In the years that followed, "Larry's cads" came to be, for the young
Talbot-Lowrys, a convenient designation for the friends into whose
bosom Providence had seen fit to fling their cousin. But Larry never
either approved or accepted it. He was entirely pleased with his new
friends, and especially with that son of the house whose position he
had usurped, Mr. Bartholomew Mangan.
Barty was a lengthy, languid, gentle youth, of nearly nineteen,
darkly, pallidly handsome, sweet natured, and slovenly, like his
mother, and, unlike her, poetical, idealistic, unpractical, shy, and
self-conscious. He was, at this period, working in the office of one
of the two solicitors, who, with the aid of a branch of a bank, a
Petty Sessions Court, and the imposing, plate-glass bow-windows of
Hallinan's hotel, enabled Cluhir to convince itself of its status as a
town. Further proof of the civic importance of Cluhir was found in the
existence of a debating club of very advanced political views among
its young men, of which Barty Mangan was secretary. Its membership, if
small, was select, since its Republican principles did not compel it
to admit to its privileges shop-assistants, or artisans, while they
automatically excluded members of the class that were usually referred
to in the club discussions as "Carrion Crows," or if the orator's mood
was mild, "the garrison." In Ireland the attitude of mind that is
termed, alternately, Disloyalty or Patriotism, is largely a matter of
class, and Barty Mangan's introduction of Master St. Lawrence
Coppinger, as an honorary member of the club, partook of the nature of
a shock to those of the faithful who were present at his first
appearance in the club room, a severely plain apartment, that offered
no impediment in the matter of luxury to high thinking. But the
faithful of the "Sons of Emmet" Club had nothing to fear from this
half-fledged young Carrion Crow. The English school to which Larry had
been sent had dulled the fire lit by the poems of The Spirit of the
Nation, but it had not extinguished it. It had flickered for a time,
during which Hunting had superseded Patriotism, and Mr. Jorrocks had
reigned alone; but the oratory of the Sons of Emmet, to which Larry
was now privileged to listen, had had the effect of restoring to life
and vigour the long-neglected, half-forgotten tenets of the
Companionage of Finn. Larry's store of enthusiasm was quite equal to
supplying motive power for running two engines; hunting still held its
own, and after a club debate in which he had taken an energetic part,
even the most exclusive of the Sons of Emmet admitted that Barty's
importation was worthy of the privilege that had been extended to him.
A spell of cold weather had compelled a postponement of Larry's return
to his own home. When snow and frost visit a country unused to their
attentions, they are treated with a respect that they do not receive
elsewhere. The Doctor's orders were strict, and Larry spent the last
days of his stay at No. 6, The Mall, seated in semi-invalid state by
the dining-room fire, occupied, mainly, in the consumption of
literature provided by his new friend, Mr. Barty Mangan, that
consisted of poems, books, and pamphlets of precisely that shade of
politics of which his family most thoroughly disapproved, and
absorbing what would be, in their opinion, the most entirely poisonous
points of view.
The Big Doctor, smoking a comfortable evening pipe over the fire,
would join in the discussions between his son and his visitor,
offering just as much opposition to Larry's revolutionary flights as
was stimulating, and flattering his sense of youth and daring.
"We mustn't send him back to his auntie too much of a rebel
altogether!" The Doctor would say, grinning at the enthusiast with his
pipe wedged under a tooth; "isn't it good enough for you to be a poor
decent old Nationalist like myself? I'm sure there's no one would
disapprove of _me_, is there, Annie?"
"Don't be too sure of that at all!" Mrs. Mangan would reply
coquettishly, trying to look as if she did not agree with him; "wait
till his auntie hears the notions Larry's taking up with, and she'll
think we're all the worst in the world! And the Major! The Major'll go
cracked-mad!"
"It doesn't matter where he goes!" says Larry, defiantly, "I've had
these 'notions,' as you call them, for ages and ages!"
"Ah, God help you, child!" Mrs. Mangan would probably say, "keep quiet
now, till I get you a glass of hot milk!"
Politics did not form the only point of contact that had been
established between Larry and the Mangan household. Since his
promotion to comparative convalescence, Tishy, daughter of the house,
had entered more actively into his scheme of life, and the point of
entrance was music. Some divergence in view as to music is more easily
condoned, on both sides, than in the other realms of the spirit. It
matters not from how far countries the travellers may come, or how
widely sundered may be their ideals, there are rest-houses at which
they can draw rein and find agreement. One of these, possibly the
greatest of them, is folk song. Ireland, whose head is ever turned
over her shoulder, looking to the past, has, in her folk song, at
least, reason and justification for her preoccupation with what has
been in her music, rather than with what is, or is to come. It is
difficult to reconcile the eternal beauty of traditional Irish melody
with the lack of musical interest and feeling that distinguishes the
mass of modern Irish life. But, here and there, a string of the harp
that has hung, mute, on Tara's walls for so many centuries, utters a
sigh of sweet sound, and at Number 6, The Mall, Cluhir, the soul of
music had still some power of inspiration.
This is, perhaps, a rather elaborate method of intimating that Dr.
Mangan played the violin, moderately as to technique, but soundly as
to intonation, and that he and his family sang, as a quartet, not only
at charity concerts, but also for their own pleasure, in their own
home. Music, more than the other arts, demands sympathy, and an
audience. In Larry, the Mangan Quartet recognised that both
requirements were supplied, together with a glorifying enthusiasm of
appreciation--though this they scarcely recognised--that gilded for
him their achievements, as the firelight had edged the profile of
Nurse Brennan with pure gold. Larry, it has already been said, had the
artistic temperament; he had also a generous heart, and he was of an
age when appreciation is spontaneous, and criticism is either unborn,
or is only an echo of some maturer mind. Therefore, as he lay on the
Mangan blue rep-covered drawing-room sofa, with a satin cushion
adorned with Tishy's conception of roses, in water-colour, under his
head, while pretty Nurse Brennan gently massaged his wrist, and the
Mangan Quartet warbled: "O, believe me if all those endearing young
charms," or "When thro' life unblest we rove," Larry passed into
ecstasy, that, had he been one degree less of a schoolboy, might have
been exhaled in tears; even as the sun draws water from the sea, in a
mist of glory, and returns it to the world again in rain.
Tishy was accompanist, and sang alto; her mother, who knew nothing of
notation, and sang by ear, sang treble; Barty had a supple and
pleasing tenor, and the Doctor possessed a solemn bass, deep and dark
as a thundercloud, yet mellow as the hum of a hive of honey-bees on a
summer morning; a rare voice and a beautiful one, that had its
counterpart in the contralto that already, at sixteen and a half, had
given Tishy power and distinction among her fellows.
At this time, Miss Letitia Mangan's views, and those of her parents,
as to her future, musical or otherwise, were entirely divergent. Hers
held as central figure a certain medical student, with an incipient
red moustache, and a command of boxes of chocolate that was
bewildering to those acquainted with his income. Quite other were Dr.
Mangan's intentions with regard to his daughter, but he was satisfied
to keep them out of sight; he was aware that, in all solid buildings,
the deeper and farther out of sight the foundation, the more assured
is the result.
It is possible that the idea of a farewell entertainment in Larry's
honour emanated from the Big Doctor; if so, he had erased his tracks
very thoroughly, and it was regarded by Mrs. Mangan's intimates as a
final brandishing of her trophy before she was forced to relinquish
it. Larry was indisputably a trophy, and Heaven was considered to have
exercised a very undue discrimination in Mrs. Mangan's favour when it
threw him into her house and her hands. It was a very select party,
only a score or so of boys and girls, with the elders appertaining to
them. Nurse Brennan had departed, taking with her Larry's young
affections, and a gift, costly and superfluous, of a silver-mounted
mirror, which was accompanied by some chaste lines, expressive of
Master Coppinger's desire to share its privileges, whose composition
had kept him happy throughout a long, wet afternoon.
The party, having opened with lemonade, tea and innumerable cakes,
moved on through "a little music," (contributed exclusively by the
Mangan Quartet) to games. Larry, afflicted by the discovery that he
had, during his illness, outgrown his evening clothes, found himself
fated to do conspicuous things in the centre of a space, cleared as
for a prize-fight, in the Mangan drawing-room. Problems in connection
with a ship that came from China. Exhausting efforts in guessing
absurdities, that usually necessitated withdrawal to the landing
outside the door with a giggling schoolgirl, and collaboration with
her in a code of complicated signals. And, blackest feature of all,
mistakes in any of these arduous matters entailed "forfeits," and the
process entitled "paying the forfeits," meant a concentration of
attention upon a young gentleman, conscious to agony of the fact that
his trousers left his ankle-bones unshielded from the public gaze.
It was sufficiently distressing to lie at full length on the carpet,
and declare oneself to be the length of a looby, and the breadth of a
booby, but what was that as compared with sitting, blindfolded, on a
chair, and guessing, among many kisses, which had been bestowed by
"the girl he loved best?" As if he loved any of them! These pert and
blowsy schoolgirls, with hideous voices, and arrogant curls, or
crimped lion-manes of aggressive hair! He, with "his heart set all
upon a snowy coif!" (as he chose to wrest Mr. Yeats' line to his own
purposes).
It was singular in how many of these exercises, of which the greater
number included kissing, he found himself involved with Tishy Mangan.
Tishy was in a bad temper. The red-headed medical student had not been
honoured with an invitation. Dr. Mangan had struck his name from the
list of guests saying that they had enough without him, and Tishy knew
her father too well to protest. Dr. Mangan was in the habit of saying
that he always left all household affairs "in the hands of the
ladies." He did not add, as he might have done, that these hands lay
within his, and that their owners had long since realised that it was
advisable to respond to any indication of pressure. His daughter,
however, while she submitted to the inevitable, saw no reason why she
should deny herself the solace of sulking, nor of avenging herself of
his tyranny on "his fine pet," as she, in high indignation, described
Larry to herself. Master Coppinger might be a man of property and the
owner of Coppinger's Court, yes, or Dublin Castle, for all she cared!
Pappy might say what he liked, but _she_ wouldn't be bothered
with a boy like that! And there was Ned Cloherty--(this was the
medical student)--that she had as good as asked to come--and what
could she say to him now, she wondered? So Tishy sulked, and resented
the Hidden Hand, that so inevitably linked her with the owner of
Coppinger's Court, as much as did that man of property himself.
The evening wore on; with romping, with screaming, with enormous
consumption of various foods, and with an ever-heightening
temperature, that was specially noticeable among those seniors who had
not disdained the brew of punch that had coincided with the
announcement of midnight, made, with maddening deliberation, by Mrs.
Mangan's cuckoo-clock. The usual delirium of cracker-head-dresses had
befallen the company. Larry, decorated with a dunce's cap, placed upon
his yellow head by a jovial matron, found himself fated, by a final
effort of penalising fancy on the part of another matron, to select "a
young lady," to conduct her to the topmost step of the staircase, and
there, on his knees, to kiss either her shoe-buckle or her lips;
"whichever he likes best!" decreed the matron, archly.
It is strange how the reserves and reticences of childhood, the things
that offend, the things that bring agony, are forgotten by so many of
those who have left childhood behind. In extenuation of this lively
and kindly lady, it may be said that the manners and customs of her
early youth were not those to which Larry was habituated. Yet, one
might have thought that a glance at Larry's face would have sufficed
to induce Rhadamanthus himself to remit the penalty. Not so Mrs.
Whelply, the arbitrator.
"Oh, look at the pout on him! What a naughty boy! If you don't take
care, I'll put a worse task on you!"
Larry, oblivious of the dunce's cap, feeling himself in the grip of a
social machine that was too strong for him, looked round upon the
company. Hot, pink faces, shining eyes and teeth, Moenad hair, on all
sides. Then he caught sight of Tishy's eyes, scornful and amused,
regarding him as he stood irresolute, and his spirit responded to the
spur of contempt. He crossed the open space of floor to where she was
seated on the blue rep sofa, took off the dunce's cap with a flourish,
and, with a low bow, offered her his arm.
A chorus of approval, weighted by the Big Doctor's big laugh, greeted
the action. Tishy, cornered, accepted the arm, the door was swung open
for them, and ostentatiously slammed behind them.
Larry, silent, and very angry, mounted the stairs quickly, and Tishy
perforce, her hand gripped by his elbow, followed him. At the highest
step but one, Larry stood aside, and Tishy ascended, and turning,
faced him from the top. They looked at each other for a moment in
silence. Both were furiously angry, resenting the compulsion that had
forced them into an absurd position.
Then Tishy said insolently: "Well! Which will you have? My shoe-buckle
or my lips? Take your choice!"
She poked her foot out over the edge of the step confidently.
A spark shot from Larry's angry heart to his blue eyes. He looked up
at Tishy, and something suddenly masterful awoke in him. Confound her!
He wouldn't have her laughing at him!
"I'll have your lips, please!" he said, mounting to the step beside
her.
With schoolboy roughness he flung his arm round her shoulders. She was
a little taller than he, but she did not withdraw herself; she was
curiously aware that her point of view was changing. She looked for an
instant in his eyes, and then she laid her lips on his.
Larry found, with surprise, that they returned the pressure of his own
as he kissed her. The spark that had been in his eyes seemed to have
flown to his lips, and met another spark in hers.
There was a moment of silence. Larry found himself a little out of
breath, and somehow bewildered. There was more in it than he thought.
He didn't quite know what to do next.
"Thank you very much," he said, stiffly, and offered his arm.
In silence they walked down the stairs again. The piano had begun, and
"Sir Roger de Coverley" was being thundered forth. At the door they
met the Doctor. Larry released Tishy's arm.
"If you don't mind," he said to the Doctor, "I think I'll go up to
bed. I'm tired."
After he had got to his room he shook himself, much as a dog renews
its vitality by shaking its ears. Then he poured some water into the
basin and washed his hot face, scrubbing his lips with the sponge.
Yet, to his infinite annoyance, he seemed still to feel the pressure
of Tishy's warm mouth on his.