mature the details of the concert upon which he had, during the last sixty seconds, enthusiastically decided.
Old Mrs. Cantwell, although unpromising of aspect, was by no means as deplorable, socially, as Christian had assumed her to be. The fact that she was the untrammelled owner of a soundly-invested fifteen thousand pounds, that she was the aunt whom Dr. Mangan delighted to honour, combined with the allied fact that she had paid for the hiring of the picnic-bearing wagonette, gave her an importance that could be undervalued only by one as ignorant of the greater concerns of life as was Christian. Mrs. Cantwell accepted the companionship of the youngest Miss Talbot-Lowry as no more than her due, and the thought that compassion had prompted its bestowal, was very far from her mind. None the less, the Noah's Ark principles that governed implicitly, if not ostensibly Cluhir entertainments of this nature, were firmly embedded in her being, and she was entirely aware of the furtive presence of Barty, at the rear of the procession of which she and Christian formed the last couple.
"Now, my dear," she observed, while she and Christian paced side by side, along the river path, "you shouldn't be wasting time on an old woman like me! When I was young, we'd have called this a Two and Two party, and I promise you that the likes o' you and me wouldn't have been reckoned a proper couple at all! Not when I was a girl!"
"I should have said that you and I were irreproachably proper, Mrs. Cantwell," responded Christian, gaily; "it isn't very kind of you to say that we aren't behaving as we should!" She laughed into Mrs. Cantwell's old face, and she, being quite unused to girls who took the trouble to flirt with her, began to think that Frankie Mangan (thus she designated her nephew, the doctor) was right when he said that the youngest of the Talbot-Lowrys was the best of the bunch.
"Ho! Ho! Ho!" she said, with a laugh like the whinny of an old horse; "it's a long time since I kicked my heels over anything higher than a hearth-rug! But I can tell you, my dear, I was a good warrant for a play-boy when I was your age! There wasn't a young girl, no, nor a young man either, that I couldn't dance down if I gave my mind to it!"
Christian's response was satisfactory, and Mrs. Cantwell, moved to give a sample of her bygone prowess, executed a hippopotamus-like hop and shuffle among the rustling, orange beech leaves of last year.
"Polkas and Mazoorkas!" she exclaimed. "Them was all the go in my time! Come on here, Barty, ye omadhaun! I believe I could dance you off those long legs of yours this minute, if I was to give me mind to it!"
Barty, thus adjured by his great-aunt, drew near. Mrs. Cantwell was not a person to be lightly disobeyed, but his dark eyes were full of apprehension. What might Aunt Bessie not say! She was incalculable, terrible.
There are old people who appear to find an indemnity for their lost youth in permitting to themselves, in dealing with later generations, a scarifying freedom of humour in connection with subjects which once they held sacred (for there are few souls that have not at some time enshrined a tender emotion).
Barty had suffered before now from Aunt Bessy, and he thought that if she made of him an offence to Miss Talbot-Lowry, he would straightway rush into the river and drown himself. Aunt Bessy, however, potentially Rabelaisian though she might be, was perfectly aware of the fact that there is a time to speak and a time to keep silence.
"See here, Barty," she said, "let you go on now, and tell your mother not to be waiting tea for me. I'll take me own time. Tell her never fear I'll turn up, only I like to go me own pace!" She turned to Christian. "Go on you too, my dear; I'm well enough pleased with me own company, and I hate to be delaying you. I'll sit down for a while and admire the scenery."
Thus did Aunt Bessy, as she complacently told herself, watch over the interests of her great-nephew, and though her method was crude, it indisputably achieved its object.
Christian and Barty Mangan walked on in silence that was made companionable by the gurgling whisper of the river behind its screen of hazels and alders; a whisper broken now and again by the tittering laugh of the flying water over a shallow place, like someone with a good story that he cannot quite venture to tell out loud.
Barty was saying to himself, distractedly: "What'll I say to her? What'll I talk to her about?" with each repetition winding himself, like a cocoon, deeper in webs of shyness.
Christian's social perceptions were hypersensitive, and the cris de coeur of her suffering companion were only too audible to her spiritual ear. At eighteen, the quality of mercy has seldom developed; the young demand mercy, they expect to receive, not to bestow it; but in this girl was something that made her different from her fellows. It was as though a soul more tempered, more instructed, more subtle and refined, had been given to her, than is vouchsafed to the majority of the poor creatures who are sent into this difficult world with an equipment that rarely meets its demands.
This is a long-winded way of saying that Christian realised that she had to restore confidence in Larry's young friend, and that she proceeded forthwith to do so. She would have laughed at the thought that anyone could be afraid of her, but she felt instinctively that a soothing monologue, a sort of cradle-song, was what the occasion demanded; so she began to speak of the bluebells, the woods, the weather, saying with a sort of languid simplicity, the things that the moment suggested; "babbling," as she subsequently assured Judith, "of green fields," until she had so lulled and bored him, that in self-defence he produced an observation.
"D'you read, Miss Christian?" said Barty, bringing forth his mouse with an abrupt and mountainous effort.
Christian repressed the reply that she had possessed the accomplishment for some years, and asked for further information.
"Poetry," said Barty, largely; "it's—it's the only reading I care for. I thought you might like it—" he added, hurriedly, and was again wrapped in the cocoon.
"Oh, I do, very much," said Christian, trying hard not to quench the smoking flax; "I've learnt quantities by heart, and Larry is always lending me new books of poetry. He says that you and he discuss it together."
"I never knew one like him!" said Barty, with sudden energy. "There's no subject at all that he's not interested in!" In the heat of his enthusiasm for Larry, the cocoon wrappings were temporarily shrivelled. He turned his dark short-sighted eyes on Christian, and took up his parable with excitement.
"Did he tell you he's learning Irish? I'll engage it'll be no trouble to him!"
"He's always getting hold of new ideas," said Christian; "I wish I could learn Irish."
"There's a branch of the Gaelic League in Cluhir," said Barty, eagerly. "There are a lot learning Irish. I suppose you wouldn't be disposed to become a member, Miss Christian?" He gazed at her imploringly.
"I don't know if I should be allowed," said Christian, hesitatingly. "You see I've only just come home. I've been at school in Paris for the last two years——"
A memory of a ferocious denunciation of the Gaelic League by her father came to her; she wondered what Barty would do if she offered him one of the profane imitations of the Major that had earned for her the laurels of the schoolroom.
"Oh, I'm quite sure I mightn't become a Gaelic Leaguer!" she repeated, beginning to laugh, while samples of her father's rhetoric welled up in her mind.
Barty thought he had never seen anything so enchanting as her face, as she looked at him, laughing, with wavering lights, filtered through young beech leaves, in her eyes. He felt a delirious desire to show her that he was not a tongue-tied fool; that he also, like Larry, was a man of ideas.
"I wish to God!" he said, with the disordered violence of a shy man, "that there was anny league or society in Ireland that would override class prejudice, and oblitherate religious bigotry!"
He had snatched a paragraph from his last address to the Gaelic Leaguers of Cluhir, and with it was betrayed into the pronunciation that mastered him in moments of excitement.
Christian said to herself that she thanked heaven Judith wasn't there to make her laugh.
"I don't think I'm a religious bigot," she said, with a faint tremor in her voice, "but one never knows!" Her head was bent down, the brim of her large hat hid her face.
Barty was stricken. What devil had possessed him? She was hurt! She was a Protestant, and in his cursed folly he had made her think he was reproaching her for Bigotry. Good God! What could he do?
Two emotions, hung, as it were, on hair-triggers, held the stage. In Christian, the fiend of laughter held sway, in poor Barty, the angel of tears. It was perhaps well for them both that their next step in advance took them round a bend in the path, and brought them face to face with the picnic.
Young Mr. Coppinger had been well inspired in his selection of a site for the entertainment. The trees along the river's bank had ceased for a space, leaving a level ring of grass, whereon certain limestone boulders had scattered themselves, with the deliberate intention, as it would seem, of providing seats for picnickers. Across that fairy circle of greenness a small vassal-stream bore its tribute waters to the Ownashee, with as much dignity as it had been able to assume in the forty level yards that lay between its suzerain and the steep glen down which it had flung itself. Not only had young Mr. Coppinger been so gracious as to provide this setting for the revel, but he was even now sacrificing a spotless pair of white flannel trousers to the needs of the company, and had concentrated on the cajolery of the fire, which, obedient to the etiquette that rules picnic fires, refused to consume any fuel less stimulating than matches. Other of the young gentlemen of the party, including the half-twin, Mr. George Talbot-Lowry (now a sub-lieut. R.N.) were detailed to gather sticks, a duty that was so arranged as to involve, with each load of firewood, the jumping of the vassal-stream, and thus gave opportunity for a display akin to that of the jungle-cocks, who, naturalists inform us, leap emulatively before their ladies. Prominent among these was that youth who, as a medical student, had inspired Miss Mangan in flapperhood, with an admiration for his gifts, intellectual and physical, that was only equalled by his own appreciation of these advantages. His opinion remained unchanged, but he was beginning to fear that Tishy's taste was deteriorating. None sprang more lightly across that little stream, or commented more humorously on men and things, than Captain Edward Cloherty, R.A.M.C.; yet Miss Mangan, to whom these exercises were dedicated, remained oblivious of them and aloof, apparently wholly absorbed by Martha-like attentions with regard to the public welfare, and particularly those connected with the fire. It was not for nothing that Tishy had had to rise early on many a winter morning to see that her father should go forth to his work suitably warmed and fed. Now, with scathing criticisms of the methods of Mr. Coppinger, she swept him from his position as stoker, and, as by magic, or so it seemed to him, the sticks blazed, the kettle began to sing. Miss Mangan's skill was not limited to the prosaic lighting of material fires only. With the two most distinguished young men of the party at her feet, she rose to the height of all her various powers. The fire roared and crackled, the kettle bubbled, and Tishy's grey and gleaming glances through the smoke were like a succession of boxes of matches, cast upon the responsive fires of Larry's and Georgy's holiday hearts.
The young May moon has often been a factor in affairs of the heart whose importance cannot be ignored. It is true that on this especial afternoon the mischief might seem to have been begun before she could, strictly, have been held responsible; none the less her madness must have been in the air, otherwise it is difficult to account for the joint and simultaneous overthrow of two young gentlemen of taste and quality, by Miss Tishy Mangan.
Georgy, aged but 19, just home from far and forlorn seas, with, as the poet says, a heart for any fate, might have been excused for swallowing any good provided for him by the gods, whole, and without criticism, but for Mr. St. Lawrence Coppinger, lately come of age, a man of taste, endowed with special finesse of feeling, it might have been expected that a highly-coloured peacock butterfly would have had but scant appeal. In fact, one is driven back upon the young May Moon as the sole plausible explanation of the fact that, on that afternoon of bewitchment, Tishy Mangan went to Larry's head.
These temporary aberrations are afflictions for which the most refined young men must occasionally be prepared, and Larry's overthrow was not without justification. Quite apart from her looks—and anyone would have been forced to admit that they were undeniable—there was her voice, the true contralto timbre, thick and mellow, dark and sweet, like heather honey, he thought, while he and Georgy sprawled on the grass at her feet (and she had good feet) making very indifferent jokes, in that exaggerated travesty of an Irish brogue which is often all that an English school will leave with Irish boys, and vicing with each other in the folly proper to such an occasion.
"I don't see your shoe-buckles!" Larry said, looking from her feet to her lips, with a meaning and impudent lift of his blue eyes. "Have you given up wearing them?"
Tishy's colour deepened; she remembered instantly what she was meant to remember.
"You're regretting the choice you made, are you?" she said, with a toss of her head. "Never fear! The buckles will be there when they're wanted!"
"Don't trouble about them!" says Larry, tremendously pleased with his success as a flirtatious man of the world; "I don't think they will be required!"
It is necessary to have attained to a reasonably advanced age to be able to recognise pathos in the fatuities that so frequently form a feature of love's young dream. Christian, listening with one ear to her brother and cousin, while into the other the genuine idiom of her native land flowed, ardently, from the now unsealed lips of Barty Mangan, began to wonder why the boys were talking like stage Irishmen; Georgy, she knew, was idiot enough for anything, but she had to admit to herself that Larry, also, was rather overdoing it. Christian was able to feel amused, but she also felt, quite illogically, that what had been distaste for Tishy Mangan was rapidly deepening into dislike.
The picnic raged on, with prodigious eatings and drinkings, with capsizings of teapots in full sail, with disastrous slaughterings of insects (disastrous to plates and tablecloths rather than to the insects) with facetious doings with heated tea-spoons and pellets of bread, with, in short, all that Mrs. Mangan and her fellow hostesses expected of a truly prosperous picnic.
Captain Cloherty, alone, of all the company, failed to contribute his share to the sum of success. He sat silent, a thing of gloom, the lively angle of whose waxed, red moustache only accentuated the downward droop of the mouth beneath it. But the skeleton at the feast has its uses, if only as a contrast, and Mrs. Mangan, who was more observant than she appeared to be, noted the gloom with a gratified eye, and being entirely aware of its cause, said to herself with satisfaction:
"Ha, ha, me young man!"
This picnic was, in truth, made ever memorable in the circle of Mrs. Mangan's friends by reason of the triumph of Tishy.
"Ah, that was the day she cot the two birds under the one stone!" Great-Aunt Cantwell (who did not care for her great-niece) was accustomed to say. "Well! Such goings-on! And after all, Tishy's nothing so much out of the way, for all Frankie Mangan thinks the world should die down before her!"
The two birds referred to were still fluttering round their captor, when a new element was added to the party in the large presence of "Frankie Mangan" himself. The Big Doctor approached slowly, elephant-like in his noiseless, rolling gait, impressive, as is an elephant, in size, in the feeling he imparted of restrained strength, of intense intelligence, masked, as in an elephant, with benevolence, and held watchfully in reserve.
He now advanced upon the scene of festivity with purpose in his manner.
"Now, ladies! Let me tell you I'm come on a very unpopular errand! To apply the closure! I think you're all sitting out here long enough for the time of year. Remember it's only May!"
"We're more likely to remember it's Mayn't!" retorted Mrs. Whelply, who was a recognised wit, and opponent of the Big Doctor. "Isn't it enough for him to bully us when we're sick, but he comes tormenting us when we're well, too!"
Thus she appealed to her fellow-matrons, looking round upon them for support with a festive eye.
"You'll none of you be well long, if you don't mind yourselves!" answered, with equal spirit, the Doctor, with a quiet eye on his daughter and her attendant swains.
"Why then I have a sore throat this minute with scolding Mr. Coppinger for the nonsense he's talking!" declared Mrs. Whelply. "Asking me to sing a cawmic at the concert he says he's going to have! There's no fear but whatever I sing will be cawmic enough!"
"I'm sure I'll have great pleasure in cauterising you!" responded the Doctor, gallantly; "but if you'll take my advice now, you won't want so much of it later on!"
"I thought you were going to take me on the river," said Tishy in a low voice to Larry, looking resentfully at her father.
"I'll tell you what we'll do," said Larry, quickly; "much better than the river—we'll go back to the house and dance! I'll fix it up with your father!"
"Good egg!" said Sub-Lieut. Talbot-Lowry, with seaman-like decision, "Miss Mangan will kindly note all waltzes are reserved for use of naval officers!"
"Miss Mangan will kindly do no such thing!" returned that young lady, dealing a flash from between her curled eyelashes that put the naval officer temporarily out of action, so devastating was its effect.
Had not Frederica Coppinger, resting in her club in Dublin, after a severe afternoon with her dentist, some intuition, some spirit-warning, of what was befalling at the home of her ancestors? I believe that those spear-thrusts of nerve-pain that assailed her just before dinner, must have been the result of the wireless summons of distress sent forth to her by her upper-housemaid.
"What next, I wonder, will Master Larry be asking for?" said the upper housemaid to the cook. "The drawing-room carpet pitched into the study, and Miss Coppinger's own room turned upside down for the riff-raff of Cluhir to be powdering their noses in! 'Haven't she no powder?' says they. 'No matter,' says the Doctor's daughter, 'sure I have a book of it in me little bag!'"
"I wouldn't at all doubt her!" said the cook, saturninely, "But what's the drawn'-room carpet to conjuring a supper out of me pocket in five minutes? I ask you that, Eliza Hosford!"
None the less, with that deep loyalty to the honour of the house that is a feature in Irish domestic life as wonderful as it is touching, the staff of Coppinger's Court were resolved that—as they say in China—the face of Master Larry should not be blackened, and The Riff-Raff of Cluhir were served with a ceremony and a success that left nothing to be desired.
Dr. Mangan sat in a very large armchair in front of a big fire of logs, in the hall, and smoked meditatively, and was seemingly quite unaware of the couples who moved past him between the dances, passing out through the open hall-door into the moon-lit May night. He did not even raise an eyelid when his daughter sailed by him, as she did many times, with the ostentation of the young lady who is aware that her prowess is the subject of comment, in company, alternately, with the two captives of her bow and spear who had offered so feeble a resistance to those weapons. Tishy and her father alike ascribed her victory to that redoubtable and already creditably battle-scarred bow and spear; they neither of them recognised the acknowledgments that were due to a certain powerful ally, the May moon. She had stolen up the sky at the back of the woods. The first Larry knew of her was the vast, incredible, pale disc behind the topmost boughs of the pine trees, so near that it seemed to him as though the crooked black branches alone were holding her back, and that her white fire that was pouring through them must consume them, "and then it will be our turn," he said, seriously, and without preamble, to Tishy.
"Our turn for what?" asked Tishy, very naturally.
"Our turn to be resolved into moonshine. You'll see me fading away into silver smoke in a minute," replied Larry. "Let's get out of this, I'm getting frightened! Hold my hand tight!"
"Go on with your nonsense!" said Tishy. "And will you tell me how can I hold your hand when it's round my waist?"
Which was reasonable enough, and may be taken as a sufficient indication of what the moon was already responsible for.
A point of red light moved in the darkness above the seat under the laurels, to which they were repairing, and the scent of a Virginian cigarette was wafted to them.
"Who's that?" Tishy whispered, pressing nearer to Larry; but she was agreeably certain that it was the gloomy and misanthropic Captain Cloherty, whose place of refuge they had invaded.
Christian, meanwhile, unlike Captain Cloherty, was conscientiously endeavouring to enjoy herself, and was finding that the wheels of the chariot of pleasure drave heavily. That Barty Mangan was a good dancer was an alleviation, but among those stigmatised by Eliza Hosford as the riff-raff of Cluhir, those now forgotten measures of the first years of this century, the prancing barn-dance, the capering pas-de-quatre, lent themselves to a violence that, even at the uncritical age of eighteen, Christian found overpowering. "They danced like the Priests of Baal," she told Judith. "One expected to see them cut themselves with knives!"
The information that the dog-cart had come for her was of the nature of a release. Barty put her into it. The May moon shone on his pale face as he looked up at Christian, and reverently took her hand in farewell. She had begun to find his dark and humble devotion oppressive; she liked him, which did not prevent her from thanking heaven when he released her hand from a pressure that had lasted longer than he knew. He stood on the gravel and watched the departing dog-cart vanish, like a ghostly thing, into the elusive mist of moonlight. The May moon, now sailing full overhead, looked with a broad satisfaction on the hardest hit of her victims.
At intervals in all histories there comes a pause, in which the moralities proper to the occasion are assembled, expounded and expanded. Such a moment might now seem to have arrived, its theme being the grain-of-mustard-seed-like character of the Cluhir picnic, as compared with the events that subsequently dwelt in its branches, nesting there, and raising up other events that flew far and wide, farther and wider than they can here be followed. But since moralities appeal only to the moral (to whom they are superfluous) it seems advisable to proceed at once to the primary result, which was the concert, that sprang like a Phœnix from the ashes of that fire on which the picnic kettle was boiled.
The scheme had various appeals for its two chief promoters, young Mr. Coppinger and Sub. Lieut. Talbot-Lowry, R.N. Immanent in it was the necessity for frequent, almost for daily, visits to No. 6, The Mall, Cluhir. For the former of these gentlemen, whose acquaintance with the Mangan family was now of long, if of intermittent, familiarity, these visits afforded a less thrilling emotion than they held for the latter, who found himself honoured and welcomed in a degree to which he was quite unaccustomed at home. Larry was not quite sure that he approved of this blaze of social success for his young cousin. It is one thing to receive, languidly, the adulation of those in whom such adulation may be regarded as an indication of a widening horizon; but when an equal veneration is lavished upon the junior and disdained play-fellow of earlier years, the result is often a reconsideration of values. The May madness that rose like a mist from the bluebells in the woods of the Ownashee, and culminated in the magical light of the full moon, began to lift from the spirit of young Mr. Coppinger, leaving him, as he formulated it to himself (and found much satisfaction in the formula) bereft, bored, and benignant. He was quite prepared to retire gracefully in favour of Georgy, and was pleased with the thought that his interest in Tishy had been merely the outcome of a mood—l'après-midi d'un faune—so to speak. There was something artistic in these transient emotions, and his future, as at present determined, was to be devoted to art; certainly not to Tishy Mangan. Yes, he would leave Tishy to Georgy; all but her voice; in that, as an artist, he still retained an interest, the interest of the impresario, whose search for stars is as absorbing as is that of the astronomer in pursuits of new worlds.
The passion and energy of the promoter are, it may be supposed, born in human beings in a certain proportion to those who are to become their victims. In Larry, both qualities were highly developed, and in no way did he prove the genuineness of his heaven-given flair more surely than in his discovery and annexation of Christian, as that rare and precious thing, a sympathetic and capable accompanist.
But although the thought of dwelling upon this and other of the details of the Cluhir concert, is appealing, it must be dismissed. So much has already been said in the hope that some further indications as to the character and conduct of some of our young friends may have been deduced; but now, certain glossings upon the household of Mount Music must be inflicted, since it is with it, rather than with the capabilities of young Mr. Coppinger's troupe, that we are mainly occupied.
It is not easy to say whether the process of emergence from the sheath of childhood, a condition that has characteristics more or less common to us all, is more interesting to feel than to observe. In Christian's case, the interest was felt exclusively by herself, her family being healthily absorbed in the conjugation of the three primary verbs, to be, to do, and to have, in relation, exclusively, to themselves, and that merely from the skin outwards. Soul-processes and developments were unknown to them in life, and were negligible in books. Lady Isabel pursued her blameless way, doing nothing in particular, diligently and unpunctually, and spending much time in writing long and loving letters to those of her family who were no longer beneath her wing, in that particular type of large loose handwriting whose indefinite spikes stab to the heart any hope of literary interest. Who shall say that she did not do her duty according to her lights? But she was certainly quite unconscious of such matters as soul-processes.
Alone of the Mount Music children, Christian was aware of an inner personality to be considered, some spirit that heard and responded to those voices and intimations that, as a little child, she had accepted as a commonplace of every day. By the time that she was sixteen the voices had been discouraged, if not stilled, their intimations dulled; but she had discovered her soul, and had discovered also, that it had been born on the farther side of the river of life from the souls of her brethren, and that although, for the first stages, the stream was narrow, and the way on one bank very like that on the other, the two paths were divided by deep water, and the river widened with the passing years.
Richard, pursuing the usual course of Irish eldest sons, had adopted the profession least adapted for young men of small means, and large spending capacity, and had gone into his father's old regiment. John, the zealot of an earlier day, was at Oxford, considering the Church; Georgy's career has been announced, and the remaining twin had, with the special predisposition of his family towards financial failure, selected the profession of land-agent, in a country in which peasant-proprietorship was already in the air, and would soon become an accomplished fact.
There remains, to complete the family history, Judith, and she, now aged twenty-one, was possibly the sole member of the house of Talbot-Lowry for whom a successful future might confidently be anticipated. Judith, a buccaneer by nature and by practice, was habitually engaged in swash-bucklering it on a round of visits. She was good-looking, tall, talkative, and an able player of all the games proper to the state of life to which she had been called. She was a competent guest, giving as much entertainment as she received, being of those who contribute as efficiently indirectly, as directly, to conversation, and are normally involved in one of those skirmishes of the heart, that cannot be described as engagements, but that, none the less, invest their heroines with an atmosphere of respect, and provide hostesses with subjects of anxiety and interest. At an early age, Christian was promoted by her elder sister to the position of confidante, and justified the promotion by the happy mixture of sympathy and cynicism with which she received the confidences. She was now well versed in the brief passions that, beginning at the second or third dance of a regimental ball, would, like some night-flowering tropic blossom, arrive at full splendour by supper time, and would expire languorously, to the strains of "God save the King." Christian, though young, was, as had been said, a capable audience. She could listen, with the severe and youthful grace that seemed to set her a little apart from others of her standing, to the feats of Judith and her fellow-blackguards, savouring and appraising the absurdities, and her comments upon them were offered with a sympathetic and skilled comprehension that excused her in Judith's eyes for her lack of ambition to emulate them.
Dick Talbot-Lowry had ceased to boast of the predominance of the masculine gender among his offsprings, and rarely alluded to his sons without coupling with their names a vigorous statement of how far in excess of their value was their cost, usually ending with an enquiry into the dark rulings of Providence, who had bestowed an expensive family with one hand, and with the other had taken away the means of supporting it. Dick was sixty-four now, an unhappy moment in a dashing and artless career, with the shadow of advancing old age blighting and reproving the still ardent enjoyment of the pleasures of youth.
"I'm an old man now!" Dick would say, without either feeling or meaning it, and would bitterly resent the failure of his sons to contradict a statement with which they were in complete agreement. Only Christian, "of all his halls had nursed," tried to maintain her father in a good conceit of himself, and to "rise his heart"; but there are few hearts for which it is more difficult to perform that office than the heart of a man, who, having ever (as King David says) taken pleasure in the strength of horses, and delighted in his own legs, is beginning to find that the former have become too strong, and the latter too weak for either comfort or confidence.
And not these things only were troubling Dick. The common lot of Irish landlords, and Pterodactyli, was upon him, and he was in process of becoming extinct. It was his fate to see his income gradually diminishing, being eaten away, as the sea eats away a bulwark-less shore, by successive Acts of Parliament, and the machinery they created, "for the purpose," as old Lord Ardmore was fond of fulminating, of "pillaging loyal Peter in order to pamper rebel Paul!" The opinion of very old, and intolerant, and indignant peers cannot always be taken seriously, but it is surely permissible to feel a regret for kindly, improvident Dick Talbot-Lowry, his youth and his income departing together, and the civic powers that he had once exercised, reft from him. Such power as he had had, he had exercised honourably and with reverent confidence in precedent, and when he had damned Parnell, and had asserted, in stentorian tones, that Cromwell was the only man who had ever known how to govern Ireland, and he, unfortunately, was now in hell; where, the Major would add, he was probably better off, his contribution to constructive politics had ended. He and his generation, reactionary almost to a man, instead of attempting to ride the waves of the rising tide, subscribed their guineas to construct breakwaters that were pathetic in their futility. Gallant in resistance, barren in expedient, history may condemn the folly of the. Old Guard of the "English Garrison," but it cannot deny, even though it may deride, its fidelity.
Lady Isabel Talbot-Lowry had invited what is concisely spoken of as "people" to tea and tennis. The month was June, but the weather was March, or at best, a sullen and overcast April. The purport of the entertainment had been the exhibition, to rival amateurs, of the Mount Music herbaceous borders, which, though "not looking quite their best," were as nearly approximating to that never-achieved ideal, as is ever the case with either gardens or children; but showers of chill rain had marred the display, and the lawn tennis was fitful, and subject to frequent interruption. In these circumstances, a fire of turf and logs did not need apologies for its presence, and Lady Isabel and her companion Heads of Households sat with it as their focal point, and thought, as they saw the players flitting to and fro between the showers, and the house, and the lawn tennis grounds, that middle age had privileges that were not to be despised.
The long and lofty drawing-room of Mount Music was a pleasant place enough, even on this showery day. Some five or six generations of Talbot-Lowrys had lived in it, and left their marks on it, and though the indelible hand of Victoria, in youthful vigour, had had, perhaps, the most perceptible influence on it as a whole, the fancies and fashions of Major Dick's great-grandmother still held their places. An ottoman, large as a merry-go-round at a fair, immovable as an island, occupied, immutably, the space in the centre of the room immediately under a great cut-glass chandelier. Facing it was the fireplace, an affair of complicated design, with "Nelson ropes" and knots, and coils, in worked and twisted brass, and deep hobs, in whose construction the needs of a punch-kettle had not been forgotten. Above it, a high, delicately-inlaid marble mantelpiece, brought from Italy by Dick's great-grandfather, was surmounted by a narrow ledge of marble, just wide enough to support the base of a Georgian mirror of flamboyant design, in whose dulled and bluish depths were reflected the row of old white china birds, that were seated, each on its own rock, on the shelf in front of it. Family portraits in frames whose charm of design and colour made atonement for the indifference of the painting, alternated with brown landscapes in which castles, bridges, and impenetrable groves were dimly to be discovered through veils of varnish; flotillas of miniatures had settled, like groups of flies, wherever on the crowded walls foothold could be found, and water-colours, pencil-drawings, and photographs, rilled any remaining space. There were long and implacable sofas, each with its conventional sofa-table in front of it; Empire consoles, with pieces of china incredibly diverse in style, beauty, and value, jostling each other on the marble slabs; woolwork screens, worked by forgotten aunts and grandmothers, chairs of every known breed, and tables, tables everywhere, and not a corner on one of them on which anything more could be deposited. The claims of literature were acknowledged, but without enthusiasm. A tall, glass-fronted cupboard, inaccessibly placed behind the elongated tail of an early grand piano, was filled with ornate miniature editions of the classics, that would have defied an effort—had such ever been made—to remove them from their shelves, whereon they had apparently been bedded in cement, like mosaic. It was a room that, in its bewildering diversity, might have broken the hearts of housemaids or decorators; untidy, without plan, with rubbish contending successfully with museum-pieces, with the past and present struggling in their eternal rivalry; yet, a human place, a place full of the magnetism that is born of past happiness, a place to which all its successive generations of sons and daughters looked back with that softening of the heart that comes, when in, perhaps, a far-away country, memories of youth return, and with them the thought of home. The ladies who, constant to the saner pleasures of conversation and tea, had disposed themselves round and about Lady Isabel's tea-table, were of the inner circle of the friends of the house, and owned, as is usually the case where habits and environment are practically identical, a common point of view, and no more diversity of opinion than is enough to stimulate conversation. Such of them as had compelled husbands or sons to accompany them, had shaken them off at the lawn tennis ground, and though loud cawings from the hall indicated that certain of the more elderly males had congregated there, the ladies in the drawing-room had, so far, been "unmolested by either the young people or the men."
Thus, Miss Frederica Coppinger phrased it to those of her allies with whom she was now holding sweet communion. The allies, albeit separated by intervals of from five to ten miles of rough and often hilly road, met with sufficient frequency to keep touch, yet not often enough to crush the ultimate fragrance from the flower of gossip. Their most recent meeting had taken place at the concert, which had been Larry's last achievement before his return to Oxford, and although they had not been oppressively hampered by the convention of silence at such entertainments, conversation had been necessarily somewhat thwarted.
"They made quite a useful little sum at Larry's concert," said Frederica. "Local charities—which meant the Fowl Fund, of course—and Mr. Cotton and Father Greer. Dick said he would not support it if his old women were not helped—abominable cheats though most of them are!"
"I feel for them!" said Mrs. Kirby, intensely. "No one knows the misery and the beggary inflicted on me by the foxes that Bill encourages about the place!"
A sympathetic imagination enabled her friends to realise the misery and beggary which Mrs. Kirby's exceedingly cheerful and prosperous appearance concealed. Both groaned appropriately, and Miss Coppinger made the sweeping statement that she detested hunting in all its ramifications. "We are always told that its great merit is that it brings all classes together," she continued. "In my opinion that is a very dubious advantage, if, indeed, it is not a draw-back!"
Mrs. Kirby permitted her glance to commune for a brief instant with that of the third lady, Mrs. St. George.
"Like mixed concerts!" said Mrs. St. George, in a deep and awful voice.
"Mixed pickles!" murmured Mrs. Kirby, and chuckled at her jest.
Miss Frederica flushed.
"My dear Louisa," she said, resentfully, "I am perfectly aware of their disadvantages, but I should be obliged to you if you would tell me what I am to do! It is the difference in religion that makes me powerless. Powerless!" she repeated looking almost with triumph upon her companions, so irrefutable was her case.
"I hope I'm not a bigot," said Mrs. St. George impressively; "but I thank God I'm not a Roman Catholic!"
"'Not as other men are'!" quoted Miss Coppinger, with some acidity. Even though she agreed with the sentiment, she could not forget that Larry was her nephew.
"Oh, it isn't the actual religion I was thinking of," said Mrs. St. George, rather hurriedly, Larry's disadvantages having temporarily escaped her memory. "It was rather—well——"
"For boys it doesn't matter so much," broke in Mrs. Kirby, "but I really did dislike seeing Christian on the platform with that party!"
"She was only playing accompaniments," said Miss Coppinger still resentful.
"That only made it worse! If she had sung a solo it would have been less humiliating," replied Mrs. Kirby, with a masterly change of front. "I was indignant! Christian, with her charming voice, only playing accompaniments and singing in the glees, and that unendurable Mangan girl posing as the Prima Donna, and oh! her clothes!"
"Or her want of them!" interposed Mrs. St. George, on a profound bass note.
"And her songs! I don't profess to know much about music, but I do know what I like!" continued Mrs. Kirby with the finality and decision that usually accompany the admission. "People may tell me she has a fine voice, but I detest enormous contralto voices! What I suffered during the last thing she sang as an encore! And that final yell of 'Asthore'! at least an octave below her voice! I could only think of the bellow of the cow that jumped over the moon!"
"What made me indignant," said Mrs. St. George, in emulous depreciation, ignoring this flight of fancy, "was their not having 'God save the King'! A cowardly concession to the Gaelic League, of course! I really think that Georgy, who is in the Navy, might have insisted upon it!"
"They did discuss it," said Frederica, forced by her friend into the position of devil's advocate, "but they were afraid of the sixpenny seats. The Mangans said that there would inevitably be rows. They have had to give up having it at anything now."
This was unanswerable, and Mrs. St. George tacitly accepted defeat.
"I believe that young Mangan is simply a Rebel" resumed Mrs. Kirby, portentously. "Bill thinks he'll go too far some day, and the police will have to take notice of him. But with the Government yielding and pandering——"
Here, at least, was a subject on which all three disputants were in complete agreement. Wolfe Tone or Robert Emmet could hardly have abhorred the Government of England more heartily than did these three respectable, law-abiding, unalterably-Unionist ladies, and for some time the more recent enormities of the rule upon which they theoretically bestowed their unshakable, allegiance, took precedence of Miss Mangan as a subjct of disapproval.
"Nevertheless," summed up Mrs. St. George gloomily at the end of a sweeping condemnation, "we must submit. We can do nothing. As Courtney says, we can't cut off cows' tails and shoot our tenants for not paying their rent! He says——"
Colonel St. George's further views were lost in the entrance of the lawn tennis players, rain-sprinkled, heated, bringing with them a lively aroma of trodden grass and wet flannel, and convinced of their superiority to those who had sought shelter, and were now (to quote Miss Talbot-Lowry) soddenly eating all the hot cakes. Judith had recently returned from one of her forays, and had not spared her family her views on the rapprochement with the musical world of Cluhir that the concert had involved. She was now seated with Bill Kirby on a secluded sofa in a corner of the long drawing-room, and was entertaining that deeply-enamoured young man with her accustomed fluency.
Mr. Kirby, having petted and patronised Judith in her youth, when he was still nine years older than she, had, since her recent return, awakened to the fact that this difference in age had been mysteriously obliterated, and that at present, Judith was not only his superior in intelligence, but also in all those subsidiary matters in which age is generally and erroneously believed to confer an advantage.
"If it had even been a good concert," Judith remarked, gobbling tea and cake with a heartiness that, taken in connection with an admirable complexion and very clear blue eyes, was in itself attractive to a hungry young man, "I could have borne it better. But it was absolutely deadly—all but just our own people's turns, of course—a sort of lyrical geography—the map of Ireland set to music! Bantry Bay, Killarney, the Mountains of Somewhere, the Waters of Somewhere else, all Irish, of course! I get so sick of Ireland and her endearing young charms—and all the entreaties to Erin to remember! As if she ever forgot!"
"She remembers her enemies, all right," rejoined Bill Kirby, gloomily, "but she forgets her friends! I know someone who hasn't got any enemies to remember, but she's just like Ireland in one way!"
"What way?" demanded Judith, "and who do you mean?"
"You know very well who I mean! And the reason she is like Ireland is that she forgets her friends! People who use to give her leads out hunting when she was a little girl and never forgot her!"
"In the first place, I deny it, and in the second place, serves them right if she does forget them," replied Judith tranquilly; "I don't know the injured beings you refer to but I do know my own family. I take my eye off them for five minutes, and I come home to find they have not only forgotten my existence, but they have plunged into the heart of that appalling Cluhir crowd, and are indignant with me—at least the boys and papa are—because I don't do the same! Strange as it may appear, I like nice people!"
"I wasn't talking of your family," said Bill Kirby morosely, "Hang it all. I'm quite a nice person, and haven't plunged into the heart of Cluhir, but it's only by sort of accident, like this, that you will ever say a word to me!"
"You'd better insure against accidents of this kind!" said Judith, who was frankly enjoying herself; "and if you choose to renounce the charms of Cluhir, you needn't make a virtue of it! Perhaps they don't want you! They mayn't realise what a nice person you are! Would you like me to explain to Tishy Mangan——"
Bill Kirby, who was possessed of good brown eyes and a profile like a handsome battle-axe, was a young man of no special intellectual gifts, but the sound judgment that distinguished him in the hunting-field was wont to stand his friend in other emergencies. He was entirely aware that he was no match for Judith in debate, but he was also aware that deeds sometimes speak louder than words. He attempted no spoken reply, but after a wary glance round the room, he permitted his large, brown hand to descend upon and envelop Judith's, that rested on the sofa beside him.
"You know you're talking rot," he murmured, cautiously. "No, don't struggle. If you say things like that, you've got to be punished. Are you sorry?"
"Not in the least!" replied Judith, with an equal caution; "but you will be, soon! Mrs. St. George is looking at you!" The battle-axe profile of Mr. Kirby betrayed no hint of the situation.
"Keep quiet, and say you're sorry! I don't mind sitting here all the afternoon—like this," he added, with a slight additional pressure.
"I shall count three," said Judith suavely, "and then I shall ask you in a loud, clear voice to get me another cup of tea. One——"
Further developments of the situation need not be attempted, the more so as at this juncture the entrance of two uninvited guests caused a redistribution of seats, whose most marked feature was the creation of a desert space round the new arrivals and their hostess.
It would perhaps be irregular to say that the Reverend Matthew and Mrs. Cotton were the incumbents of the parish church of Cluhir (and had been profanely described as "the incumbrance of Cluhir"); even to speak of them as, respectively, its curate and its rector, might, though more accurate, be, perhaps, considered flippant. It would also be open to the reproach of lack of originality. Yet, unoriginal though the dominant clergywoman of fiction may be, it cannot be denied that St. Paul's injunctions in connection with the subjection of wives did not commend themselves to Mrs. Cotton. It may be, indeed, that her views on matrimony, being more instructed, were sounder than those of St. Paul, and she could at least argue that had he been acquainted with Mr. Cotton he might have modified them. In any case, whatever St. Paul might think about it, Mrs. Cotton was quite sure that she was better fitted than was her husband to deal with the matter that had brought them to Mount Music.
She did not, however, as becomes a sound tactician, approach the point with undue directness. Lady Isabel had sent her daughters to school in Paris; Lady Isabel had, on a bygone occasion, been goaded by Mrs. Cotton into a declaration that her servants' religion was a matter with which she only concerned herself if they neglected their religious duties. Mrs. Cotton, remembering these things and being ever filled to brimming with what Christian has called The Spirit of the Nation, opened with a general attack upon the Church of Rome, and narrowed to a tale of "a friend of mine and Mr. Cotton's. A clergyman. A man of private means." After this stimulating prelude, the tale ceased for a moment, while Mrs. Cotton blinked her small black eyes at her hostess, several times, as was her practice. "Oh, a very wealthy man!" she continued, imposingly, "and he bought a lovely house, with a garden; a lovely garden!" The thought of a garden was a fortunate one, and enlisted Lady Isabel's wandering attention. "But at the end of the garden what was there but a Nunnery. And the clergyman found that his daughters were always slipping out into the garden, and what was it but the nuns that were getting hold of the girls! Very refined women they were, and well able to deceive young girls!" The tale was flowing swiftly now, but Mrs. Cotton paused dramatically, and continued on a lower key. "The clergyman had had bookshelves made to fit the study, and a splendid antique sideboard to fitanitch——" Mrs. Cotton spoke fast, and the last three words ran bewilderingly into one. "But he sold the house AT ONCE! Yes, indeed, Lady Isabel! Weren't his daughters' souls more to him than bookshelves?"
Lady Isabel, who was still wrestling with the apparently Russian problem in connection with the antique sideboard, attempted no reply to this inquiry, and Mrs. Cotton, considering that her hostess' mind was now sufficiently prepared, did not wait for her opinion, and swept on to her objective, which was the denunciation of the conduct of the recent concert, and more especially of the disposition of the proceeds. "Of course, I don't know in whose hands it lay, Lady Isabel," she said, raising her tea cup to her lips, and in order to do so curtaining it behind her ample veil, "but the Roman Catholics seemed to consider that it was all to go to them, and the paltry sum I have mentioned was all they gave Mr. Cotton and me for our charities!" Her black eyes snapped nenacingly at Lady Isabel over the rim of the veiled tea cup.
Lady Isabel uttered a soothing and indefinite murmur, and the indictment proceeded.
"Considering that your family, Lady Isabel, took a leading part in the programme, and that I may say the greater number of the half-crown seats were Protestants, I do think that our Church——"
It avails not to follow Mrs. Cotton's diatribes further. Lady Isabel had lived for some five and twenty years in Ireland, but they had not sufficed to expound to her the intricacies of the web of jealousies, hatreds, fears, and stupidities, that has been spun by that intolerant Spirit of the Nation, in order to separate, as far as may be, the two Churches who divide the kindly people of the Island of Saints between them. Lady Isabel might see that in the distribution of the spoils Mrs. Cotton had possibly a lawful grievance, but she could not, even after five and twenty years, quite understand how solacing to the soul of Mrs. Cotton was the consideration of the wrongs endured by her Church.
"Yes, indeed, Lady Isabel! Not one penny more! And then Dr. Mangan to say to Mr. Cotton when I sent him to complain about it, that it was better than a poke in the eye with a blunt stick! That was by the way of making a joke of it! And that the Hunt wanted it more than we did! I wonder how much Father Greer left the Hunt!"
Again Mrs. Cotton's beady eyes snapped several times, in an emotion that was not far from enjoyment. The iniquities of Father Greer were very dear to her, and she was confident that in this matter of dividing the spoil he had not disappointed her.
Passing on from the concert, Mrs. Cotton dealt with many subjects in a harangue that turned the seamy side of Cluhir to the sun, with the skill of a buyer of old clothes. Lady Isabel, behind the prisoning tea-table, after a hopeless, helpless glance round an assembly that was either preoccupied or wilfully blind, relapsed into the brain stupor that was sometimes sent, like an anodyne, to those whom fate had consigned to Mrs. Cotton's keeping. The Reverend Matthew, in whom a prolonged course of his wife had developed a condition, when in her society, of semi-hypnotic trance, sat in silence at his hostess' side, devouring cake, and swallowing cups of tea, until what had apparently been starvation was averted; he then dreamily withdrew, and joined himself vaguely, to the group of which Miss Coppinger formed one. Frederica's early training had, as has been said, implanted in her an ineradicable interest in the Church. Even the dulled, almost obliterated personality of Mr. Cotton still held for her some of the magic of his cloth. She moved her chair to admit him to the fellowship of which she was one, and offered him the seat that had been hastily vacated by Mrs. Kirby on his approach, with a darkling eye of reproof at that experienced lady.
Conversation with Mr. Cotton resembled conversation with his wife, in that it was apt to be one-sided, life having taught him to take the side not patronised by Mrs. Cotton. When, however, severed from her, he was capable of imparting rudimentary fragments of fact, and one of these he now offered to Miss Coppinger.
"I hear your nephew is the candidate chosen by the Nationalists here for the next election, Miss Coppinger," he said, his pale eyes regarding her drearily over the top of his spectacles.
Frederica sat erect in her chair with a jerk, and a hot red sprang, like a danger-signal, to her face.
"I've heard nothing of it," she said stoutly, but with a leaping heart of horror. "How do you know it is the case?"
"It is commonly reported in the town," replied Mr. Cotton, "One hears these things——"
"I can't believe it—I can't believe it," said Frederica; the colour had left her cheeks, and her eyes hurried from Mr. Cotton's face to Mrs. St. George's, and roved on to Mrs. Kirby, who was seated near, and had evidently felt the wind of the shot.
"Why, the boy is only just twenty-one!" said Mrs. Kirby, rolling herself and her chair back into action to the support of her friend. "With all deference to you, Mr. Cotton, I don't believe a word of it! Of course, Larry would have told you, Frederica! I can well believe that those Gaelic League people would like to have him if they can get him! Depend upon it, the wish is father to the thought!"
Frederica made no reply; her lips were tightly compressed, and her unseeing eyes, though they appeared to be fixed on Mrs. Kirby's broad and friendly face, were looking along the paths of memory to the time when that barrier of ice had not arisen between her and Larry.
"I understand that the suggestion emanated from Dr. Mangan," went on Mr. Cotton, faintly stimulated by his unaccustomed success. "I am not aware if young Mr. Coppinger has made any reply."
Mrs. Kirby put her plump white hand on Frederica's narrow knee. "I shouldn't distress myself if I were you, my dear," she said in a low voice. "Quite possibly it's all a mistake——" She turned to Mr. Cotton, who was relapsing into trance; his eyes had followed the movement of her hand, and were being held, hypnotically, by the sparkle of the diamonds in her rings. "At all events," went on Mrs. Kirby, "a general election now is very unlikely, and our valued member—upon my word, I don't even remember his name!—isn't likely to resign in Larry's favour, so we needn't discuss it now! I am sure, Mr. Cotton, that you will agree with me, that the less said about it the better; most probably the whole thing will die out and come to nothing!" She glanced at Mrs. St. George, and perceiving that the news had shattered her in only less degree than Frederica, she continued to address Mr. Cotton, "Such weather! Isn't it? How does your garden like all this rain, Mr. Cotton? Our strawberries won't ripen, and as for the poor hay——! You really ought to have prayers for fine weather for us next Sunday!"
Mr. Cotton recalled his eyes from the diamonds with an effort. "I will, if you like, Mrs. Kirby!" he said, looking at her, like an old horse, down his long, deplorable nose, "but I fear they will be not of much use, as the glawss is remorkably low!"
Prayers for the modification of the weather are often treated as a permissible subject for mirth, and Mrs. Kirby availed herself of the convention; even Frederica and Mrs. St. George, stricken though they were, smiled wanly.
At about this time, that imposing spectacle, once described by Mrs. Twomey as "The Big Doctor and little Danny Aherne walking the streets of Cluhir like two paycocks," was vouchsafed to the town rather more frequently than was usually the case. Dr. Aherne had sent a patient, who was no less a person than the priest of the parish of Pribawn, to the private ward of the Infirmary in Cluhir, where he would, among other advantages, receive daily visits from Dr. Mangan. Father Sweeny was suffering from a broken leg, and other damages; a midnight drive to a dying parishioner had ended, disastrously, in an unguarded road-side ditch, and Dr. Aherne had thought it best to consign a patient of such importance to the care of hands less occupied, as well as of higher renown, than his own.
Thus it was that the Big Doctor and his kinsman saw more of each other than is often possible for men whose work is as widespread and incessant as is that of Irish Dispensary Doctors. On this windy June morning they had met in the dreary yard of the Workhouse, to which the Infirmary was attached, and together they paced the long, whitewashed, slate-paven passages that led to the Infirmary, pausing at intervals to talk of matters quite unconnected with their patients, but, if the frequency of the pauses, filled by the sibilant whispers of the little doctor, and the deep growls of the big one, was any criterion, none the less absorbing.
"His name's been accepted," ended the Big Doctor, after the lengthiest of these, "and it would be no harm for you to be slipping in a word, now and again, with the people through the country, according as you'd get the chance, Danny."
"I will, I will," replied the little doctor, as he opened the door of Father Sweeny's room.
"You're doing very well, Father," said Dr. Mangan, his inspection of the patient ended. "I consider you couldn't be progressing more satisfactorily." He seated himself by Father Tim Sweeny's bedside, while the Nursing Sister-in-Charge rolled up bandages, and conferred in lowered tones with Dr. Aherne, on the subject of what he called the patient's "dite."
"You'll be going as strong as ever you did in a few weeks' time," continued Dr. Mangan, encouragingly.
Father Sweeny returned the Doctor's look morosely.
"I'm sick and tired of being here as it is," he said, gloomily, "and you talk to me of weeks!"
"Ah, they'll pass, never fear they'll pass!" said the Big Doctor, cheerfully. "I never saw the weeks yet that didn't pass if you waited long enough! And I wouldn't say but that you mightn't go home before you're out of our hands entirely."
Father Sweeny received these consolations with an unpropitiated grunt. His large face, with its broad cheeks and heavy double-chins, that was usually of a sanguine and all pervasive beefy-red, now hung in pallid purple folds, on which dark bristles, that were as stiff as those on the barrel of a musical box, told that the luxury of shaving had hitherto been withheld. There are some professions that tend more than others to grade the men that follow them into distinct types. The Sea is one of these, the Church, and pre-eminently the Church of Rome, is another. The ecclesiastical types vary no less than the nautical ones, and neither need here be enumerated. It is sufficient to say that Father Sweeny, when in his usual robust health, in voice, in appearance, and in manner, provoked, uncontrollably, a comparison with a heavy and truculent black bull.
"'Tis highly inconvenient to me to be boxed up in bed this way, at this time," said Father Sweeny, with a small hot eye upon his attendant nun that would have said instantly to any one less entirely kind, religious, and painstaking, that he had no immediate need of her services; "Sister Maria Joseph, I wonder would you be so kind as to bring me the paper? I didn't see it to-day at all."
Sister Maria Joseph turned her amiable, unruffled face, with that pure complexion that would seem to be one of the compensations for the renunciation of the world, towards her patient, and said, obsequiously:
"I beg your pordon, Fawther?"
The little eyes had a hotter sparkle as Father Sweeny repeated his request.
"It's a wonder to me," he growled to Dr. Mangan, after Sister Maria Joseph had left the room, having taken, in her anxiety to show respect, quite half a minute in closing the door with suitable noiselessness, "why people can't attend to what's said to them! If there's a thing I hate, it's being bothered repeating an entirely trivial matter, which——"—here Father Tim's voice began to take on the angry, high tenor of one of his prototypes—"she had a right to have heard at the first offer! I declare I'm beside meself sometimes with the annoyance I get!"
Dr. Mangan laid his spatulate fingers upon the sufferer's hairy wrist.
"We'll have to give his Reverence a sedative, Danny," he said, winking at his colleague. "I'd be sorry to see you that way, Father; the bed's narrow enough for you as it is, without having you beside yourself in it!"
Father Sweeny's mood was one to which chaff did not commend itself. He snatched his hand from beneath the Doctor's fingers, and picked up some letters that lay beside him.
"Look at this, I ask you! From Mary Murphy, saying her husband is quite well, and that he took the turn for good from the minute he was anointed! And me lying here crippled!"
"'The dog it was that died!'" quoted Dr. Mangan, smoothly.
"What dog?" demanded Father Sweeny, with indignation, "I d'no what you're talking about!"
"Ah, nothing, nothing," said the Big Doctor, with a lift of the spirit at the thought of his superior culture, "but surely it wasn't to show me Mary Murphy's letter that you sent poor Sister Maria Joseph on a fool's errand?"
"Why a fool's errand?" demanded the now incensed Father Sweeny. "What d'ye mean?"
"Look at the newspaper on the floor here," returned the Doctor. "You'll have her back in a minute, begging your pardon again, to tell you so."
Father Sweeny glared, speechless, at his tormentor for an instant; then, rinding the Big Doctor unmoved "in the furnace of his look," he fell back on his pillows.
"Lock the door!" he commanded angrily. He pushed a letter into the Doctor's hand. "Read that!"
"Hullo! The Major! What's he got to say to you, Father Tim?"
"Read it, I tell you!"
Dr. Mangan did so, with attention, and read it a second time before he replaced it in its envelope and handed it back to the priest.
"That's a nice letter!" said Father Sweeny, with a snort that he believed to be a laugh. "What d'ye think of that now, you that are so fond of Protestants!"
"I think the man is justified," said the Doctor, stoutly. "There's no such great hurry, and anyhow, his authority is at an end. He couldn't give you as much as'd sod a lark now——"
"Nor he wouldn't if he could!" broke in Father Sweeny. "And there is hurry, and great hurry! How will I build my chapel without the land to put it on? Will you tell me that?"
"Ah, you haven't the money gathered yet. The delay isn't worth exciting yourself about!" said the Doctor, soothingly. Father Tim amused him, and he liked him, being well aware that if his temper was hot, his heart was correspondingly warm. "You'll see the young chap will give you the site as soon as look at you."
"And how do I know the young chap will be any easier than the old one? Isn't he there at Mount Music all day and every day, at their tea-parties and their dinner-parties? Won't they have him married up to one of the daughters before you can look around? He may call himself a Catholic, but them English Catholics—COME IN!"
Sister Maria Joseph's faint tap at the door had as instant an effect as a squib, planted in the mane of the monarch of the bull-ring, might produce.
"I cannt—the door's locked, Fawther!" came Sister Maria Joseph's gentle voice, in mild protest. "I couldn't find the——"
"Never mind it! I have it myself—I have it, I tell you!" shouted Father Tim; in his voice the appeal to a merciful Heaven to grant patience was unmistakable.
Sister Maria Joseph, recognising with trembling her superfluousness, withdrew.
"It's Barty will have that job we were speaking of just now, before you were coaxing Sister Maria Joseph to go away from you," resumed Dr. Mangan. "Maybe you didn't hear he's got the Coppinger's Court Agency? Young Coppinger offered it to him yesterday."
"It's a good thing it's out of Talbot-Lowry's hands anyhow," growled Father Sweeny.
"Larry's up at my house every day now, about a concert they're to have," went on the Doctor, tranquilly. "Tishy's helping him. He's very fond of music. I think you're mistaken in thinking he'll be married to one of the Major's daughters in such a hurry!"
"The first thing he'll want to do is to tidy up his property and pacify the tenants," said Dr. Aherne, in his small, piping voice. "They're not too pleased with the way they are now. The Major was rather short with some of them, now and again. There was Herlihy, and two of the Briens, was talking to me and saying what would they do at all with Father Tim here, away. They were thinking would Father Hogan——"
"Br-r-r-r-r-h!"
As a bull shakes his head, with a reverberating roar at the foes he cannot reach, so did Father Tim Sweeny, crippled and furious, roll his big head, growling, on his pillows. His dark hair lay in tight rings on his broad and bulging forehead, and curled in strength over his head back to the tonsure. His eyes were congested with the unavailing rage that possessed him, as he thought of his parish left leaderless.
Had the "Ballad of the Bull" then been written, and had Dr. Mangan been acquainted with it (which seems unlikely) he might have again proved his culture by remembering the injunction to pity "this fallen chief," as he saw the impotent wrath in Father Tim's bovine countenance.
"Don't worry yourself now, Father," he said, consolingly, "I'll undertake to say it will be all right about the site for the chapel, and what's more, I'll undertake to say there'll be nothing done about it, or the tenants, or anything else, till you're well. The people will do nothing without you!"
He looked at his huge, old-fashioned gold watch.
"Oh, b' Jove, I must be off! Tell me, did you hear they have Larry Coppinger chosen to be the candidate, when Prendergast retires, as he says he will, before the next election? There won't be much talk of tea-parties for Larry at Mount Music then! Any tea-party there that he'd go to once he was a Nationalist M.P., I think he'd be apt to get 'his tay in a mug!'"
The Doctor got up and moved towards the door.
"I'll support him, so!" Father Sweeny called after him.
There are families, as there are nations, that are like those ships that, launched under a lucky star, sail their appointed courses ever serenely and eventlessly, and though they may indeed look on tempests, yet are never shaken by them. But of such was not, it must regretfully be said, the family of Talbot-Lowry. It can only be supposed that the gods had preordained its destruction, for on no other assumption can the dementia of its chief representative be comprehended. It would be out of place, even, if not impertinent, absurd, to discuss here the Act of Parliament that in the year nineteen hundred and three, made provision to change the ownership of Irish land, and to transfer its possession from the landlords to the tenants. It is sufficient to say that those of both classes who were endowed with the valuable quality of knowing on which side of a piece of bread the butter had been applied, lost as little time as was possible in availing themselves of the facilities that the Act offered them. The ceremony of Hari Kiri, even if entered upon with the belief that it will lead to another and a better world, is not an agreeable one, but it was obvious to most Irish landlords that, with bad or good grace, sooner or later, that grim rite had to be faced, and that the hindmost in the transaction need expect only the fate proverbially promised to such. It is, possibly, superfluous to say that of the company of the hindmost was our poor friend, well-meaning and stupid Dick Talbot-Lowry, and also that his fate, as such, was sedulously pointed out to him by those friends of his own class, who, like the fabled fox, having lost their brushes, were eager in explanation of the superiority of their position.
"I don't own a stick outside my own demesne wall!" says Colonel St. George. "Of all the hundreds of acres of mountain that my father had, there isn't as much as one patch of bog left that I could cut a sod of turf in!"
This whisk of a vanished brush was a gesture well calculated to enrage Major Dick. It was senseless of St. George to boast of his limitations, and yet no one better than Dick knew what must be the feeling of emancipation that prompted the boast.
Autocracy dies hard, and it is probable that long after Leagues of Nations have decreed the abolition of all Rulers, the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table will still, in the most inveterate Republics, issue, unquestioned, his unalterable edicts, with his coat-tails monopolising the dining-room fire, and the family income concentrated in his cheque book. Dick Talbot-Lowry's pigheadedness was at the root of the downsliding of Mount Music. Having faced, undaunted, deputations of his tenants; deputations of public bodies; ("Damned interfering blackguards, who ought to be taught to mind their own business!"), having made light of advice from his friends, and of anonymous threatening letters from, presumably, his enemies, he still held fast, and refused to sell the property that had come to him from the men whose portraits had looked down on him from the old walls of Mount Music, all the days of his life. It was, perhaps, the solitary strand of romance in his nature, the feudal feeling that the Mount Music tenants were his, as they had been his ancestors', to have and to hold, to rule, to arbitrate for, and to stand by, as a fond and despotic husband rules and stands by an obedient wife, loving her and bullying her (but both entirely for her good). He had, moreover, the desire to disparage and to disprove new ideas, that is a sign of a mind incapable of originality, and anxious to assert itself negatively, since it must otherwise remain silent.
"But Dick," his friends would say, "there isn't a property this side of the county that isn't sold, except your own!"
"What's that to me?" says Dick, as stubborn and stupid a King Canute as ever sat with the tide nearing the tops of his hunting-boots; "I don't care a damn what anybody else does! And what's more," he would add, gloomily, "I can't afford to sell at seventeen years' purchase. Anyhow, what's mine's my own! I'll be shot if I'll be bullied!"
"I wouldn't be at all surprised if you were!" the friends would reply darkly.
To sell at seventeen years' purchase, was what Mr. St. Lawrence Coppinger had done, following the advice of his agent and solicitor, Mr. Bartholomew Mangan, and his cousin, and late guardian, Major Talbot-Lowry, had found it hard to forgive him. The business had been arranged while Larry was in Paris, and the expostulations that might have prevailed if delivered viva voce, failed of their effect when presented on foreign paper, in Cousin Dick's illegible scrawl. It was all very fine for Larry, ran the illegible scrawl, to talk of selling at such a price, but he ought to see what a hole his doing so put his neighbours in! Larry hadn't a squad of incumbrances, and charges, and mortgages, hung round his neck like leeches (and no fault of the Major's). He had had to find money in a hurry to pay off one of these cursed things only the other day, and if he hadn't had the luck to mention it to a friend, who was kind enough to come to the rescue (of course on good security) the Major would have been in a hat, or a hole, Larry couldn't quite read which.
These grievances, and much more, illegibly scrawled on foreign paper, with a quill pen. Larry, swallowed up in the absorbing, isolating life of a Paris studio, would put the letters half-read, in his pocket, and would immediately forget all about them. After all, he couldn't interfere with Barty; he was the man at the helm, and mustn't be talked to. Also it was idiotic to keep a dog and bark yourself. Proverbial philosophy is a recognised sedative; Larry gave himself a dose or two, and straightway forgot Cousin Dick, forgot Ireland, forgot even that gratifying nomination of himself as Nationalist candidate for the Division, and plunged back into the burning atmosphere of art, wherein models and professors, cliques and cabals, glow, and seethe, and exist intensely, and with as little reference to the affairs of the outside world, as if they were the sole occupants of a distant and much over-heated star.
There are many people who have been endowed with one master-passion, that "like Aaron's serpent swallows up the rest," but Larry's ingenuous breast harboured a nest of such serpents. During his three years at Oxford, he had stormed from one enthusiasm to another; he had rowed, and boxed, and spouted politics, and, beginning with music, had stormed on through poetry and the drama, to painting.
Having taken a moderate degree, he had rushed in pursuit of this latest charmer to Paris, and the waters of the Quartier Latin then closed over him. Occasionally a bubble would rise from those clouded deeps, and a letter to Aunt Freddy, or to Barty Mangan, would briefly announce his continued existence. Sometimes he wrote to Christian, and would expand a little more to her; telling her of how one Professor had remarked of his work that it was now presque pas mal, and that this dizzying encomium had encouraged him to begin a Salon (its subject described at length, with elucidatory sketches); further, that he had taken a very jolly atelier, and "dear old Chose" was "on the Jury," and would try and get him accepted, with much more to the same effect, music, politics, horses and hounds, forgotten as though they had never been.
Christian received these effusions with a characteristic mixture of respect for the artistic effort that they described, and of amused, almost pitying comprehension of the enthusiasm that they revealed. It was three years since Larry had left Oxford and gone to France, and during those years Christian had learned more of life than Larry had acquired, or would ever acquire, in spite of the three years' start of her with which he had begun the world.
Judith had been induced to close her brilliant career as a buccaneer, by a perfectly, even—from the buccaneering point of view—depressingly satisfactory marriage with Mr. William Kirby, and her departure had forced her younger sister into the front rank of domestic combatants. At Mount Music, where once the milk and honey had flowed with effortless abundance, each year brought increasing stress. The rents grew less, the expenses greater, that large and omnivorous item, known as "keeping up the place," was as exacting as ever, the minor problems of household existence more acute. There had been a time when the Mount Music tenants had vied with one another in the provision of sons and daughters for service in the Big House, when bonfires had blazed for the return of "the young gentlemen," and offerings of eggs had greeted "the young ladies." Now the propitiatory turkey that heralded a request, the goose that signalised a success, gained with the help of the hereditary helpers, had all ceased. Alien influences had poisoned the wells of friendship. Such rents as were paid were extracted by the hard hand of the law, and the tenants held indignation meetings against the landlord who refused to resign to them what they believed to be theirs, and he was equally convinced was his. Major Dick still shot and fished, as was his right, over the lands and waters that were still in his name, but the tenants, whose fathers had loved him, had renounced the old allegiance. The partridges were run down by the greyhounds that had killed off the hares; the salmon were poached; worst of all, Derrylugga Gorse, the covert that Dick had planted twenty-five years ago, on Carmody's farm, in the middle of the best of the Broadwater Vale country, was burned down, and a vixen and her cubs had perished with it.
Dick gave up the hounds at the end of the season.
"I've done my best to show sport for five and twenty years," he said, "and I'm not going to spoil it now!"
It is impossible to deny that for Dick's wife this sacrifice had its consolatory aspects. It was a long time now since there had been quite enough money for anything at Mount Music. Those far-sighted guardian angels who had compelled the investment of Lady Isabel's dowry in gilt-edged securities, had placed the care of these in the hands of hide-bound English trustees (the definition is Major Dick's) and the amiable reader need therefore have no anxieties that starvation threatened this well-meaning family, but, as Lady Isabel frequently said, "what with the Boys, and Judith's trousseau, and the Wedding, and One-Thing-and-Another" (which last is always a big item in the domestic budget) the more common needs of every day had to submit to very drastic condensation, and it was indisputable that the Talbot-Lowry family-coach was running on the down-grade.
The law of averages is a stringent one, and it may be assumed with reasonable certainty, that when one ancient and respectable family-coach runs down hill, another vehicle, probably of more modern equipment, will go up. In the case under consideration, the operations of this principle were less obscure than is sometimes the way with them. As Mount Music descended, so did No. 6, The Mall, Cluhir, rise, and Dr. Mangan's growing prosperity compensated Fate for the decline in Major Talbot-Lowry's affairs, with a precision that, to a person interested in the statistics of averages, might have seemed beautiful. The Big Doctor was now the leading man in Cluhir, leader in its councils and its politics. On his professional side, his advice and ministrations were in demand even beyond the range of his motor car, and the measure of his greatness may be best estimated when it is mentioned that his motor had been the first to startle the streets of his native town.
Major Talbot-Lowry was of the Old Guard, who, in those now far away times, swore never to surrender to what he held to be so thoroughly unsportsmanlike an innovation as a motor car, and the Doctor was accustomed to offer facetious apologies when he and his car drew up at the Mount Music hall door. This had become a fairly frequent occurrence. Dick was not the man he had been. When his hounds went, old age came, and it came like an illness, bewilderingly, unexpectedly. Dick's long, straight legs began to give at the knees, and his square shoulders learned the hollow curve of the back of his armchair, and submitted to it. His long sight, that had outlived the infliction of spectacles for reading, was failing him; he had twice tally-ho'd away a yellow cur-dog, at less than a field's distance.
"No, Mangan, I'll be damned if I go out to make a fool of myself and the hounds!" he said, when reproached by the Doctor for staying at home. "The sooner I'm put down like an old hound, the better!"
Dr. Mangan had been equal to the occasion, and had assured Dick that Bill Kirby was "lost altogether" for want of his counsels, and that the whole field were saying the Major was the only man to show sport, and that he knew the way a fox'd run, as well as if he was inside him!
"In company with another old gander, I suppose!" says poor Dick, with tears in his eyes, being both moved and cheered by his own jest.
The Doctor's presence was partly a reassurance and partly a menace, to Major Dick. There had been, from time to time, further opportunities for the investment of the Doctor's "spare ha'pence" in "something solid and safe, like land." Aunt Bessie Cantwell's money, for instance, had, on her demise, all come Dr. Mangan's way. There was no need for the Major to think there was any obligation, he might call it a mutual advantage, if he liked, anyhow, why shouldn't the money go where it was wanted? The security was all right.
"Oh yes," says Dick, "that's right enough, and whenever I can come to terms with the tenants——"
"No hurry!" the Big Doctor would answer; "five per cent. is good enough for me!"
The Doctor, alone of all Dick's friends, sympathised with Major Talbot-Lowry in the matter of the tenants, and he condemned the conduct of his own son, Barty, as heartily as did Dick that of his nephew, in their dealings with the Coppinger estate.
"'Tis impossible to hold these young fellows," he said, severely, while he and Dick strolled slowly round the weedy flower garden of Mount Music, one sunny August afternoon, four years after Larry's coming of age; "You may be sure that I pointed out to Barty that he and Larry were playing the deuce with you over the sale, but what could I do? After all, Barty had to obey the orders he got from his boss!"
"I know, I know," responded Dick. "My dear fellow, I don't blame you, my own cousin's a different pair of shoes! Richard may fight it out with the tenants when I'm gone. He'll have to marry money. Why, my God! If I sold at these fellows' price, the property would hardly clear itself! At least," Dick cleared his throat and picked himself up with a guilty jerk, as does a horse who stumbles from carelessness, "at least, it would cover the charges, and—and the mortgages of course—but not much more——"
Dr. Mangan looked straight in front of him, as became a mortgagee of delicate feeling, and said with some elaborateness, "No man need be anxious about money whose security is Irish land, nowadays. 'Tis daily appressiating in value."
"To every man except the owner!"
Dick struck hard with his ash-plant at a tall weed as he spoke, and decapitated it with the grace and dexterity of the old cavalryman. He put force enough into the cut to have felled a tougher foe.
"This place is turned into a wilderness——" he went on and then, staggering, caught at the Doctor's thick arm.
In an instant the Big Doctor had his other arm round Dick's shoulders, and held him firm.
"Stand still, Major, it's nothing! You'll be all right in a minute!" he said, meeting Dick's frightened eyes with reassuring steadiness. "The sun's very hot. It's only a touch of giddiness——"
He stood, a great rock of support, uttering leisurely words of consolation, while he quietly slipped one hand down the Major's arm, until his broad, perceptive finger-tips could feel the faint pulse jerking under their pressure.
Dick's colour crept back, and the veins, that had shown blue on the sudden yellow of his cheek, began to lose their vividness.
"That's more like it!" said the Doctor, tranquilly. "Do you sit quite here for a minute, now, and I'll go get you a drop of something from our friend, Mr. Evans, that'll do you no harm!"
He established his patient on a garden seat, and left him, moving slowly until he knew he was no longer in sight; then he swung into the house, with swift strides that would have compelled a smaller man to run, if he were to keep level with him.
"Poor old lad!" he thought, compassionately; yet, blended with the compassion, was the half-unconscious triumph of strong middle-age at sight of the failure of a senior. "That's the first knock. He'll want to mind himself from this out—the next one might hit him harder."
The back stairs at Mount Music were old and precipitous. To descend them at high noon demanded circumspection at night, when the armies of the cockroaches were abroad; and marauding rats came flopping up and down them, upon their unlawful occasions, only that man of iron, Robert Evans, was proof to their terrors. Christian, even though inured from childhood to the backstairs, held her habit skirt high, and thanked, heaven for her riding-boots, as she made her way down the worn stone steps, at some half-past four of a September morning.
Mount Music was one of the many houses of its period that, with, to quote Mrs. Dixon, "the globe of Ireland to build over," had elected to bestow its menials in dark and complex basements. Christian and her candle traversed the long maze of underground passages. The smell of past cooking was in the air, the black and evil glitter of cockroaches twinkled on the walls on either hand. This was the horrible part of subbing, thought Christian, and told herself that nothing but the thought of seeing the début of Dido, the puppy that she had walked, would compensate her for facing the cockroaches.
As she opened the kitchen door she was surprised to find a lighted lamp on the table. In the same glance she caught a glimpse of a figure, retreating hastily, with slippered shuffle, followed by the trailing tappings of braces off duty. On one end of the long kitchen table was seated a cat, in motionless meditation, like a profile in an Egyptian hieroglyphic; at the other end was a steaming cup of cocoa and plateful of bread and butter.
"Long life to Evans!" thought Christian, seating herself, like the cat, on the edge of the table, and entering upon the cocoa.
"Miss Christian!" a raven-croak came through a slit of the pantry-door; "keep off the Carmodys' land! Mind now what I'm tellin' you!" The slit ceased.
"Thank you for the cocoa, Evans, but why must I?" called Christian, in a breath.
A lower croak, that seemed to end with the words "black papishes," came through the closed door.
"Old lunatic!" thought Christian; she drank the cocoa, and putting out the lamp, groped her way to the back-door. It opened on a shrieking hinge, and she was out into a pale grey dawn, pure and cold, with the shiver and freshness of new life in it.
The Mount Music stable yard was an immense square, with buildings round its four sides, and a high, ivy-covered battlemented wall surrounding and overlooking all. In the middle of the yard was an island of grass, on which grew three wide-armed and sombre Irish yews, dating, like the walls, from the days of Queen Elizabeth. Weeds were growing in the gravel of the wide expanse; more than one stable-door dropped on broken hinges under its old cut-stone pediments; the dejection of a faded and remembered prosperity lay heavy on all things in the thin, cold air of that September dawn.
The clatter of a horse's hoofs came cheerfully from a stable, and, as Christian crossed the yard, a dishevelled young man, with a large red moustache, put his head over the half-door.
"I'm this half-hour striving to girth her, Miss," he complained, "she got very big entirely on the grass; the surcingle's six inches too short for her, let alone the way she have herself shwoll up agin me!"
Charles, once ruler and lawgiver, was dead, and, with the departure of the hounds, Major Dick's interest in the stables had died too; his tall, grey horse was ending his days in bondage to the outside car; the meanest of the underlings who had grovelled beneath Charles' top-boots, was now in sole charge, and had grown a moustache, unchecked; and Christian's only mount was a green four-year-old filly, in whom she had invested the economies of a life-time, with but a dubious chance of their recovery.
"Can't you get a bit of string and tie up the surcingle Tommy?" suggested Christian, who was now too well used to these crises in the affairs of the stable to be much moved by them.
"Sure, I'm after doing it, Miss. T'would make a cat laugh the ways I have on it! She's a holy fright altogether with the mane and the tail she have on her! I tried to pull them last night, and she went up as straight as a ribbon in the stable!"
The flushed face and red moustache were withdrawn, and with considerable clattering and shouting, the holy fright was led forth. She was a small and active chestnut mare, with a tawny fleece, a mane like a prairie fire, and a tail like a comet. Her impish eyes expressed an alarm that was more than half simulated, and the task of manoeuvring her into position beside the mounting block, was comparable only to an endeavour to extract a kitten from under a bed with the lure of a reel of cotton. An apple took the place of the reel of cotton, and its consumption afforded Christian just time enough to settle herself in her saddle. Since the days of Harry the Residue Christian had ridden many and various horses, and she had a reputation for making the best of a bad job that had often earned her mounts from those who, wishing to sell a horse as a lady's hunter, were anxious to impart some slight basis of fact into the transaction.
Tommy Sullivan watched her admiringly.
"Where's the meet, Miss?" he said, quickly, as she started, and as if he were struck by a sudden thought.
"Nad Wood."
"If they run the Valley, Miss, mind out for wire!" called Tommy after her, as she rode out of the yard. "Carmody's fences are strung with it!"
He ran to the gate to watch the mare as she capered and lunged sideways along the drive, and thanked God, not for the first time, for the heavy hands that preserved him from the duty of riding Miss Christian's horses.
Christian rode past the long ivy-covered lace of the house, that stared at her with the wall-eyed glare of shuttered windows, and down the long avenue, that curved submissive to the windings of the Onwashee, now black and brimming after a week of rain. Young cattle, that had slept, according to their custom, on the roadway, scrambled up as she came near, and crashed away through the evergreens, whose bared lower branches bore witness to their depredations. They were a sight hateful to Christian, who, in spite of her resignation to the methods of her groom, cherished a regard for tidiness that she had often found was more trouble than it was worth.
She let Nancy, the chestnut mare, have her head, a privilege that made short work of the remaining half-mile of avenue, and soon the stones and mud of the high road were flying behind her, as the little mare, snatching at her bridle, and neglecting no opportunity for a shy, fretted on towards the sunrise, and the covert that lay, purple, on a long hill, three miles away.
Bill Kirby's foible was not punctuality; when Christian arrived at the appointed cross-roads in the middle of Nad Wood she found a patient little group of three or four men, farmers, all of them, she thought, waiting under the dewy branches of the beeches for the arrival of the hounds. One of them rode quickly from the group to meet her. A young man, with a slight figure and square shoulders, who was riding a long-legged bay horse, that, like its rider, was unknown to Christian. The light under the beech trees was dim and green, and such faint illumination as the grey and quiet sky afforded, was coming, like this rider, to meet Christian. He was close to her before he spoke, then he caught his cap off his head and waved it, and shouted: "Hurrah, Christian! Here I am! Home again! Don't pretend you never saw me before, because I won't stand swagger from you!"
"Larry! Not you? Not really?"
He had her hand by this time, and was shaking it wildly despite the resentment of the chestnut mare, at the sudden proximity of the bay horse.
"Yes! Me all right! Moi qui vous parle—as we say in French Paris! I only got home last night. I bought this chap at Sewell's on my way through. He's a County Limerick horse. I bet he's a goer! How do you like him?"
It was like Larry to require, instantly, praise and recognition for his new purchase, but Christian wasn't thinking of the horse. Her wide, clear eyes were fixed on his rider, her mind was a hustle of questions.
Had he changed? Would he stay? Did he know that he was "in black books" with her father? Would he care if he did know? What ages it seemed——! Four years, wasn't it? Her brain was working too hard to remember, but she certainly remembered that he had not had a moustache when he was last at home; such a fanciful little French scrap of a moustache as it was too, made of pure gold!
"I rather like it, Larry!" she said, beaming at him; "quite nice!"
"What? What's quite nice?" says Larry, beaming back; "oh, this?" He gave the moustache an extra upward twist. "Yes, rather so! Beats the Kaiser's to fits, I flatter myself! I'm glad you like it, but I don't see how you could help it!"
Yes! This was the old Larry, the right one; Christian felt very glad. It might so easily have been some one else, some one not half so nice as her own old Larry.
"Why on earth didn't you say you were coming? Cousin Freddy told us that you were painting at Étaples."
"So I was till one fine day I 'took the notion for to cross the raging ocean,' and I'm jolly glad I did too! Oh, by Jove! Look at old Bill and the hounds! What a swell! Christian, do you know I haven't seen a hound for four years! Do you mind if I call them 'dogs,' just till I get used to them a bit?"
There are few bonds more enduring than those that are woven round the playmates of childhood. In how many raids had Larry not been Christian's trusted leader! What stolen dainties had they not shared, what punishments not endured together! Larry's three years of seniority had only deepened the reverence and loyalty that he had inspired in his youngest follower; he had never presumed upon them; he had been a chieftain worthy of homage, and he had Had all Christian's. There are some people who appear to change their natures when they grow up. They may have been pleasing as little boys or girls; they may be equally agreeable as men and women, but there is no continuity and no development. They have become new creatures. Christian, alone of her family, was essentially as she had ever been, and, being of those whose inward regard is as searching as their outward observation, she knew it. Now, Larry had come back again, and in half-a-dozen sentences she knew that neither had he changed, and that with him her ancient leader had returned.
The Wood of Nad (which, being interpreted, means a nest) filled a pocket on the side of Lissoughter Hill, and had thence spread over the crest of the hill, and ended near the cross-roads at which the hounds had met.
"Don't holloa away an old fox. I want to kill a cub if I can. I'll let you know if the hounds get away below. You needn't be afraid I won't! Open the gate!"
Thus, magisterially, the Master, standing at the gate into the wood, with the hounds crushing round his horse's heels, "Leu in there!"
With a squeal or two of excitement from Dido and her brethren-puppies, the hounds squeezed through the narrow gateway, and were swallowed up by the wood.
Larry returned to Christian's side.
"I hate not seeing Cousin Dick out," he began; "what a pity he gave 'em up! Why did he? You know, Christian, you were pretty rotten about writing to me! Aunt Freddy never tells me a thing about the Hunt! I didn't even know Cousin Dick had chucked till I saw it in The Field."
Larry was staring at Christian as he spoke. He, like her was searching for his former comrade; but, unlike her, was doing so unconsciously, as Larry did most things: What he believed himself to be doing was appraising her appearance from a painter's point of view. He found he had forgotten her eyes. He tried to think of them in terms of paint; Brun de Bruxelles, and a touch of cadmium, or was it Verte Émeraude? Hang it! How can paint do more than suggest the colours of a sunlit moorland pool? Was it the white hunting-tie that gave that special "value" to her face He had forgotten how delicious in tone was the faint colour that just tinted her cheek; so hopeless a word as pink was not to be thought of; just a hint of Rose Garance doré, might do it. And to get the drawing of those subtle outlines the ineffable refinement of all her features. Larry put his head on one side, and screwed up his eyes (remembering faithfully the injunctions of "dear old Chose," en clignant bien les yeux) and said to himself that she would put dear old Chose himself to his trumps, and then maybe he wouldn't get her right!
Aloud he said, peremptorily and professionally:
"Christian, I'm going to paint you! Eight o'clock at the studio to-morrow morning, Ma'mselle, s'il vous plaît!"
Christian's response was closured by a wild outcry from the wood, hounds and horn lifting up their voices together in sudden delirium. Old horses pricked their ears, and young ones, and notably, Nancy, began to fret and to fidget. Some one said, unnecessarily: "That's him!" A man, farther down the road, turned his horse, and standing in his stirrups, stared over the wall into the thick covert, rigid as a dog setting his game. Then he held up his hat, and, a moment later, something brown glided, with the fluent swiftness of a fish in a stream, across the road and over the opposite wall. The scream that followed him was not needed; was, indeed, hardly heard in the crashing, clashing clamour of the back, as they came pitching headlong over the wall of the wood, and hurling themselves at the opposite wall. It was high, and had a coped, top, and the yelling hounds broke against it, and fell, like waves against a cliff. A couple achieved it, and the anguish of their comrades, as they heard them go away, full-cry, on the line, redoubled. In the same instant, Larry was off his tall bay. He flung his reins to Christian, and was into the struggling pack. It is no easy matter to heave a hound over a high wall, but Larry and a young farmer had somehow shoved over four couple, before Bill Kirby and his whipper-in came and swept the remainder to a place of possible entrance a little further on.