Dr. Mangan's body was still lying on the door on which it had been
carried up from the river-bank. Kitchen chairs now supported it where
it lay, with its burden, between the high windows, in the desolate,
sheeted dining-room, surrounded by portraits of Talbots, and Lowrys,
and their collaterals, who would surely have considered the presence
of Francis Aloysius Mangan, dead or alive, as something of an
intrusion, not to say a liberty.
Old Evans opened the hall door, and silently led the two young men
through the hall, and opening the dining-room door, left them there.
They stood looking down on the Big Doctor in silence. The strong,
coarse face had taken on that aloof dignity, even splendour of
expression, that death can confer. The servants had covered all else
with a sheet; the soaked fur collar of the coat was turned up, and
made a pillow for the big, iron-grey head.
With a shaking hand Barty turned back the sheet. His father's thick,
powerful hands were crossed on his broad breast. The son stooped and
kissed them, humbly; then he replaced the sheet, and kissed the heavy
brow, from which all the marks of the turmoil of life had been
smoothed.
"I believe he is near us," he whispered; he took a prayer-book from
his pocket and knelt, his head resting on the covered form.
Larry knelt also. If only Barty had not told him that abhorrent thing.
He tried to forget it, to pray for the soul of the man who had, as he
believed, always been kind to him, and a good friend. Larry was
undevout, careless, thinking little of spiritual things, so little,
that he had scarcely troubled himself either to question or to accept
what he had been taught, but he was quick to respond to emotion of any
kind; now he listened, with an unaccustomed reverence, to Barty's
voice, brokenly whispering the prayers of his Church. Their unfamiliar
beauty stirred his imagination, their appeal for mercy wakened his
heart, and made him ask himself what was he that he should refuse
mercy! He felt the anger, that had only been roused in him within the
last few minutes, dying, merged in pity and in awe.
"By the multitude of Thy mercies, ever compassionate to human frailty,
deliver him, O Lord!" Barty's husky, shaking voice murmured. "Give
him, O Lord, eternal rest, and let perpetual light shine upon him--"
The door was opened and Evans said:
"The police are here, and are asking for Mr. Mangan."
Barty rose from his knees; without a word, he placed the prayer book
in Larry's hands, and left the room.
Larry had risen also, but instead of following Barty he knelt again by
the Big Doctor's still figure, and began to speak to him in the low
voice that is the mark of recognition of the great mystery of death,
and tells of that singular, sudden reverence that is bestowed on the
body when the spirit has left it; a reverence that seems to imply a
belief in the nearness of the freed spirit, which is unsupported by
the immeasurable remoteness of the expression of the mask that it once
wore.
"Doctor," said Larry, "I don't know if you can hear me, but I'll
chance it. I want to tell you that it's not my fault about Tishy, and
the wedding not coming off. She bolted with Ned Cloherty last night--"
he checked himself, and felt he ought to apologise for talking slang,
and then thought that if it were the Doctor, himself, he wouldn't
mind. "Tishy liked Cloherty best," he hurried on, "and she was
probably quite right, but I want you to know that I would have played
up all right." Then he said, hesitating, that Barty had told him a
thing that he didn't quite understand the rights of. "You must forgive
me if I felt angry. I daresay there's a lot to be said on your side if
I only knew it. But I don't and you can't tell me now--" He stood
up, and touching the cold brow, smoothed back the damp hair. "You were
always awfully good to me," he said, and, stooping, kissed the
forehead, as Barty had done, and found that his eyes were full of
tears.
As he stood erect again, he saw he was not alone in the room. A girl
was standing just behind him with a basket of Christmas roses in her
hand, a girl who had come quietly in while he was speaking, and had
waited, watching, with eyes that saw more than Larry's kneeling figure
beside the dead man, listening, with senses that were perceptive of a
fellow-listener, in whom were newly-learnt impulses of self-reproach
and penitence.
"Christian!" said Larry, trembling, as he had trembled when he spoke
to her by the Druid Stone on Cnocán an Ceoil Sidhe.