People have said, retrospectively, that the rise of the Mangan family
dated from the fall of Larry Coppinger into the Feorish River. This
may, or may not have been the case but it is certain that Mrs.
Mangan's way through the world took at about this time an upward
trend, and one of the most perceptible ascending jerks was the result
of Lady Isabel Talbot-Lowry's Sale of Work.
This function had been ordained with, for object, the provision of a
fund for the renovation of the parish church of Knock Ceoil, and was
obviously a matter without interest for persons of another
denomination. Lady Isabel, and Miss Coppinger, and others of their
friends and neighbours slaved at the provision of munitions for it, as
good women will slave at such enterprises, squandering energy on the
construction of those by-products of the rag-bag that wen specially
consecrated to charitable purposes by the ladies of their period.
"No one will want to buy this rubbish," said Miss Coppinger, who never
tried to deceive even herself, "but people will have to spend their
money on something, and _we're_ not going to raffle bottles of
brandy--as they did at that R.C. Bazaar in Riverstown!"
Frederica could be just, but when a question of religion intervened,
she found it hard to be generous.
The Sale of Work took place during the September that followed the
winter of Larry's disaster, and it was indisputable that the Mangan
family contributed materially to its success. Mrs. Mangan was of a
class that is accustomed to get its money's worth, and was herself
known and respected as an able and inveterate haggler. Yet, at the
Mount Music Sale, she was content to hide her talent beneath
innumerable chair-backs and night-dress cases, purchased,
uncomplainingly, at the prices marked on them, and to permit the
contents of an apparently inexhaustible purse to flow in a golden
stream from stall to stall. Her family were no less in evidence, the
Big Doctor offering himself a cheerful victim on the shrine of
raffles, even attaching himself to Christian as a coadjutor in the
sale of tickets for the disposal of one of Rinka's latest progeny.
Mrs. Mangan's son and daughter, something subdued by unfamiliar
surroundings, were, on the disposal of the puppy-tickets, taken in
hand by their father, and were, with an eloquence that seemed meant
for a larger audience, made acquainted with the notable objects of the
house.
"If I could get hold of your mother, now," the Big Doctor would say,
"I'd like her to see this," or "Look at that picture, Tishy! That's a
lovely woman! The Major's grandmother, I believe. We'll ask Miss
Judith--'pon my honour, it might have been done of herself!"
Miss Judith, with a fruit and flower stall near the portrait in
question, coldly admitted the relationship, and ignored the question
of the likeness. Judith was of the age of intolerance; moreover, she
was at that moment in the act of selling a button-hole to Bill Kirby,
and the Doctor's enthusiasm was undesired.
The little family party moved on, while Dr. Mangan, with the ease of
an _habitué_, indicated to his son and daughter the ancestral
portraits in the dining-room, the Cromwellian arms on the staircase,
the coats-of-arms, the Indian weapons, the foxes' masks in the hall.
The son and daughter received the information coldly. It was their
first introduction to the interior of Mount Music, and while Tishy was
filled with a great resolve to be impressed by nothing, Barty was
silenced by those tortures that unfamiliar surroundings have power to
inflict upon the shy.
In his determination to instruct his young in all the possible objects
of interest, Dr. Mangan strolled away from the crowded scene of the
sale, and led them down the long passage, dedicated to sporting
prints, that led to the library.
"There's a picture there that's worth seeing, of a Meeat Coppinger's
Court in the time of Larry's grandfather," he announced impressively,
as he opened the door. "The Talbot-Lowrys and the Coppingers were
always fine sports men--"
A tall old screen stood between the door and the fireplace from behind
it a hunted voice said:
"Who the devil's there now?"
Dr. Mangan thought, complacently: "My diagnosis was correct!" Aloud he
said to his son and daughter, in a tone of hoarse consternation: "To
think of our blundering in on the Major like this! Here! Away now, the
pair of you!"
He advanced from behind the screen.
"Major! My most humble apologies! I never thought of you being here! I
was showing that boy and girl of mine some of your beautiful things."
Major Talbot-Lowry was unlike his daughter Judith in many things, and
not least in his easy sufferance of those whom she, in youthful
arrogance, called cads.
"Come in, Doctor, and have a cigar in peace," he said, hospitably,
putting on one side the novel he was reading. "I thought you were
Evans, or one of the maids, coming to bother me. This damned show has
turned the house upside down!"
"Well, it seems a great success," said Dr. Mangan cordially.
"Very good of you to come," responded his host, "more especially when
it's--er--it's--er--such a purely local affair--"
Dr. Mangan understood that he was receiving the meed of religious
tolerance.
"Well, Major," he said, expansively, "I lived long enough one time in
England to learn that we mustn't give in too much to the clerical
gentlemen! My own instinct is to be neighbourly, and to let my friends
mind their own religion."
"Quite so, quite so," said Major Dick, magnanimously, forgetting, for
the moment, those epithets that, in his more heated moments, he was
accustomed to apply to the ministers of the Church to which he did not
belong. "Quite so, Doctor. I'm all for toleration, and let the parsons
fight it out among 'em! Busy men, like you and me, haven't time to
worry about these affairs--we've other things to think about!" He
stretched a long arm for a box of cigars, and handed it to his
visitor; "sit down for a bit. There's no hurry. The ladies can have it
all their own way for a while!"
Dr. Mangan lowered his huge person into an armchair of suitable
proportions, and for some moments smoked his cigar in appreciative
silence. As a matter of fact, he was planning an approach to the
subject that had instigated his visit to the library, but he was in no
hurry to begin upon it, remembering that the longest way round is
often the shortest way home.
"By the way, Major," he said, taking the cigar from his mouth, and
regarding it with affection, "did some one tell me that you were
looking for a farming horse?"
"If they didn't, they might have," replied Dick. "McKinnon's at me to
get another. I was going to ask you if you knew of anything?"
"Well, now, that's funny. I was wondering to myself this morning what
I'd do with that big brown horse of mine. He'll not go hunting again,
he never got the better of that hurt he got. But he's the very cut of
a farm-horse. You see, the poor devil had to carry _me_!" ended
the Big Doctor, with a laugh at himself.
"I'll tell McKinnon of him. He wants a horse that will--" a recital of
the accomplishments exacted by Dick's steward followed.
Dr. Mangan listened with attention.
"Tell McKinnon he'd better have him over on trial. I know him and his
requirements! The horse mightn't be able to play the piano for him!"
said the Doctor, facetiously. "I'm not afraid of _you_, Major,
but I've a great respect for Mr. McKinnon!"
"Oh, I'll tell old Mack he'll be lucky to get him," said Dick, with
his pleasant laugh; "you and I will strike the bargain!"
The approach had been pegged out, and Dr. Mangan turned, for the
moment, to other subjects.
It was a damp and sodden day near the beginning of September, and a
comfortable turf fire centralised and gave point to the room, as a
fire inevitably does. Major Talbot-Lowry was in the habit of saying
that the day of the month never warmed anybody yet, and if it was only
for the sake of the books--the truth being that the library fire at
Mount Music had never, in the memory of housemaid, been extinguished
save only when "the Major was out of home." Dick, like most
out-of-door men, considered that fresh air should be kept in its
proper place, outside the walls of the house, and an ancient
atmosphere, in which the varied scents of turf, tobacco, old books,
and old hound-couples, all had their share, filled the large, dingy
old room. Dusty and composite squirrel-hoards of objects that defy
classification, covered outlying tables, and lay in heaps on the
floor, awaiting that resurrection to useful life that Major
Talbot-Lowry's faith held would some day be theirs, and were, in the
meantime, the despair and demoralisation of housemaids.
Deep in the bearskin rug in front of the fire (a trophy of one of the
rifles that filled a glass-fronted case over the mantel-shelf) lay the
two little fox-terriers, Rinka and Tashpy, in moody and determined
repose. For a brief period of suffering they had attempted to cleave
to Christian; but as the throng grew, and the time for tea lingered,
they had, in high offence, betaken themselves to their ultimate
citadel, the library.
"I suppose it was her pup I was raffling awhile ago," remarked Dr.
Mangan, presently, as Rinka languidly rose, and having stretched
herself, and yawned, musically and meretriciously, put her nose on his
broad knee, deliberating as to whether the distinction of a human lap
outweighed the lowly comfort of the bearskin.
"Doggie! Poor doggie! Down, now, down!" Dr. Mangan had no idea how to
talk to dogs, and he did not wish Rinka to sit on his best grey
trousers.
"Hit her a smack!" said Major Dick; "don't let her bother you.
Christian has spoilt these dogs till they're perfect nuisances! Yes,
it's her pup. Who won it? It ought to be a clinker; it was the best of
the lot--"
"I d'no did they draw for it yet. I took three tickets for it myself,"
said the Doctor. "I want it for a sort of a cousin of me own--a very
sporting chap that's coming to Cluhir; he asked me could I get him a
dog."
"What's he going to do in Cluhir?" asked Dick, carelessly.
The approach was now clear, and Dr. Mangan began to advance.
"Well, he's just taken his degree. He's a doctor, and he's coming here
for a while. He can give me a help while he's looking out for a
dispensary. He'd like some place where he'd get a little hunting now
and then. I expect you know his father, Major--old Tom Aherne, of
Pribawn--"
Major Talbot-Lowry became more interested.
"You don't say old Tom's son is a doctor! By Jove! That's very
creditable to him--a decent old fellow Tom was--and you say he wants
to hunt? That's the right sort of doctor! Look here!"
Dick sat up, the light of inspiration woke in his ingenuous blue eyes,
he wrinkled his forehead with the super-intelligent concentration of a
not very brilliant intellect. "Didn't I hear that old Fogarty is
giving up the Dispensary here? Why don't you run him for that?"
The shepherding of Dick Lowry was really an affair of a simplicity
unworthy of preparation made by that _rusé_ old collie, the Big
Doctor. Nevertheless, being an artist, he continued to play the game.
"Knock Ceoil! Begad, that's a great notion! Now I come to think of it,
I did hear something of old Fogarty giving up, but somehow I never
thought of young Danny Aherne in connection with it. I thought I was
as well able as any man to put two and two together, but I declare I
might never have thought of it if it hadn't been for you! They say, if
you're too close to a thing, you can't see it!"
Thus did the collie yap, while the sheep (who was a member of the
Dispensary Committee) gratified, and pleasantly conscious of
originality, trotted up the path and into the fold that had been
prepared for it.
Meanwhile, in what house-agents call the reception-rooms, the Sale of
Work raged on, with auctions, with raffles, with card-fortunes, told
in a cave of rugs by a devoted sorceress, in a temperature that would
inure her to face with composure the witch's destiny at the stake;
with "occasional music," that fell upon the turmoil of talk more
softly than any petals from blown roses on the grass, and was just
sufficiently perceptible to impart the requisite flavour of festivity.
One item of the musical programme had indeed had power to still the
storm, but since it was contributed by the Mangan Quartet, it must be
admitted that, charming though it was, it owed something of its
success to surprise. The countryside had rallied to Lady Isabel with a
response that did credit to her as to them, yet, thronged though the
rooms were the Mangan family shone with a unique lustre as alone
representing the mighty Church of Rome.
"Wonderful of them to come!" said the Church of Ireland ladies
approvingly; "the only R.C.'s here!"
Yet the Mangan family was not quite alone in this representative
position; young Mr. Coppinger, their (as it were) inventor and
patentee, shared it with them, and was, moreover, beginning, for the
first time, and not without displeasure, to realise something of the
social complications that are involved by the difference of creed. It
was a matter of atmosphere; quite intangible, and quite perceptible.
Larry was discovering that he was something of an anomaly. "Only an
R.C. by accident," as he had heard someone say, in apparent
extenuation (a benevolence that he found irritating). He was learning
the meaning of the sudden silences, the too obvious changes of the
course of conversation, that seemed to occur when he drew near. He had
not, as yet, formulated these things to himself, but, on this
turbulent afternoon, it was possibly some livelier apprehension of
them that made him gravitate towards Barty Mangan, as towards a fellow
pariah, and induced him to seek with him the far asylum of the
schoolroom. There, save for the schoolroom cat, they were alone, and
they sat for some minutes in grateful silence, looking out, across
misty stretches of grass, to the river, and beyond it to the dense
green of the trees of Coppinger's Court. The sky was very low and
grey; by leaning out of the window a little, a far-off reach of river,
at the western end of the valley, could be descried; above it there
was a narrow slit in the clouds, and through it a faint and lovely
primrose light fell, like a veil, that hid, while it told of the
deathbed repentance of the dying day. Larry dragged his chair into the
corner of the window, and watched the growing glory of the sunset with
all his ardent soul in his eyes.
Whatever this boy did, he did vividly, and to Barty Mangan, seated on
the shadow side, watching him, he was, as ever, a pageant, a being of
incalculable impulse, of flashing intensity and splendour.
"Where on earth did you go, Barty? I looked about for you for ages
before I found you; but there was such an awful crowd of women--I'm
jolly glad to get out of it!" Larry leaned back in his chair and
proceeded to light a cigarette, as an assertion of the rights of a man
of nearly seventeen.
"My father was taking Tishy and me about, showing us the house,"
replied Barty, apologetically. (As a matter of fact, he said "me
fawther," but if this, and similar details of pronunciation, are not
known by nature, it is labour in vain to attempt to indicate them by
means of the wholly inadequate English alphabet.) "Larry," he went on,
with the candour that made a gentleman of him, "I never was in a house
like this before. I declare to you it frightens me! I feel like a rat
gone astray! I was in the dining-room by myself, looking at the
pictures, and that old fella' of a butler came in and frightened the
heels off me! He kept an eye on me that was like a flame from a
blow-pipe! You'd say he thought I was going to steal the house!"
"I expect he did, too," said Larry, "especially if he thought that you
were a pal of mine. He hates me like blazes. He's one of those damned
Orangemen. I say, do you remember that thing in The Spirit of the
Nation, 'Orange and Green will carry the Day'? I bet old Evans would
rather lose, any day, than be 'linked in his might' with a Papist like
you or me! It's a most extraordinary thing how religion plays the
devil with Ireland!"
There are certain standard truisms that must be rediscovered by each
successive generation (possibly because they have bored the preceding
one to extinction), and Larry was of the age at which truisms reveal
themselves as new ideas, and sing and shine with the radiancy of
morning stars. He was also young enough, and just sufficiently
interested in religion, to find it exciting to denounce it. The
fervour of his indictment lifted him from his chair, and he stood,
with the evening light on his hot face, enjoying his theme, and his
audience.
"I stayed with some people in England last holidays, friends of my
people's; Protestants they were, too--Sour-faces,' as the 'Leader'
calls them!--and they didn't give a blow what religion I was! That was
_my_ affair, they thought--and so it was, too! Not like this
crowd here--I don't mean my _own_ people, you know," he added
hastily, "they're all right!"
"Oh, I'm sure!" said Barty, in instant assent.
"I hate England, of course," continued the student of The Spirit of
the Nation, hurriedly, "but I must say I get sick of this eternal
blackguarding of Catholics by Protestants, and Protestants by
Catholics--"
"Ah, they don't mean it half the time!" put in Barty, pacifically;
"it's just a trick they have!"
"Well, I don't care," said Larry, who didn't like being interrupted,
with a fling of his head; "they shouldn't do it! I hear people
shutting up when I come into the room--just as if I didn't jolly well
know they were abusing the priests or something like that. And if they
only knew it, _I_ don't care a curse how much they abuse them!"
He took an angry pull at his cigarette, glaring at the unoffending
Barty. "''Tisn't the man I respects, 'tis the office!' That's what
Mrs. Twomey said, when I was chaffing her for dragging gravel up from
the river to put in front of her house, because the priest, whom she
loathes, was going to have a 'station' there!"
The orator paused for breath, as well as for the duty of keeping his
cigarette alight.
"Well, and isn't she quite right, too?" said Barty. "I've no great
fancy for Father Greer, but that doesn't affect my feeling for the
Church."
He rose, and resting his elbows on the window-sill, leaned out into
the still air.
"By Jingo! You don't often see the beat o' that for a sky! Look at it,
Larry. There's Orange and Green for you, if you like! God! I wish
_we_ could get them to work together like that!"
One of those transformation scenes that sometimes follow on an
overcast and rainy day, was happening in the west. The sun had sunk
behind the hills, the grey clouds had vanished; the higher heaven was
green, clear and pale, but low in the west, long and fleecy rollers of
golden cloud lay in a sea of burning orange.
At about the same time, the golden stream that had flowed so
generously from Mrs. Mangan's purse, had failed, and Mrs. Mangan, her
arms full of the fruit of those Christian graces of Faith, Hope and
Charity, that are indispensable to the success of a _bazaar_, was
asking Evans to order for her her "caw," by which term she indicated
the vehicle that had conveyed her to the scene of her triumph.
For it was evident to the meanest capacity that Mrs. Mangan had now
paid her footing in society.