Barty Mangan fulfilled his father's behests, and on Saturday, he drove
his mother to Coppinger's Court.
He drove a motor well; not brilliantly, like Larry, because Barty did
nothing brilliantly, but capably and gently, with consideration for
donkey-carts, with respect for horses, with kindness towards
pedestrians, even without animosity towards cur-dogs. The surprising
aspect of the fact was that he should be able, in any degree, to
handle a car, the control of energy being an effort foreign to his
nature. What in his mother was laziness, was with him transmuted to
languor; his father's vigour and decision became in Barty a sort of
tepid obstinacy, and the Doctor's fierce and fighting allegiance to
his Church reappeared in his son as a peevish conscientiousness, that
had provoked a friend of the family to say: "Barty's a dam' bad
solicitor! He'll take up no case but what pleases him, and he'll touch
nothing if he thinks he'll make money out of it!"
"Ah! He was always a fool for himself!" replied, heartily, Barty's
great-aunt, Mrs. Cantwell, to whom the comment had been offered.
One aspect of the practical affairs of life, and one only, had power
to rouse Barty from the dreamy passivity which had excited Great-Aunt
Cantwell's contempt. Where Ireland and Irish politics came into
question, some deep spring of sentiment and enthusiasm in him was
touched, and all the force that he was capable of became manifest. All
the strength and tenacity that were in him were concentrated in the
cause of Nationalism; Ireland was his religion, and he felt himself to
be one of her priesthood.
There are some gentle natures, with deep affections, but without much
brain-power in whom an idea, a mental attitude, and especially a
personal liking or disliking, is very easily implanted; yet, easily as
it is introduced, once it has taken hold it can never be dislodged.
The intellect has not energy enough for reconstruction; it accepts too
readily, and, once saturated, the stain is indelible, because there is
no power of growth.
Behold, then, Barty, gentle and obstinate, timid and an enthusiast,
loving, yet implacable, seated in Larry's studio, regarding with
submissive adoration the being compact of the antithesis of his
qualities, and ready, for that being's sake, to make any sacrifice
save that of renouncing him.
The being in question, wholly and feverishly absorbed in his own
affairs of the heart, while bound by his oath to say nothing about
them, brought himself with difficulty to attend to the retrospect of
financial operations, hitherto postponed, but now insisted upon, by
his man of business.
"Oh, first-rate, old chap--quite all right--good business!--" With
these, and similar interjections, did the employer ratify and approve
of his agent's transactions. Barty's legal training abetted his
conscientiousness, and in his mild and monotonous brogue he laid
before Larry a statement of his money matters that was as unsparing in
detail as it was accurate.
"So now you see," he concluded, "I didn't act without careful
consideration, and I consulted me fawther, besides others of
experience in such matters. I believe there are people who are saying
we sold too cheap to the tenants. But, on the other hand, the money's
good and safe now; you have a certain and secure income, and you're in
a very favourable position in the eyes of the people."
Larry pulled himself from reverie to ejaculate further general
approval; then he rose from the table, upon which Barty's books had
been displayed, and drawing forward an easel on which was a framed
canvas covered by some vivid oriental drapery, he arranged it
carefully with regard to the light. Then he caught away the drapery,
stepping back, quickly, from the easel.
"What do you think of that, Barty?"
Barty, who was short-sighted, stood up and adjusted his eye-glasses,
while he endeavoured to readjust his ideas, and to abandon the realms
of business for those of art.
"But you know, Larry," he apologised, "I know nothing about paintings.
You wouldn't know what tomfoolery I mightn't--" The apology broke
off abruptly.
"Oh, God!" he muttered, feeling, in the shock of meeting her eyes, as
if a sudden wind had swept his mind bare of business, of Larry, of all
things save Christian, "it's herself!"
His sallow face had turned a dull red. He moved back a step or two,
and then went forward again. The easel was low, and Barty was very
tall; he went on his knees, and gazed, speechless.
Thus might a devout Russian have greeted a lost icon, and worshipped,
silently, a re-found saint. Larry, equally absorbed, as any painter
will understand, in the contemplation of his work, took no heed of its
effect upon Barty.
"By Jove!" he murmured, drawing a big breath, "I wonder if I did it! I
don't feel as if I had--something outside me--" He stopped; he felt
as if Christian herself were there; he felt as if her arms were round
him, his head upon her bosom. He was giddy with emotion. Scarcely
knowing what he did he walked across the room, and stared out of the
window, looking across his own woods to the woods of Mount Music.
That morning he had said good-bye to her for three long days. She had
met him at the old stepping stones across the Ownashee, and she had
made him renew his promise of silence until her return; he was sorry
he couldn't tell old Barty; but no matter, nothing mattered, except
the marvel that she was his. He whispered adoration to her, breathing
her name again and again, crowning it, as with a wreath, with those
old, familiar adjectives that had so lately become intense with new
meaning for him; he forgot Barty, forgot even her portrait, as he
thought of herself.
Barty came over to him; the two young men, with their common secret,
suspected by neither, a secret that for one was a living ecstasy, and
for the other an impossible ideal, stood silent, full of their own
thoughts. Barty spoke first.
"It's a wonder to me! I didn't think you could paint like that, Larry!
I didn't think anyone could!"
"Well, no more I can, really. This was a sort of a miracle and it
painted itself."
The same impulse moved them both, and they returned to the easel on
which was the picture, but with a quick movement Larry flung the
drapery over the frame again and hid the picture.
"Didn't you say you had a message for me from your father?"
Barty accepted the change of subject with his accustomed resignation
to Larry's moods.
"I have. He said he'd be at home to-morrow afternoon--that's
Sunday--and he wanted to see you on very special business."
"Do you know what about?" Larry asked, without interest, while he
arranged the many-coloured silken drapery in effective folds over the
picture.
"I believe old Prendergast's dying."
Barty hesitated; then, remembering that his father had not enjoined
secrecy, he rushed into his subject. "Larry, I believe the chance
we've been waiting for is come--or as good as come!"
"Do you mean that it's Prendergast the Member who's dying? Do you mean
my getting into Parliament?"
Larry swung round on Barty, and fired the questions at him, quick as
shots from a revolver.
The colour rose again in Barty's face. His dark, shortsighted eyes,
that were set on Larry, had a sudden glow in them. He nodded.
"He's likely dead by now! Oh Larry!" he cried, panting in his
eagerness. "May be the chance has come at last! I believe you might be
the man Ireland wants! I believe you might take Parnell's place! Me
fawther says you're certain to be nominated, and there's no
opposition, of course. Anyhow, if there were, itself, you'd go in
flying, just the same! You're the man we're all waiting for! Larry,
old cock! The day will come when I'll be bragging that I was the one
first gave you the notion to go into politics!"
Larry was gazing at his man of business, whose aspect, it may be
conceded, was at this moment singularly at variance with the usual
conception of such a functionary. The man of business gazed back at
him, the glow intensifying behind his eye-glasses and gathering energy
from the answering gleam in Larry's eyes.
"The Bloody Wars!" uttered Larry, slowly and quite irrelevantly, and
with great emphasis. "By all the crosses in a yard of check! Let me
hold on to something and think! This is a game and a half! I must
think furiously!"
"Do not!" exclaimed Barty; "don't think at all! Don't be wasting time
like that! No man ever had a greater chance than this! Lep at it,
Larry, old lad! Give me the word I want, and I'll wire the Doctor
to-night--a message he'll understand, and no one else. Oh Larry!" he
implored, "don't cry off now! You've pots of money; you can do any
damn thing you like! If you refuse this chance now you'll only regret
it the once, and that'll be all your life!"
Then did that mysterious and mighty agency, the warp that a mind has
received in childhood, come to reinforce the enthusiasms and ambitions
of youth, and urge Larry to assent. That other and nobler Spirit of
the Nation woke, and the passionate, irreconcilable voice, that had
first spoken to him when he was a little boy, woke and uttered itself
again, shouting to him its wild summons at a moment when the tide of
life was running fiercest in him, when every emotion was at highest
pressure and calling for great adventure.
"All right, Barty, my son, I'm for it!" said Larry, with the
assumption of outward calm, when heart and pulses are pounding, that
has been claimed as one of the assets of a public school education,
and is, even without that advantage, the birthright of such as young
Mr. Coppinger.