It is, or should be, superfluous to say that Miss Frederica Coppinger
viewed with disfavour, that was the more poignant for its
helplessness, Larry's adoption and assimilation by the Mangan family.
"Disastrous!" she said in a tragic voice, to the Rector of Knockceoil
parish. "If he were a Protestant it wouldn't matter so much; but, as
things are, for _him_ to be thrown among these second-rate,
Nationalistic, Roman Catholics--!"
The intensity of Miss Coppinger's emotions silenced him. She had
indeed beaten her biggest drum, and she knew it.
The Rector, the Reverend Charles Fetherston, nodded his head with
solemnity, and made a conscientious effort to remember what she was
speaking of. He was not much in the habit of attending to what was
said to him, finding his own thoughts more interesting than those of
his parishioners. The parishioners, being aware of this peculiarity,
put it down, very naturally, to eccentricity for which he was rather
to be pitied than condemned, and his popularity was in no way abated
by it. Mr. Fetherston was unmarried, in age about sixty; tall, stout,
red-faced, of good family, a noted woodcock shot and salmon fisher, a
carpenter, and an incessant pipe-smoker. These being his leading
gifts, it will probably, and with accuracy, be surmised by persons
conversant with the Irish Church, that he was a survival of its
earliest days, when it was still an avocation suitable for gentlemen,
and one in which they could indulge without any taint of
professionalism being laid to their charge. He was immensely respected
and admired by the poor people of the parish (none of whom were
included in his small and well-to-do congregation), the fact that he
was what is known as "old stock," giving him a prestige among the
poorer Roman Catholics, that they would have denied to St. Peter. He
shared with Major Talbot-Lowry the position of consultant in feuds,
and relieving officer in distress, and, being rich, liberal, easily
bored, and not particularly sympathetic to affliction, he was
accustomed to stanch the flow of tears and talk alike, with a form of
solace that rarely failed to meet the case, and was always acceptable.
With Miss Coppinger, he felt, regretfully, that five shillings could
in no way be brought to bear upon her problem, and with an effort he
withdrew his mind from a new hinge that he thought of fitting to a
garden-gate, and applied it to Larry.
"How old is the boy now? Sixteen last October? He doesn't look as
much--you'll see he'll outgrow all that nonsense of Nationalism! Send
him to Oxford as soon as you can. He'll soon get hold of some other
tomfoolery there, and forget this. Seven devils worse than the first,
in fact!"
The Reverend Charles laughed, wheezily, and began, automatically, to
fill a pipe, an indication of a change of mental outlook.
"Worse?" cried Miss Frederica, ardently; "no indeed, Mr. Fetherston!
Better! Far better! _Any_thing is preferable to this--this
Second-rate Sedition!"
When Frederica perorated, and this remark partook of the nature of
peroration, it was as though she took a header into deep water. By the
time she had again risen to the surface of her emotions, the Reverend
Charles Fetherston had returned to the hinge of the garden-gate, and
Miss Coppinger, knowing her man, made no attempt to recall him. She
had a very special regard for her rector, of a complex sort that is
not quite easy to define. There was veneration in it, the veneration
that was inculcated in her youth for the clergy; there was the
compassion that many capable and self-confident women bestow upon any
man to whom Providence has denied a feminine protector; there was a
regretful pity for his shortcomings--(but half-acknowledged, even to
herself)--as a Minister of the Word, counterbalanced by respect for
his worldly wisdom; above all, there was the deep, peculiar interest
that was excited in her by any clergyman, merely in virtue of his
office, a person whose trade it was to occupy himself with the art and
practice of religion, which was a subject that had, quite apart from
its spiritual side, the same appeal for her that the art and practice
of the theatre has for many others. (It is hard to imagine any simile
that would have shocked Frederica more than this; in all her years of
strenuous, straightforward life, she had never, as she would have
said, set foot in a theatre.)
Frederica had been born at Coppinger's Court, and she had passed her
childhood there, but her youth had been spent in Dublin, in the hot
heart of a parish devoted to good works, and to a pastor whose power
and authority was in no degree less absolute than that of any of the
"Romish priests" whom he so heartily denounced. She was brought up in
that school of Irish Low Church Protestantism that makes more severe
demands upon submission and credulity than any other, and yet more
fiercely arraigns other creeds on those special counts. It is quite
arguable that Irish people, like the Israelites who so ardently
desired a king, enjoy and thrive under religious oppression, and it is
beyond dispute that among the oppressed, of both the rival creeds, are
saints whose saintliness has gained force from the systems to which
they have given their allegiance. To Frederica the practice of her
cult both inwardly in her heart, and outwardly in the work of St.
Matthew's Parish, was the mainspring of her existence. It was also her
pastime. She would analyse a sermon, as Dick Lowry would discuss a
run, and with the same eager enjoyment. She assented with enthusiasm
to the Doctrine of Eternal Damnation, and a gentler-hearted creature
than she never lived. She would have gone to the stake for the Verbal
Inspiration of the Bible; she was as convinced that the task of
Creation was completed in a week, as she was that she paid the
Coppinger's Court workmen for six days' work every Saturday evening.
In short, the good Frederica was a survival of an earlier and more
earnest period, and her religious beliefs were only comparable, in
their sincerity and simplicity, with those of the Roman Catholic poor
people, whose spiritual prospects were to her no less black
(theoretically) than were hers to them.
Those who know Ireland will have no difficulty in believing that Miss
Coppinger had no warmer sympathisers in her feelings concerning Larry
and the Mangan household than the Coppinger's Court retainers, despite
the fact that none of them were of her communion, nor did they share
her political views. And no less will those who know Ireland,
recognise that in the Irish countryside it is the extremes that touch,
and that there is a sympathy and understanding between the uppermost
and the lowest strata of Irish social life, which is not extended, by
either side, to the intervening one. Thus, it was that Frederica
could, and did converse with her work-people and her peasant
neighbours, with a freedom and an implicit confidence in their good
breeding, that it is to be feared she was incapable of extending to
Larry's new acquaintances in Cluhir. Possibly the outdoor life, and
the mutual engrossment in outdoor affairs, explain, in some degree,
this sympathy, but at the root of it is the certainty on both sides,
that the well-bred, even the chivalrous point of view, will govern
their intercourse.
It may seem somewhat excessive to use the word chivalry in connection
with Mrs. Twomey, the Coppinger's Court dairy-woman. Yet, I dare to
say that as great a soul filled the four feet four inches that
comprised her excessively plain little person, as ever inspired
warrior or fighting queen in the brave days of old. Bred and born
under the Talbot-Lowrys, she had crossed the river when she married
one of the Coppinger's Court workmen, and for close on thirty-five
years she had milked the cows and ruled the dairy according to her own
methods, which were as rigorous as they were remarkable, and altered
not with modern enlightenment, or conformed with hygienic laws. Her
husband was a feeble creature, whose sole claim to distinction was his
inability to speak English. At the time that "The Family," (which is,
say, Frederica and Larry) returned, he had become quite blind, and he
passed a cloistered existence in a dark corner of his little cottage,
sitting, with his hat always upon his head, a being seemingly as
withdrawn from the current of life as one of the smoky brown and white
china dogs on the shelf above the wide hearth.
The legend ran that when he was young, a marriage had been arranged
for him. On the appointed wedding-day he had gone to the chapel, the
priest was there, and the wedding-guests, but no bride came. Michael
Twomey therefore, after a fruitless exercise of patience, left the
chapel in deep wrath and humiliation, and proceeded to walk home
again. On the road he was faced by a string of laughing girls, and
among them there was little Mary Driscoll. Mary had then, no doubt,
such grace as youth can give, and that she had, at least, good teeth,
was obvious to the disgruntled Michael Twomey, as she was grinning at
him from ear to ear. Also, possibly, his sight may not even then have
been of the best. Be that as it may, Michael caught at Mary's arm.
"Come on to the chapel, Mary!" he shouted at her, in the Irish that
was a more common speech in those days than it is now; "The priest is
there yet, and the money is in my pocket. I'll marry you!"
Michael had made a luckier hit than he knew. Little Mary Driscoll
recognised the sporting quality of the suggestion, and being a girl of
spirit acceded to it.
Mary had been to America. She was one of the many of her class who put
forth fearlessly for the United States, adventuring upon the unknown
without any of the qualms that would beset them were the bourne
London, or even one of the cities of their native land. Wasn't Mary's
mother's sisther's daughter, and Maggie Brian from Tullagh, and the
dear knows how many more cousins and neighbours, before her in it?
Didn't her brother that was marrit in it, send her her ticket, and
wasn't there good money to be airned in it?
These queries, that, as may be seen by anyone with half an eye,
answered themselves, having been propounded by little Mary Driscoll,
she, roaring crying, and keened by all her relatives to the
coach-door--no railway being within thirty miles of her home--departed
to America, and was swallowed up by "Boyshton" for the space of five
years, during the passage of which, since she could neither read nor
write, no communication passed between her and her parents, save only
the postal orders that, through an intermediary, she unfailingly sent
them. Then there was a month that the postal order came not, and while
the old father and mother were wondering was Mary dead, or what ailed
her, Mary walked in, uglier than ever in her Boyshton clothes, and it
was gloriously realised that not only was not Mary dead at all, but
that she had as much saved as would bury the old people, or maybe
marry herself.
Mary had not enjoyed America. She wouldn't get her health in it, she
said.
("Ye wouldn't see a fat face or a red cheek on one o' thim that comes
back," assented Mary's mother); and for as little as she was, Mary
continued, she'd rather bring her bones home with herself to
Cunnock-a-Ceoil. (A cryptic phrase signifying that though she
recognised, humorously, her own unworthiness, she still attached
sufficient importance to her person to wish to bestow it upon the
place of her birth.) Not long after her return and restoration to
health, the episode of her marriage had occurred, and she had settled
down into the soil of Ireland again, with, possibly, a slightly
increased freedom of manner, but, saving this, with no more token on
her of her dash into the new world, than has the little fish that lies
and pants on the river bank for a moment, before the angler
contemptuously chucks him into the stream again.
Michael and Mary Twomey had been on the staff of Coppinger's Court for
a full thirty years when, in the fullness of time, Frederica returned
to her ancient home, bringing with her the young heir to it, and all
its accessory tenanted lands. Not Green Dragon or The Norreys
King-at-Arms, or any other pontiff of pedigrees, could attach a higher
importance to gentle blood than did little elderly Mary Twomey,
elderly, but still as indomitably nimble and resolute as when in
Frederica's childhood she would catch the donkey for her, and run
after it, belabouring it in its rider's interest, for half an
afternoon.
In spite of the fact that Miss Coppinger's youth had been spent,
chiefly, in a town, the love of the country, ingrained during her
first years, was merely dormant, and it revived with her return to
Coppinger's Court. The garden, the farm, the hens, the cattle, the
dairy, were all interests to which she returned with that renewal of
early passion, that has in it the fervour of youth as well as the
depth of maturity. She read agricultural papers insatiably, and
believed all that she read, accepting the verbal inspiration of their
advertisements with the enthusiasm of her religious beliefs. She was a
doctrinaire farmer, and she applied to the garden, the farm and the
poultry-yard, the same zeal and intensity that had made her in earlier
days the backbone of committees, and the leading exponent of the godly
activities of St. Matthew's. She was regarded by the heretofore rulers
of these various provinces with a mixture of respect, contempt, and
apprehension. She was an incalculable force, with a predisposition
towards novelty, and novelty, especially if founded on theory, is
abhorrent to such as old Johnny Galvin the steward, or Peter Flood the
gardener, or, stiffest in her own conceit of all, Mrs. Twomey of the
dairy.
"Master Larry's coming home from Cluhir tomorrow, Mary," Miss
Coppinger announced, with satisfaction, to the peculiar confection of
grey hair and black chenille net that represented the back of Mrs.
Twomey's head, her forehead being pressed against the side of the cow
that she was milking.
"Thang-aade!" replied Mrs. Twomey fervently, expressing in this
concise form her gratitude to her Creator for what she considered to
be Larry's release from a very vile durance "He's long enough in it
already!"
"The Doctor wouldn't let me move him any sooner," replied Miss
Coppinger, apologetically.
"The divil doubt him, what a fool he'd be!" said Mrs. Twomey with a
bitter laugh. "Aren't they all sayin' as sure as gun is iron it's what
he wants that he'll see his daughter in Coppinger's Court before he
dies!"
"What nonsense!" said Miss Coppinger, warmly; "I should like to know
who is saying it!"
Mrs. Twomey, milking ceaselessly, slewed her head a little and looked
at her employer out of the corner of an eye as bright and as cunning
as a hen's, and said: "As rich as your Honour is, you couldn't put a
penny into the mouth of every man that's sayin' it!"
"I'm surprised at you, Mary," said Frederica, indignantly, "You ought
to have more sense than to repeat such rubbish!"
To this reproach, Mrs. Twomey responded with a long and jubilant crow
of laughter.
"Yerra, gerr'l alive--!" she corrected herself quickly. "My lady
alive, I should say--sure a little thing like me'd tell lies as fast
as a hen'd pick peas!"
The modesty, as well as the accuracy, of this statement silenced Miss
Coppinger for a moment.
"Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself!" she resumed with much
severity. "It is amazing to me how a decent, respectable little woman
like you can not only tell lies, but boast of it!"
"Ah ha! I'm the same owld three and fourpince, an' will be till I
die!" triumphed Mrs. Twomey, with another screech of laughter,
removing her tiny person, her milk-pail, and her stool from under the
cow. "An' I won't be long dyin'!" another screech; "an' it won't take
many to carry me to Cunnock-a-Ceoil Churchyard!"
A final and prolonged burst of mirth succeeded this announcement,
during which the unrepentant Three and Fourpence swung the pail on to
the hook of the swinging-balance for weighing the milk that was Miss
Coppinger's latest and most detested innovation.
"Look at that now what she has for you, Miss! Shixteen pints! An' I'll
engage I'll knock thirteen ounces o' butther out of it! That's the
little bracket cow that yourself and Johnny Galvin wanted to sell, an'
I withstood ye!"
This was of the nature, jointly, of a counter-attack and of a truckle
to the system of milk-records, but Frederica heeded it not As a matter
of fact, she was still somewhat discomposed by the insinuations that
were more numerous than the pennies she was believed to possess.
"I hope, Mary," she said, repressively, "that if you should hear any
more talk of that kind about Dr. Mangan, you will do your best to
contradict it. He has been extremely kind to Master Larry, and it
annoys me very much that such things should be said."
Mrs. Twomey's supple mind was swift to realise that a change of
attitude was advisable.
"Why then, upon my truth and body, I'd blame no one that wanted Master
Larry! That little fella is in tune with all the world!" she declared;
"but those people do be always gibbing and gabbing! Give them a smell,
and they're that suspeecious they'll do the rest! Sure I said to that
owld man below, Mikey Twomey"--thus dispassionately was Mrs. Twomey
wont to speak of her husband--"I says to him, that your Honour was
satisfied to leave Master Larry back in Cluhir till he'd be well agin.
They were all sayin' the child wouldn't be said by ye to come back!
Didn't I have to put the heighth o' the house o' curses to it before
he'd believe me!"
"Intolerable nonsense!" said Frederica, hotly.