The sunset"bloomed and withered on the hillLike any hill-flower";
The sunset
The sunset
"bloomed and withered on the hillLike any hill-flower";
"bloomed and withered on the hill
Like any hill-flower";
but long those two stood by the Druid stone, knowing, perhaps, the best moment that life could give them, facing the dying radiance with hearts that were full of sunrise.
CHAPTER XXVII
Doctor Francis Mangan, driving his car at something even more than his usual high rate of speed, to the Parochial House, a mile or so from the town of Cluhir, what time the sun's last rays were falling upon the Druid stone on Cnochán an Ceoil Sidhe, would have been far from pleased had he seen what the sun then saw. On their knees by the Tober an Sidhe, Larry and Christian were looking into the tiny cave in which the fairy water rose, and were giving each to each their plighting word, the old word that they had known since they were children:
"While water stands in Tubber an shee,My heart in your hands, your heart in me,"
"While water stands in Tubber an shee,My heart in your hands, your heart in me,"
"While water stands in Tubber an shee,
My heart in your hands, your heart in me,"
and, observing scrupulously the prescribed rite, were drinking a mouthful of the water, each from the other's hand.
Dr. Mangan would probably have said that it was all children's nonsense, and that it was easier to break a promise than to keep it, but it may be asserted with tolerable certainty that he would not have been pleased.
He was a strong and able driver, and his big car whirled up Father Greer's neat and narrow drive, holding undeviatingly the crown of the high-cambered track, and stopped dead at the front door of the Parochial House.
That Spirit of the Nation to whom allusion has occasionally been made in these pages, was by now well accustomed to the discouragement that she had ever received from the two young lovers whose betrothal she had been powerless to forbid. She had fled from the benign fairy influences of the Tober an Sidhe; but now, full of hope, she was hovering with wide-spread wings over the Parochial House, and, as its door was opened by Father Greer's elderly and ugly housekeeper, the Spirit folded her wings and slipped past her, as by a familiar path, into the priest's sitting-room.
Father Greer was "inside," the elderly and ugly housekeeper said; "would the Doctor sit in the parlour a minute and he'd come down?"
The Doctor "sat" as requested, in the parlour, noting, as he had often noted before, its arid asceticism, wondering how any man could stand the life of a priest, respecting the power that could enable a man to dispense with all the things that, in his opinion—which, by the way, he pronounced "oping-en"—made life worth living.
Father Greer came imperceptibly into the room while the Doctor was still pondering upon the hardness of the black horsehair-covered armchair in which he was seated.
"Why, Doctor, this is an unexpected pleasure! I heard you were away," the priest said, laying a limp hand in the Doctor's big fist.
"So I was too. I was summoned to a consultation. That's what I'm come to you about, Father. It's old Prendergast. I'm thinking he won't last much longer."
"D'ye mean Daniel? The Member?"
"I do."
Father Greer took his thin nose, with the nostrils edged with red, between his finger and thumb, and pinched it slowly downwards several times.
"Well, what then?" he said at length.
"That's the point," said the Big Doctor, looking at the priest's pale and bumpy forehead, and trying in vain to catch his eye. "You know that young Coppinger's name was sent up by our local Committee four years ago, and the Party approved it."
"I wonder were they in the right!" said Father Greer, still pinching his nose, and looking up at the Doctor over his knuckles.
"I don't see who we could find that'd do better," said Dr. Mangan, apologetically. "He's well off, and he holds strong Nationalist oping-ens; and then, of course, he's a Catholic."
"I'm told he didn't go to Mass since he came home"; Father Greet let the statement fall without expression.
"Ah well, he's only just back from France. Give him a little time, and he'll come to himself," said the Doctor, still apologetic.
"I understand he's been painting Miss Christian Talbot-Lowry's portrait," pursued Father Greer, with limpid simplicity. "I'm told she's as pretty a young girl as there is in this neighbourhood."
Whether this slight prod of the mahout'sankuswas, or was not, intentional, it is not easy to say, but it took instant effect upon the Big Doctor.
"There are other pretty young girls in the neighbourhood besides Christian Lowry," he said sharply. "And maybe prettier! I don't think it would give us much trouble to find one that Larry Coppinger would be well satisfied with, and one that's in the bosom of the Church, too!"
"I greatly deplore mixed marriages," said Father Greer; permitting his eyes to meet those of Dr. Mangan. "I had hoped that in the case of this young man beneficial influences might have been brought to bear——"
"If you want to put a spoke in that wheel," interrupted the Doctor with eagerness, "you'll support his nomination. I'll undertake to say there won't be much talk of mixed marriages then!"
Father Greer's small eyes again rested for a second on the Doctor's broad face, with its strong, overhanging brows and heavy under-jaw, and drew his own conclusions from the confident smile that showed the white teeth under the drooping, black moustache that had still scarcely a grey hair in it.
"I was thinking that might be what he was after!" thought Father Greer. "Well, he's a good warrant to play his hand well, and more unsuitable things have occurred before now. Yet, didn't I hear something——!" Even in thought Father Greer observed a studied mildness and moderation, and there were contingencies which might remain unformulated until they crystallised into certainty.
"I'll think it over, Doctor," he said. "I'm inclined to your view, of the case, and I might be disposed to advocate the candidature of your nominee. But,"—here Father Greer sniffed several times, indicating that a humorous aspect of the case had occurred to him, "what will we do if he turns 'sour-face,' as they say, on us?"
This euphuism, which had been adopted by some of the more extreme of the Nationalist party to indicate members of the opposing communion, was received by Dr. Mangan as an apt and entertaining quotation on the part of his clergyman.
"No fear, no fear!" he said, laughing jovially, "but if you'll allow me to say so, I think a good deal depends on this business going through."
The Spirit of the Nation smiled also; it was evident to her that these ministers of hers were conscientiously intent on doing her pleasure, and, leaving them with confidence, she spread her wide wings and followed the broad stream of the river down the valley in the direction of Mount Music.
Dr. Mangan drove home as swiftly and capably as was his wont. It had been fair-day in Cluhir, and the people from the country were slowly and reluctantly forsaking the enjoyments of the town. Large women piled voluminously on small carts, each with a conducting little boy and a labouring little donkey somewhere beneath her; men in decent blue cloth garments, whose innate respectability must have suffered acutely from the erratic conduct of the limbs inside them; wandering knots of cattle, remotely attended by the wearers of blue cloth aforesaid; horses carting themselves and their owners home, with entire self-control and good sense; and, anchored in the tide of traffic, the ubiquitous beggar-women, their filthy hands proffering matches, green apples, bootlaces, their strident tongues mastering the noises of the street, their rapacious, humorous eyes observant of all things. All these did Dr. Mangan encounter and circumvent, frustrating their apparent determination to commit suicide by those diverse methods of abuse, cajolery, and, on the part of the car, mechanical activity, that formed an important part of the necessary equipment of an Irish motorist of the earlier time. Nevertheless, the more intimate portion of his brain was deeply engaged in those labyrinths of minor provincial intrigue in which so many able intellects spend themselves, for want of wider opportunity.
Mrs. Mangan was in the kitchen, where, indeed, she was not infrequently to be found, when the Doctor came in by the back-door from the yard.
"I want you, Annie," he said, shouldering his enormous bulk along the narrow passage, and treading heavily on the cat, who, her mystic meditations thus painfully interrupted, vanished in darkness, uttering the baleful cry of her kind, that is so inherently opposed to the blended forgiveness and apology that give poignancy to a dog's reproach for a similar injury.
"Look here, Annie. Before I forget it, I want you to take the car on Saturday—I'll want it myself to-morrow—and call upon Miss Coppinger. Barty can drive you. I got a wire awhile ago, and I have to go on the nine o'clock to-night to Broadhaven. It's that unfortunate Prendergast the Member. There's nothing can be done for the poor fellow, but whether or no, I must go."
"They'll not be satisfied till they have you dead, too, dragging at you!" protested Mrs. Mangan. "What nonsense they have, and you there only this morning! On earth, what can you do more for him?"
"They think more of me, my dear, than you do!" said the Doctor, cheerfully. "Be listening, now, to what I'm saying. You're to be as civil as be damned to old Frederica, and tell Barty he's to fix up with Larry to come here—what day is this to-day is? Thursday?—Tell him I'll be in on Sunday afternoon, and I want to talk to him on very special business. Now, will you remember that?"
He repeated his commands, as people will who have learnt, as most Doctors must learn, the fallibility of the human memory and its infinite powers of invention and substitution.
Mrs. Mangan listened obediently and promised attention. Although in matters to which she attached slight importance, such as the proportions of a prescription, her memory was liable to betray her, in other affairs, it had the cast-iron accuracy of the peasant, and without having been privileged with the Doctor's full confidence, she was probably deeper in it than he was aware.
While still these intentions with regard to young Mr. St. Lawrence Coppinger were whirling in the air above him, as a lasso swirls and circles before it secures its victim, that young man was, it is no exaggeration to say, staggering home under the weight of his happiness. After the sacrament at the Tober an Sidhe he and Christian had gone from the hill, hand in hand, like two children. In silence they had gone through the dark wood, and almost in silence had made their mutual farewells in the fragrant shadow of the pines.
When the soul is tuned to its highest it cannot find an interpreter. The lips can utter only broken sounds, pathetically inadequate to express emotions that may, in some future sphere, make themselves known in terms other than are permitted to us. There is an inner radiance that is beyond thought, that might conceivably utter itself in music or in colour, but that can no more be translated into words than can the radiance of the mid-day sun be more than indicated by earthly painters with earthly pigments.
So it was with Larry and Christian. It chances now and then on this old, and prosaic, and often tearful earth that some kindly spirit leaves the door of Paradise a little open, and two happy people—though sometimes it is only one—are caught inside for a time, and come out, as Larry did, bewildered, dazzled, wandering back to earth, he scarcely knew how, saying, drunkenly, to himself:
"Good Lord! She is so bright to-night!" as the blackbird said, who was "blowing his bugle to one far bright star."
CHAPTER XXVIII
Old, prosaic, and often tearful, though this earth may be, few are anxious to hasten their departure from it, and Daniel Prendergast, Esq., M.P., abetted by the ministrations of that able consultant, Dr. Mangan, "hung on," as his friends put it, with unexpected tenacity to his share of the world. And, so far reaching are the etheric cords that are said to bind us all together, Mr. Prendergast's grip of his sorry and suffering life bestowed upon Larry and Christian three days to be spent within the confines of Paradise.
This may seem an over-statement when it is recorded that their next meeting was at 7 a.m. at a cubbing meet of the hounds, which occurred on the morning following on Larry's discovery that theentréeto Paradise had been his for the asking; it is, however, no more than the truth. Christian had exacted a promise from him that no word was to be said to any other of the high contracting parties until Monday, and, as they rode in at the Castle Ire gates, the matter was still under debate.
"Three days we must have, just three, with this secret hidden between us like a pearl in an oyster-shell! Larry, you knowIcan keep a secret!"
"And you think I can't!" said Larry, affronted.
"I don't think, I know it! But you must try! Don't forget I've got to week-end at the——" she named people who lived in the next county. "No one shall be told until I come home!"
This was when they were riding to the meet. Larry had brought over Joker, the bay horse, for her and he was himself riding a small grey four-year-old mare, on whose education as a hunter he was entering. It was one of those gorgeous mornings of late September, when everything is intense in colour and in sentiment. A light white frost was melting, in the first rays of the sun, to a silver dew, that twinkled on grass and bush and twig. Now and then a beech leaf, prematurely gold, came spinning down in the still air; from high places of heaven a tiny gabble of music, cold, and shrill, and sweet, told of the songs of the larks at those heavenly gates within which Larry's and Christian's spirits were dwelling.
"Yes!" Christian repeated, as they rode tranquilly along on the grass beside one of the long Castle Ire avenues, "it shall remain a secret as long as possible, unprofaned by the vulgar! It's like this morning; the dew's on it still. Larry, you've got to try!"
"Got to try, have I?" said Larry, beaming at her fatuously.
The horses were sidling close to one another after the manner of stable companions; Larry put his hand on the bay horse's withers and gazed into Christian's laughing eyes, while the blue of the southern Irish sky uttered its strong, splendid note of colour behind the pale rose of her face, and the ineffable freshness of the morning thrilled in him.
"If you look at me like that in general society," he declared, "I shall either give it away on the spot—or burst! Look here, here's the measured-mile gallop; I'll race you to the hall door! If I get in first, I shall tell everyone we're engaged!"
"Done!" said Christian, instantly shortening her reins; "but I back Joker!"
She touched Joker with her heel and the big horse sprang, at the hint, into a gallop. Quickly as he started, Rayleen, the grey mare (whose name, being interpreted, is Little Star), being ever concentrated for instant effort, as is the manner of small and well-bred four-year-olds, was up to his shoulder in a couple of bounds, even in the flame of her youth and enthusiasm, she drove ahead of Joker's ordered strides, and led him for awhile. Larry's laugh of triumph, that the wind tossed back to her, was not needed to rouse Christian to emulation. Any hint of a race, any touch of a contest, appealed to her as instantly as to Rayleen, and she was racing for that secret that was like a pearl. Sitting very still she touched Joker again with her heel and spoke to him. There was in her the magnetism that can fire a horse to his best, by some mystery, compound of sympathy and stimulation, that has no outward manifestation. Joker's great shoulders worked under her as he lengthened and quickened his beautiful, rhythmic stride. The wind of the pace whistled in her ears and snatched at her hair. She crammed her hat over her forehead, laughing with the joy of battle. She was level with Larry now. Now she was passing him, and the little grey strove in vain to hold her place. Gallant as she was, what could she do against a raking, trained galloper, well over sixteen hands, and nearly thoroughbred?
The smooth mile of shining grass was annihilated, wiped out in a few whirling minutes. Joker had but just fairly settled down to go when the end of the race was at hand. Had he been a shade less of a gentleman than he was, Christian, and the snaffle in which she was riding him, would hardly have stopped him, as did their joint efforts, on the gravel in front of the goal that Larry had given her.
Hunts come, and hunts go, and are forgotten. Horses, the best and dearest of them, fade, in some degree, from remembrance; where are the snows of yester year, and where the great gallops that we rode when we were young? But here and there something defies the mists of memory, and remains, bright and imperishable as a diamond. I believe that for Christian that mile of sun and wind and speed and flight, with her lover thundering at her heels, will remain ever vivid, one of the moments that are of the incalculable bounty of Chance; moments that earth can never equal, nor Heaven better.
The hounds and staff were waiting at the farther end of the long front of Castle Ire, when Larry and Christian made their somewhat sensational entrance upon the scene.
"Joker wins, by a length and a half," said Bill Kirby, judicially, "and a very pretty race. I never saw a prettier, on any sands, on any jackasses, on any Bank Holiday! I suppose this is how people always fetch up at meets in France? It's not come in in this benighted country yet."
"His fault!" said Christian, breathless and glowing. "He dar'd me! Where are you going to draw?"
"The ash-pit and the fowl-houses," replied Bill, picking up his reins. "Then the backstairs, and the kitchenmaid's bedroom. Judith and Mrs. Brady say he's taking all the fowl, and they're going to lay poison—I don't mean the fowl——"
"Isn't he bright this morning?" said Judith, looking down upon the party from an upper window, effectively arrayed in one of those lacy and lazy garments that invite, while they repudiate, society. "No, I'm not coming out. Too early for me. Come in and eat something—breakfast or lunch, anything—when you've done enough."
The hounds moved on and were soon busy in the screens of glossy laurel round the house. Other riders arrived. A fox was found, if not in the kitchenmaid's bedroom in some spot of almost equal intimacy, and the Hunt surged in and through yards, and haggards, outhouses, and gardens, the hounds over-running all the complicated surroundings of an Irish country-house, while every grade of domestic, forsaking his or her lawful occupation, joined in the chase.
Christian had betaken herself to a point on the avenue remote from the fray. A run, she told herself, would have tranquillised her, and made things seem more normal, but there was no prospect of one. "I'll wait till this rat-hunt is over," she thought, letting Joker stroll across the park towards a little lake, shining amidst bracken and bushes, a jewel dropped from heaven. A couple of stiff-necked swans floated in motionless trance upon it; black water-hens flapped in flashing, splashing flight to safety as Christian came near; a string of patchwork coloured mandarin-ducks propelled themselves in jerks towards her, confident that any human being meant food. Two gigantic turquoise dragon-flies rose, with a dry crackle of talc-like wings, from a dead log under Joker's feet. One of them swung round the horse's head, and lit on his shaven neck. It brooded there, apparently unperceptive of the difference of this resting place from the one that it had abandoned; its dull globes of eyes looked as if sight was the last purpose for which they were intended. Joker stretched his long neck to nibble a willow twig, and the blue mystery, rising, remained poised over him for another moment of meditation, before it sailed away, sideways, on its own obscure occasions.
Christian sat in the sunshine, and thought about Larry, and wondered. She knew now that what she felt for him was no new thing. It had been with her always, not merely since the painting of her portrait, but always, unacknowledged yet implicit, ever since that first day when he had rescued her from Richard. Her intensely criticising, analytic brain refused to surrender to vague emotion. She was resolved to understand herself, to rationalise her overthrow. It was the difference, for which that half-hour of sunset was responsible, in the degree of what she felt, that bewildered her. Yesterday, she told herself, it was a deep, but well-controlled and respectable little stream. To-day it was a flood. "I must keep my feet," she thought; "I must not be swept away!" The thought of him was sometimes overwhelming, like the fire of a summer noon; sometimes meditative, and wound about with memories, like twilight, and the song of the thrush; even at its least, it had been the glow that lives behind the northern horizon in midsummer, witnessing to the hidden glory, during darkness, or the wistful glimmer of stars. Now, while the sun went higher, and all the hum of life rose, and the cries of the water-birds, the buzz of insects over the bright lake, became more insistent, and the blue and lovely morning spread and strengthened round her, criticism and analysis failed. She could only think of him, helplessly, saying to herself what she had once heard a peasant woman say: "My heart'd open when I thinks of him."
Across the park came repeated notes from the horn, the baying of hounds, and the screams that celebrate with orthodox excitement the death of a fox. The rat-hunt was over. Joker lifted his spare, aristocratic head from the grass, and listened, with a wisp of dewy green stuff in his mouth. Christian looked at her watch. It was early still, not eight o'clock. A grey horse and its rider came forth from the dark grove of laurels. Larry was looking for her. She sighed; she did not know why. She thought of the old Mendelssohn open-air part-song:
"The talk of the lovers in silence dies,They weep, yet they know not why tears fill their eyes."
"The talk of the lovers in silence dies,They weep, yet they know not why tears fill their eyes."
"The talk of the lovers in silence dies,
They weep, yet they know not why tears fill their eyes."
The old, absurd words, that she had so often laughed at. She laughed again, but at herself, and sat still, watching the grey mare coming lightly over the sunny grass to her.
"They got him!" Larry shouted, as he came near. "The brute wouldn't run for 'em! Too full of hen, I suppose! They're going on now to the gorse in the high paddock. Why did you come away here?"
"Because I'm illogical. I like hunting, and I hate catching what I hunt. Besides, I wanted to think."
"Rotten habit," said Larry. "I won't have you changing your mind!"
Christian looked at him, and sighed again. He was on her right, and she took her hunting-crop in her left hand, with the reins, and stretched out her right hand to him. He caught it, and kissed her slender wrist above the glove. There came back to Christian, with a rush, the remembrance of the May morning at the kennels when he had kissed her wrist. That had been the left wrist. The kiss had meant more to her than it had to him. Now, as she met his eyes she knew that she and he stood on level ground.
Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel? Those even, who pin it down, and set it up in a glass case in the cause of science and for the edification of an inquisitive public, are not wholly to be commended, praiseworthy though their intentions may be. Let a rule of silence, therefore be observed, as far as may be. What this boy and girl said to each other, is their secret, not ours.
The gorse in the high paddock held a fox; several, in fact, a lady having reared a fine young family there without any anxieties as to their support, thanks to the votive offerings of crows and rabbits, obsequiously laid on her doorstep, by her best friend, and her most implacable enemy, Mr. William Kirby, M.F.H. In recognition, no doubt, of these attentions, the lady in question permitted one of her sons to afford a little harmless pleasure to her benefactor, and this, having included a lively gallop of some three miles, ceased in a plantation where was the place of safety that had been indicated to the beginner, and ceased appositely, at an hour that made a late breakfast at Castle Ire a matter obvious, even imperative, for those who were not prepared to await, in patient starvation, that very inferior repast, an early lunch.
Young Mrs. Kirby had not lost, with matrimony, the habit of having her own way.
"No, Christian, you're not going home. You haven't seen Baby, and he really looksrathersweet in his new——" (a negligible matter, whatever the attire the formulae being unvaried)—"and, besides," continued young Mrs. Kirby, with decision, "I want to talk to you."
Being talked to by Judith was an adequate modern equivalent for an interview with the "Jailer's Daughter," as a method of obtaining information.
Christian trembled for the secret of the pearl.
"Bill tells me," began Judith, after the late breakfast had been disposed of, settling herself luxuriously in an armchair in the round tower-room which she had made her own sitting-room and lighting a cigarette, "that our tenants—I mean Papa's people—are getting rather nasty. Of course, there was that disgraceful business when your mare was killed but I don't mean that—Bill thinks old Fairfax was right in advising Papa to do nothing about that—but about this archaic nonsense of feudal feeling and not selling the property. Of course he's bound to lose by the sale, but the longer he waits the worse it gets."
"I don't think it's only feudal feeling—he says he can't afford to sell," began Christian.
"Oh, I know all that, my dear," interrupted Judith; "'the infernal mortgagees, and the damned charges, and that blackguard rebel, young Mangan, who cut the ground from under his feet,' and so on. I've heard it all from Papa, exactly five thousand times. But the point is that there was a meeting at Pribawn, with the priest in the chair, and there were furious speeches, and they talked of boycotting Papa, and some stepsoughtto be taken. It's an intolerable nuisance being boycotted, if it's nothing else, and most expensive. I was with the O'Donnells that time when they were boycotted—up at five every morning to milk the cows and light the kitchen fire, and having to get every earthly thing by post from London!"
"I'll take as many steps as you like," said Christian, "if you'll only tell me where to take them."
Judith took her cigarette out of her mouth, and blew a ring of smoke, regarding her younger sister the while with a shrewd and wary blue eye.
"I've often said to you, my dear child," she began, in a voice that seemed intended to usher in a change of subject, "that if youwon'ttake an interest in men,theywon't take an interest; in you."
"Then why repeat the statement?" said Christian, wondering what Judith was working up to, and girding herself for battle; "true and beautiful though it is!"
"Because, my dear—and I may say I speak as one having authority and not as the scribes—inmyopinion, and judging by what I perceived with about a quarter of one eye at breakfast, you have only to hold up your little finger, in a friendly and encouraging manner, and our young friend and relative, Mr. Coppinger, will—I admit I don't quite know what people do with little fingers in these cases, something affectionate, no doubt!"
"I thought your authority would have extended to little fingers!" broke in Christian, sparring for wind, and wishing she were not facing the window; "in any case, I fail to see what mine, in this instance, has to say to our being boycotted?"
"My dear girl," said Judith, leaning forward, and speaking with solemnity, "the priests won't want to fall foul of anyone with as much money as Larry!"
Christian was silent; she had not anticipated quite so direct an intervention in her personal affairs as was now being discovered, and she felt that her pearl was melting in the fierce solvent of Judith's interest and curiosity.
"I know it's a bore about his religion, and his politics aremorethan shaky, but you know, in a way, it's rather lucky, in view of the mess Papa's got everything into, to have someone on that side," went on Judith, who was far too practical to be influenced by that malign Spirit of the Nation who had so persistently endeavoured to establish herself as one of the family at Mount Music. "All I'm afraid of is that Papa may begin to beat the Protestant drum and wave the Union Jack! Such nonsense! The main thing is that Larry himself is quite all right!"
"I'm sure he would be gratified by your approval!" Judith's patronage was somewhat galling; Judith, who was quite pleased with Bill Kirby!—Good, excellent Bill, but still! Christian's colour betrayed her, and she knew it, and knowing also the remorseless cross-examination that the betrayal would immediately provoke, she decided to anticipate it.
"As a matter of fact," she went on, "he—we——" she hated the crudity of the statement.
"You're engaged!" swooped Judith, with the speed of a hawk. "Excellent girl!"
Christian found the commendation offensive.
"I assure you it's quite without either political or religious bias!" she said defiantly. She had failed to keep her secret, but she went down with her flags flying.
CHAPTER XXIX
Barty Mangan fulfilled his father's behests, and on Saturday, he drove his mother to Coppinger's Court.
He drove a motor well; not brilliantly, like Larry, because Barty did nothing brilliantly, but capably and gently, with consideration for donkey-carts, with respect for horses, with kindness towards pedestrians, even without animosity towards cur-dogs. The surprising aspect of the fact was that he should be able, in any degree, to handle a car, the control of energy being an effort foreign to his nature. What in his mother was laziness, was with him transmuted to languor; his father's vigour and decision became in Barty a sort of tepid obstinacy, and the Doctor's fierce and fighting allegiance to his Church reappeared in his son as a peevish conscientiousness, that had provoked a friend of the family to say: "Barty's a dam' bad solicitor! He'll take up no case but what pleases him, and he'll touch nothing if he thinks he'll make money out of it!"
"Ah! He was always a fool for himself!" replied, heartily, Barty's great-aunt, Mrs. Cantwell, to whom the comment had been offered.
One aspect of the practical affairs of life, and one only, had power to rouse Barty from the dreamy passivity which had excited Great-Aunt Cantwell's contempt. Where Ireland and Irish politics came into question, some deep spring of sentiment and enthusiasm in him was touched, and all the force that he was capable of became manifest. All the strength and tenacity that were in him were concentrated in the cause of Nationalism; Ireland was his religion, and he felt himself to be one of her priesthood.
There are some gentle natures, with deep affections, but without much brain-power in whom an idea, a mental attitude, and especially a personal liking or disliking, is very easily implanted; yet, easily as it is introduced, once it has taken hold it can never be dislodged. The intellect has not energy enough for reconstruction; it accepts too readily, and, once saturated, the stain is indelible, because there is no power of growth.
Behold, then, Barty, gentle and obstinate, timid and an enthusiast, loving, yet implacable, seated in Larry's studio, regarding with submissive adoration the being compact of the antithesis of his qualities, and ready, for that being's sake, to make any sacrifice save that of renouncing him.
The being in question, wholly and feverishly absorbed in his own affairs of the heart, while bound by his oath to say nothing about them, brought himself with difficulty to attend to the retrospect of financial operations, hitherto postponed, but now insisted upon, by his man of business.
"Oh, first-rate, old chap—quite all right—good business!——" With these, and similar interjections, did the employer ratify and approve of his agent's transactions. Barty's legal training abetted his conscientiousness, and in his mild and monotonous brogue he laid before Larry a statement of his money matters that was as unsparing in detail as it was accurate.
"So now you see," he concluded, "I didn't act without careful consideration, and I consulted me fawther, besides others of experience in such matters. I believe there are people who are saying we sold too cheap to the tenants. But, on the other hand, the money's good and safe now; you have a certain and secure income, and you're in a very favourable position in the eyes of the people."
Larry pulled himself from reverie to ejaculate further general approval; then he rose from the table, upon which Barty's books had been displayed, and drawing forward an easel on which was a framed canvas covered by some vivid oriental drapery, he arranged it carefully with regard to the light. Then he caught away the drapery, stepping back, quickly, from the easel.
"What do you think of that, Barty?"
Barty, who was short-sighted, stood up and adjusted his eye-glasses, while he endeavoured to readjust his ideas, and to abandon the realms of business for those of art.
"But you know, Larry," he apologised, "I know nothing about paintings. You wouldn't know what tomfoolery I mightn't——" The apology broke off abruptly.
"Oh, God!" he muttered, feeling, in the shock of meeting her eyes, as if a sudden wind had swept his mind bare of business, of Larry, of all things save Christian, "it's herself!"
His sallow face had turned a dull red. He moved back a step or two, and then went forward again. The easel was low, and Barty was very tall; he went on his knees, and gazed, speechless.
Thus might a devout Russian have greeted a lost icon, and worshipped, silently, a re-found saint. Larry, equally absorbed, as any painter will understand, in the contemplation of his work, took no heed of its effect upon Barty.
"By Jove!" he murmured, drawing a big breath, "I wonder if I did it! I don't feel as if I had—something outside me——" He stopped; he felt as if Christian herself were there; he felt as if her arms were round him, his head upon her bosom. He was giddy with emotion. Scarcely knowing what he did he walked across the room, and stared out of the window, looking across his own woods to the woods of Mount Music.
That morning he had said good-bye to her for three long days. She had met him at the old stepping stones across the Ownashee, and she had made him renew his promise of silence until her return; he was sorry he couldn't tell old Barty; but no matter, nothing mattered, except the marvel that she was his. He whispered adoration to her, breathing her name again and again, crowning it, as with a wreath, with those old, familiar adjectives that had so lately become intense with new meaning for him; he forgot Barty, forgot even her portrait, as he thought of herself.
Barty came over to him; the two young men, with their common secret, suspected by neither, a secret that for one was a living ecstasy, and for the other an impossible ideal, stood silent, full of their own thoughts. Barty spoke first.
"It's a wonder to me! I didn't think you could paint like that, Larry! I didn't think anyone could!"
"Well, no more I can, really. This was a sort of a miracle and it painted itself."
The same impulse moved them both, and they returned to the easel on which was the picture, but with a quick movement Larry flung the drapery over the frame again and hid the picture.
"Didn't you say you had a message for me from your father?"
Barty accepted the change of subject with his accustomed resignation to Larry's moods.
"I have. He said he'd be at home to-morrow afternoon—that's Sunday—and he wanted to see you on very special business."
"Do you know what about?" Larry asked, without interest, while he arranged the many-coloured silken drapery in effective folds over the picture.
"I believe old Prendergast's dying."
Barty hesitated; then, remembering that his father had not enjoined secrecy, he rushed into his subject. "Larry, I believe the chance we've been waiting for is come—or as good as come!"
"Do you mean that it's Prendergast the Member who's dying? Do you mean my getting into Parliament?"
Larry swung round on Barty, and fired the questions at him, quick as shots from a revolver.
The colour rose again in Barty's face. His dark, shortsighted eyes, that were set on Larry, had a sudden glow in them. He nodded.
"He's likely dead by now! Oh Larry!" he cried, panting in his eagerness. "May be the chance has come at last! I believe you might be the man Ireland wants! I believe you might take Parnell's place! Me fawther says you're certain to be nominated, and there's no opposition, of course. Anyhow, if there were, itself, you'd go in flying, just the same! You're the man we're all waiting for! Larry, old cock! The day will come when I'll be bragging that I was the one first gave you the notion to go into politics!"
Larry was gazing at his man of business, whose aspect, it may be conceded, was at this moment singularly at variance with the usual conception of such a functionary. The man of business gazed back at him, the glow intensifying behind his eye-glasses and gathering energy from the answering gleam in Larry's eyes.
"The Bloody Wars!" uttered Larry, slowly and quite irrelevantly, and with great emphasis. "By all the crosses in a yard of check! Let me hold on to something and think! This is a game and a half! I must think furiously!"
"Do not!" exclaimed Barty; "don't think at all! Don't be wasting time like that! No man ever had a greater chance than this! Lep at it, Larry, old lad! Give me the word I want, and I'll wire the Doctor to-night—a message he'll understand, and no one else. Oh Larry!" he implored, "don't cry off now! You've pots of money; you can do any damn thing you like! If you refuse this chance now you'll only regret it the once, and that'll be all your life!"
Then did that mysterious and mighty agency, the warp that a mind has received in childhood, come to reinforce the enthusiasms and ambitions of youth, and urge Larry to assent. That other and nobler Spirit of the Nation woke, and the passionate, irreconcilable voice, that had first spoken to him when he was a little boy, woke and uttered itself again, shouting to him its wild summons at a moment when the tide of life was running fiercest in him, when every emotion was at highest pressure and calling for great adventure.
"All right, Barty, my son, I'm for it!" said Larry, with the assumption of outward calm, when heart and pulses are pounding, that has been claimed as one of the assets of a public school education, and is, even without that advantage, the birthright of such as young Mr. Coppinger.
CHAPTER XXX
Larry bicycled up to the white chapel on the hill, to Second Mass, on the following morning. He rode fast through the converging groups of people, on foot, on outside cars, in carts, on horseback. It was four years since he had last attended a service there, and to many of the assembled congregation he had become a stranger. None the less there was no hesitation in any man's mind in identifying him; these were people who knew a gentleman when they saw one, and the young owner of Coppinger's Court was the only gentleman ever to be seen at the white chapel on the hill.
Therefore it was that Larry's right hand was seldom on his handle-bar, as he skimmed through the people, decent and dark-dressed in their Sunday best, who saluted with a long-established friendship and respect this solitary representative of their traditional enemies, the landlords.
There cannot be in the world a people more unfailingly church-going than those sons and daughters of Rome who are bred in Southern Ireland. Larry looked down, from his pew in the gallery, at the close ranks of kneeling figures, and thought with compunction how long it was since he had been in a church, and thanked God that he had come home to his own people, and that their religion was his. He followed the words of the service with a new realisation of their ancient beauty. He trembled with an unfamiliar emotion, as, in the charged silence of the crowded chapel, the bell tinkled and the censer clashed, sounds that have in them at such moments a heart-shaking power, magnetic, mystical. He heard nothing of the sermon; in his eager mind two thoughts raced side by side, now one, now the other, leading. These two marvels that had befallen. That Christian should love him; this had the mastery, irradiating all; but with the vivid sense of fellowship and communion that the service brought the other thought, the old dream that was coming true of standing for these people, of making their interests his, their welfare his care, moved him profoundly.
Outside in the chapel yard, after the service, the congregation was in no hurry to disperse. Larry looked about him, and found many friendly eyes set on him. Larry, too, had a friendly heart, and he bethought him that, as a future M.P., he should lose no opportunity of intercourse with his constituents. He recognised the solid presence of John Herlihy, an elderly farmer who had been one of the largest of his own late tenants, and he went across the yard to where he stood and shook hands with him.
"Fine day, John! Good and hot for the harvest! Got your threshing done yet?"
"'Tis very warm, sir," answered John Herlihy, correcting, as is invariable, Larry's employment of the vulgar adjective "hot"; "very warm entirely, and sure I have my corn threshed this ten days, the same as yourself!"
"Nothing like taking time by the fetlock, is there, John!" chaffed Larry (who, until that moment, had been unaware that he possessed any corn); "it's a good harvest all round, isn't it?"
"Well, pretty fair, thank God!"
"And the country's quiet?"
"Never better, sir, never better!" responded John Herlihy, weightily; but something in his cool eyes, grey and wise as a parrot's, impelled Larry, in his new-born sense of responsibility, to further questioning.
Mr. John Herlihy was a man of the order to whom the label "respectable" inevitably attaches itself (that adjective which acts as a touch-stone in the definition of class, and is a compliment up to a certain point, an offence higher up the scale); one of those sound and sensible and thrifty farmers who are the strength of Ireland, and are as the stones of a break-water, over which the storm-froth of the waters of politics sweeps unheeded.
"Well," Larry went on, "it wasn't a very nice way that those Carmodys up at Derrylugga treated Miss Christian Talbot-Lowry the other day! Killing her mare under her, the cowardly blackguards!"
The grey parrot eyes scanned Larry, summing him up, determining how far he might be trusted, deciding that an oblique approach might be most advisable.
"Major Lowry's a fine gentleman," said John Herlihy, largely; "a fine, easy,grauverman! I declare I was sorry to me heart when he gave up the hounds! If it was to be only a scold or a curse from him, ye'd rather it, and to have he be goin' through the country!"
"Then what have people against him? Good God!" cried Larry, hotly. "It's too easy he is!Iwouldn't have let those devils off as easy as he did!"
"I heard the Priest and a few more, was above at Mount Music ere yesterday," said John Herlihy, in a slightly lowered voice, "about the sale of the property they were, I b'lieve. You done well, Master Larry, you got quit o' the whole kit of us!"
Having thus shelved the controversial subject, Mr. Herlihy, laughing heartily at his own jest, moved towards his horse and car, that were hitched to the chapel gate, and let down the upturned side of the car.
"Come! Get up, woman! Get up!" he called to his wife, a prosperous lady, in a massive, blue, hooded cloak, who had been standing by the gate, patiently waiting his pleasure; "don't be delaying me this way!"
He winked at Larry, scrambling on to the car.
"Whattashpyhe has!" remarked Mrs. Herlihy, benignantly, as Larry shook hands with her.
"Ah, you spoil him, Mrs. Herlihy! You should dock his oats!" said Larry, laughing into her jolly, round, red face, that was glistening with heat under the heavy cloth hood. "It's a grand hot day, isn't it?"
"'Tis very warm, sir, indeed," corrected Mrs. Herlihy, as she mounted the car with an agility as competent, and as unexpected, as that of a trespassing cow confronted with a stone-faced bank.
Larry went home, and continued a letter to Christian that he had begun over night. He told her of Barty's visit, and of all that it was likely to involve. He said that he was very lonely, and he believed she had been gone a year. Even Aunt Freddy had bolted off to Dublin, on urgent private affairs, which meant the dentist, as usual. He would go over to see Cousin Dick, only that he was absolutely bound to go into Cluhir. At this point he entered anew upon the subject of his political future, and what it meant to him. Of the fun he would have canvassing the electors. Christian would have to come round with him, and in very obdurate cases there was always the classical method of the Duchess of Devonshire to be resorted to! Already, he said, he was frightfully interested in the whole show, and he meant—several pages were devoted by Larry to his intentions.
Christian, far away in the County Limerick, received the letter with her early cup of tea, and, as she read it, felt her soul disquieted within her. The conjunction of the stars of Love and Politics presaged, she felt, disaster—as if the question of religion had not been complicating enough! Even had her gift of envisaging a situation by the light of reason failed her, that spiritual aneroid, which, sensitive to soul-pressure, warned her intuitively of coming joy or sorrow, ill luck or good fortune, had fallen from set fair to stormy. She had gone to sleep with sunshine in her heart; she awoke in clouds, dark and threatening. She read Larry's letter, and knew that the foreboding would come true.
It is probable that no human being was ever less the prey of intuitions or presentiments than was young Mr. Coppinger, as he bicycled lightly into Cluhir along the solitary steam-rolled road of the district, a typical effort of Irish civilisation, initiated by Dr. Mangan, that had proposed to link Cluhir with the outer world, but had died, like a worn-out tramp, at the end of a few faltering miles, on the steps of the work-house hospital at Riverstown. The road ran along the bank of the great river, with nothing save a low fence and a footpath between it and the water. The river was still and gleaming. Masses of dove-coloured cloud, with touches of silver-saffron, where their lining showed through, draped the wide sky, in over-lapping folds. The planes of distance up the broad valley were graduated in tone by a succession of screens of luminous vapour that parcelled out the landscape, taking away all colour save that bestowed by the transparent golden grey of the mist. The roofs of Cluhir made a dark profile in the middle distance, the lower part of the houses hidden in the steaming mist, and the beautiful outline of the twin crests of Carrigaholt was like a golden shadow in the sky above them. The spire and the tower of the two churches of Cluhir, rose on either side of the pale radiance of the river, with the slender arch of the bridge joining them, as if to show in allegory their inherent oneness, their joint access to the water of life. Religion counted for but little with Larry in those days, yet as the wonder of beauty sank into his soul, that was ever thirsty for beauty, the thought of what it would mean for Ireland if the symbol of the linking bridge had its counterpart in reality sprang into his eager mind. Then he thought of himself and Christian, and knew that religion could never come between him and her, and, as the close-followed thought of what these last days had brought, rose in his mind, the wonder of it overwhelmed him. He told himself that the only possible explanation of her caring for such as he, was that Narcissus-like, she had seen her own image reflected in his heart, and had fallen in love with it. The fancy attracted him; he rode on, his mind set on a sonnet that should fitly enshrine the thought, and politics and religion, symbols and ideals, faded, as the stars go out when the sun comes.
For the last couple of miles before Cluhir was reached the road and the river ran their parallel course in a line that was nearly direct, and, from a long way off, Larry was aware of the figure of a man and woman and a dog, preceding him towards the town. He noted presently that the dog had passed from view, and then he saw the man and the woman hurry across the road and pass through the gateway of a field. He was soon level with the gate. There was a little knot of people just within the field, and in the moment of perceiving that the woman was Tishy Mangan, he also saw that a fierce fight was in progress between two dogs.
"Oh, stop them, stop them!" Tishy was screaming. "That's my father's dog, and he'll be killed!"
She belaboured the dogs, futilely, with her parasol.
The man who was with her, a tall and elaborately well-dressed young gentleman with a red moustache, confined himself, very wisely, to loud exhortations to the remainder of the group, who were lads from the town, to call off their dog; and the remainder of the group, with equal wisdom and greater candour, were unanimously asserting that they would be "in dhread" to touch the combatants. The dogs were well matched—strong, yellow-red Irish terriers; each had the other by the side of the throat, and each, with the deep, snuffling gurgles of strenuous combat, was trying to better his hold on his enemy.
Larry, swift in action as in thought, was off his bicycle and into the ring without a second of hesitation.
"Catch your dog by the tail," he shouted to the boys, while he performed the like office for the Doctor's dog. "Now then! Into the river with them!"
The two dogs, fast in each other's jaws, were lifted, and were borne across the road to the edge of the footpath, below which the river ran, deep and strong.
"Now then!"
The two rough, yellow bodies were swung between Larry and his coadjutor.
"Now! Let 'em go!"
The dogs flew like chain-shot through the air, and, with a tremendous splash disappeared from view in the river. They rose to the surface still keeping their hold of one another, and sank again. A second time they rose without having loosened their grip, but at their third appearance they were apart.
"Now boys! Cruisht them well, or they'll be at it again when they land!"
The "cruishting," which means pelting with stones, succeeded. The enemies landed at different points. Miss Mangan's charge was recaptured, his antagonist was stoned by his owners until out of range, and the incident closed.
It was not, however, without result.
"I think you never met Captain Cloherty, Mr. Coppinger?" said Tishy, with a glance at Captain Cloherty that spoke disapproval. "He's not as useful in a fight as you are, though heisin the Army!"
"My branch of the service mends wounds, it doesn't go out of its way to get them!" returned Captain Cloherty, composedly, "and I haven't any use for getting bitten."
"Mr. Coppinger wasn't so nervous!" retorted Miss Mangan, scorchingly, "and it's well for me he wasn't! What'd I say to the Doctor if I had to tell him his pet dog was dead?"
"Something else, I suppose!" suggested Captain Cloherty, his red moustache lifting in a grin that Miss Mangan found excessively exasperating; "it wouldn't be the best time to tell the truth at all!"
"How funny you are!" said Tishy, with a blighting glance. "It's easy to joke now, when Mr. Coppinger has done the work!"
She swept another glance of her grey eyes at Larry, very different from that that she had bestowed upon the callous Cloherty.
Few young men object to exaltation at the expense of another, especially if that other has two or three inches the advantage in height, and they are themselves not unconscious of deserving. Larry led his bicycle and walked beside Tishy, and found pleasure in meeting her again after four years of absence. For one thing, she had become even better-looking than he remembered her—turned into a thundering handsome young woman, he thought—and it became him, as an artist, to be a connoisseur in such matters.
"Oh, so you're going to see the Doctor, are you?" she said, "I know he was expecting you." She hesitated. "I told him I thought I'd be at Mrs. Whelply's this afternoon. He—he might be surprised if he thought I had Tinker out, and that he was in a fight——"
"I'll keep it dark," Larry said, reassuringly, while he wondered if the protecting darkness were also to envelop Captain Cloherty, R.A.M.C. He thought, on the whole, perhaps, yes.
CHAPTER XXXI
Major Talbot-Lowry had been in a passion for three days, and Lady Isabel, who had borne the storm alone, longed for Christian's return, as the lone keeper of a lighthouse might long for the support of his comrade during a gale.
Judith came to visit her parents on Monday, but Judith was very far from being Christian, and could be relied on merely as far as a counter-irritant might prove of service.
"Well, of course, it was abominable impertinence of the priest to come up with the tenants to try and bully you, Papa, but you know, I see their point." Thus, Judith, annoyingly, and with pertinacity.
"You do, do you!" interjected Judith's progenitor, his once ruddy face now a congested purple. "It seems to me, Judith, you're always deuced ready to see any one's point but mine!"
"After all," went on Judith, with all the self-confidence and intolerance of five and twenty, "it's in your interest to sell, just as much as theirs to buy! With this detestable Government in power it will be a case of the Sibylline Books. You'll see the Nationalists will have it all their own way, and the next Act——"
"Nationalists!" roared the Major, sitting upright in his chair, and panting, his utterance temporarily checked by the sheer pressure of all that he wished to say. "Don't talk to me of Nationalists! Common thieves! That's all they are! There's no Nationalism aboutthem! Call it Socialism, if you like, or any other name for robbery! They'd look very blue ifwetook to shouting 'Ireland a Nation!' and expecting to come in at the finish! They mightn't be able to call us English invaders and to steal our property then! English! I've got Brian Boroihme in my pedigree and that's more than they can say! A pack of half-bred descendants of Cromwell's soldiers! That's what they are, and the best of them, too! That's the best drop of blood they've got!" Dick shouted, veering in the wind of his own words like a rudderless ship in a storm. "That's what gives them tenacity and bigotry! Look at the old places that they're squeezing the old families out of! It's the Protestant farmers and the Religious Orders that are getting them, swarming into them like rats! Don't tell me that I and my family aren't a better asset to any country than a lot of fat, lazy Monks and Nuns!"
"But, Papa, they're not all fat!" said Judith, beginning to laugh.
"Deuce a many of them's thin for want of plenty to eat!" returned Dick, with the confidence of a man whose faith in his theories has never been interfered with by investigation. He was recovering his temper, having enjoyed the delivery of his diatribe; and the fact that he had not only silenced Judith but had tickled her to a laugh, restored his sense of domination.
Poor old King Canute, with the tide by this time well above the tops of his hunting-boots, and all the familiar landmarks becoming submerged, one after the other! It may be easy to deride him, but it is hard not to pity him.
This was on Monday, and Christian returned from her week-end visit that evening. Judith stayed, and went with Christian to her room.
"Well, my dear," she began, eagerly, as the door closed, "when are you going to announce it?"
Christian sat down on her bed. She was looking very tired.
"Never, I think!"
Without paying attention to Judith's exclamation she took a newspaper out of the pocket of her top-coat, and handed it to her sister.
"This is this evening's paper. I got it at the Junction. Read that." She pointed to a paragraph.
Judith read it; then she dropped the paper, and gazed at Christian with dramatic consternation.
"The idiot!" she said, at length. "Couldn't you stop him?"
"He had promised years ago. I didn't try. He couldn't break his word."
"Oh, rot!" said Judith, briefly.
"You know he couldn't, Judy."
"Well, you know, this will finish him with Papa," said Judith, gloomily. "He's bad enough as it is about the sales to the tenants, and I was prepared for rows over the religious business, of course, but this! Can't you"
"I can't do anything," interrupted Christian, getting up. "I heard from him this morning, fearfully keen about it, but he didn't know then if the Party were going to adopt him. Evidently they have."
"Trust them for that!" said Judith, with a heavy groan. "I suppose Larry thinks we shall all be delighted! What fools men are! Bill did say once that it had been suggested—oh, ages ago, when Larry came of age; Ma-in-law told him—but we thought it had died out."
Christian hardly heard what she said. She was standing at the open window, in the stillness that tells of intense mental engrossment. Self-deception was impossible for her; her mind was too acute for tolerance of subterfuge; and for her, also, away and beyond the merciless findings of intellect was the besetment of presentiment, intuition, inward convictions that can override logical conclusions, words that are breathed in the soul as by a wind, and, like the wind, are born and die in mystery.
The last of the daylight had gone; there was a touch of frost; the sky was clear and hard, the stars shone with sharp brilliance, some of them had long, slanting rays on either hand that looked like wings of light; a new moon glittered among them, keen and clean, and vindictive as a scimitar; in the quiet, the low murmur of the Broadwater pervaded the night. Judith watched her sister with unconsciously appraising eyes, noting the straight slenderness of her figure, the small, high-held, dark head.
"Old people are intolerable!" she thought; "she shallnotsacrifice herself to Papa's prejudices! If she likes Larry she shall have him!"
But she was too wise to argue with Christian.
Dick Talbot-Lowry, though now arrived at the age of sixty-nine, was as unconvinced as ever of the fact that time had got the better of him, and that its despotism was daily deepening. He admitted that he had become something of an invalid, but that his elder daughter should have classified him as an old person would have appeared to him as absurd and offensive. There are minds that keep this inveterate youthfulness; that learn nothing of age, and forget nothing of youth. It is an attitude sometimes charming, sometimes undignified, always pathetic. Christian saw old age as a tragedy, a disaster, to alleviate which no effort on the part of the young could be too great; the pathos and the pity of it were ever before her eyes. In contest with her father, if contest there were to be, she would go into the arena with her right hand tied behind her back.
Without any definite admission of failure, Major Talbot-Lowry had been brought to submit to having his breakfast in bed, and Robert Evans, a sour and withered Ganymede, was the bearer of it. He was also the bearer of any gossip that might be available, and seldom failed to provide his master with a stimulant and irritant. On the morning following on Christian's return it was very evident that intelligence of unusual greatness seethed in the cauldron wherein fermented Mr. Evans' brew of news. His rook-like eye sparkled, his movements, even that walk for whose disabilities it may be remembered that the pantry boy had thanked his God, were alert and purposeful.
"Ye didn't see theIrish Timesyet, I think?" he began, standing over his master, and looking down upon him with an expression as triumphant and malign as that of a carrion-crow with a piece of stolen meat. He rarely bestowed the usual honorifics upon Dick, considering that his five years' seniority relieved him of such obligations. "I wouldn't believe all I'd read in the papers, but this is true, anyway!"
"What's true?" said Major Dick, irritably; "you've forgotten the salt again, Evans! How the devil can I eat an egg without salt? Send one of the maids for it—don't go yourself," he added, as Evans left the room. "The old fool'd be all day getting it," he said to himself, with an old man's contempt for old age in another. "Now, then," as Evans returned, "what's your wonderful bit of news?"
"Ye can read it there for yourself," replied Evans, coldly; he was ruffled by the episode of the salt.
"Damn it, man, I can't read the paper and eat an egg!" snapped the Major. "Out with your lie, whatever it is!"
"Master Larry's chosen for the Member in place of Prendergast," said Evans, sulkily.
If Evans had been unfortunate in the way in which his sensation had been led up to, its reception left him nothing to desire. Dick was stricken to an instant of complete silence. Then he roared to Evans to take the damned tray out of his way, and to give him the (otherwise qualified) paper.
It would serve no purpose, useful or otherwise, to attempt to record Dick Talbot-Lowry's denunciations of Larry, of his religion, and of his politics; of, secondarily, his ingratitude; his treachery, and his lack of the most rudimentary elements of a gentleman. They lasted long, and lacked nothing of effect that strength of lung and vigour of language could bring to them. And Evans, the many-wintered crow, hearkened, and rejoiced that he was seeing his desire of his enemy.
"No! I won't eat it! Take it away—I don't want it, I tell you! Curse you, can't you do as you're bid?" Thus spake Dick Talbot-Lowry, flinging himself back on his pillows, and shoving the breakfast-tray from him. The hot purple colour that had flooded his face was fading; his voice was getting hoarse and weak. Evans, with an apprehensive eye on his master's changed aspect, carried the tray out of the room.
There was a quick step on the stairs, and Larry came lightly along the landing.
"The Major up, Evans? No? Oh, all right! May I come in, Cousin Dick?"
He swung into the room.
Old Evans carefully shut the door behind him.
"Now me laddy-o!" he whispered, rubbing his hooked grey beak with one finger, and chuckling low and wheezily: "Now, maybe! Me fine young Papist! Ye'll be getting your tay in a mug! Hot and strong! Hot and strong!"
He moved away from the door with the tray of untouched breakfast things.
CHAPTER XXXII
Lady Isabel was returning from her accustomed housekeeping morning visit to Mrs. Dixon, when she was startled by the sharp outcry of an electric bell.
"Dick's room!" she said to herself, beginning to hurry; she hardly knew why.
A housemaid ran down the long passage in front of her, flying to the summons. Through the open door of the dining-room Lady Isabel saw Christian giving the dogs their breakfast.
"Papa's bell is ringing, dear," said Lady Isabel, breathing hard.
"I heard someone go up to his room just now," said Christian, languidly; "I haven't seen him this morning; I was in the yard with the dogs——"
Someone came down the stairs, headlong, two steps at a time. Larry's voice shouted:
"Christian! Cousin Isabel! Anyone——!"
There was urgency and alarm in the voice.
Lady Isabel and Christian were in the hall in an instant, and met Larry at the foot of the stairs.
"Cousin Dick's ill! A heart attack, I think—I didn't know what to do for him——"
"I do!" said Christian, speeding upstairs.
Her mother followed her, and Larry remained in the hall. Of one thing he was quite certain, that he had better keep out of Cousin Dick's sight. His nerves were quivering from the interview that had been so shatteringly abbreviated. Had the friendly old setter, whose head at this moment was on his knee, while her limpid eyes swore to him that all her love was his, suddenly turned and rent him, it would scarcely be a shock worse than that he had received. He had been undeterred by the ominous gloom of the Major's greeting; few young men have very keen perception of mood, and Larry, deeply self-engrossed, wildly happy, had flung at once into his theme, which, it need hardly be said, was Christian. Then the storm broke, and the lightning blazed, and the thunders of the house uttered their voice, while Larry, amazed, horrified, gradually, as the invective gathered volume and venom, becoming angry, stood in silence, and received in a single cloud-burst the bitter flood of long-pent prejudice, jealousy, and sense of injury.
"Dead!" Dick had roared; "I'd rather see her dead in her coffin than married to——"
The epithets that a hoarded hatred finds ready to hand when its pent force is released, come horribly from the lips of an old man. Yet, almost more horrible than the full tide of rage, was to see its ebb, as "the sick old servant" in Major Dick's bosom failed him, and his heart staggered and fainted in its effort to abet him in denouncing the young cousin who he thought had wronged him.
Larry sat, fondling the old setter's chestnut head, thinking it all over, flaming again at the remembered insults, quailing at the possibilities as they concerned Christian. Once she had appeared at the top of the stairs, and said the single word, "Better!" before she vanished.
One half of Larry's mind said "Better? What do I care? Better if he dies, if he comes between me and her!" The other, which was his deeper self, preserved the memory of Dick's greying face and frightened eyes, and was glad that relief had come.
At last Christian came to him, slowly and with a dragging step, down the wide staircase. Her face was white, her eyes were set in shadows.
"How is he?"
"Round the corner, I think. We've wired for Mangan."
"Christian, I want to explain—I said nothing—I never meant to annoy him, I began about you, and that—that we loved each other. For we do, Christian, don't we?" He had her hands in his, he crushed them in his anxiety, his eyes implored her. "Then suddenly he began to abuse me like a madman! My religion, my politics, my treachery to my class—I can't tell you what he didn't say! And then he swore he'd rather see you dead than married to me. I don't know what I said—nothing, I think; he began to look as if he were dying himself, and I rang the bell and bolted for you."
"Poor boy!" said Christian.
He thought that her face as she looked at him was as it were the face of an angel, but the sorrow in it frightened him.
"Come into the study," she said, freeing her hands from his grasp; "we can't talk here."
The study door was open; he followed her in silence, and, shutting the door, sat down beside her on the sofa.
"Larry, we've got to face it, you know; we've got to face it," she began, and gave back to him her slender sensitive hand, as if to heal the wound of what the words implied.
"Face what?" said Larry, stubbornly, girding himself for resistance.
"Face delay—opposition——"
"I'll face opposition as much as you like, but I won't face delay! Why should we? We're of age. There's nothing against me!"
Christian smiled faintly.
"Dear child, I know that. It's not the facts that are against us, it's the fancies——"
"I won't be patronised!" said Larry, vehemently. "I'm not your dear child! I'm the man you've promised to marry! No one's fancies have a right to interfere with us!"
His arm was round her, and he felt her tremble. He loosed her hand, and with his hand that had held it he turned her face to his. Then he kissed her, many times, with an ever-growing abandonment as he felt the response that she tried in vain to withhold.
At length, in spite of him, she hid her face in his shoulder.
"No, Larry, no!" she gasped, her breath coming short. "Dearest, don't be cruel to me! How can I keep that promise! If you had seen Papa just now and Mother—her terror and her helplessness! How could I leave them? Supposing that I defied him, and married you, and that he died in one of these furies! Just think what that would be for us!"
"He wouldn't die!" said Larry, obstinately. "People don't die as easy as all that!" he added, with a fierce thought of regret that Dick had not gone out in this latest storm.
"Listen," said Christian, beseechingly. "Don't let us be in such a hurry. Everything needn't be settled at once. We'll ask Dr. Mangan how Papa is, and if there is real danger for him in these rages. He was nearly as bad on Saturday after the Priest and the tenants had been here."
Larry's face was dark; he was not used to opposition. His guardians and his spiritual directors had alike found that while he was easy to lead, he was a difficulty and a danger to drive. He was stirred to the depths now. The strain of receiving Dick's onslaught in silence, the shock of his collapse, and now the fire that Christian's nearness and dearness had lit in him, all broke his self-control. He held her to him.