A fortnight or so after the moving incidents that have just been
recited, Miss Frederica Coppinger, and her nephew, St. Lawrence of
that ilk, were spending a long and agreeable Sunday afternoon with
their relatives at Mount Music, elders and youngsters being
segregated, after their kind, and to their mutual happiness.
Major Talbot-Lowry, very well pleased with himself, very tall and
authoritative, was standing, from force of habit, on the rug in front
of the fire-place in the Mount Music drawing-room, and was
cross-examining Miss Coppinger on her proposed arrangements for
herself and her nephew, while he drank his tea in gulps, each
succeeded by burnishing processes, with a brilliant silk bandanna
handkerchief, such as are necessitated by a long and drooping
moustache.
All good-looking people are aware of their good looks, but the gift of
enjoying them, that had been lavishly bestowed on Dick, is denied to
many; on the other hand, the companion gift, of realising when they
are becoming pleasures of memory, had been withheld from him. Dick was
of the happy temperament that believes in the exclusive immortality of
his own charms, and he was now enjoying his conversation with his
cousin none the less for the discovery that Miss Coppinger, who was
younger than he, had preserved her youth very much less successfully
than he had done.
The cross-examination had moved on to the subject of Larry's religion,
and the combative fervour of Major Dick's Protestantism might have
edified John Knox.
"But look here, Frederica," he said, putting down his cup and saucer,
with a crash, on the high mantelpiece, "you don't mean to tell me that
the boy has to go to Mass with the servants--on the cook's lap, I
suppose--on the outside car! Good Heeavens! Poor old Tom! Talk about
turning in his grave! I should think he was going head over heels in
it by this time!"
This referred to the late Colonel Coppinger, the genuineness of whose
conversion to his wife's Church had never been accepted by Major
Talbot-Lowry.
"My _dear_ Dick!" said Lady Isabel.
Miss Coppinger closed her lips tightly with an air of high
self-control.
"That is a matter of opinion!" she said blandly. "Tom was perfectly
aware of what changing his religion involved, in this country--though
it's probably quite different in India. In any case, the thing is
done, and as I believe it to be my Duty to send Larry to his chapel,
to his chapel he shall go!"
Unimaginative people, or those of limited vocabulary, affixed to Miss
Coppinger the ancient label: "A typical old maid," and considered that
no further definition was required; and, since her appearance
conformed in some degree with stage traditions, there is something to
be said for them. If labels are to be employed, even the least complex
of human beings would suggest a much-travelled portmanteau, covered
with tags and shreds from hotels and railways. Frederica shall not be
labelled; let it suffice to say that she was tall and thin, and nearer
fifty than forty (which was a far greater age thirty years ago than it
is now), and that she had a sense of fair play that was proof against
her zeal as an Irish Church-woman. It is true that she mentioned what
she regarded as the disaster of Larry's religion in her prayers, but
she did so without heat, leaving the matter, without irreverence, to
the common sense of Larry's Creator, who, she felt must surely
recognise the disadvantages of the position as it stood.
"I cannot possibly interfere with Larry's religion," pursued Miss
Coppinger, with a defiant eye on her cousin, "and as soon as we are a
little more settled down I shall ask the priest to lunch. Farther than
that I don't feel called upon to go."
"Draw the line at dinner, eh?" said Major Dick, with large and
humorous tolerance: "_I_ know very little about the feller--he's
newly come to the parish--he mayn't be a bad sort for all I know--I'm
bound to say he's got a black-muzzled look about him, but we might go
farther and fare worse. I should certainly have him to lunch if I were
you. Have a good big joint of roast beef, and don't forget to give him
his whack of whisky!"
"I never have whisky in the house," said Miss Coppinger repressively.
"Claret, I _could_ give him--?"
Major Talbot-Lowry looked down at his cousin with the condescending
amusement that he felt to be the meed of female godliness especially
when allied with temperance principles.
"Well, claret might do for once in a way," he conceded, shaking his
long legs to take the creases out of his trousers, "and you mightn't
find Father Sweeny so anxious to repeat the dose--and that mightn't be
any harm either! I daresay you wouldn't object to that, Frederica!
Well, good-bye, ladies! I'm going down to the kennels--"
Lady Isabel's and Miss Coppinger's eyes followed him, as he swung,
with that light halt in his leisurely stride, down the long
drawing-room, trolling in the high baritone, that someone had pleased
him by likening to a cavalry trumpet,
"Oh, Father McCann was a beautiful man,
But a bit of a rogue, a bit of a rogue!
He was full six feet high, he'd a cast in his eye,
And an illigant brogue, an illigant brogue!"
In both his wife's and his cousin's faces was the same look, the look
that often comes into women's faces when, unperceived, they regard the
sovereign creature. Future generations may not know that look, but in
the faces of these women, born in the earlier half of the nineteenth
century, there was something of awe, and of indulgence, of
apprehension, and of pity. Dick was so powerful, so blundering, so
childlike. Miss Frederica expressed something of their common thought
when she said:
"Dick seems to forget that he is Larry's guardian as well as I. Also
that Larry is a Roman Catholic, and it is not only useless but
dishonourable to ignore it!"
It has been said that Lady Isabel had _les qualitiés de ses défauts_;
in Miss Coppinger's case the words may be restored to their rightful
sequence. She had the inevitable _défauts de ses qualités_. The sense
of duty was as prominent a feature of her soul as a hump on her long
straight back would have been, but toleration was inconspicuous. She
ran straight herself, and though she could forgive deviations on the
part of others, she could not forget them. She was entirely and
implacably Protestant, a typical member of that Church that expects
friendship from its votaries, but leaves their course of action to
their own consciences. It was a very successful example of the malign
humour of Fate that Miss Coppinger's ward should belong to the other
Church, that exacts not only obedience, but passion, and it was a
master-stroke that Frederica's sense of duty should compel her to
enforce her nephew to compliance with its demands.
"Dear Frederica, Dick will leave all religious things to you, I
know--" warbled Lady Isabel, in her gentle, musical voice, that
suggested something between the tones of a wood pigeon and an ocarina.
"And they couldn't be in better hands!"
"But my dear Isabel, that is precisely what I complain of! Dick's
solitary suggestion has been that we should send Larry to Winchester,
which is perfectly impracticable! I entirely agree with him, but,
unfortunately, _I_ know that it is our duty to send him to one of
those--" Miss Coppinger hesitated, swallowed several adjectives, and
ended with Christian tameness--"one of those special schools for Roman
Catholics."
"Well, dear, I daresay it won't make very much difference," consoled
Lady Isabel. "I have always heard that Monkshurst was a charming
school, and dear Larry will be _so_ well off--I don't suppose his
religion will interfere in _any_ way. It seldom does, does it?"
"Not, I admit, unless he wanted a job in this country!" began Miss
Coppinger grimly, and again remembered that intolerance was not to be
encouraged. "The end of it is that I shall endeavour to do _my
duty_--which is, apparently, to do everything that I most entirely
disapprove of--and that on the day Larry is twenty-one, I shall march
out of Coppinger's Court, and dance a jig, and then he may have the
Pope to stay with him if he likes!"
While Miss Coppinger was thus belabouring and releasing her conscience
in the drawing-room, quite another matter was engaging the attention
of her ward, and of his entertainers at the school-room tea-table.
This was no less a thing than the dissolving of the existing Bands,
and the formation of a new society, to be known as "The Companions of
Finn."
Larry Coppinger's entrance, literally at a bound, into the
Talbot-Lowry family group, had landed him, singularly enough, into the
heart of their affection and esteem. He was now the originator of this
revolutionary scheme, and having in him that special magnetic force
that confers leadership, the scheme was being put through.
"The point is," he said, eagerly, "that when we are split up into two
bands, we can do nothing much, but the lot of us together might--might
make quite a difference."
"Difference to what?" said Richard, ex-chief of the Elder Statesmen,
unsympathetically. Like his father before him, he disliked change.
"Well, hold on!" said Larry, quickly, "wait just one minute, and I'll
tell you. I got the notion out of a book I found in the library. I
don't expect I'd have thought of it myself--" Larry's transparent
sky-blue eyes sought Richard's appealingly. "It's--it's only poems,
you know, but it's most frightfully interesting--I brought it with
me--"
"Oh--poems!" said Richard, without enthusiasm. "Are they long ones?"
"I don't seem to care so awfully much about poetry," abetted Judith,
late Second-in-command.
John looked sapient, and said, neutrally, that some poetry wasn't bad.
The Twins, who were engaged in a silent but bitter struggle for the
corpse of a white rabbit, recently born dead, made no comment. Only
Christian, her small hands clenched together into a brown knot, her
eyes fastened on Larry's flushed face, murmured:
"Go on, Larry!"
Larry went on.
"It's called the Spirit of the Nation," he said. "It's full of
splendid stuff about Ireland, and the beastly way England's treated
her. It sort of--sort of put the notion into my head that we might
start some sort of a Fenian band, and that some day we might--well,"
he turned very red, and ended with a rush, "we might be able to strike
a blow for Ireland!"
"Moy oye!" said Richard, intensifying his favourite invocation in his
surprise, "but what's wrong with Ireland?"
The position wanted but the touch of opposition. Larry rather well bet
Richard that there was plenty wrong with her! Penal laws! Persecution!
Saxon despots grinding their heels into a down-trodden people!
Revolution! Liberation! Larry had a tongue that was hung loosely in
his head and was a quick servant to his brain.
"Of course I know we're rather young--well, you're nearly fourteen,
Richard, and I'm thirteen and three months, that's not so awfully
young. Anyway, everything's got to have a beginning--" He glowed
upon his audience of six, his fair hair in a shock, his eyes and his
cheeks in a blaze, and one, at least, of that audience caught fire.
The Revolutionary or Reformer, who hesitates at becoming a bore, is
unworthy of his high office; and Larry, like most of his class,
required but little encouragement. He produced a large book, old and
shabby, the green and gold of its covers stained and faded, but still
of impressive aspect.
"There are heaps of them, and they're all jolly good. It's rather hard
to choose--" began the Revolutionary with a shade of nervousness.
Then he again met Christian's eyes, shining and compelling, and took
heart from them.
"Well, there's 'Fontenoy,' of course that's a ripper--Well, I don't
know what _you'll_ all think, but _I_ think this is a jolly
good one," he said with a renewal of defiance, and began to read, at
first hurriedly, but gathering confidence and excitement as he went
on:
"Did they dare, did they dare, to slay Owen Roe O'Neill?
Yes, they slew with poison, him they feared to meet with steel.
May God wither up their hearts! May their blood cease to flow!
May they walk in living death, who poisoned Owen Roe!
We thought you would not die--we were sure you would not go,
And leave us in our utmost need to Cromwell's cruel blow--
Sheep without a shepherd, when the snow shuts out the sky--
Oh! Why did you leave us, Owen? Why did you die?"
The Elder Statesmen listened in critical silence, while Larry, not
without stumbles, stormed on through the eight verses of the poem.
When he had finished it, there was a pause. The audience was
impressed, even though they had no intention of admitting the fact.
Christian gave a tremendous sigh. The contest for the defunct rabbit,
that had been arrested, broke out again, fiercely, but with caution.
Then Richard said, dubiously:
"Well, that's all right, Larry--I meant it's jolly sad, and awfully
good poetry, I'm sure--but how on earth are you going to work a show
out of it? I can't see--"
"Unless," interrupted Judith, thoughtfully, "unless we sort of acted
it--?"
John, who loved "dressing up," woke to life; even Richard began to see
daylight.
"That's not a bad notion, Judy!" he said briskly: "bags I Cromwell!
Larry, you can be Owen what's-his-name."
Larry came down like a shot bird from the sphere of romance to which
the poem had borne him.
"I hadn't thought of any scheme," he said, pulling himself together;
"I only wanted to give you a kind of notion of the rotten way
England's always treated Ireland--"
"But let's!" cried Christian; "let's act the whole book!"
Truisms are of their essence dull, but they must sometimes be
submitted to, and the truism as to a book's possible influence on the
young and impressionable cannot here be avoided. What it is that
decides if the book is to stamp itself on the plastic mind, or if the
mind is to assert itself and stamp on the book, is a detail that
admits less easily of dogmatism. The Companionage of Finn remained in
being for but two periods of holiday. Before the boys had returned to
school, it had seen its best days; the scheme for an armed invasion of
England had been abandoned, even the more matured project of storming
Dublin Castle was set aside; by the end of the Christmas holidays it
had been formally dissolved.
It is not easy to understand, it is still harder to explain what it
was in those fierce denunciations and complaints, outcome of that time
of general revolt, the "Roaring Forties" of the nineteenth century,
that made them echo in Larry's heart, nor why the restless, passionate
spirit that inspired them should have remained with him, a perturbing
influence from which he never wholly escaped. His young soul burned
with hatred of England, borrowed from the Bards of "The Nation"
Office; he lay awake at nights, stringing rhymes in emulation of their
shouts of fury, or picturing rebellions, of which he was to be the
leader and hero. Larry's enthusiasms were wont to devour not him only,
but also his friends. It is impossible to escape from the conclusion
that the career of the Companionage of Finn was abbreviated by Larry's
determination to recite to the Companions of the Order, in season and
out of season, the poems by which, during his first Irish summer, he
was possessed. There came a time when he had, as he believed, put away
childish things, that, returning to these venerable trumpet-blasts, he
asked himself, in the arrogance of youth, how these stale metaphors,
these conventional phrases, these decorations as meretricious as stage
jewellry, and metres that cantered along, as he told himself, like
solemn old circus-horses, could have had the power to shake his voice
and fill his eyes with tears, as he spoke them to Christian, who had
so soon become his sole audience.
The strange thing was, as he acknowledged to himself, that while he
could mock at them as poetry, he could not ignore their power. The
intensity of their hatred, and of their sincerity, made itself felt,
as the light of the sun will shine through the crude commonness of a
vulgar stained-glass window.