There are families, as there are nations, that are like those ships
that, launched under a lucky star, sail their appointed courses ever
serenely and eventlessly, and though they may indeed look on tempests,
yet are never shaken by them. But of such was not, it must regretfully
be said, the family of Talbot-Lowry. It can only be supposed that the
gods had preordained its destruction, for on no other assumption can
the dementia of its chief representative be comprehended. It would be
out of place, even, if not impertinent, absurd, to discuss here the
Act of Parliament that in the year nineteen hundred and three, made
provision to change the ownership of Irish land, and to transfer its
possession from the landlords to the tenants. It is sufficient to say
that those of both classes who were endowed with the valuable quality
of knowing on which side of a piece of bread the butter had been
applied, lost as little time as was possible in availing themselves of
the facilities that the Act offered them. The ceremony of Hari Kiri,
even if entered upon with the belief that it will lead to another and
a better world, is not an agreeable one, but it was obvious to most
Irish landlords that, with bad or good grace, sooner or later, that
grim rite had to be faced, and that the hindmost in the transaction
need expect only the fate proverbially promised to such. It is,
possibly, superfluous to say that of the company of the hindmost was
our poor friend, well-meaning and stupid Dick Talbot-Lowry, and also
that his fate, as such, was sedulously pointed out to him by those
friends of his own class, who, like the fabled fox, having lost their
brushes, were eager in explanation of the superiority of their
position.
"I don't own a stick outside my own demesne wall!" says Colonel St.
George. "Of all the hundreds of acres of mountain that my father had,
there isn't as much as one patch of bog left that I could cut a sod of
turf in!"
This whisk of a vanished brush was a gesture well calculated to enrage
Major Dick. It was senseless of St. George to boast of his
limitations, and yet no one better than Dick knew what must be the
feeling of emancipation that prompted the boast.
Autocracy dies hard, and it is probable that long after Leagues of
Nations have decreed the abolition of all Rulers, the Autocrat of the
Breakfast Table will still, in the most inveterate Republics, issue,
unquestioned, his unalterable edicts, with his coat-tails monopolising
the dining-room fire, and the family income concentrated in his cheque
book. Dick Talbot-Lowry's pigheadedness was at the root of the
downsliding of Mount Music. Having faced, undaunted, deputations of
his tenants; deputations of public bodies; ("Damned interfering
blackguards, who ought to be taught to mind their own business!"),
having made light of advice from his friends, and of anonymous
threatening letters from, presumably, his enemies, he still held fast,
and refused to sell the property that had come to him from the men
whose portraits had looked down on him from the old walls of Mount
Music, all the days of his life. It was, perhaps, the solitary strand
of romance in his nature, the feudal feeling that the Mount Music
tenants were his, as they had been his ancestors', to have and to
hold, to rule, to arbitrate for, and to stand by, as a fond and
despotic husband rules and stands by an obedient wife, loving her and
bullying her (but both entirely for her good). He had, moreover, the
desire to disparage and to disprove new ideas, that is a sign of a
mind incapable of originality, and anxious to assert itself
negatively, since it must otherwise remain silent.
"But Dick," his friends would say, "there isn't a property this side
of the county that isn't sold, except your own!"
"What's that to me?" says Dick, as stubborn and stupid a King Canute
as ever sat with the tide nearing the tops of his hunting-boots; "I
don't care a damn what anybody else does! And what's more," he would
add, gloomily, "_I_ can't afford to sell at seventeen years'
purchase. Anyhow, what's mine's my own! I'll be shot if I'll be
bullied!"
"I wouldn't be at all surprised if you were!" the friends would reply
darkly.
To sell at seventeen years' purchase, was what Mr. St. Lawrence
Coppinger had done, following the advice of his agent and solicitor,
Mr. Bartholomew Mangan, and his cousin, and late guardian, Major
Talbot-Lowry, had found it hard to forgive him. The business had been
arranged while Larry was in Paris, and the expostulations that might
have prevailed if delivered _viva voce_, failed of their effect
when presented on foreign paper, in Cousin Dick's illegible scrawl. It
was all very fine for Larry, ran the illegible scrawl, to talk of
selling at such a price, but he ought to see what a hole his doing so
put his neighbours in! Larry hadn't a squad of incumbrances, and
charges, and mortgages, hung round his neck like leeches (and no fault
of the Major's). He had had to find money in a hurry to pay off one of
these cursed things only the other day, and if he hadn't had the luck
to mention it to a friend, who was kind enough to come to the rescue
(of course on good security) the Major would have been in a hat, or a
hole, Larry couldn't quite read which.
These grievances, and much more, illegibly scrawled on foreign paper,
with a quill pen. Larry, swallowed up in the absorbing, isolating life
of a Paris studio, would put the letters half-read, in his pocket, and
would immediately forget all about them. After all, he couldn't
interfere with Barty; he was the man at the helm, and mustn't be
talked to. Also it was idiotic to keep a dog and bark yourself.
Proverbial philosophy is a recognised sedative; Larry gave himself a
dose or two, and straightway forgot Cousin Dick, forgot Ireland,
forgot even that gratifying nomination of himself as Nationalist
candidate for the Division, and plunged back into the burning
atmosphere of art, wherein models and professors, cliques and cabals,
glow, and seethe, and exist intensely, and with as little reference to
the affairs of the outside world, as if they were the sole occupants
of a distant and much over-heated star.
There are many people who have been endowed with one master-passion,
that "like Aaron's serpent swallows up the rest," but Larry's
ingenuous breast harboured a nest of such serpents. During his three
years at Oxford, he had stormed from one enthusiasm to another; he had
rowed, and boxed, and spouted politics, and, beginning with music, had
stormed on through poetry and the drama, to painting.
Having taken a moderate degree, he had rushed in pursuit of this
latest charmer to Paris, and the waters of the Quartier Latin then
closed over him. Occasionally a bubble would rise from those clouded
deeps, and a letter to Aunt Freddy, or to Barty Mangan, would briefly
announce his continued existence. Sometimes he wrote to Christian, and
would expand a little more to her; telling her of how one Professor
had remarked of his work that it was now _presque pas mal_, and
that this dizzying encomium had encouraged him to begin a _Salon_
(its subject described at length, with elucidatory sketches); further,
that he had taken a very jolly _atelier_, and "dear old Chose"
was "on the Jury," and would try and get him accepted, with much more
to the same effect, music, politics, horses and hounds, forgotten as
though they had never been.
Christian received these effusions with a characteristic mixture of
respect for the artistic effort that they described, and of amused,
almost pitying comprehension of the enthusiasm that they revealed. It
was three years since Larry had left Oxford and gone to France, and
during those years Christian had learned more of life than Larry had
acquired, or would ever acquire, in spite of the three years' start of
her with which he had begun the world.
Judith had been induced to close her brilliant career as a buccaneer,
by a perfectly, even--from the buccaneering point of view--depressingly
satisfactory marriage with Mr. William Kirby, and her departure had
forced her younger sister into the front rank of domestic combatants.
At Mount Music, where once the milk and honey had flowed with
effortless abundance, each year brought increasing stress. The rents
grew less, the expenses greater, that large and omnivorous item, known
as "keeping up the place," was as exacting as ever, the minor problems
of household existence more acute. There had been a time when the
Mount Music tenants had vied with one another in the provision of sons
and daughters for service in the Big House, when bonfires had blazed
for the return of "the young gentlemen," and offerings of eggs had
greeted "the young ladies." Now the propitiatory turkey that heralded
a request, the goose that signalised a success, gained with the help
of the hereditary helpers, had all ceased. Alien influences had
poisoned the wells of friendship. Such rents as were paid were
extracted by the hard hand of the law, and the tenants held
indignation meetings against the landlord who refused to resign to
them what they believed to be theirs, and he was equally convinced was
his. Major Dick still shot and fished, as was his right, over the
lands and waters that were still in his name, but the tenants, whose
fathers had loved him, had renounced the old allegiance. The
partridges were run down by the greyhounds that had killed off the
hares; the salmon were poached; worst of all, Derrylugga Gorse, the
covert that Dick had planted twenty-five years ago, on Carmody's farm,
in the middle of the best of the Broadwater Vale country, was burned
down, and a vixen and her cubs had perished with it.
Dick gave up the hounds at the end of the season.
"I've done my best to show sport for five and twenty years," he said,
"and I'm not going to spoil it now!"
It is impossible to deny that for Dick's wife this sacrifice had its
consolatory aspects. It was a long time now since there had been quite
enough money for anything at Mount Music. Those far-sighted guardian
angels who had compelled the investment of Lady Isabel's dowry in
gilt-edged securities, had placed the care of these in the hands of
hide-bound English trustees (the definition is Major Dick's) and the
amiable reader need therefore have no anxieties that starvation
threatened this well-meaning family, but, as Lady Isabel frequently
said, "what with the Boys, and Judith's trousseau, and the Wedding,
and One-Thing-and-Another" (which last is always a big item in the
domestic budget) the more common needs of every day had to submit to
very drastic condensation, and it was indisputable that the
Talbot-Lowry family-coach was running on the down-grade.
The law of averages is a stringent one, and it may be assumed with
reasonable certainty, that when one ancient and respectable
family-coach runs down hill, another vehicle, probably of more modern
equipment, will go up. In the case under consideration, the operations
of this principle were less obscure than is sometimes the way with
them. As Mount Music descended, so did No. 6, The Mall, Cluhir, rise,
and Dr. Mangan's growing prosperity compensated Fate for the decline
in Major Talbot-Lowry's affairs, with a precision that, to a person
interested in the statistics of averages, might have seemed beautiful.
The Big Doctor was now the leading man in Cluhir, leader in its
councils and its politics. On his professional side, his advice and
ministrations were in demand even beyond the range of his motor car,
and the measure of his greatness may be best estimated when it is
mentioned that his motor had been the first to startle the streets of
his native town.
Major Talbot-Lowry was of the Old Guard, who, in those now far away
times, swore never to surrender to what he held to be so thoroughly
unsportsmanlike an innovation as a motor car, and the Doctor was
accustomed to offer facetious apologies when he and his car drew up at
the Mount Music hall door. This had become a fairly frequent
occurrence. Dick was not the man he had been. When his hounds went,
old age came, and it came like an illness, bewilderingly,
unexpectedly. Dick's long, straight legs began to give at the knees,
and his square shoulders learned the hollow curve of the back of his
armchair, and submitted to it. His long sight, that had outlived the
infliction of spectacles for reading, was failing him; he had twice
tally-ho'd away a yellow cur-dog, at less than a field's distance.
"No, Mangan, I'll be damned if I go out to make a fool of myself and
the hounds!" he said, when reproached by the Doctor for staying at
home. "The sooner I'm put down like an old hound, the better!"
Dr. Mangan had been equal to the occasion, and had assured Dick that
Bill Kirby was "lost altogether" for want of his counsels, and that
the whole field were saying the Major was the only man to show sport,
and that he knew the way a fox'd run, as well as if he was inside him!
"In company with another old gander, I suppose!" says poor Dick, with
tears in his eyes, being both moved and cheered by his own jest.
The Doctor's presence was partly a reassurance and partly a menace, to
Major Dick. There had been, from time to time, further opportunities
for the investment of the Doctor's "spare ha'pence" in "something
solid and safe, like land." Aunt Bessie Cantwell's money, for
instance, had, on her demise, all come Dr. Mangan's way. There was no
need for the Major to think there was any obligation, he might call it
a mutual advantage, if he liked, anyhow, why shouldn't the money go
where it was wanted? The security was all right.
"Oh yes," says Dick, "that's right enough, and whenever I can come to
terms with the tenants--"
"No hurry!" the Big Doctor would answer; "five per cent. is good
enough for me!"
The Doctor, alone of all Dick's friends, sympathised with Major
Talbot-Lowry in the matter of the tenants, and he condemned the
conduct of his own son, Barty, as heartily as did Dick that of his
nephew, in their dealings with the Coppinger estate.
"'Tis impossible to hold these young fellows," he said, severely,
while he and Dick strolled slowly round the weedy flower garden of
Mount Music, one sunny August afternoon, four years after Larry's
coming of age; "You may be sure that I pointed out to Barty that he
and Larry were playing the deuce with you over the sale, but what
could I do? After all, Barty had to obey the orders he got from his
boss!"
"I know, I know," responded Dick. "My dear fellow, I don't blame
_you_, my own cousin's a different pair of shoes! Richard may
fight it out with the tenants when I'm gone. He'll have to marry
money. Why, my God! If I sold at these fellows' price, the property
would hardly clear itself! At least," Dick cleared his throat and
picked himself up with a guilty jerk, as does a horse who stumbles
from carelessness, "at least, it would cover the charges, and--and the
mortgages of course--but not much more--"
Dr. Mangan looked straight in front of him, as became a mortgagee of
delicate feeling, and said with some elaborateness, "No man need be
anxious about money whose security is Irish land, nowadays. 'Tis daily
appressiating in value."
"To every man except the owner!"
Dick struck hard with his ash-plant at a tall weed as he spoke, and
decapitated it with the grace and dexterity of the old cavalryman. He
put force enough into the cut to have felled a tougher foe.
"This place is turned into a wilderness--" he went on and then,
staggering, caught at the Doctor's thick arm.
In an instant the Big Doctor had his other arm round Dick's shoulders,
and held him firm.
"Stand still, Major, it's nothing! You'll be all right in a minute!"
he said, meeting Dick's frightened eyes with reassuring steadiness.
"The sun's very hot. It's only a touch of giddiness--"
He stood, a great rock of support, uttering leisurely words of
consolation, while he quietly slipped one hand down the Major's arm,
until his broad, perceptive finger-tips could feel the faint pulse
jerking under their pressure.
Dick's colour crept back, and the veins, that had shown blue on the
sudden yellow of his cheek, began to lose their vividness.
"That's more like it!" said the Doctor, tranquilly. "Do you sit quite
here for a minute, now, and I'll go get you a drop of something from
our friend, Mr. Evans, that'll do you no harm!"
He established his patient on a garden seat, and left him, moving
slowly until he knew he was no longer in sight; then he swung into the
house, with swift strides that would have compelled a smaller man to
run, if he were to keep level with him.
"Poor old lad!" he thought, compassionately; yet, blended with the
compassion, was the half-unconscious triumph of strong middle-age at
sight of the failure of a senior. "That's the first knock. He'll want
to mind himself from this out--the next one might hit him harder."