Miss Letitia Mangan was a young woman of dauntless courage, who, as
has been said of the sect spoken of by detractors as The Black
Prozbytarians, feared neither God nor divil. To this rule there were,
however, in Tishy's case, two exceptions admitted, and of these, one
was her father, the other Father Greer. If, therefore, during the days
that followed, when the streets of Cluhir were, as it were, mined with
congratulations that exploded round her wherever and whenever she went
abroad, any shade of doubt, any tenuous memory of the foxy devil back
in Riverstown assailed her, she made haste to banish such with the
thoughts of Father Greer's pontifical approval, and of the warmth of
the paternal sunshine that now shone upon her and her _fiancé_.
Cluhir said that it was a very nice engagement, and a great match;
there were not wanting those who said also that it was wonderful
promotion for that Tishy Mangan. A tactless ex-charwoman had even
referred to young Mr. Coppinger as being Miss Mangan's "up-raiser,"
and having enquired, with incredulity, of Mrs. Mangan ("and this
before a crowd in Egan's shop, if you please!" as Mrs. Mangan
reported) "Ma'am! are they in bonds?" she had so fervently thanked God
on hearing that such was the case, that Mrs. Mangan said she could
never enter Egan's again without she'd feel they were all laughing at
her!
Of the _fiancé_ and of his frame of mind, what shall be said? He,
at all events, said as little to himself as was possible, but, in the
circumstances, it was no more than could be expected that a lively
fancy would not wholly be denied, and that occasional vagrant visions
would present themselves uninvited. He pictured to himself a meeting
with Christian, all in the clouds, of course; he told himself he had
no wish to meet her, nor, if he did, was he at all likely to discuss
the matter with her; still he thought that he would rather enjoy
telling her that he had acknowledged his engagement with Tishy, to
Tishy's father, in the very same words in which she, Christian, had
broken hers with him. They had somehow stuck in his head. He would
tell her that. He had certainly been rather screwed (but that there
would be no necessity to mention); it was just a curious chance that
he should have used them. He dramatised the interview in his mind. It
would serve Christian right; it would be a rather jolly instance of
retributive justice--only he wished that the Christian whom he
visualised was not always that shadowed, ethereal Christian whom he
had painted, with, as Rossetti said, the wonder not yet quite gone
from that still look of hers. Bother Rossetti, anyway! What did it
matter what he said? The main point was what Larry himself had said,
and the result was that he was engaged to Tishy Mangan, solidly and
seriously.
There was nothing fatiguingly ethereal about Tishy anyhow; she was
just about as good-looking a girl as he had ever met in his life. He
would take her to Paris some day, and would see what his pals would
say to her. He thought there wouldn't be two opinions about her there.
He and she would travel about a bit. He didn't feel as if he would
care about settling down at Coppinger's Court at once. Anyhow he would
have to fix up about Aunt Freddy. She hadn't written him much of a
letter about his engagement; she seemed to like it just about as well
as she had liked his excursion into politics.
"Of course Tishy's a Papist!" he thought, mockingly, accounting to
himself for the chill of the congratulations. "That's enough for Aunt
Freddy! But, hang it all, so am I! She ought to see how suitable it
is! I'd like to lay on Father Greer to talk to her!"
There is no need to attempt to record in detail the comments of the
wider circle of Larry's acquaintances, but it may be said that his
friends of all ranks had one point in common, a sincere admiration for
Dr. Mangan. Bill Kirby, who had supported him politically, now fell
away from him. Judith had not refrained from admitting him to the
secret which she had extracted from her younger sister, and Bill's
references to young Mr. Coppinger and to Doctor, Mrs., and Miss
Mangan, would have been very helpful to those ladies, of whom there
were many, who took the matter to heart.
The unpopularity of the engagement was considerably aggravated by the
extreme magnificence of the furs, presented by the bridegroom elect to
his _fiancée_, and worn by her at a meet of the hounds, which she
attended in her father's motor.
It might have been some consolation to the neighbourhood had it known
that those grey furs had been of the nature of a peace-offering, after
a rather acute difference of opinion on that point of settling down at
Coppinger's Court as opposed to going abroad. Larry had shelved it for
the present, and had, as he told himself, made good by the dint of the
furs. That had come out all right, but now, Larry, mounted on Joker,
and led in chains at Tishy's motor-wheel, found that among his former
allies of the hunt things were not as they once had been, and was not
pleased. Singularly enough, Judith alone was faithful found among the
faithless. She declared that Larry had been brutally and idiotically
treated, and that this engagement was the result, and justified all
that she had been saying for many past ages. When Larry appeared at
the Meet, his scalp-lock prominent among Miss Mangan's furs, Judith
alone of his former intimates met him with cordiality, condoled with
him over his election defeat with sympathy, and congratulated him on
his engagement with decorum.
"I felt it was only decent," she said later, to the friend to whom she
complacently recounted her effort, "after he had been kicked
downstairs by Papa, and booted out of the house by Christian, quite
without justification. I congratulated him warmly! I absolutely rode
up to the gorgeous Tishy and said civil things there too!"
"It was perfectly angelic of you!" said the friend.
"Quite the reverse, my dear!" said Judith, proudly. "But you see Bill
has the hounds, and anyhow, I like to prepare for all contingencies!"
For the rest, a chilly neutrality reigned at the Meet. Larry was
finding his official position of captive decidedly irksome. He wished
that Tishy would not call him by his name every time she spoke to him;
that she would not speak so loud; that this eternal jog to the covert
would end before the Day of Judgment; finally, that he had stayed at
home. He saw the red-headed Cloherty, and, failing more congenial
society, joined him. But the red-headed Cloherty was crosser than any
of them, and what the devil was it to him what Larry's politics or his
matrimonial intentions were? Confound Cloherty, anyway! He was a
sufficiently common object of the Cluhir scene--and infernally common
at that. Hardly a day that you didn't meet him loafing about the town.
Larry hadn't the smallest wish to talk to Cloherty. When, some brief
time before the Day of Judgment, they reached the covert, it was drawn
blank, and Bill Kirby took quite a month to get the hounds out.
Hunting rabbits, of course. Larry never knew them so out of hand. And
then another rotten jog along the road to the next draw. Why on earth
couldn't Bill get into the country and let them have a school at
least, and get away from these damned motors? He was hoarse from
shouting replies to Tishy's airy nothings, all winged with his name,
and all, he felt, addressed as much to the public as to him. She
looked stunning, of course, and he was glad he had given her those
furs, but three miles trying to keep a suspicious fool of a horse up
to the elbow of a car roaring along at half speed, was--!
It matters not what Larry thought it was, the point is that Tishy
thought it wasn't, and, suddenly realising his views, turned in one of
those instantaneous furies of hers, to the cavalier at the other elbow
of the car, who happened to be the red-headed Cloherty.
Larry, neglected, fell back, and presently found himself beside an old
friend, Father David Hogan, the priest of Riverstown. It was nearly
ten years since the great days of Father David's black mare; she had
passed into legend, and Father David, something heavier than he was
but no less keen, now followed hounds in more leisurely fashion on the
back of the black mare's son, a portly and careful bay cob.
"I'm very pleased to see you out, Mr. Coppinger," Father David began,
the kindly little blue eyes twinkling deep in his red face, confirming
the assurance imparted by his extensive smile, that his friendship was
still unshaken, "You've been missing some nice hunts."
"I've been too hard worked to get out, Father," apologised Larry.
"Ah, otherwise engaged, maybe?" said Father David, with a facetious
stress on the word engaged. "I was greatly put out over the election,"
he continued. "Tell me now, why didn't the Unionists support you? I
noticed that our worthy M.F.H. came to record his vote, but your
cousin, the late M.F.H., was, as they say, conspicuous by his
absence."
"He's quite an invalid now," said Larry shortly.
"Indeed? Indeed? And is that the case? I'm grieved to hear it!" Father
David pressed the stout cob nearer to Joker, and murmured very
confidentially. "I've known you since your boyhood I may say, Mr.
Coppinger, and you will not consider me impertinent speaking to you.
But could you tell me is it a fact what I'm 'hearing about the good
Major--you, no doubt, have prior information--"
"I think that's very unlikely," said Larry, sulkily, flushing as he
spoke.
Father David eyed Larry cautiously, and began to wonder if something
he had been told not long since were true.
In Ireland, it may confidently be said, all things are known to the
poor people, and a brief consideration of this position will show,
that this being so, there is but little that is unknown to the Church.
"Well, Mr. Coppinger," Father Hogan resumed, "I'm told--only told,
mind you--that the Major had Mount Music and the demesne advertised on
the English papers--"
"Good God!" exclaimed Larry, startled out of his sulk; "to sell?"
Father David, like other gentlemen of his age and cloth, had the
Baboo's predilection for a well-worn quotation. "As to that I cannot
say," he said portentously. "''Tis whispered in Heaven, 'tis muttered
in Hell' that the encumbrances are very heavy--mortgages and
debts--. The good Major had a long family, Mr. Coppinger; fine,
dashing young min they are too, but we all know that expenses do not
tend to diminish as families grow up! Children may be a heritage that
comes from the Lord, but unless other heritages accompany them--!"
Father David put his head on one side, and, beaming at Larry, laid his
little professional joke, so to speak, at his feet.
"Well, well," he resumed, "'What business is it of yours?' says you!"
"Not at all, Father," said Larry, still shaken by what he had heard.
"Thank you for speaking to me--it's the first I've heard of it."
The procession of the hunt halted, the hounds left the road by the
direct method of a high stone "gap," and Father David and the bay cob
melted away to betake themselves to those secret equivalent routes
known to those who have come to years of discretion in the
hunting-field.
The second draw seemed at first as if it were to be no more fortunate
than its predecessor. The covert was a patch of scrubby woodland at a
little distance below the road, at the head of one of the long deep
glens that were the terrors of the Broadwater country. The wind blew
from the west, across the wide cleft of Gloun Kieraun, and the hounds
were thrown into the wood in which the upper end of the glen was
masked, and were encouraged to work downwards. An unaccustomed wave of
misanthropy had assailed Larry, and instead of following with the
crowd the course of the hounds, he moved onwards along the road,
scarcely considering where he was going. He was thinking with
consternation of what Father Hogan had told him. Larry was not of
those who nurse their wrath to keep it warm, and the thought of Dick's
misfortunes swept away the recollection of his insults. Joker had, of
his own initiative, soon turned aside from the high road into a grassy
lane, and he moved along it in the relentless manner in which many
horses will decline to stand still while Larry, deep in thought,
allowed the reins to lie on the horse's neck while he lit a cigarette
and tried to fix in his memory Father David's exact words. He thought
he would talk to Dr. Mangan about it. Things might be better than the
old priest thought. From the thought of the doctor his mind passed on
to that of his wedding. Was it possible that he was to be married next
week? A distinct physical drop of the heart accompanied the
realisation. "Nerves!" he told himself, and hurried on to reflect upon
his bride. She certainly looked stunning in those grey furs; he was
glad he had given them to her; she knocked spots off any other girl in
the country. He impressed this thought on his mind. And she had sung
jolly well last night, and had accompanied him quite decently. They
would get on all right once they were married. She had been a bit
edgey these last few days, but--some under-self warned him off the
pursuit of this topic. He began to formulate excuses for her that
inculpated himself. Larry "came of a gentle kind," and had the
generous temper that finds it easier to bear than to ascribe blame.
A note of the horn was wafted sweetly across the glen, and he came to
the surface of his thoughts. By Jove! Where had Joker got him to? The
lane they had wandered down ran parallel with Gloun Kieraun, and a gap
in the fence on his left made him aware that he was now moving abreast
with the hunt, but was divided from his fellows by the chasm of the
glen.
A second touch of the horn came; Larry checked his horse; Bill Kirby
had seen him and was shouting to him.
"Head him back if he breaks your side! I want him his way!"
All jolly fine for old Bill, but where did young Mr. Coppinger come
in? He held up his hand to show he had heard, and stood still.
One hound spoke, sharply, in the depths of the woody glen. Another and
another joined in. In a moment, the echoing glen was full of voices;
it was impossible to tell what was happening. A couple and a half
emerged on the farther side in the heather above the trees, working a
line upwards, and speaking to it as they went. Larry saw the Master
force his horse down near them, and heard him cheering them and
doubling his horn. Another couple joined them, and Larry swore
heartily. Here he was on the wrong side, and the fox away to the east!
The cry redoubled; it sounded as if twice the pack were engaged, yet
the two and a half couple were not being reinforced. By some chance
Larry withdrew his eyes from them, and just then, about a hundred
yards further on, on his side of the glen, something like a brown
feather floated up into view.
"A second fox, by the living Jingo!" whispered Larry, thrilling to
that sight that never fails to thrill.
He held up his hat. Bill saw the signal, and acknowledged it by
redoubled efforts to get the hounds away with the fox that had broken
to the east. The chorus of sound grew and grew, and as Joker and his
rider, tense with an equal excitement, listened, it became plain that
the cry was drawing nearer to them. Joker's sensitive ears were
twitching, his heart thumped; the storm of sound was just below them
now, and then, hound by hound, Larry counted them as they came,
fourteen couples struggled up over the lip of the glen where that
brown feather had so lightly lifted into view, and drove ahead, on the
way it had gone, with a rush and a cry that Larry could no more have
checked than he could have stemmed and driven back the wild stream in
the glen below.
It may be said at once that he made no such futile effort. With a
single glance at the frenzied party on the farther side, already
galloping distractedly for a possible pass lower down the glen, Larry
released his feelings in a maniac howl to the fleeting pack, and let
Joker--who had already stood up on his hind legs twice, in legitimate
protest--follow them.
The fox, having begun by running west, away from the glen, had then
turned right-handed, and was heading north over the mountain whose
lower slopes were cleft by Gloun Kieraun. The scent served well; the
gurgling music with now and then a sharper note, like a fife among
flutes and 'cellos, flowed on, and Larry and Joker, two happy
creatures, the world forgetting (though by no means by their world
forgot) galloped and rejoiced.
The little mountain sheep with their black, speckled faces sprang
before them, quick as rabbits; green plover flopped up from the grassy
places, wheeling and squealing; a woodcock whirred out of a furze bush
so near Larry that he could have struck it down with his crop.
Long-legged mountain hares fled right and left of the driving pack,
unheeded. Great spaces of the mountain were bare of fences, but in
those tracts where the grass had mastered the heather, it was
"striped" with broad banks, sound, and springy, and bound, as with
wire, by the heather roots. To feel Joker quicken his big stride and
leap at the banks out of his gallop, to realise the perfect precision
of his method, as he changed feet and flicked off into the next field,
to race him at the walls of smooth round stones, weathered in the long
centuries, and grey with lichen, and to know that if they were three
times their height Joker would have sailed over them with the same
ease--whatever might have been Larry's burden of care, it would have
fallen from him, forgotten, in the pure glory of that ride.
The hounds ran hard for nearly a half hour before they checked, and
Larry bethought him of those unfortunates between whom and himself
that great gulf had been fixed. Apparently they had not found, any
more than the rich man in the parable, a means of crossing it. He was
high above the valley; the splendid landscape lay in broad undulating
ribbons of brown and green and amethyst and blue, with the Broadwater
dividing it--a silver belt, with a band of green on its either side;
but within the great circle that was spread beneath his eyes were none
of those toiling specks that tell of a Hunt in labour. The check was
brief; the hurrying hounds, busy as ants, cast themselves right and
left forward, combining in fussy groups, that would suddenly
disintegrate as if by an access of centrifugal force; crowding each
other jealously along the top of a bank, flopping into the patches of
bog, snuffing greedily at the orange stems of the bracken. Soon,
reiterated squeals from a leading lady told that the clue was found
again, and they began to run, hard as before, but downwards this time,
as though the fox despaired of finding refuge among the high places of
heather and rock. Larry had lost his bearings; his eyes on the hounds,
his thoughts on his horse, he had not even tried to place himself. But
as the hounds ran on, south and west, he began to recognise familiar
features. Away there to the south, surely were the trees of
Coppinger's Court; could it be the Mount Music earths for which the
fox was heading? The hounds were running now down hill, through crisp,
upland meadows. Farmhouses began to reappear, thatched and
whitewashed, tucked snugly in among low bunches of trees; fences were
changing in character; the amber streams ran less fiercely, and found
time to loiter in pools and quiet reaches. The hounds had begun to
hunt more slowly, and Larry looked at his watch.
"Forty-five minutes since they left the glen! Bill's just about mad
enough for the asylum by this time!" he thought "If we could only
catch this lad!"
But this particular "lad" was not to gratify young Mr. Coppinger by
dying, classically, in the open, "on the top of the ground." Five
minutes after Larry had taken the time he took it again, this time at
the mouth of one of many holes in a sandpit, wherein, as was announced
by a country boy, "the lad" had saved himself, with "the dogs snapping
at his tail."
"He earned it well," said Larry, ungrudgingly, even though the mask
that was to have hung so carelessly from his saddle was panting deep
and safe in the sandpit, listening warily for a possible eviction
notice from the hunt-terrier (left, alas hunting rabbits in the heart
of Gloun Kieraun) thanking its own wits for the recollection of the
city of refuge.
"Ye're on the lands of Finnahy now," said the boy. "Folly on that way
down, and ye'll meet the road. That's the near way."
"Come on, you, and show it to me," said Larry.
Amazing were the ramifications of the near way. The bed of a stream
had a share, and a well-trodden path along the wide top of a bank; a
brace of wheels had to be trundled out of one gap, a toothless harrow
dragged from another. Then they were on heather again.
"Carry on now," said the guide, "and ye'll meet a pat--"
Larry needed no more leading; he was on the hill above Mount Music,
Cnocán an Ceoil Sidhe, and the "pat" that was to meet him was the
narrow track that led by the Druid Stone and the Well of the Fairies.
The December afternoon was darkening to its close; the sun had made
its farewell appearance, coming forth for a moment, a half-circle of
clear flame, above the long grey cloud that barred the head of the
valley. Larry rode past the great grey stone, and hardly turned his
eyes toward it. The hounds, trooping meekly round his horse, went
aside to the well, and drank long and thirstily. He did not wait for
them. He put from his mind the memory of the last time he had seen
from that hill-side the sun go down. Rather he set his thoughts,
resolutely, on that other last time, in the library of Mount Music.
And he called up Tishy's brilliant face, framed in the furs that he
had given her, that it might help him to drive away other memories. He
was very fond of Tishy, he told himself; anyway, he was booked to
marry her next week.