"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 caperingpas-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.
CHAPTER XIX
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 theimpresario, 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-givenflairmore 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.
CHAPTER XX
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; Empireconsoles, 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!"
"Ifeelfor them!" said Mrs. Kirby, intensely. "Noone 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 inallits ramifications. "We are always told that its great merit is that it brings all classes together," she continued. "Inmyopinion 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 actualreligionI 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 reallydiddislike 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 Idoknow 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 Idetestenormous contralto voices!WhatI 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 mademeindignant," 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 aRebel" resumed Mrs. Kirby, portentously. "Bill thinks he'll go too far some day, and the police willhaveto 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,wecan't cut off cows' tails and shoot our tenants for not paying their rent!Hesays——"
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 therapprochementwith 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 forgother!"
"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 Idoknow 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,Ilike nice people!"
"I wasn't talking of your family," said Bill Kirby morosely, "Hang it all.I'mquite 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!Idon'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,Idon'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 wasallto go to them, and the paltry sum I have mentioned was all they gave Mr. Cotton and me forourcharities!" 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 thatyourfamily, Lady Isabel, took a leading part in the programme, and that I may say the greater number of the half-crown seats were Protestants, Idothink thatourChurch——"
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 strawberrieswon'tripen, 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.
CHAPTER XXI
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'shegot 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 thereishurry, 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.
CHAPTER XXII
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, "Ican'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 deliveredviva 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 nowpresque pas mal, and that this dizzying encomium had encouraged him to begin aSalon(its subject described at length, with elucidatory sketches); further, that he had taken a very jollyatelier, 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 blameyou, 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."
CHAPTER XXIII
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 thedébutof 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!