At intervals in all histories there comes a pause, in which the
moralities proper to the occasion are assembled, expounded and
expanded. Such a moment might now seem to have arrived, its theme
being the grain-of-mustard-seed-like character of the Cluhir picnic,
as compared with the events that subsequently dwelt in its branches,
nesting there, and raising up other events that flew far and wide,
farther and wider than they can here be followed. But since moralities
appeal only to the moral (to whom they are superfluous) it seems
advisable to proceed at once to the primary result, which was the
concert, that sprang like a Phoenix from the ashes of that fire on
which the picnic kettle was boiled.
The scheme had various appeals for its two chief promoters, young Mr.
Coppinger and Sub. Lieut. Talbot-Lowry, R.N. Immanent in it was the
necessity for frequent, almost for daily, visits to No. 6, The Mall,
Cluhir. For the former of these gentlemen, whose acquaintance with the
Mangan family was now of long, if of intermittent, familiarity, these
visits afforded a less thrilling emotion than they held for the
latter, who found himself honoured and welcomed in a degree to which
he was quite unaccustomed at home. Larry was not quite sure that he
approved of this blaze of social success for his young cousin. It is
one thing to receive, languidly, the adulation of those in whom such
adulation may be regarded as an indication of a widening horizon; but
when an equal veneration is lavished upon the junior and disdained
play-fellow of earlier years, the result is often a reconsideration of
values. The May madness that rose like a mist from the bluebells in
the woods of the Ownashee, and culminated in the magical light of the
full moon, began to lift from the spirit of young Mr. Coppinger,
leaving him, as he formulated it to himself (and found much
satisfaction in the formula) bereft, bored, and benignant. He was
quite prepared to retire gracefully in favour of Georgy, and was
pleased with the thought that his interest in Tishy had been merely
the outcome of a mood--_l'après-midi d'un faune_--so to speak.
There was something artistic in these transient emotions, and his
future, as at present determined, was to be devoted to art; certainly
not to Tishy Mangan. Yes, he would leave Tishy to Georgy; all but her
voice; in that, as an artist, he still retained an interest, the
interest of the _impresario_, whose search for stars is as
absorbing as is that of the astronomer in pursuits of new worlds.
The passion and energy of the promoter are, it may be supposed, born
in human beings in a certain proportion to those who are to become
their victims. In Larry, both qualities were highly developed, and in
no way did he prove the genuineness of his heaven-given _flair_
more surely than in his discovery and annexation of Christian, as that
rare and precious thing, a sympathetic and capable accompanist.
But although the thought of dwelling upon this and other of the
details of the Cluhir concert, is appealing, it must be dismissed. So
much has already been said in the hope that some further indications
as to the character and conduct of some of our young friends may have
been deduced; but now, certain glossings upon the household of Mount
Music must be inflicted, since it is with it, rather than with the
capabilities of young Mr. Coppinger's troupe, that we are mainly
occupied.
It is not easy to say whether the process of emergence from the sheath
of childhood, a condition that has characteristics more or less common
to us all, is more interesting to feel than to observe. In Christian's
case, the interest was felt exclusively by herself, her family being
healthily absorbed in the conjugation of the three primary verbs, to
be, to do, and to have, in relation, exclusively, to themselves, and
that merely from the skin outwards. Soul-processes and developments
were unknown to them in life, and were negligible in books. Lady
Isabel pursued her blameless way, doing nothing in particular,
diligently and unpunctually, and spending much time in writing long
and loving letters to those of her family who were no longer beneath
her wing, in that particular type of large loose handwriting whose
indefinite spikes stab to the heart any hope of literary interest. Who
shall say that she did not do her duty according to her lights? But
she was certainly quite unconscious of such matters as soul-processes.
Alone of the Mount Music children, Christian was aware of an inner
personality to be considered, some spirit that heard and responded to
those voices and intimations that, as a little child, she had accepted
as a commonplace of every day. By the time that she was sixteen the
voices had been discouraged, if not stilled, their intimations dulled;
but she had discovered her soul, and had discovered also, that it had
been born on the farther side of the river of life from the souls of
her brethren, and that although, for the first stages, the stream was
narrow, and the way on one bank very like that on the other, the two
paths were divided by deep water, and the river widened with the
passing years.
Richard, pursuing the usual course of Irish eldest sons, had adopted
the profession least adapted for young men of small means, and large
spending capacity, and had gone into his father's old regiment. John,
the zealot of an earlier day, was at Oxford, considering the Church;
Georgy's career has been announced, and the remaining twin had, with
the special predisposition of his family towards financial failure,
selected the profession of land-agent, in a country in which
peasant-proprietorship was already in the air, and would soon become
an accomplished fact.
There remains, to complete the family history, Judith, and she, now
aged twenty-one, was possibly the sole member of the house of
Talbot-Lowry for whom a successful future might confidently be
anticipated. Judith, a buccaneer by nature and by practice, was
habitually engaged in swash-bucklering it on a round of visits. She
was good-looking, tall, talkative, and an able player of all the games
proper to the state of life to which she had been called. She was a
competent guest, giving as much entertainment as she received, being
of those who contribute as efficiently indirectly, as directly, to
conversation, and are normally involved in one of those skirmishes of
the heart, that cannot be described as engagements, but that, none the
less, invest their heroines with an atmosphere of respect, and provide
hostesses with subjects of anxiety and interest. At an early age,
Christian was promoted by her elder sister to the position of
confidante, and justified the promotion by the happy mixture of
sympathy and cynicism with which she received the confidences. She was
now well versed in the brief passions that, beginning at the second or
third dance of a regimental ball, would, like some night-flowering
tropic blossom, arrive at full splendour by supper time, and would
expire languorously, to the strains of "God save the King." Christian,
though young, was, as had been said, a capable audience. She could
listen, with the severe and youthful grace that seemed to set her a
little apart from others of her standing, to the feats of Judith and
her fellow-blackguards, savouring and appraising the absurdities, and
her comments upon them were offered with a sympathetic and skilled
comprehension that excused her in Judith's eyes for her lack of
ambition to emulate them.
Dick Talbot-Lowry had ceased to boast of the predominance of the
masculine gender among his offsprings, and rarely alluded to his sons
without coupling with their names a vigorous statement of how far in
excess of their value was their cost, usually ending with an enquiry
into the dark rulings of Providence, who had bestowed an expensive
family with one hand, and with the other had taken away the means of
supporting it. Dick was sixty-four now, an unhappy moment in a dashing
and artless career, with the shadow of advancing old age blighting and
reproving the still ardent enjoyment of the pleasures of youth.
"I'm an old man now!" Dick would say, without either feeling or
meaning it, and would bitterly resent the failure of his sons to
contradict a statement with which they were in complete agreement.
Only Christian, "of all his halls had nursed," tried to maintain her
father in a good conceit of himself, and to "rise his heart"; but
there are few hearts for which it is more difficult to perform that
office than the heart of a man, who, having ever (as King David says)
taken pleasure in the strength of horses, and delighted in his own
legs, is beginning to find that the former have become too strong, and
the latter too weak for either comfort or confidence.
And not these things only were troubling Dick. The common lot of Irish
landlords, and Pterodactyli, was upon him, and he was in process of
becoming extinct. It was his fate to see his income gradually
diminishing, being eaten away, as the sea eats away a bulwark-less
shore, by successive Acts of Parliament, and the machinery they
created, "for the purpose," as old Lord Ardmore was fond of
fulminating, of "pillaging loyal Peter in order to pamper rebel Paul!"
The opinion of very old, and intolerant, and indignant peers cannot
always be taken seriously, but it is surely permissible to feel a
regret for kindly, improvident Dick Talbot-Lowry, his youth and his
income departing together, and the civic powers that he had once
exercised, reft from him. Such power as he had had, he had exercised
honourably and with reverent confidence in precedent, and when he had
damned Parnell, and had asserted, in stentorian tones, that Cromwell
was the only man who had ever known how to govern Ireland, and he,
unfortunately, was now in hell; where, the Major would add, he was
probably better off, his contribution to constructive politics had
ended. He and his generation, reactionary almost to a man, instead of
attempting to ride the waves of the rising tide, subscribed their
guineas to construct breakwaters that were pathetic in their futility.
Gallant in resistance, barren in expedient, history may condemn the
folly of the. Old Guard of the "English Garrison," but it cannot deny,
even though it may deride, its fidelity.