It was Barty who had brought out the car, and, on his father's
departure, he released the grip of the railings that had enabled him
to keep his footing, and was, literally, blown into the house.
"Shut the door, my Pigeon-pie!" said his mother, "the wind's too
strong for me."
Barty was too well accustomed to this expression of his mother's
affection to resent it, and having done her bidding, he followed her
into the Doctor's room, which alone had a fire in it.
"Nothing would please Tishy only to go down to the Whelplys,"
complained Mrs. Mangan, poking the fire, and seating herself in front
of it with a long, groaning sigh of exhaustion; "some nonsense about a
wreath. A wreath indeed! Any one'd be lucky that kept their hair on
their heads in this wind, let alone a wreath! You'll have to go fetch
her, my poor boy! I'll not be easy till I see her and Pappy home
again! I thought maybe Larry might have come over, but I declare now
I'm glad he did not."
"Larry's not like himself lately," said Barty, sitting down in his
father's chair, and taking from his pocket a paper packet and
extracting a crushed cigarette from it. "I think the loss of th'
election disappointed him greatly."
"'Twas well he had Tishy to console him," said Mrs. Mangan, "it was in
the nick of time she cot him!"
"It was," replied Barty, tepidly. "I think also," he went on, "he's
put out about his aunt not coming down for the wedding, and even young
Mrs. Kirby away. It's funny to think Coppinger's Court and Mount Music
are empty now, the two of them--or will be after to-morrow. Miss
Christian went to-day."
("See now how he's talking of her!" thought his mother. "I wonder did
Francis say anything to him?") Aloud she said: "It's a pity she's
gone, but it mightn't be for long."
"I saw her yesterday. The Doctor sent me there for a map," said Barty,
with elaborate unconcern.
("Look at that now!" again commented Mrs. Mangan to herself. "How well
they never told me he'd gone to see her! Aren't men a fright the way
they'll hide things!")
"She's a sweet girl, my Pidgie," she resumed, to her son, "And Pappy's
always said the same thing."
Barty looked at her like a horse prepared to shy. Had his father said
anything to her? The longing to speak of Christian had mastered him,
but if his mother knew--
"I think I'd better go for Tishy now," he said abruptly, "It might be
a job to get down the town later on."
He left the room, and Mrs. Mangan, in her husband's big chair, by his
big fire, fell into tired yet peaceful ease of body and mind. How
wonderful was Francis! Who but he would have dared to aspire for his
children as he had? He had secured for Tishy the very pick of the
country; and now, her own darling Barty! Was it possible? Yes! It was,
if Francis said so! But _what_ was "the argument he had up his
sleeve?" Never mind! Francis would tell her when he came home. There
was no hurry. But again, how wonderful was Francis!
She fell asleep. Barty woke her, coming into the room, dripping and
shining in oilskins and sou'wester, like a lifeboat man.
"I couldn't get further than West Street, Mammie," he said, still
breathless. "I had on my waders, but the water was up over them. They
had boats going about, I believe, but I couldn't get hold of one.
Tishy'll have to stay the night at the Whelplys'. I met a man that
told me there was a big flood in the river, and haystacks, and cattle,
and all sorts, coming down in it. It was up over the line, and the
train hardly got out. It was near putting out the engine fires."
"Oh, my God!" said Mrs. Mangan, with her big eyes that were so like
Barty's fixed on his, "the Riverstown road! Oh! Francis!--" she
groped at the front of her blouse for her Rosary, her lips moving in
hasty supplication, her eyes wild, roving from her son's face to the
blackness of the window. Suddenly she thrust back the Rosary.
"Why do you tell me these things?" she cried, furiously, "you great
_omadhaun_! Is it to frighten me into my grave you want? Is it
nothing to you that your father's out alone? Oh God! Oh God! Why
couldn't he think of me as well as of that damned woman away at
Riverstown!" She began to cry, wildly, her forehead pressed against
one of the streaming panes of the window. "Oh Francis, Francis!--"
There were many more than Mrs. Mangan and her son that sat up all
through that night in the Valley of the Broadwater. Trembling people
in little low-lying cottages, with thatched roofs held in place with
ladders, and ropes, and stones, with doors and windows barricaded
against the wind. But of what avail are barricades against the
creeping white lip of water, crawling in under the doors over the
earthen floors, soaking in, through mud-built walls, coming against
them at first as a thief in the night, falling upon them later as a
strong man armed?
From the lower side-streets of Cluhir the people fled before the flood
to any shelter that the upper parts of the town could offer them.
Ghastly stories were told of drowned cattle that were swept against
the closed doors, and came pushing and banging at the windows, carried
there by their conqueror as it were with mockery, to entreat for the
succour that was too late.
When the pale dawn looked out through wind-torn clouds, it saw a
half-mile breadth of racing water where had been pasture-fields; the
yellow, foam-laced river was half way up the tall, slender arches of
Cluhir Bridge, lapping ever higher, as if in envy, to hide the sole
beauty of the ignoble town. Trees, and hayricks, broken boats, and
humble pieces of cottage furniture, jostled each other between the
piers, tossing and dancing in grotesque gaiety, like drunken
holiday-makers on their way to the sea. The great river that is
credited with exacting six lives each year, was claiming its toll. How
many it took that December night does not now concern us, save,
indeed, where one sad house was in question, where a wife and a son
waited a long night through for the man who would not return to them.
* * * * *
Down below Cluhir, at Mount Music, old Evans crept out of the
shuttered house, and fought his way in the wind, amid fallen trees,
down to the big river, to see what still stood of the boathouse. The
boathouse had weathered out the night. Its roof had held, its door
stood firm. Old Evans surveyed it with pride.
"Aha! Protestant building!" he said, old inveterate that he was.
Then he saw on the submerged bank, amid a _débris_ of broken
rushes, and clots of foam, and branches, something that he knew
instantly for what it was. The drowned body of a man.
Cautiously, and holding by shrubs and tree-stems, he reached the
place, where, half ashore, half lying in thin flood through which
tufts of grass were showing, with arms stretched out, grasping at the
shore, the intruder lay. Old Evans knew well that fur-collared coat.
Often enough he had held it for the Big Doctor. He had no need to turn
the defeated face from its pillow in the broken reeds. He stared down
at the man whom he had hated, with something of pity, more of
cynicism.
"Well, ye wanted Mount Music!" he said, at last. "How d'ye like it now
ye've got it?"
* * * * *
The things that a man has accomplished we sum him up by, and the
things of which he was capable, and did not accomplish, are of no
account, and the net that held him is of a mesh beyond the vision of
most.
Who shall pity the Big Doctor, or blame him over-much? He died in the
fullness of his powers, with his ambitions, as he believed, attained.
He knew himself to be a good son of the Church, a faithful husband, a
successfully-scheming father. What his priest thought of him is known
only to his priest, but we may be sure he regretted him. A jury of his
peers would have approved him in his every action. If the paths that
he had followed were sometimes tortuous, along many of them he had
been guided by the _ankus_ of that mahout in whose directions his
faith had taught him to confide. He had lived according to the light
that he had received, and in his last act he took his life in his
hand, and gave it for another.
For my part, I believe that the Big Doctor viewed with a justified
composure
" ... that last
Wild pageant of the accumulated past
That clangs and flashes for a drowning man."