Larry bicycled up to the white chapel on the hill, to Second Mass, on
the following morning. He rode fast through the converging groups of
people, on foot, on outside cars, in carts, on horseback. It was four
years since he had last attended a service there, and to many of the
assembled congregation he had become a stranger. None the less there
was no hesitation in any man's mind in identifying him; these were
people who knew a gentleman when they saw one, and the young owner of
Coppinger's Court was the only gentleman ever to be seen at the white
chapel on the hill.
Therefore it was that Larry's right hand was seldom on his handle-bar,
as he skimmed through the people, decent and dark-dressed in their
Sunday best, who saluted with a long-established friendship and
respect this solitary representative of their traditional enemies, the
landlords.
There cannot be in the world a people more unfailingly church-going
than those sons and daughters of Rome who are bred in Southern
Ireland. Larry looked down, from his pew in the gallery, at the close
ranks of kneeling figures, and thought with compunction how long it
was since he had been in a church, and thanked God that he had come
home to his own people, and that their religion was his. He followed
the words of the service with a new realisation of their ancient
beauty. He trembled with an unfamiliar emotion, as, in the charged
silence of the crowded chapel, the bell tinkled and the censer
clashed, sounds that have in them at such moments a heart-shaking
power, magnetic, mystical. He heard nothing of the sermon; in his
eager mind two thoughts raced side by side, now one, now the other,
leading. These two marvels that had befallen. That Christian should
love him; this had the mastery, irradiating all; but with the vivid
sense of fellowship and communion that the service brought the other
thought, the old dream that was coming true of standing for these
people, of making their interests his, their welfare his care, moved
him profoundly.
Outside in the chapel yard, after the service, the congregation was in
no hurry to disperse. Larry looked about him, and found many friendly
eyes set on him. Larry, too, had a friendly heart, and he bethought
him that, as a future M.P., he should lose no opportunity of
intercourse with his constituents. He recognised the solid presence of
John Herlihy, an elderly farmer who had been one of the largest of his
own late tenants, and he went across the yard to where he stood and
shook hands with him.
"Fine day, John! Good and hot for the harvest! Got your threshing done
yet?"
"'Tis very warm, sir," answered John Herlihy, correcting, as is
invariable, Larry's employment of the vulgar adjective "hot"; "very
warm entirely, and sure I have my corn threshed this ten days, the
same as yourself!"
"Nothing like taking time by the fetlock, is there, John!" chaffed
Larry (who, until that moment, had been unaware that he possessed any
corn); "it's a good harvest all round, isn't it?"
"Well, pretty fair, thank God!"
"And the country's quiet?"
"Never better, sir, never better!" responded John Herlihy, weightily;
but something in his cool eyes, grey and wise as a parrot's, impelled
Larry, in his new-born sense of responsibility, to further
questioning.
Mr. John Herlihy was a man of the order to whom the label
"respectable" inevitably attaches itself (that adjective which acts as
a touch-stone in the definition of class, and is a compliment up to a
certain point, an offence higher up the scale); one of those sound and
sensible and thrifty farmers who are the strength of Ireland, and are
as the stones of a break-water, over which the storm-froth of the
waters of politics sweeps unheeded.
"Well," Larry went on, "it wasn't a very nice way that those Carmodys
up at Derrylugga treated Miss Christian Talbot-Lowry the other day!
Killing her mare under her, the cowardly blackguards!"
The grey parrot eyes scanned Larry, summing him up, determining how
far he might be trusted, deciding that an oblique approach might be
most advisable.
"Major Lowry's a fine gentleman," said John Herlihy, largely; "a fine,
easy, _grauver_ man! I declare I was sorry to me heart when he
gave up the hounds! If it was to be only a scold or a curse from him,
ye'd rather it, and to have he be goin' through the country!"
"Then what have people against him? Good God!" cried Larry, hotly.
"It's too easy he is! _I_ wouldn't have let those devils off as
easy as he did!"
"I heard the Priest and a few more, was above at Mount Music ere
yesterday," said John Herlihy, in a slightly lowered voice, "about the
sale of the property they were, I b'lieve. You done well, Master
Larry, you got quit o' the whole kit of us!"
Having thus shelved the controversial subject, Mr. Herlihy, laughing
heartily at his own jest, moved towards his horse and car, that were
hitched to the chapel gate, and let down the upturned side of the car.
"Come! Get up, woman! Get up!" he called to his wife, a prosperous
lady, in a massive, blue, hooded cloak, who had been standing by the
gate, patiently waiting his pleasure; "don't be delaying me this way!"
He winked at Larry, scrambling on to the car.
"What _tashpy_ he has!" remarked Mrs. Herlihy, benignantly, as
Larry shook hands with her.
"Ah, you spoil him, Mrs. Herlihy! You should dock his oats!" said
Larry, laughing into her jolly, round, red face, that was glistening
with heat under the heavy cloth hood. "It's a grand hot day, isn't
it?"
"'Tis very warm, sir, indeed," corrected Mrs. Herlihy, as she mounted
the car with an agility as competent, and as unexpected, as that of a
trespassing cow confronted with a stone-faced bank.
Larry went home, and continued a letter to Christian that he had begun
over night. He told her of Barty's visit, and of all that it was
likely to involve. He said that he was very lonely, and he believed
she had been gone a year. Even Aunt Freddy had bolted off to Dublin,
on urgent private affairs, which meant the dentist, as usual. He would
go over to see Cousin Dick, only that he was absolutely bound to go
into Cluhir. At this point he entered anew upon the subject of his
political future, and what it meant to him. Of the fun he would have
canvassing the electors. Christian would have to come round with him,
and in very obdurate cases there was always the classical method of
the Duchess of Devonshire to be resorted to! Already, he said, he was
frightfully interested in the whole show, and he meant--several pages
were devoted by Larry to his intentions.
Christian, far away in the County Limerick, received the letter with
her early cup of tea, and, as she read it, felt her soul disquieted
within her. The conjunction of the stars of Love and Politics
presaged, she felt, disaster--as if the question of religion had not
been complicating enough! Even had her gift of envisaging a situation
by the light of reason failed her, that spiritual aneroid, which,
sensitive to soul-pressure, warned her intuitively of coming joy or
sorrow, ill luck or good fortune, had fallen from set fair to stormy.
She had gone to sleep with sunshine in her heart; she awoke in clouds,
dark and threatening. She read Larry's letter, and knew that the
foreboding would come true.
It is probable that no human being was ever less the prey of
intuitions or presentiments than was young Mr. Coppinger, as he
bicycled lightly into Cluhir along the solitary steam-rolled road of
the district, a typical effort of Irish civilisation, initiated by Dr.
Mangan, that had proposed to link Cluhir with the outer world, but had
died, like a worn-out tramp, at the end of a few faltering miles, on
the steps of the work-house hospital at Riverstown. The road ran along
the bank of the great river, with nothing save a low fence and a
footpath between it and the water. The river was still and gleaming.
Masses of dove-coloured cloud, with touches of silver-saffron, where
their lining showed through, draped the wide sky, in over-lapping
folds. The planes of distance up the broad valley were graduated in
tone by a succession of screens of luminous vapour that parcelled out
the landscape, taking away all colour save that bestowed by the
transparent golden grey of the mist. The roofs of Cluhir made a dark
profile in the middle distance, the lower part of the houses hidden in
the steaming mist, and the beautiful outline of the twin crests of
Carrigaholt was like a golden shadow in the sky above them. The spire
and the tower of the two churches of Cluhir, rose on either side of
the pale radiance of the river, with the slender arch of the bridge
joining them, as if to show in allegory their inherent oneness, their
joint access to the water of life. Religion counted for but little
with Larry in those days, yet as the wonder of beauty sank into his
soul, that was ever thirsty for beauty, the thought of what it would
mean for Ireland if the symbol of the linking bridge had its
counterpart in reality sprang into his eager mind. Then he thought of
himself and Christian, and knew that religion could never come between
him and her, and, as the close-followed thought of what these last
days had brought, rose in his mind, the wonder of it overwhelmed him.
He told himself that the only possible explanation of her caring for
such as he, was that Narcissus-like, she had seen her own image
reflected in his heart, and had fallen in love with it. The fancy
attracted him; he rode on, his mind set on a sonnet that should fitly
enshrine the thought, and politics and religion, symbols and ideals,
faded, as the stars go out when the sun comes.
For the last couple of miles before Cluhir was reached the road and
the river ran their parallel course in a line that was nearly direct,
and, from a long way off, Larry was aware of the figure of a man and
woman and a dog, preceding him towards the town. He noted presently
that the dog had passed from view, and then he saw the man and the
woman hurry across the road and pass through the gateway of a field.
He was soon level with the gate. There was a little knot of people
just within the field, and in the moment of perceiving that the woman
was Tishy Mangan, he also saw that a fierce fight was in progress
between two dogs.
"Oh, stop them, stop them!" Tishy was screaming. "That's my father's
dog, and he'll be killed!"
She belaboured the dogs, futilely, with her parasol.
The man who was with her, a tall and elaborately well-dressed young
gentleman with a red moustache, confined himself, very wisely, to loud
exhortations to the remainder of the group, who were lads from the
town, to call off their dog; and the remainder of the group, with
equal wisdom and greater candour, were unanimously asserting that they
would be "in dhread" to touch the combatants. The dogs were well
matched--strong, yellow-red Irish terriers; each had the other by the
side of the throat, and each, with the deep, snuffling gurgles of
strenuous combat, was trying to better his hold on his enemy.
Larry, swift in action as in thought, was off his bicycle and into the
ring without a second of hesitation.
"Catch your dog by the tail," he shouted to the boys, while he
performed the like office for the Doctor's dog. "Now then! Into the
river with them!"
The two dogs, fast in each other's jaws, were lifted, and were borne
across the road to the edge of the footpath, below which the river
ran, deep and strong.
"Now then!"
The two rough, yellow bodies were swung between Larry and his
coadjutor.
"Now! Let 'em go!"
The dogs flew like chain-shot through the air, and, with a tremendous
splash disappeared from view in the river. They rose to the surface
still keeping their hold of one another, and sank again. A second time
they rose without having loosened their grip, but at their third
appearance they were apart.
"Now boys! Cruisht them well, or they'll be at it again when they
land!"
The "cruishting," which means pelting with stones, succeeded. The
enemies landed at different points. Miss Mangan's charge was
recaptured, his antagonist was stoned by his owners until out of
range, and the incident closed.
It was not, however, without result.
"I think you never met Captain Cloherty, Mr. Coppinger?" said Tishy,
with a glance at Captain Cloherty that spoke disapproval. "He's not as
useful in a fight as you are, though he _is_ in the Army!"
"My branch of the service mends wounds, it doesn't go out of its way
to get them!" returned Captain Cloherty, composedly, "and I haven't
any use for getting bitten."
"Mr. Coppinger wasn't so nervous!" retorted Miss Mangan, scorchingly,
"and it's well for me he wasn't! What'd I say to the Doctor if I had
to tell him his pet dog was dead?"
"Something else, I suppose!" suggested Captain Cloherty, his red
moustache lifting in a grin that Miss Mangan found excessively
exasperating; "it wouldn't be the best time to tell the truth at all!"
"How funny you are!" said Tishy, with a blighting glance. "It's easy
to joke now, when Mr. Coppinger has done the work!"
She swept another glance of her grey eyes at Larry, very different
from that that she had bestowed upon the callous Cloherty.
Few young men object to exaltation at the expense of another,
especially if that other has two or three inches the advantage in
height, and they are themselves not unconscious of deserving. Larry
led his bicycle and walked beside Tishy, and found pleasure in meeting
her again after four years of absence. For one thing, she had become
even better-looking than he remembered her--turned into a thundering
handsome young woman, he thought--and it became him, as an artist, to
be a connoisseur in such matters.
"Oh, so you're going to see the Doctor, are you?" she said, "I know he
was expecting you." She hesitated. "I told him I thought I'd be at
Mrs. Whelply's this afternoon. He--he might be surprised if he thought
I had Tinker out, and that he was in a fight--"
"I'll keep it dark," Larry said, reassuringly, while he wondered if
the protecting darkness were also to envelop Captain Cloherty,
R.A.M.C. He thought, on the whole, perhaps, yes.