"I will never let you go! Never—!" His lips were on hers again, life, with all its difficulties, was again forgotten, the rhyme of the Fairies' Well galloped in his hot brain:
"My heart in your hands, your heart in me."
"My heart in your hands, your heart in me."
"My heart in your hands, your heart in me."
The sound of the hall door opening, and the grinding roar of a motor engine running down, recalled them both to this troublesome world.
But in Christian's heart, whether from within or from without, a voice had spoken, telling the kisses, one by one, as though they were the petals of a flower. "This year, next year, sometime, never!" If the last word had been "sometime," or "never," she knew not; she knew only that if what before her was the way of renunciation, she would find it a hard way to walk in.
Dr. Mangan stood, a massive presence, at the top of the stairs, and talked massively to Lady Isabel of Dick's condition.
"Very critical—no worries—nourishment—would he have a nurse?"
To which Lady Isabel, a poor, shaken, pallid Lady Isabel, with no more backbone than the shape of blancmange, which, it must be said, she somewhat resembled, replied: "Nothingwould induce him!"
"Then I should like to have a little talk with Miss Christian," said the Big Doctor, beginning to walk downstairs, slowly, solemnly, solidly, like a trick-elephant at a circus.
Christian's quick ears had heard his voice on the stairs, and she met him in the hall. Larry stood irresolute at the door of the study. His eyes met those of the Doctor, and something during the interchange of glances suggested that his presence was not desired. He returned to the study and shut the door, and wished that he could have a word alone with the Doctor, just to put him up to what to say to Christian. He could hear the heavy rumble of the Doctor's bass voice, and the soft alto murmur of Christian's replies. She had the Irish voice, pitched on a low note, an instrument more apt for pathos than for gaiety, which is, perhaps, what gives to its gaiety so special a charm.
Larry stood by the window with his hands in his pockets, trying to steady himself. Deep under his panic uncertainty as to the strength of his hold on Christian, was the anger that Dick's denunciation had roused in him, and momently, as his mind went back over the interview, remembrance of the insults became more unendurable. Abuse from the old to the young, and from a sick man to a sound one, cannot fail to rankle, since it cannot be flung back. Generosity may impose silence, but it cannot obliterate an insult or heal a wound.
Christian came into the room; he heard her come, but he would not look round. She slid her hand into his arm.
"Larry! Dear! Listen to me; there's no way out of it but patience! Dr. Mangan says hemustbe kept absolutely quiet, and have nothing to annoy him. He says he might die in an instant in one of those attacks. He's not himself now, Larry—so little makes him lose self-control——" She paused, but Larry did not speak. "You couldn't want me to sacrifice the little share of life left to him to our happiness; I know you couldn't! Larry, he's an old man; it can't be for very long——"
"I don't see that that follows," said Larry, implacably. "He had strength enough to blackguard me very thoroughly, and it hasn't done him any harm. It seems to me,I'mthe one to be sacrificed!"
"He spoke to Mother about us—about what you said to him. He began about it the instant he could speak. She——" Christian hesitated, "she could only quiet him by saying there was no engagement between us."
"Then she said what wasn't true!"
"Oh, itmustbe true!" said Christian, desperately; "it's got to be true——"
"Very well," said Larry, moving away, so that her hand fell from his arm. "If it's got to be true I suppose there's no more to be said. I may as well go. After all, I daresay you're well quit of me. Your father says I'm a damned Papist and——"
"I won't listen to you!" broke in Christian. "What's the use of hurting me and hurting yourself like this? Larry, I'll wait for you for ever—you know that—time will make no difference. Don't make it harder for me than it must be!"
"You don't seem to think much aboutme" said Larry, with a still rage that was a new thing with him. He left her side, and walked steadily to the door; then he turned, and in a few quick steps came back to her. He put his hands on her shoulders; he was not much taller than she, and his eyes looked straight into hers.
"Then it's true, is it? You're off it? You've given me the chuck?"
He spoke roughly, and gripped her harder than he knew, and in the tension of her nerves, the roughness of the words and action cut her like the stroke of a whip. Almost as if he had struck her, a splash of colour came in her face.
Larry was blind to the torture in her eyes, but he saw the quick red, and knew he had hurt her high spirit, and was glad.
"If you like to put it in that way!" said Christian, her head up, her mood answering his, "apparently it is the only thing to be done!"
There came a tap at the door. Dr. Mangan's voice said: "I'm going back to Cluhir now. Haven't you to meet Father Greer at twelve o'clock, Larry? I could give you a lift if you like——"
From an early work on the Fauna of the Indian Forest the following extract may be quoted:
"The elephant's trunk then encircled the young man's body, and placing him gently upon its back, the huge creature ambled away with its prize to the depths of the jungle."
CHAPTER XXXIII
Little Mary Twomey, footing it into Cluhir on a misty Saturday morning, with a basket of fowl under her brown and buff shawl, was not sorry when, from a side road on the line of march, a donkey-cart, driven by an acquaintance, drew forth at the instant of her passing.
"God bless ye, John Brien," she said, when the suitable salutations and comments on the weather had been exchanged, with the rigorous courtesy observed by such as Mary Twomey and John Brien with one another, "this basket is very weighty on me——"
"Put it up on the butt, ma'am," responded John Brien. "Put it up, for God's sake, and let you sit up with it. Sure the ass is able for more than yourself!"
This referred, with polite facetiousness, to Mrs. Twomey's stature, and was taken by her in excellent part.
She uttered a brief screech. "Isn't it what they say they puts the best of goods in the small passels?" she demanded; "but for all, I wouldn't wish it to be too small altogether! 'Look!' I says to that owld man I have, 'Look! When I'll be dead, let ye tell the car-pennther that he'll make the coffin a bit-een too long, the way the people'll think the womaneen inside in it wasn't altogether too small entirely!'"
"Arrah, don't talk of dyin' for a while, ma'am!" said John Brien, gallantly. "Aren't you an' me about the one age, and faith, when you're dyin' I'll be sending for the priest for meself!"
"Well, please God, the pair of us'll knock out a spell yet!" responded Mrs. Twomey, cheerfully; "for as little as I am, the fly itself wouldn't like to die!"
John Brien did not question this assertion. "The 'fluenzy is very raging these times," he remarked.
"'Tis a nassty, dirty disease altogether, God help us!" said Mrs. Twomey, with feeling.
"It is, and very numerous," replied John Brien. "There's people dying now that never died before."
This statement presented no difficulty to Mrs. Twomey, since she had no desire to exult over Mr. Brien as being what is often called a typical Irishman, and was able to accept its rather excessive emphasis in the sense in which it was intended.
"I'm told Major Lowry is sick enough," went on John Brien; "an impression like, on the heart, they tells me."
"He have enough to trouble him," said Mrs. Twomey, portentously; "and I wouldn't wish it to him. A fine man he was. Ye'd stand in the road to look at him! The highest gentleman of the day!"
"Well, that's true enough," said John Brien, cautiously. "There's some says the servants in the house didn't get their hire this two years."
"Dirty little liars!" said Mrs. Twomey, warmly. "Divil mend them, and their chat! There isn't one but has as many lies told as'd sicken an ass! Wasn't I selling a score of eggs to the Docthor's wife a' Saturday, and she askin' me this an' that, and 'wasn't it said young Mr. Coppinger was to marry Miss Christhian Lowry'? Ah ha! She was dam' sweet, but she didn't get—" Mrs. Twomey swiftly licked and exhibited a grey and wrinkled finger—"thatmuch from me!"
"Ha, very good, faith!" said John Brien; "them women wants to know too much!"
"And if they do itself," retorted Mrs. Twomey, instant in defence of her sex, "isn't it to plase the min that's follyin' them for the news! Yis! An' they too big fools to hear it for theirselves!"
John Brien, somewhat stupefied by this home thrust, made no reply, but smote the donkey heavily, provoking it to a jog that temporarily jolted conversation to death.
At the next incline, however, Mrs. Twomey took up her parable again.
"Tell me now awhile, John, what day is this th' election is?"
"I d'no if it isn't Choosday week it is," replied John Brien, without interest. "There's two o' them up for it now. Young Coppinger, that was the first in it, and a chap from T'prairy. What's this his name is?—Burke, I think it is. Sure they had two meetin's after chapel at Riverstown last Sunday. Roaring there they were out o' mothor-cars. But it's little I regard them and their higs and thrigs!"
"Why wouldn't ye wote for Larry Coppinger, John?" said Mrs. Twomey, persuasively "and him 'All-for-Ireland'! A strong, cocky young boy he is too; greatly for composhing he is, an' painting, an' the like o' that. Sure didn't I tell him it was what it was he had a rag on every bush! 'Well,' says he, 'Mrs. Twomey,' says he, 'I'll have another rag on another bush soon,' says he. 'Sir,' says I to him, 'that much would not surpass your honour!' But faith, they're tellin' me now Burke'll have him bet out, and I'm sorry to me heart for it."
John Brien looked from one side of the road to the other, and ahead, between his donkey's ears. The mist was close round the cart as the walls of a room; the only sound was the thin wind singing in the telegraph wires.
"Mrs. Twomey," murmured John Brien, "the Clergy is agin him!"
"Oh, great and merciful Lord God!" said Mrs. Twomey. She said it without either irreverence or reverence. She merely wished to express to John Brien her comprehension of the importance of his statement.
Larry had flung himself into electioneering as an alternative to drink. That was how he put it to himself. He took rooms at Hallinan's Hotel, in Cluhir, in order to be on top of the railway station, and the situation generally, and he had, moreover, a standing invitation to No. 6, The Mall, for any meal, at any hour of the day or night, that he found suitable. The district to be canvassed was a wide one, and day after day Larry and the faithful Barty went forth to interview "People of importance"; darkly-cautious publicans, with wives lurking at hand to make sure that "Himself" should do nothing rash; uninterested farmers, who "had their land bought," and were left cold by the differences 'twixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee; and visits to "The Clergy" of all denominations, productive of much artificially friendly converse and no very definite promises.
Of Larry's own Communion, Father Tim Sweeny alone announced himself, unhesitatingly, as being of Larry's camp. Father Tim's hostility had not been proof against Larry's charms, more especially since these were combined with a substantial proof of the young candidate's interest in the decoration of the new chapel; and, at the gate of that chapel, (the site of which he did not forget that he owed to Larry) he attended one of Larry's meetings, and shook his bovine head at his flock, and bellowed ferocious commendation of the young man, who, he thundered, had not failed in his duty by the Church and the people. There was a downright, fighting quality in Father Sweeny that was large and stimulating. Larry felt that he had, at least, his own parish firmly at his back, and wished that he had a few more such as Father Tim to stand by him.
The Rev. Matthew Cotton (stiffened by Mrs. Cotton) said that to enter a hustings for a Home Ruler, of any variety, would be for him an unauthorised bowing down in the House of Rimmon, a simile that conveyed little to Larry, and nothing at all, allegorically, to his agent, Barty Mangan, though its practical interpretation presented no difficulties to either of them.
The Reverend Mr. Armstrong, Pastor of the Methodists, admitted to a preference for an "All-for-Irelander," as opposed to an Official Nationalist; but evaded the responsibility of a promise by saying that he would lay the matter before the Lord, and would write later.
Neither did young Mr. Coppinger receive much encouragement from his own class. Bill Kirby, indeed, undertook to support him and even volunteered to go round with him on his canvassing expeditions, but this was considered by Larry's Committee as being of questionable advantage, even, possibly, affording to the enemy an occasion to blaspheme, and the offer (made, it may be said, at Judith's instigation) was declined.
Nor, as a matter of fact, was Larry himself disposed to take Bill Kirby's proffered hand. He told himself that he was done with that lot. He was bitterly angry with Christian. He said to himself that he would never forgive her; would never, if he could help it, see one of them again. At a word from her father she had chucked him; without a moment of hesitation, without a word to show that she was even sorry for her father's treatment of him. "Apparently it's the only thing to do!" she had said. That was all she thought of keeping a promise! What about leaving father and mother and sticking to your husband, he would like to know! These Protestants who talked such a lot about reading the Bible! It was quite true what old Mangan had said: "When all comes to all, a man must stick to his own Church!" All these others, these St. Georges, and Westropps, and old Ardmore, and the rest of them, had only been waiting to jump on him as soon as he put a foot out of the rut they all walked in. They had waited for the chance to make him a pariah. Now they had it. All right! He could face that. They should soon see how little he thought of them!
He pitched himself headlong into the contest. The weather had fallen from grace. October, having been borne in on the wings of a gale, was storming on through wind and wet, and the game of canvassing, that had seemed, on that sunny day when he had written to Christian, so "frightfully interesting," was beginning to pall. Boring as were the personal interviews, and exhausting the evening oratory in town halls and school-houses, the Sunday meetings at the gates of the chapels were still more arduous. On each Sunday, during the period between the death of Daniel Prendergast and the election of his successor, did young Mr. Coppinger, with chosen members of his "Commy-tee"—he had learnt to accept the inflexible local pronunciation—splash from chapel to chapel, to meet the congregations, and to shout platitudes to them. Larry began to feel that no conviction—however fervently held—could survive the ordeal of being slowly yelled to a bored crowd from the front seat of a motor car. He told himself that he had become a gramophone, and a tired gramophone, badly in want of winding up, at that.
It would be of little avail to attempt to define the precise shade of green of young Mr. Coppinger's political flag; whether, as a facetious supporter put it, it was "say-green, pay-green, tay-green, or bottle." It is enough to say that it varied sufficiently from that of Mr. Burke to provide their respective followers with a satisfactorycasus belli. The shades of political opinion in Ireland change, and melt and merge into each other as the years pass, even as the colours of her surrounding seas vary, deepening and paling with the changing clouds, yet affecting only the surface, leaving the sullen depths unchanged. Larry knew no more of Ireland than a boy can learn in his school holidays; it was only by degrees that he realised that in Ireland, as he now found it, the single element of discord that remained ever unchanged was Religion. He had spent the four most recent and most receptive years of his life in an atmosphere in which religion had no existence. The hem of its raiment might, perhaps, have been touched, when, as sometimes happened, the subject of a studio composition was taken from the Bible, or the Apocrypha. Then, possibly, would the young pagans of Larry's circle discover as much acquaintance with the Scriptures as would point a jest, and give an agreeable sensation of irreverence in discussing the details of the subject.
"There," thought Larry, "no one thought about your religion. No one cared if you had one, and the presumption was that you hadn't." But here, in these little Irish towns, the question of a man's private views on a matter that might be supposed to concern only himself, appeared of paramount importance. He listened to denunciations of Protestants until he felt, as he told the faithful Barty, that "for tuppence" he would change over himself; just as in some sections of the rival camp, he would have heard to weariness of the bigotry and errors of Romanism. He was brought, as many people more God-fearing than he have been brought, to debate the question as to whether a common atheism were not the only panacea for the mutual hatreds that, as appeared to him from his present point of view, ruled the Island of Saints. He and Barty would sit up over the dying embers of the dining-room fire of No. 6, The Mall, talking; wrangling, in a sort of country-dance of argument, in which they advanced and retired, and joined hands, and flung away from each other again; ending, generally, in such agreement as might be found in a common determination to lay all the blame for all the malice and uncharitableness at the door of the clergy of the two creeds; a comprehensive decision, and a consoling one, from the point of view of two laymen.
Larry, in his loneliness, had fallen into the habit of frequenting No. 6; of "taking pot-luck," of "dropping in," or of "turning in," all of which courses had been urged upon him by his captor, Dr. Mangan. Those great and special gifts of the Mangan family, the love of music, and the habit of it (which are not always allied) bestowed upon the household a charm that was almost more potent for Larry than any other could have been. At the end of a long day of canvassing, spent with companions who, he felt, only half trusted him, and were incapable of being amused by the things that amused him (a factor in friendship that cannot be valued too highly) it was comforting to "drop in" to the hospitable, untidy house, where, thanks to Mrs. Mangan's early experiences, there was always good luck in the pot, and to spend a peaceful evening over the fire, smoking, and listening to the famous Mangan Quartet. Music was the initial point of contact between Larry and these people among whom he had once more been cast, and the Big Doctor was not unaware of the fact. Singly, or united, the Mangan voices, mellow, tuneful, singing songs of Ireland with artless grace and charm, wrought more in Larry's soul than he was aware of. Not only to his ears, but to his eyes also, the Mangan Quartet brought artistic satisfaction. The Big Doctor, with his sombre face and overhanging brow, looking, in the lamplight, like a Rembrandt burgomaster; Barty and his mother, pale and dark-eyed, recalling Southern Italy rather than Southern Ireland; and Tishy—Larry's eyes used to dwell longest on Tishy, her face lit by her most genuine feeling, the love of music, while her voice of velvet (of purple velvet, he decided) mourned for Patrick Sarsfield, or lamented with Emer for Cuchulain, or thrilled her listener with the sudden glory of "The Foggy Dew." Larry's own voice was habitually exhausted by the cart-tail oratory in which he daily expended it; it was enough for him to listen and look, shutting his mind to the past, living, as ever, in the present, like a wise man, because its bounty sufficed him.
CHAPTER XXXIV
At a little before this time a sufficiently epoch-making scene had taken place between Dr. Mangan and his daughter, following not long on that day when the elephant had conveyed his captive to the depths of the jungle.
"Tishy!" said the Big Doctor, looming large at the door of the dining-room where his daughter was engaged in trimming a hat, "come down to the surgery a minute; I want you."
The feather to which Miss Mangan had just imparted the correct "set," was only fixed in position with a precarious pin, none the less, Tishy, albeit vexed, did not delay. She had a well-founded respect for the Fifth Commandment, as far, at all events, as her father was concerned. She abandoned the hat, and followed the Doctor through the narrow hall-passage and into the surgery, with a promptness that she was not wont to exhibit in obeying an order that was not convenient.
Dr. Mangan had seated himself at his desk, and was writing. Tishy stood by the seat dedicated to patients; she wished to imply that she had been interrupted in her work, and that her time was of value.
"There now," said Dr. Mangan, thumping the envelope that he had just closed and directed, on the blotting-paper, with his big fist, "I want you to run round to Hallinan's with this for me."
"Is it a hurry?" asked Tishy, unwillingly.
"It is. It's to order rooms for Larry Coppinger. He's coming to stay in town till the election's over. Sit down there a minute."
Tishy obeyed, and the Doctor surveyed her attentively. The position that is assigned to patients in a doctor's consulting room is one that faces the light, pitilessly, inescapably; but for Tishy, this was a negligible disadvantage. A peacock butterfly looks its best in sunlight, and Tishy's dark bloom, and intent eyes of luminous grey, faced the glare of October sunlight with confident unconcern.
"A right-down handsome girl!" he had called her, to himself, more than-once; now, he thought, she had good looks enough for any man in Europe. It was not his habit to betray his feelings; but as he sat there, appraising her, weighing her beauty, as a jeweller might appraise some rich-hued ruby that a kind fate had placed in his hands, sheer pride in her made him smile, and he was hard put to it to keep up the severity that he believed the occasion exacted.
"I've a couple of things to say to you," he resumed, "and you know as well as I do that I've no fancy for saying things twice. I've seen Ned Cloherty sneaking about the Mall very often lately—like as if he was waiting for somebody. I'm not saying it's for you or me he's waiting; you might know that better than I do. But he's no great ornament to the view there, or anywhere else, as far as I can see!"
Tishy put her strong, rounded chin in the air, and said, "I suppose other people have a right to use the roads as well as us!"
The Doctor was glad that his face was shadowed, as he noted the arrogant tilt of her head, and the smooth, cream-white pillar of her neck that it revealed, since the smile of paternal pride would not be denied. He didn't blame Ned Cloherty to be sneaking about after her; there wasn't her like in the county. But she very certainly was too good for the likes of Ned Cloherty. "Now, Babsey," he said, and Tishy knew that the old pet name denoted a satisfaction with her that might not otherwise betray itself, "you're a sensible girl, and I needn't go out of my way to tell you things that you're smart enough to see for yourself. You're 'pert enough without Latin'—as they say! Well, I'll just say one other thing to you, and it's this. Larry Coppinger's up for this election, and I've told him to use this house, like his own, as much as he wants to," the Doctor stood up and took a pocket-book from the breast-pocket of his coat. "You're to make it agreeable for him to come here. Mind that! And more than agreeable! I'll think very little of you if you don't have him at your feet before you're done with him!" he went on, selecting something from among the papers in the pocket-book as he spoke. "There's not a girl in Ireland that wouldn't half hang herself for the chance you'll have! And there's not a girl in Cluhir but will be gibeing you if you lose it!" He took a step towards where Tishy was sitting, and put his hand under his chin.
Her bright water-grey eyes were alight with mutiny; she laughed defiantly.
"Suppose I don't want it!"
Her father looked steadily at her; he saw, as clearly as if she had spoken, that the suggestion had excited her.
"Well, Babs," he said, with the laugh that always seemed an octave higher than matched with his voice, "if you're able to bring him to your feet—and I'm not saying you will! You might find it a bit of a job too!—you'll want a dandy pair of shoes on them! Put this in your pocket."
He had taken a ten-pound note out of his pocket-book, and he pushed it into Tishy's strong and supple white hand.
CHAPTER XXXV
Great pain paralyses the mind, as the torture of a limb makes the limb faint and helpless. When the heart-pain can be dealt with as a separate thing, it is no longer supreme.
This was the difference between Christian and Larry. Her love was herself, indivisible, a condition of her being. When it ceased, it would mean that the creature that called herself Christian Talbot-Lowry had ceased also. During the long, bright morning, after Larry and Dr. Mangan had departed together, she felt that this had happened; that the part of her that knew and suffered had gone away, or was lying dead in her. There was a weight in her breast, she could feel it, but she scarcely felt pain, only a great bewilderment, an incredulity that this thing, of whose reality her mind told her, but without conviction, should have happened to her, just precisely to her, out of all the people in the world. People have felt this when that iron shutter that is called Death has fallen between them and that one who was their share of the world. A part of them, some plausible imitation of them, can speak and act, and be extolled, perhaps, for facing the music stoutly; while the stricken thing that is themselves, is lying prone before the iron shutter; beating on it with broken hands, calling, and hearing no answer.
It was nearly a month now since Dick Talbot-Lowry had asserted his paternal rights, and had, following various classic and biblical precedents, sacrificed his daughter to his own particular formulæ of religion and politics. He would never know that it had been the appeal that weakness makes to strength that had given him his victory. When he spoke to Lady Isabel of his scene with Larry, he told her that he had nipped the thing in the bud. The damned puppy of a fellow took for granted that Christian was in love with him; but here she was, going about as usual, as jolly as a sandboy; "in fact," Dick would say, plastering up with bromidic mortar the windows of the narrow dwelling wherein dwelt Lady Isabel's soul, "all's well that ends well!" With which valuable aphorism, sanctioned by a long and respectable past, the Major contentedly fed his heart, and tranquillised that of his wife.
Judith was less confident of the satisfactory end of all things. She was, in fact, exceedingly indignant that an engagement so entirely advantageous from all practical points of view should be broken off; "simply to gratify Papa's imbecile prejudices!" she declared, with her usual emphasis. "Christian, you were a fool to mind what he said or did.Hewouldn't have died! Not a bit of him! Of course, Mother has got to agree with him—that's what he married her for!"
"Don't tire me, Judy, please," Christian would say, serenely. "It's all over now. These discussions only weary me. I assure you my philosophy is quite equal to the strain!"
"If that's the case, I don't know why you should look like a dying ghost!"
Judith had never entirely comprehended her younger sister, and she found her, as she said with indignation to the concurring Bill, absolutely dark and inscrutable over the whole affair.
"I know it's hit her hard, but nothing will make her admit it. I detest Spartan Boys!" said Judith.
The Spartan Boy in question, though aware of her sister's ardent desire to investigate her wounds, had no intention of removing the cloak that covered them. She wrapped it close about her, so close that Lady Isabel, while unable to stifle a motherly regret for the wedding that might have been, thanked heaven that Christian had not "really cared"; so close that even Judith said that, since Christian had not been hit too hard, though she regretted thecoup manquéshe personally found some consolation in the fact that she would not be called upon to make apologies for the political aberrations of her brother-in-law.
The polling day came, and passed with but little excitement.
"You wouldn't har'ly know it," said a voter, who had returned to his normal avocations after a morning wasted, as he considered, in the task of recording his vote. "There was a few men drunk in the town. Which won is it? Bedad, they dunno yet. Father Sweeny it was marched in the Pribawn boys. Faith, he had them well regulated. Very nate they marched, very nate entirely. They never were in such rotation!"
The voter bent melancholy and slightly bloodshot eyes upon Christian, and awaited her reply.
Christian, with her usual miscellaneous company of dogs, was on her way to visit a woman whose husband had died not long before. Her way took her along the banks of the Broadwater, and during one of the frequent pauses, necessitated by the investigations into the private affairs of water-rats and others, made by her companions, she and Peter Callaghan had exchanged greetings. He and Christian had fallen into talk, with the absence of formality that is, perhaps, peculiar to intercourse between his class and hers. He leant upon his scythe, and discoursed seriously and courteously. He wore a soft, slouched black hat, that did not wholly conceal his thick and curly hair, in which there was scarcely a grey strand, though he was, as he told Christian, the one age with her father. His white flannel jacket was wrapped round him, its skirts pushed under the band of his brown frieze trousers. A red wisp of rag was knotted round his middle, and held all together. His pale grey and wistful eyes looked at Christian from above a tangled thicket of grizzled moustache and beard. He suggested almost equally, a conventional Saint Joseph and a stage-brigand—a brigand, as it might be, who had joined the Salvation Army. "As old as I am," he returned, dreamily, to the affair of the morning, "I stepped it away with them!"
He turned his eyes from Christian's face to the large and sliding brightness of the river.
There followed a moment of silence that was filled by the yelps of the little dogs who had marked a water-rat to ground, and the hobble-de-hoy shouts of the hound puppies, uttered with no definite idea of the cause of their enthusiasm, but none the less enthusiastic for that reason.
"Are you the youngest young lady, I beg your pardon?" Peter Callaghan asked presently. "It's long since I seen you. Your father knows me well. I remember of one time when the hounds was crossing my land, and I seen yourself and your sisther taking the hur'ls. I cries out to ye 'me heart'd rise at ye, my darlins!' and the Major, he laughs!"
"I remember jumping the hurdles," said Christian; "I'll tell my father I met you."
"He gave me permission to cut the 'looha' in these fields," resumed Peter Callaghan. "I'm thankful to him. I have a good sop of it cut."
He waved a hand; Christian saw, at a little distance, a heap of rushes, and, seated on it, a girl, of whose presence she had been unaware. She was very pale, and there was a fixity of sadness about her. Christian spoke to her, but she did not appear to notice.
"She's my daughter," said Peter Callaghan in his quiet voice. "She wouldn't know it was to her you spoke. She's dark, the creature. Blinded she is. She's not long that way."
"How did it happen?" said Christian, in a low voice.
"You could not say," said Peter Callaghan; his dreamy eyes roved again over the broad river; "God left a hand on her," he said.
Christian went on her way, and the words stayed with her. "God left a hand on her." There had been no resentment in the father's voice, only a profound and noble gravity.
"And here am I," thought Christian, "angry and whimpering——"
Mrs. James Barry lived a mile or so farther down the river. Christian gathered up her pack of terriers, hound puppies, and red setters, with the farm collie to complete its absurdity, and walked fast. October was just ending; the willows along the river-bank were yellow, the reeds in the ditches that ran beneath each fence were greying and withering. The successive profiles of wood and hill, down the valley of the river went from orange and brown to a reddish purple, until, in the large serenity of the autumn evening, they softened to the universal blue of distance.
Mrs. Barry's farm-house stood a little back from the river. A stream that widened to a pond, and narrowed again to a stream, divided the house from the fields that ran between it and the river; the decent thatched roofs and whitewashed walls of the farm, and the elm trees that grew beside it, were mirrored in the pond. A flotilla of geese and ducks paraded, in stately fatuity, to and fro across the mirror. A battered little wooden bridge, painted green, enabled the people of the farm to reach the banks of the river. Christian crossed it, and went up to the open door of the house.
In the kitchen a red-haired woman was seated, rocking a wooden cradle with her foot while she stitched at a child's frock. Hens, with their alert and affected reserve of manner, stepped in and out of the doorway, sometimes slowly, with poised claw, sometimes headlong, with greedy speed. Christian watched them and the hound puppies (in whose power of resistance to temptation she had no confidence), while she talked to the woman of the house, and heard the story of her trouble.
Her husband had been "above in the hospital at Riverstown. He was in it with a fortnight," said the red-haired woman in the idiom of her district, the noise of the rocker of the cradle on the earthen floor beating through her words; "he had a bunch, like, undher his chin, and they were to cut it." She paused, and the wooden bump of the cradle filled the pause.
"When they had it cut, he rose up on the table, and all his blood went from him; only one little tint, I suppose, stopped in him. Afther a while, the nurse seen the life creeping back in him. 'We have him yet!' says she to the Docthor. 'I thought he was gone from us!' says the Docthor." The voice ceased again. The speaker slashed the frock in her hand at an over-bold hen, who had skipped on to the table beside her and was pecking hard and sharp at some food on a plate.
"They sent him home then. We thought he was cured entirely. He pulled out the summer, but he had that langersome way with him through all."
She was silent a moment, then she looked at Christian, with grief, crowned and omnipotent, on her tragic brow.
"As long as he was alive, I had courage in spite of all, but when I thinks now of them days, and the courage I had, it goes through me!" Her red-brown eyes stared through the open door at the path twisting across the field to the high road.
"Ye'll never see him on that road again, and when I looks up it me heart gets dark. Sure, now when he's gone, I thinks often, if he'd be lyin' par'lysed above in the bed, I'd be runnin' about happy!"
When Christian went home Mrs. Barry walked with her to the little green bridge, and stood there until her visitor reached the bend of the river where the path passed from her sight.
At the turning Christian looked back and saw the lonely figure standing at the bridge-head, and again she said to herself: "Here am I, angry and whimpering!"
CHAPTER XXXVI
Doctor Mangan told himself that he had never laid out a ten-pound note to better advantage than the one he had pushed into the heel of Tishy's fist. It had, as he thought it would, clinched the matter. He had never been unaware of the menace of Cloherty, R.A.M.C., but he was confident in the three forces that he had at his command—authority, bribery, and propinquity.
"If I know my young lady," he said cheerfully to himself, "she'll think more of Larry at her elbow, than of that foxy devil back at Riverstown" (which was the present scene of Captain Cloherty's professional labours). "And what's more, if Tishy will only give her mind to it, it'll take a stiffer lad than Master Larry to be man enough for her! She downed him once, and she'll do it again, in spite of Christian Lowry!"
Even as the Big Doctor thought, there were many more that fought for him in this matter than against him. Potent had been his suggestion to his daughter that there wasn't a girl in Cluhir that wouldn't "be gibeing at her" if she lost so golden an opportunity, nor one that would believe she had not half hanged herself to secure it. (And though it has not been possible to include them in this chronicle, it may be accepted that there were many girls in Cluhir of the lively malevolence of whose gibes Tishy was entirely sensible.) Even more potent was the pull of Larry's position, theprestigeof his money, of his "place," of his good looks; most potent of all, the fact of his nearness, the mere primary fact that he was a young man, in whose company she was daily thrown, whose unattached status (the Doctor had kept his own counsel as to that interview with Christian, and his deductions therefrom) was a continual challenge to her charms, whose mere presence was an excitement an a stimulus.
As the polling day approached, and effort became more strenuous, Larry fell ever more gratefully into the habit of No. 6, The Mall. Of coming in, in the gloom of the wet afternoon, and finding Tishy mending her gloves, or stitching something all lace and ribbons, something that would obviously blossom into a "Sunday blouse," but that, with flash of her grey eyes, she would tell him was "poor-clothes,' that the Nuns had asked her to make. Of sitting on the big sofa beside her, and teasing her about Captain Cloherty and the adventure in which Tinker took a leading part.
"If you go telling tales to the Doctor, you'll be sorry!"
"How can you make me sorry?"
"Wait awhile and you'll find out! There are plenty ways to teach little boys manners! Oh, look now what you've done! You've made me pull the thread out o' me needle. Thread it now, you!"
Then Larry, with his quick eye and steady hand, would annoy her by threading it as deftly as she herself could have done, would possibly contribute some enormous stitches to the confection, and, by the time its construction was seriously resumed, the collaborators on the big sofa would have advanced a stage further on the road through the jungle, that had, with so much foresight and patience, been prepared for them.
Young Mr. Coppinger's hopes and fears as to his prospects of becoming a Member of Parliament varied no more than was suitable in the possessor of the artistic temperament, but Barty, his agent in chief, maintained an attitude of unbroken pessimism. That whisper of the secret and late-declared antagonism of the Church had reached him, and in the secure seclusion of his own office he inveighed against clerical interference with all the fierceness of a dog chained in his kennel, who knows that his adversaries are as unable to touch him as he is to injure them. Only, in Barry's case, he was quite sure that his barkings were unheard, and he would have been exceedingly alarmed had he thought otherwise.
"I declare to God I don't care what way it goes!" Larry had said many times, but most often when fatigue and discouragement had together taken control.
Such times had come more often during the last week Before the election, and they reached their climax on the evening of the polling day. The two young men, mentally and physically demoralised by fatigue, had at length, at an hour considerably past midnight, escaped from their colleagues, and, having gained the sanctuary of Barty's office, were drearily reviewing the position by the light of a smoky lamp and over the ashes of a dead fire; counting possible votes, making unconvincing calculations based on supposition, wading hand-in-hand ever deeper into the Slough of Despond.
"I was talking to your father this evening," said Larry, lighting a cigarette and letting himself fall into an ancient rocking-chair. "He wouldn't give me an opinion one way or the other, but it's my belief he thinks it's a bad chance."
"I believe he's done his best for you," said Barty, dubiously; "but the way he's situated, he doesn't like to come out too strong one way or the other."
"Quite right too; I'm a rotten proposition," said Larry, "and this dam' cigarette won't draw!"
"I could stand getting licked," went on Barty, too preoccupied to consider the plaints of his principal, "if I thought the Clergy had played fair. Father Hogan and Father Sweeney stood to us well, and I know Father Greer was for you at the first go-off; but God knows what way he and the rest o' them went, after. I wouldn't trust them——" His dark and mournful eyes rested dejectedly upon Larry. "And what's more, they don't trust you!"
"They're perfectly right," said Larry; "shows their sense! You and I are what Father Greer and the rest of them would consider rotten bad Catholics, and I believe they know it!" He got up from the limping old rocking-chair and stretched himself, with a yawn that prolonged itself into a howl. "Oh Dark Rosaleen!—or Kathleen-ni-Houlihan—or anything else you like to call yourself—if you only knew how really and sincerely devoted I am to you! I believe I'm a perfectly single-minded Irish patriot, and ye you won't believe in me, and no more will any one else except this bloody old fool of a Barty here! Barry my hearty, I'm going to bed! I'm done! Don't wake me till the news comes in——" He gave vent to another heart-broken yawn.
"Well, for God's sake stop howling like a banshee, and go!" replied the hard-pressed Barty, "I'm about done myself!"
The opening Meet of the Broadwater Vale Hounds chanced to take place at Cluhir Bridge, on the day after the election. Larry, finishing a late breakfast at Hallinan's Hotel, heard the beloved sounds of the hunt, the pistol-cracks of the whips, the clatter of horse-hoofs, the jingle of bits, and the steady paddling of hounds' feet in the muddy street. Joined with these was the clamour of the town curs and the thunder of the following rush of town boys along Cluhir's narrow pavements. Larry ran to the window, and opening it, found himself practically face to face with young Georgy Talbot-Lowry, riding a horse of Bill Kirby's.
The sight of the hounds drove from his mind the resolve to have no dealings more with the house of Talbot-Lowry.
"Hullo, Georgy!" he shouted: "I didn't know you were home——"
Georgy gave a quick look at the window, and directed his gaze between his horse's ears; save that his face had turned as red as his coat, there was nothing, as he jogged on, to indicate that he had either seen or heard.
Larry banged down the window, in a state of conflagration, every strained nerve vibrating. What need to attempt to recount what he said or thought? Dark Rosaleen has made trouble often enough between nearer and dearer than Larry and his young cousin. She will send brothers to fight each other to the changing music of her harp, crowned and uncrowned; she will gather her sons under the sign of the Cross, and encourage them to hate one another for the love of God. This was only a trivial bit of mischief hardly worthy of our attention, were it not that it had its share in the macadamising of that jungle road in which, as is frequent in such routes, the preliminary labour had been undertaken by an elephant, under the direction of a skilful mahout.
It was dark when the news came to Cluhir, six o'clock of a wet night. The counting of the votes had taken place elsewhere, and the word was to come by wire. Barty and Larry, with others of the rival "Commy-tees," had hung about between the post-office, and their respective offices, and houses of call, all day. Many drinks had been drunk, many bets been laid; before the news came through, Larry's proclaimed indifference as to the result had worn so thin as to be imperceptible. It seemed to him, during the tedious hours of that dark and wet afternoon, that success in this enterprise was the only thing left in life worth having. To triumph, secretly, over that secret clerical opposition, to snap his fingers, openly, at Georgy Talbot-Lowry's impudence and all that it implied of hostility and contempt. These were the great objects of life, the things that justified all the double dealing, and the lies, and the humbug of the past weeks. There was no such thing as patriotism, and ideals were rot. He had claimed last night to be a single-minded patriot, but to-day he knew better; he had become a man, and had put ideals away, with love, and other childish things. The main thing was to have your desire of your enemy.
He was standing in the heavy downpour on the outskirts of the group that waited outside the post-office; he was sick with suspense and fatigue, and hardly troubled to move as a motor came slowly nosing its way through the crowd. It passed within a few inches of him and stopped. He heard the Big Doctor's voice.
"Get into the car out of the rain," it commanded. "D'ye want to be ill on my hands again? I'll run you down to No. 6. Let Barty 'phone the news to you. Isn't that what he's for?"
Larry was alone in the dining-room of No. 6 when the telephone summoned him. He had eaten nothing since breakfast; his hand shook with cold and excitement, and he could scarcely hold the switch firmly.
"Burke, 1047; Coppinger, 705;" Barty's voice sounded flat and without emotion. "Majority against us, 342. Can you hear? Adverse majority, 342! They've beaten us to babby-rags!" The voice ceased.
Larry said: "All right, old chap. Thanks!" and hung up the receiver.
He returned to the dirty, comfortable old sofa by the fire.
Beaten! and Larry was used to victory. In all his twenty-five years of life, he had never been thwarted. What he wished to do, that he did, in games, in sport, in art. He might have said, with Beatrice: "There was a star danced, and under that was I born!"
The first defeat he could remember was the one he had suffered at Christian's hands, and here he was, turned down again, twice in a month!
"My luck's out!" he said, staring at the flickering, whispering fire, and feeling that ebbing of life which will befall, even at five and twenty, when exhaustion, that has been held at bay by excitement and hope, comes to its own.
The door burst open, and Tishy came swiftly into the room.
"I've just heard!" she said. "Dad got it on the other 'phone. It's a wicked shame and a disgrace! That's what it is!" Her voice was hot with wrath and sympathy; she flung across the room and caught Larry's hand and shook it vehemently. "The fools!" she cried, furiously. "You were too good for them, that's what it was! The dirty, low, common—Oh, there's no words bad enough for them!" Her eyes blazed; she looked exceedingly handsome. She was moved by a perfectly genuine emotion of indignation; Larry was Mangan property, and it was not fitting that the leading family of Cluhir should be defeated.
"You look half dead this minute!" she cried, pushing him down on to the sofa by the hand that she had taken. "Sit down for gracious sake!"
Again the door opened, and from without the Doctor's deep voice said:
"Tishy! Come here a minute, I want you."
Larry, sitting on the sofa, watching his wet boots steaming, was conscious of a sense of consolation. It was something to know that these kind people cared. He heard the light chink of glasses, and looked round, and saw Tishy coming into the room, bearing a tray, on which were a cake, and wineglasses, and a bottle of champagne.
"Dad says he prescribes a little stimulant!" said Tishy, gaily, "the wire's cut——"
She took the cork out of the bottle with a strong, capable hand, and filled two glasses. "Drink that at once now! And I'll drink one drop myself—just for luck! Here now! Here's to the next time, and you at the top of the poll!"
"Sounds as if I were a bear!" said Larry, with a pale smile at her, as he lifted the glass, "Clink!" He touched her glass, and then drank the wine thirstily.
"I was just about cooked," he said apologetically. "Awfully good of you and the Doctor——"
"Ah, don't be talking nonsense!" interrupted Tishy. "Here, show me your glass——"
The glasses were very large and old fashioned; she refilled his, brimmingly. "Now, sit down, and drink that, and eat a bit of cake. Not a word out of you now! Only do as you're told!"
Then, as he obeyed her, she suddenly knelt beside him, and before he realised what she was doing she began to unlace his boots. Larry started up, horrified and protesting.
"Sit down at once and be good!" said Tishy, holding firmly to the foot on which she had begun operations, and with a vigorous jerk compelling him to obedience. "I'll do what I choose, I always do!"
Her nimble, white fingers made short work of the task that she had set herself; Larry's remonstrances availed him nothing. She had insisted on refilling his glass a third time, and the wine had begun to take away from him the feeling of reality, and to make everything seem hazy and indefinite, but quite agreeable.
"There now!" said Tishy, pushing the boots under the sofa, "aren't you obliged to me? I often did that for the Doctor, but I never saw such lovely green silk socks onhim, I can tell you!"
The champagne had made her eyes very bright; there was a look in them that spoke to a dim memory in Larry's cloudy mind. She was still kneeling beside him, and as she prepared to rise, she rested one hand on his knee to help herself. Larry put his hand on hers, and leaned forward. Her brilliant, challenging face was very near his. His memory cleared in a flash, and he thought of the night, long ago, when they had played at forfeits.
"'My shoe buckle or my lips'? Do you remember?" he said, with an unsteady laugh, answering the challenge. "It's my turn now—which will you have?"
He did not wait for an answer, but looking straight into her eyes, he bent down and kissed her laughing, red lips.
The situation had not materially changed when Dr. Mangan's large presence was suddenly developed at the end of the sofa. He had come noiselessly in, and was surveying his daughter and guest with a benedictory smile.
"So that's the way, is it?" he said quietly.
The hot dream that held Larry, melted and reeled a little. He released Tishy from his enfolding arms, and wondered if he had better risk standing up. He wished old Mangan hadn't come bothering in. He had only just begun to find out how much he liked Tishy.
But he stood up, and met the Doctor's smile with a guilty and foolish grin, holding on with one hand to the end of the sofa. Tishy continued to hold his other hand; he felt as if he should fall if she relinquished it.
"Well, I suppose I may draw my own conclusions from what I see?" went on the Big Doctor, in a voice that oozed fatherliness at every syllable. "Eh, Larry?"
Larry swayed a little; his yellow hair was ruffled, his blue eyes shone, he looked like a child who had just been awakened.
"Oh quite so, sir," he said, laughing. "Apparently it's the only thing to do!" which was indisputable.
The bottle of champagne which had played its part so ably was finished later on, and the engagement was ratified and celebrated with the pomp that was its due.
CHAPTER XXXVII
Miss Letitia Mangan was a young woman of dauntless courage, who, as has been said of the sect spoken of by detractors as The Black Prozbytarians, feared neither God nor divil. To this rule there were, however, in Tishy's case, two exceptions admitted, and of these, one was her father, the other Father Greer. If, therefore, during the days that followed, when the streets of Cluhir were, as it were, mined with congratulations that exploded round her wherever and whenever she went abroad, any shade of doubt, any tenuous memory of the foxy devil back in Riverstown assailed her, she made haste to banish such with the thoughts of Father Greer's pontifical approval, and of the warmth of the paternal sunshine that now shone upon her and herfiancé.
Cluhir said that it was a very nice engagement, and a great match; there were not wanting those who said also that it was wonderful promotion for that Tishy Mangan. A tactless ex-charwoman had even referred to young Mr. Coppinger as being Miss Mangan's "up-raiser," and having enquired, with incredulity, of Mrs. Mangan ("and this before a crowd in Egan's shop, if you please!" as Mrs. Mangan reported) "Ma'am! are they in bonds?" she had so fervently thanked God on hearing that such was the case, that Mrs. Mangan said she could never enter Egan's again without she'd feel they were all laughing at her!
Of thefiancéand of his frame of mind, what shall be said? He, at all events, said as little to himself as was possible, but, in the circumstances, it was no more than could be expected that a lively fancy would not wholly be denied, and that occasional vagrant visions would present themselves uninvited. He pictured to himself a meeting with Christian, all in the clouds, of course; he told himself he had no wish to meet her, nor, if he did, was he at all likely to discuss the matter with her; still he thought that he would rather enjoy telling her that he had acknowledged his engagement with Tishy, to Tishy's father, in the very same words in which she, Christian, had broken hers with him. They had somehow stuck in his head. He would tell her that. He had certainly been rather screwed (but that there would be no necessity to mention); it was just a curious chance that he should have used them. He dramatised the interview in his mind. It would serve Christian right; it would be a rather jolly instance of retributive justice—only he wished that the Christian whom he visualised was not always that shadowed, ethereal Christian whom he had painted, with, as Rossetti said, the wonder not yet quite gone from that still look of hers. Bother Rossetti, anyway! What did it matter what he said? The main point was what Larry himself had said, and the result was that he was engaged to Tishy Mangan, solidly and seriously.
There was nothing fatiguingly ethereal about Tishy anyhow; she was just about as good-looking a girl as he had ever met in his life. He would take her to Paris some day, and would see what his pals would say to her. He thought there wouldn't be two opinions about her there. He and she would travel about a bit. He didn't feel as if he would care about settling down at Coppinger's Court at once. Anyhow he would have to fix up about Aunt Freddy. She hadn't written him much of a letter about his engagement; she seemed to like it just about as well as she had liked his excursion into politics.
"Of course Tishy's a Papist!" he thought, mockingly, accounting to himself for the chill of the congratulations. "That's enough for Aunt Freddy! But, hang it all, so am I! She ought to see how suitable it is! I'd like to lay on Father Greer to talk to her!"
There is no need to attempt to record in detail the comments of the wider circle of Larry's acquaintances, but it may be said that his friends of all ranks had one point in common, a sincere admiration for Dr. Mangan. Bill Kirby, who had supported him politically, now fell away from him. Judith had not refrained from admitting him to the secret which she had extracted from her younger sister, and Bill's references to young Mr. Coppinger and to Doctor, Mrs., and Miss Mangan, would have been very helpful to those ladies, of whom there were many, who took the matter to heart.
The unpopularity of the engagement was considerably aggravated by the extreme magnificence of the furs, presented by the bridegroom elect to hisfiancée, and worn by her at a meet of the hounds, which she attended in her father's motor.
It might have been some consolation to the neighbourhood had it known that those grey furs had been of the nature of a peace-offering, after a rather acute difference of opinion on that point of settling down at Coppinger's Court as opposed to going abroad. Larry had shelved it for the present, and had, as he told himself, made good by the dint of the furs. That had come out all right, but now, Larry, mounted on Joker, and led in chains at Tishy's motor-wheel, found that among his former allies of the hunt things were not as they once had been, and was not pleased. Singularly enough, Judith alone was faithful found among the faithless. She declared that Larry had been brutally and idiotically treated, and that this engagement was the result, and justified all that she had been saying for many past ages. When Larry appeared at the Meet, his scalp-lock prominent among Miss Mangan's furs, Judith alone of his former intimates met him with cordiality, condoled with him over his election defeat with sympathy, and congratulated him on his engagement with decorum.
"I felt it was only decent," she said later, to the friend to whom she complacently recounted her effort, "after he had been kicked downstairs by Papa, and booted out of the house by Christian, quite without justification. I congratulated him warmly! I absolutely rode up to the gorgeous Tishy and said civil things there too!"
"It was perfectly angelic of you!" said the friend.
"Quite the reverse, my dear!" said Judith, proudly. "But you see Bill has the hounds, and anyhow, I like to prepare for all contingencies!"
For the rest, a chilly neutrality reigned at the Meet. Larry was finding his official position of captive decidedly irksome. He wished that Tishy would not call him by his name every time she spoke to him; that she would not speak so loud; that this eternal jog to the covert would end before the Day of Judgment; finally, that he had stayed at home. He saw the red-headed Cloherty, and, failing more congenial society, joined him. But the red-headed Cloherty was crosser than any of them, and what the devil was it to him what Larry's politics or his matrimonial intentions were? Confound Cloherty, anyway! He was a sufficiently common object of the Cluhir scene—and infernally common at that. Hardly a day that you didn't meet him loafing about the town. Larry hadn't the smallest wish to talk to Cloherty. When, some brief time before the Day of Judgment, they reached the covert, it was drawn blank, and Bill Kirby took quite a month to get the hounds out. Hunting rabbits, of course. Larry never knew them so out of hand. And then another rotten jog along the road to the next draw. Why on earth couldn't Bill get into the country and let them have a school at least, and get away from these damned motors? He was hoarse from shouting replies to Tishy's airy nothings, all winged with his name, and all, he felt, addressed as much to the public as to him. She looked stunning, of course, and he was glad he had given her those furs, but three miles trying to keep a suspicious fool of a horse up to the elbow of a car roaring along at half speed, was——!
It matters not what Larry thought it was, the point is that Tishy thought it wasn't, and, suddenly realising his views, turned in one of those instantaneous furies of hers, to the cavalier at the other elbow of the car, who happened to be the red-headed Cloherty.
Larry, neglected, fell back, and presently found himself beside an old friend, Father David Hogan, the priest of Riverstown. It was nearly ten years since the great days of Father David's black mare; she had passed into legend, and Father David, something heavier than he was but no less keen, now followed hounds in more leisurely fashion on the back of the black mare's son, a portly and careful bay cob.
"I'm very pleased to see you out, Mr. Coppinger," Father David began, the kindly little blue eyes twinkling deep in his red face, confirming the assurance imparted by his extensive smile, that his friendship was still unshaken, "You've been missing some nice hunts."
"I've been too hard worked to get out, Father," apologised Larry.
"Ah, otherwise engaged, maybe?" said Father David, with a facetious stress on the word engaged. "I was greatly put out over the election," he continued. "Tell me now, why didn't the Unionists support you? I noticed that our worthy M.F.H. came to record his vote, but your cousin, the late M.F.H., was, as they say, conspicuous by his absence."
"He's quite an invalid now," said Larry shortly.
"Indeed? Indeed? And is that the case? I'm grieved to hear it!" Father David pressed the stout cob nearer to Joker, and murmured very confidentially. "I've known you since your boyhood I may say, Mr. Coppinger, and you will not consider me impertinent speaking to you. But could you tell me is it a fact what I'm 'hearing about the good Major—you, no doubt, have prior information——"
"I think that's very unlikely," said Larry, sulkily, flushing as he spoke.
Father David eyed Larry cautiously, and began to wonder if something he had been told not long since were true.
In Ireland, it may confidently be said, all things are known to the poor people, and a brief consideration of this position will show, that this being so, there is but little that is unknown to the Church.
"Well, Mr. Coppinger," Father Hogan resumed, "I'm told—only told, mind you—that the Major had Mount Music and the demesne advertised on the English papers——"
"Good God!" exclaimed Larry, startled out of his sulk; "to sell?"
Father David, like other gentlemen of his age and cloth, had the Baboo's predilection for a well-worn quotation. "As to that I cannot say," he said portentously. "''Tis whispered in Heaven, 'tis muttered in Hell' that the encumbrances are very heavy—mortgages and debts——. The good Major had a long family, Mr. Coppinger; fine, dashing young min they are too, but we all know that expenses do not tend to diminish as families grow up! Children may be a heritage that comes from the Lord, but unless other heritages accompany them——!" Father David put his head on one side, and, beaming at Larry, laid his little professional joke, so to speak, at his feet.
"Well, well," he resumed, "'What business is it of yours?' says you!"
"Not at all, Father," said Larry, still shaken by what he had heard. "Thank you for speaking to me—it's the first I've heard of it."
The procession of the hunt halted, the hounds left the road by the direct method of a high stone "gap," and Father David and the bay cob melted away to betake themselves to those secret equivalent routes known to those who have come to years of discretion in the hunting-field.
The second draw seemed at first as if it were to be no more fortunate than its predecessor. The covert was a patch of scrubby woodland at a little distance below the road, at the head of one of the long deep glens that were the terrors of the Broadwater country. The wind blew from the west, across the wide cleft of Gloun Kieraun, and the hounds were thrown into the wood in which the upper end of the glen was masked, and were encouraged to work downwards. An unaccustomed wave of misanthropy had assailed Larry, and instead of following with the crowd the course of the hounds, he moved onwards along the road, scarcely considering where he was going. He was thinking with consternation of what Father Hogan had told him. Larry was not of those who nurse their wrath to keep it warm, and the thought of Dick's misfortunes swept away the recollection of his insults. Joker had, of his own initiative, soon turned aside from the high road into a grassy lane, and he moved along it in the relentless manner in which many horses will decline to stand still while Larry, deep in thought, allowed the reins to lie on the horse's neck while he lit a cigarette and tried to fix in his memory Father David's exact words. He thought he would talk to Dr. Mangan about it. Things might be better than the old priest thought. From the thought of the doctor his mind passed on to that of his wedding. Was it possible that he was to be married next week? A distinct physical drop of the heart accompanied the realisation. "Nerves!" he told himself, and hurried on to reflect upon his bride. She certainly looked stunning in those grey furs; he was glad he had given them to her; she knocked spots off any other girl in the country. He impressed this thought on his mind. And she had sung jolly well last night, and had accompanied him quite decently. They would get on all right once they were married. She had been a bit edgey these last few days, but—some under-self warned him off the pursuit of this topic. He began to formulate excuses for her that inculpated himself. Larry "came of a gentle kind," and had the generous temper that finds it easier to bear than to ascribe blame.
A note of the horn was wafted sweetly across the glen, and he came to the surface of his thoughts. By Jove! Where had Joker got him to? The lane they had wandered down ran parallel with Gloun Kieraun, and a gap in the fence on his left made him aware that he was now moving abreast with the hunt, but was divided from his fellows by the chasm of the glen.
A second touch of the horn came; Larry checked his horse; Bill Kirby had seen him and was shouting to him.
"Head him back if he breaks your side! I want him his way!"
All jolly fine for old Bill, but where did young Mr. Coppinger come in? He held up his hand to show he had heard, and stood still.
One hound spoke, sharply, in the depths of the woody glen. Another and another joined in. In a moment, the echoing glen was full of voices; it was impossible to tell what was happening. A couple and a half emerged on the farther side in the heather above the trees, working a line upwards, and speaking to it as they went. Larry saw the Master force his horse down near them, and heard him cheering them and doubling his horn. Another couple joined them, and Larry swore heartily. Here he was on the wrong side, and the fox away to the east! The cry redoubled; it sounded as if twice the pack were engaged, yet the two and a half couple were not being reinforced. By some chance Larry withdrew his eyes from them, and just then, about a hundred yards further on, on his side of the glen, something like a brown feather floated up into view.
"A second fox, by the living Jingo!" whispered Larry, thrilling to that sight that never fails to thrill.
He held up his hat. Bill saw the signal, and acknowledged it by redoubled efforts to get the hounds away with the fox that had broken to the east. The chorus of sound grew and grew, and as Joker and his rider, tense with an equal excitement, listened, it became plain that the cry was drawing nearer to them. Joker's sensitive ears were twitching, his heart thumped; the storm of sound was just below them now, and then, hound by hound, Larry counted them as they came, fourteen couples struggled up over the lip of the glen where that brown feather had so lightly lifted into view, and drove ahead, on the way it had gone, with a rush and a cry that Larry could no more have checked than he could have stemmed and driven back the wild stream in the glen below.
It may be said at once that he made no such futile effort. With a single glance at the frenzied party on the farther side, already galloping distractedly for a possible pass lower down the glen, Larry released his feelings in a maniac howl to the fleeting pack, and let Joker—who had already stood up on his hind legs twice, in legitimate protest—follow them.
The fox, having begun by running west, away from the glen, had then turned right-handed, and was heading north over the mountain whose lower slopes were cleft by Gloun Kieraun. The scent served well; the gurgling music with now and then a sharper note, like a fife among flutes and 'cellos, flowed on, and Larry and Joker, two happy creatures, the world forgetting (though by no means by their world forgot) galloped and rejoiced.
The little mountain sheep with their black, speckled faces sprang before them, quick as rabbits; green plover flopped up from the grassy places, wheeling and squealing; a woodcock whirred out of a furze bush so near Larry that he could have struck it down with his crop. Long-legged mountain hares fled right and left of the driving pack, unheeded. Great spaces of the mountain were bare of fences, but in those tracts where the grass had mastered the heather, it was "striped" with broad banks, sound, and springy, and bound, as with wire, by the heather roots. To feel Joker quicken his big stride and leap at the banks out of his gallop, to realise the perfect precision of his method, as he changed feet and flicked off into the next field, to race him at the walls of smooth round stones, weathered in the long centuries, and grey with lichen, and to know that if they were three times their height Joker would have sailed over them with the same ease—whatever might have been Larry's burden of care, it would have fallen from him, forgotten, in the pure glory of that ride.
The hounds ran hard for nearly a half hour before they checked, and Larry bethought him of those unfortunates between whom and himself that great gulf had been fixed. Apparently they had not found, any more than the rich man in the parable, a means of crossing it. He was high above the valley; the splendid landscape lay in broad undulating ribbons of brown and green and amethyst and blue, with the Broadwater dividing it—a silver belt, with a band of green on its either side; but within the great circle that was spread beneath his eyes were none of those toiling specks that tell of a Hunt in labour. The check was brief; the hurrying hounds, busy as ants, cast themselves right and left forward, combining in fussy groups, that would suddenly disintegrate as if by an access of centrifugal force; crowding each other jealously along the top of a bank, flopping into the patches of bog, snuffing greedily at the orange stems of the bracken. Soon, reiterated squeals from a leading lady told that the clue was found again, and they began to run, hard as before, but downwards this time, as though the fox despaired of finding refuge among the high places of heather and rock. Larry had lost his bearings; his eyes on the hounds, his thoughts on his horse, he had not even tried to place himself. But as the hounds ran on, south and west, he began to recognise familiar features. Away there to the south, surely were the trees of Coppinger's Court; could it be the Mount Music earths for which the fox was heading? The hounds were running now down hill, through crisp, upland meadows. Farmhouses began to reappear, thatched and whitewashed, tucked snugly in among low bunches of trees; fences were changing in character; the amber streams ran less fiercely, and found time to loiter in pools and quiet reaches. The hounds had begun to hunt more slowly, and Larry looked at his watch.