Little Mary Twomey, footing it into Cluhir on a misty Saturday
morning, with a basket of fowl under her brown and buff shawl, was not
sorry when, from a side road on the line of march, a donkey-cart,
driven by an acquaintance, drew forth at the instant of her passing.
"God bless ye, John Brien," she said, when the suitable salutations
and comments on the weather had been exchanged, with the rigorous
courtesy observed by such as Mary Twomey and John Brien with one
another, "this basket is very weighty on me--"
"Put it up on the butt, ma'am," responded John Brien. "Put it up, for
God's sake, and let you sit up with it. Sure the ass is able for more
than yourself!"
This referred, with polite facetiousness, to Mrs. Twomey's stature,
and was taken by her in excellent part.
She uttered a brief screech. "Isn't it what they say they puts the
best of goods in the small passels?" she demanded; "but for all, I
wouldn't wish it to be too small altogether! 'Look!' I says to that
owld man I have, 'Look! When I'll be dead, let ye tell the
car-pennther that he'll make the coffin a bit-een too long, the way
the people'll think the womaneen inside in it wasn't altogether too
small entirely!'"
"Arrah, don't talk of dyin' for a while, ma'am!" said John Brien,
gallantly. "Aren't you an' me about the one age, and faith, when
you're dyin' I'll be sending for the priest for meself!"
"Well, please God, the pair of us'll knock out a spell yet!" responded
Mrs. Twomey, cheerfully; "for as little as I am, the fly itself
wouldn't like to die!"
John Brien did not question this assertion. "The 'fluenzy is very
raging these times," he remarked.
"'Tis a nassty, dirty disease altogether, God help us!" said Mrs.
Twomey, with feeling.
"It is, and very numerous," replied John Brien. "There's people dying
now that never died before."
This statement presented no difficulty to Mrs. Twomey, since she had
no desire to exult over Mr. Brien as being what is often called a
typical Irishman, and was able to accept its rather excessive emphasis
in the sense in which it was intended.
"I'm told Major Lowry is sick enough," went on John Brien; "an
impression like, on the heart, they tells me."
"He have enough to trouble him," said Mrs. Twomey, portentously; "and
I wouldn't wish it to him. A fine man he was. Ye'd stand in the road
to look at him! The highest gentleman of the day!"
"Well, that's true enough," said John Brien, cautiously. "There's some
says the servants in the house didn't get their hire this two years."
"Dirty little liars!" said Mrs. Twomey, warmly. "Divil mend them, and
their chat! There isn't one but has as many lies told as'd sicken an
ass! Wasn't I selling a score of eggs to the Docthor's wife a'
Saturday, and she askin' me this an' that, and 'wasn't it said young
Mr. Coppinger was to marry Miss Christhian Lowry'? Ah ha! She was dam'
sweet, but she didn't get--" Mrs. Twomey swiftly licked and exhibited
a grey and wrinkled finger--"_that_ much from me!"
"Ha, very good, faith!" said John Brien; "them women wants to know too
much!"
"And if they do itself," retorted Mrs. Twomey, instant in defence of
her sex, "isn't it to plase the min that's follyin' them for the news!
Yis! An' they too big fools to hear it for theirselves!"
John Brien, somewhat stupefied by this home thrust, made no reply, but
smote the donkey heavily, provoking it to a jog that temporarily
jolted conversation to death.
At the next incline, however, Mrs. Twomey took up her parable again.
"Tell me now awhile, John, what day is this th' election is?"
"I d'no if it isn't Choosday week it is," replied John Brien, without
interest. "There's two o' them up for it now. Young Coppinger, that
was the first in it, and a chap from T'prairy. What's this his name
is?--Burke, I think it is. Sure they had two meetin's after chapel at
Riverstown last Sunday. Roaring there they were out o' mothor-cars.
But it's little I regard them and their higs and thrigs!"
"Why wouldn't ye wote for Larry Coppinger, John?" said Mrs. Twomey,
persuasively "and him 'All-for-Ireland'! A strong, cocky young boy he
is too; greatly for composhing he is, an' painting, an' the like o'
that. Sure didn't I tell him it was what it was he had a rag on every
bush! 'Well,' says he, 'Mrs. Twomey,' says he, 'I'll have another rag
on another bush soon,' says he. 'Sir,' says I to him, 'that much would
not surpass your honour!' But faith, they're tellin' me now Burke'll
have him bet out, and I'm sorry to me heart for it."
John Brien looked from one side of the road to the other, and ahead,
between his donkey's ears. The mist was close round the cart as the
walls of a room; the only sound was the thin wind singing in the
telegraph wires.
"Mrs. Twomey," murmured John Brien, "the Clergy is agin him!"
"Oh, great and merciful Lord God!" said Mrs. Twomey. She said it
without either irreverence or reverence. She merely wished to express
to John Brien her comprehension of the importance of his statement.
Larry had flung himself into electioneering as an alternative to
drink. That was how he put it to himself. He took rooms at Hallinan's
Hotel, in Cluhir, in order to be on top of the railway station, and
the situation generally, and he had, moreover, a standing invitation
to No. 6, The Mall, for any meal, at any hour of the day or night,
that he found suitable. The district to be canvassed was a wide one,
and day after day Larry and the faithful Barty went forth to interview
"People of importance"; darkly-cautious publicans, with wives lurking
at hand to make sure that "Himself" should do nothing rash;
uninterested farmers, who "had their land bought," and were left cold
by the differences 'twixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee; and visits to
"The Clergy" of all denominations, productive of much artificially
friendly converse and no very definite promises.
Of Larry's own Communion, Father Tim Sweeny alone announced himself,
unhesitatingly, as being of Larry's camp. Father Tim's hostility had
not been proof against Larry's charms, more especially since these
were combined with a substantial proof of the young candidate's
interest in the decoration of the new chapel; and, at the gate of that
chapel, (the site of which he did not forget that he owed to Larry) he
attended one of Larry's meetings, and shook his bovine head at his
flock, and bellowed ferocious commendation of the young man, who, he
thundered, had not failed in his duty by the Church and the people.
There was a downright, fighting quality in Father Sweeny that was
large and stimulating. Larry felt that he had, at least, his own
parish firmly at his back, and wished that he had a few more such as
Father Tim to stand by him.
The Rev. Matthew Cotton (stiffened by Mrs. Cotton) said that to enter
a hustings for a Home Ruler, of any variety, would be for him an
unauthorised bowing down in the House of Rimmon, a simile that
conveyed little to Larry, and nothing at all, allegorically, to his
agent, Barty Mangan, though its practical interpretation presented no
difficulties to either of them.
The Reverend Mr. Armstrong, Pastor of the Methodists, admitted to a
preference for an "All-for-Irelander," as opposed to an Official
Nationalist; but evaded the responsibility of a promise by saying that
he would lay the matter before the Lord, and would write later.
Neither did young Mr. Coppinger receive much encouragement from his
own class. Bill Kirby, indeed, undertook to support him and even
volunteered to go round with him on his canvassing expeditions, but
this was considered by Larry's Committee as being of questionable
advantage, even, possibly, affording to the enemy an occasion to
blaspheme, and the offer (made, it may be said, at Judith's
instigation) was declined.
Nor, as a matter of fact, was Larry himself disposed to take Bill
Kirby's proffered hand. He told himself that he was done with that
lot. He was bitterly angry with Christian. He said to himself that he
would never forgive her; would never, if he could help it, see one of
them again. At a word from her father she had chucked him; without a
moment of hesitation, without a word to show that she was even sorry
for her father's treatment of him. "Apparently it's the only thing to
do!" she had said. That was all she thought of keeping a promise! What
about leaving father and mother and sticking to your husband, he would
like to know! These Protestants who talked such a lot about reading
the Bible! It was quite true what old Mangan had said: "When all comes
to all, a man must stick to his own Church!" All these others, these
St. Georges, and Westropps, and old Ardmore, and the rest of them, had
only been waiting to jump on him as soon as he put a foot out of the
rut they all walked in. They had waited for the chance to make him a
pariah. Now they had it. All right! He could face that. They should
soon see how little he thought of them!
He pitched himself headlong into the contest. The weather had fallen
from grace. October, having been borne in on the wings of a gale, was
storming on through wind and wet, and the game of canvassing, that had
seemed, on that sunny day when he had written to Christian, so
"frightfully interesting," was beginning to pall. Boring as were the
personal interviews, and exhausting the evening oratory in town halls
and school-houses, the Sunday meetings at the gates of the chapels
were still more arduous. On each Sunday, during the period between the
death of Daniel Prendergast and the election of his successor, did
young Mr. Coppinger, with chosen members of his "Commy-tee"--he had
learnt to accept the inflexible local pronunciation--splash from
chapel to chapel, to meet the congregations, and to shout platitudes
to them. Larry began to feel that no conviction--however fervently
held--could survive the ordeal of being slowly yelled to a bored crowd
from the front seat of a motor car. He told himself that he had become
a gramophone, and a tired gramophone, badly in want of winding up, at
that.
It would be of little avail to attempt to define the precise shade of
green of young Mr. Coppinger's political flag; whether, as a facetious
supporter put it, it was "say-green, pay-green, tay-green, or bottle."
It is enough to say that it varied sufficiently from that of Mr. Burke
to provide their respective followers with a satisfactory _casus
belli_. The shades of political opinion in Ireland change, and melt
and merge into each other as the years pass, even as the colours of
her surrounding seas vary, deepening and paling with the changing
clouds, yet affecting only the surface, leaving the sullen depths
unchanged. Larry knew no more of Ireland than a boy can learn in his
school holidays; it was only by degrees that he realised that in
Ireland, as he now found it, the single element of discord that
remained ever unchanged was Religion. He had spent the four most
recent and most receptive years of his life in an atmosphere in which
religion had no existence. The hem of its raiment might, perhaps, have
been touched, when, as sometimes happened, the subject of a studio
composition was taken from the Bible, or the Apocrypha. Then,
possibly, would the young pagans of Larry's circle discover as much
acquaintance with the Scriptures as would point a jest, and give an
agreeable sensation of irreverence in discussing the details of the
subject.
"There," thought Larry, "no one thought about your religion. No one
cared if you had one, and the presumption was that you hadn't." But
here, in these little Irish towns, the question of a man's private
views on a matter that might be supposed to concern only himself,
appeared of paramount importance. He listened to denunciations of
Protestants until he felt, as he told the faithful Barty, that "for
tuppence" he would change over himself; just as in some sections of
the rival camp, he would have heard to weariness of the bigotry and
errors of Romanism. He was brought, as many people more God-fearing
than he have been brought, to debate the question as to whether a
common atheism were not the only panacea for the mutual hatreds that,
as appeared to him from his present point of view, ruled the Island of
Saints. He and Barty would sit up over the dying embers of the
dining-room fire of No. 6, The Mall, talking; wrangling, in a sort of
country-dance of argument, in which they advanced and retired, and
joined hands, and flung away from each other again; ending, generally,
in such agreement as might be found in a common determination to lay
all the blame for all the malice and uncharitableness at the door of
the clergy of the two creeds; a comprehensive decision, and a
consoling one, from the point of view of two laymen.
Larry, in his loneliness, had fallen into the habit of frequenting No.
6; of "taking pot-luck," of "dropping in," or of "turning in," all of
which courses had been urged upon him by his captor, Dr. Mangan. Those
great and special gifts of the Mangan family, the love of music, and
the habit of it (which are not always allied) bestowed upon the
household a charm that was almost more potent for Larry than any other
could have been. At the end of a long day of canvassing, spent with
companions who, he felt, only half trusted him, and were incapable of
being amused by the things that amused him (a factor in friendship
that cannot be valued too highly) it was comforting to "drop in" to
the hospitable, untidy house, where, thanks to Mrs. Mangan's early
experiences, there was always good luck in the pot, and to spend a
peaceful evening over the fire, smoking, and listening to the famous
Mangan Quartet. Music was the initial point of contact between Larry
and these people among whom he had once more been cast, and the Big
Doctor was not unaware of the fact. Singly, or united, the Mangan
voices, mellow, tuneful, singing songs of Ireland with artless grace
and charm, wrought more in Larry's soul than he was aware of. Not only
to his ears, but to his eyes also, the Mangan Quartet brought artistic
satisfaction. The Big Doctor, with his sombre face and overhanging
brow, looking, in the lamplight, like a Rembrandt burgomaster; Barty
and his mother, pale and dark-eyed, recalling Southern Italy rather
than Southern Ireland; and Tishy--Larry's eyes used to dwell longest
on Tishy, her face lit by her most genuine feeling, the love of music,
while her voice of velvet (of purple velvet, he decided) mourned for
Patrick Sarsfield, or lamented with Emer for Cuchulain, or thrilled
her listener with the sudden glory of "The Foggy Dew." Larry's own
voice was habitually exhausted by the cart-tail oratory in which he
daily expended it; it was enough for him to listen and look, shutting
his mind to the past, living, as ever, in the present, like a wise
man, because its bounty sufficed him.