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.



CHAPTER XXXI

Major Talbot-Lowry had been in a passion for three days, and Lady Isabel, who had borne the storm alone, longed for Christian's return, as the lone keeper of a lighthouse might long for the support of his comrade during a gale.

Judith came to visit her parents on Monday, but Judith was very far from being Christian, and could be relied on merely as far as a counter-irritant might prove of service.

"Well, of course, it was abominable impertinence of the priest to come up with the tenants to try and bully you, Papa, but you know, I see their point." Thus, Judith, annoyingly, and with pertinacity.

"You do, do you!" interjected Judith's progenitor, his once ruddy face now a congested purple. "It seems to me, Judith, you're always deuced ready to see any one's point but mine!"

"After all," went on Judith, with all the self-confidence and intolerance of five and twenty, "it's in your interest to sell, just as much as theirs to buy! With this detestable Government in power it will be a case of the Sibylline Books. You'll see the Nationalists will have it all their own way, and the next Act—"

"Nationalists!" roared the Major, sitting upright in his chair, and panting, his utterance temporarily checked by the sheer pressure of all that he wished to say. "Don't talk to me of Nationalists! Common thieves! That's all they are! There's no Nationalism about them! Call it Socialism, if you like, or any other name for robbery! They'd look very blue if we took to shouting 'Ireland a Nation!' and expecting to come in at the finish! They mightn't be able to call us English invaders and to steal our property then! English! I've got Brian Boroihme in my pedigree and that's more than they can say! A pack of half-bred descendants of Cromwell's soldiers! That's what they are, and the best of them, too! That's the best drop of blood they've got!" Dick shouted, veering in the wind of his own words like a rudderless ship in a storm. "That's what gives them tenacity and bigotry! Look at the old places that they're squeezing the old families out of! It's the Protestant farmers and the Religious Orders that are getting them, swarming into them like rats! Don't tell me that I and my family aren't a better asset to any country than a lot of fat, lazy Monks and Nuns!"

"But, Papa, they're not all fat!" said Judith, beginning to laugh.

"Deuce a many of them's thin for want of plenty to eat!" returned Dick, with the confidence of a man whose faith in his theories has never been interfered with by investigation. He was recovering his temper, having enjoyed the delivery of his diatribe; and the fact that he had not only silenced Judith but had tickled her to a laugh, restored his sense of domination.

Poor old King Canute, with the tide by this time well above the tops of his hunting-boots, and all the familiar landmarks becoming submerged, one after the other! It may be easy to deride him, but it is hard not to pity him.

This was on Monday, and Christian returned from her week-end visit that evening. Judith stayed, and went with Christian to her room.

"Well, my dear," she began, eagerly, as the door closed, "when are you going to announce it?"

Christian sat down on her bed. She was looking very tired.

"Never, I think!"

Without paying attention to Judith's exclamation she took a newspaper out of the pocket of her top-coat, and handed it to her sister.

"This is this evening's paper. I got it at the Junction. Read that." She pointed to a paragraph.

Judith read it; then she dropped the paper, and gazed at Christian with dramatic consternation.

"The idiot!" she said, at length. "Couldn't you stop him?"

"He had promised years ago. I didn't try. He couldn't break his word."

"Oh, rot!" said Judith, briefly.

"You know he couldn't, Judy."

"Well, you know, this will finish him with Papa," said Judith, gloomily. "He's bad enough as it is about the sales to the tenants, and I was prepared for rows over the religious business, of course, but this! Can't you"

"I can't do anything," interrupted Christian, getting up. "I heard from him this morning, fearfully keen about it, but he didn't know then if the Party were going to adopt him. Evidently they have."

"Trust them for that!" said Judith, with a heavy groan. "I suppose Larry thinks we shall all be delighted! What fools men are! Bill did say once that it had been suggested—oh, ages ago, when Larry came of age; Ma-in-law told him—but we thought it had died out."

Christian hardly heard what she said. She was standing at the open window, in the stillness that tells of intense mental engrossment. Self-deception was impossible for her; her mind was too acute for tolerance of subterfuge; and for her, also, away and beyond the merciless findings of intellect was the besetment of presentiment, intuition, inward convictions that can override logical conclusions, words that are breathed in the soul as by a wind, and, like the wind, are born and die in mystery.

The last of the daylight had gone; there was a touch of frost; the sky was clear and hard, the stars shone with sharp brilliance, some of them had long, slanting rays on either hand that looked like wings of light; a new moon glittered among them, keen and clean, and vindictive as a scimitar; in the quiet, the low murmur of the Broadwater pervaded the night. Judith watched her sister with unconsciously appraising eyes, noting the straight slenderness of her figure, the small, high-held, dark head.

"Old people are intolerable!" she thought; "she shall not sacrifice herself to Papa's prejudices! If she likes Larry she shall have him!"

But she was too wise to argue with Christian.

Dick Talbot-Lowry, though now arrived at the age of sixty-nine, was as unconvinced as ever of the fact that time had got the better of him, and that its despotism was daily deepening. He admitted that he had become something of an invalid, but that his elder daughter should have classified him as an old person would have appeared to him as absurd and offensive. There are minds that keep this inveterate youthfulness; that learn nothing of age, and forget nothing of youth. It is an attitude sometimes charming, sometimes undignified, always pathetic. Christian saw old age as a tragedy, a disaster, to alleviate which no effort on the part of the young could be too great; the pathos and the pity of it were ever before her eyes. In contest with her father, if contest there were to be, she would go into the arena with her right hand tied behind her back.

Without any definite admission of failure, Major Talbot-Lowry had been brought to submit to having his breakfast in bed, and Robert Evans, a sour and withered Ganymede, was the bearer of it. He was also the bearer of any gossip that might be available, and seldom failed to provide his master with a stimulant and irritant. On the morning following on Christian's return it was very evident that intelligence of unusual greatness seethed in the cauldron wherein fermented Mr. Evans' brew of news. His rook-like eye sparkled, his movements, even that walk for whose disabilities it may be remembered that the pantry boy had thanked his God, were alert and purposeful.

"Ye didn't see the Irish Times yet, I think?" he began, standing over his master, and looking down upon him with an expression as triumphant and malign as that of a carrion-crow with a piece of stolen meat. He rarely bestowed the usual honorifics upon Dick, considering that his five years' seniority relieved him of such obligations. "I wouldn't believe all I'd read in the papers, but this is true, anyway!"

"What's true?" said Major Dick, irritably; "you've forgotten the salt again, Evans! How the devil can I eat an egg without salt? Send one of the maids for it—don't go yourself," he added, as Evans left the room. "The old fool'd be all day getting it," he said to himself, with an old man's contempt for old age in another. "Now, then," as Evans returned, "what's your wonderful bit of news?"

"Ye can read it there for yourself," replied Evans, coldly; he was ruffled by the episode of the salt.

"Damn it, man, I can't read the paper and eat an egg!" snapped the Major. "Out with your lie, whatever it is!"

"Master Larry's chosen for the Member in place of Prendergast," said Evans, sulkily.

If Evans had been unfortunate in the way in which his sensation had been led up to, its reception left him nothing to desire. Dick was stricken to an instant of complete silence. Then he roared to Evans to take the damned tray out of his way, and to give him the (otherwise qualified) paper.

It would serve no purpose, useful or otherwise, to attempt to record Dick Talbot-Lowry's denunciations of Larry, of his religion, and of his politics; of, secondarily, his ingratitude; his treachery, and his lack of the most rudimentary elements of a gentleman. They lasted long, and lacked nothing of effect that strength of lung and vigour of language could bring to them. And Evans, the many-wintered crow, hearkened, and rejoiced that he was seeing his desire of his enemy.

"No! I won't eat it! Take it away—I don't want it, I tell you! Curse you, can't you do as you're bid?" Thus spake Dick Talbot-Lowry, flinging himself back on his pillows, and shoving the breakfast-tray from him. The hot purple colour that had flooded his face was fading; his voice was getting hoarse and weak. Evans, with an apprehensive eye on his master's changed aspect, carried the tray out of the room.

There was a quick step on the stairs, and Larry came lightly along the landing.

"The Major up, Evans? No? Oh, all right! May I come in, Cousin Dick?"

He swung into the room.

Old Evans carefully shut the door behind him.

"Now me laddy-o!" he whispered, rubbing his hooked grey beak with one finger, and chuckling low and wheezily: "Now, maybe! Me fine young Papist! Ye'll be getting your tay in a mug! Hot and strong! Hot and strong!"

He moved away from the door with the tray of untouched breakfast things.



CHAPTER XXXII

Lady Isabel was returning from her accustomed housekeeping morning visit to Mrs. Dixon, when she was startled by the sharp outcry of an electric bell.

"Dick's room!" she said to herself, beginning to hurry; she hardly knew why.

A housemaid ran down the long passage in front of her, flying to the summons. Through the open door of the dining-room Lady Isabel saw Christian giving the dogs their breakfast.

"Papa's bell is ringing, dear," said Lady Isabel, breathing hard.

"I heard someone go up to his room just now," said Christian, languidly; "I haven't seen him this morning; I was in the yard with the dogs—"

Someone came down the stairs, headlong, two steps at a time. Larry's voice shouted:

"Christian! Cousin Isabel! Anyone—!"

There was urgency and alarm in the voice.

Lady Isabel and Christian were in the hall in an instant, and met Larry at the foot of the stairs.

"Cousin Dick's ill! A heart attack, I think—I didn't know what to do for him—"

"I do!" said Christian, speeding upstairs.

Her mother followed her, and Larry remained in the hall. Of one thing he was quite certain, that he had better keep out of Cousin Dick's sight. His nerves were quivering from the interview that had been so shatteringly abbreviated. Had the friendly old setter, whose head at this moment was on his knee, while her limpid eyes swore to him that all her love was his, suddenly turned and rent him, it would scarcely be a shock worse than that he had received. He had been undeterred by the ominous gloom of the Major's greeting; few young men have very keen perception of mood, and Larry, deeply self-engrossed, wildly happy, had flung at once into his theme, which, it need hardly be said, was Christian. Then the storm broke, and the lightning blazed, and the thunders of the house uttered their voice, while Larry, amazed, horrified, gradually, as the invective gathered volume and venom, becoming angry, stood in silence, and received in a single cloud-burst the bitter flood of long-pent prejudice, jealousy, and sense of injury.

"Dead!" Dick had roared; "I'd rather see her dead in her coffin than married to—"

The epithets that a hoarded hatred finds ready to hand when its pent force is released, come horribly from the lips of an old man. Yet, almost more horrible than the full tide of rage, was to see its ebb, as "the sick old servant" in Major Dick's bosom failed him, and his heart staggered and fainted in its effort to abet him in denouncing the young cousin who he thought had wronged him.

Larry sat, fondling the old setter's chestnut head, thinking it all over, flaming again at the remembered insults, quailing at the possibilities as they concerned Christian. Once she had appeared at the top of the stairs, and said the single word, "Better!" before she vanished.

One half of Larry's mind said "Better? What do I care? Better if he dies, if he comes between me and her!" The other, which was his deeper self, preserved the memory of Dick's greying face and frightened eyes, and was glad that relief had come.

At last Christian came to him, slowly and with a dragging step, down the wide staircase. Her face was white, her eyes were set in shadows.

"How is he?"

"Round the corner, I think. We've wired for Mangan."

"Christian, I want to explain—I said nothing—I never meant to annoy him, I began about you, and that—that we loved each other. For we do, Christian, don't we?" He had her hands in his, he crushed them in his anxiety, his eyes implored her. "Then suddenly he began to abuse me like a madman! My religion, my politics, my treachery to my class—I can't tell you what he didn't say! And then he swore he'd rather see you dead than married to me. I don't know what I said—nothing, I think; he began to look as if he were dying himself, and I rang the bell and bolted for you."

"Poor boy!" said Christian.

He thought that her face as she looked at him was as it were the face of an angel, but the sorrow in it frightened him.

"Come into the study," she said, freeing her hands from his grasp; "we can't talk here."

The study door was open; he followed her in silence, and, shutting the door, sat down beside her on the sofa.

"Larry, we've got to face it, you know; we've got to face it," she began, and gave back to him her slender sensitive hand, as if to heal the wound of what the words implied.

"Face what?" said Larry, stubbornly, girding himself for resistance.

"Face delay—opposition—"

"I'll face opposition as much as you like, but I won't face delay! Why should we? We're of age. There's nothing against me!"

Christian smiled faintly.

"Dear child, I know that. It's not the facts that are against us, it's the fancies—"

"I won't be patronised!" said Larry, vehemently. "I'm not your dear child! I'm the man you've promised to marry! No one's fancies have a right to interfere with us!"

His arm was round her, and he felt her tremble. He loosed her hand, and with his hand that had held it he turned her face to his. Then he kissed her, many times, with an ever-growing abandonment as he felt the response that she tried in vain to withhold.

At length, in spite of him, she hid her face in his shoulder.

"No, Larry, no!" she gasped, her breath coming short. "Dearest, don't be cruel to me! How can I keep that promise! If you had seen Papa just now and Mother—her terror and her helplessness! How could I leave them? Supposing that I defied him, and married you, and that he died in one of these furies! Just think what that would be for us!"

"He wouldn't die!" said Larry, obstinately. "People don't die as easy as all that!" he added, with a fierce thought of regret that Dick had not gone out in this latest storm.

"Listen," said Christian, beseechingly. "Don't let us be in such a hurry. Everything needn't be settled at once. We'll ask Dr. Mangan how Papa is, and if there is real danger for him in these rages. He was nearly as bad on Saturday after the Priest and the tenants had been here."

Larry's face was dark; he was not used to opposition. His guardians and his spiritual directors had alike found that while he was easy to lead, he was a difficulty and a danger to drive. He was stirred to the depths now. The strain of receiving Dick's onslaught in silence, the shock of his collapse, and now the fire that Christian's nearness and dearness had lit in him, all broke his self-control. He held her to him.

"I will never let you go! Never—!" His lips were on hers again, life, with all its difficulties, was again forgotten, the rhyme of the Fairies' Well galloped in his hot brain:

"My heart in your hands, your heart in me."

The sound of the hall door opening, and the grinding roar of a motor engine running down, recalled them both to this troublesome world.

But in Christian's heart, whether from within or from without, a voice had spoken, telling the kisses, one by one, as though they were the petals of a flower. "This year, next year, sometime, never!" If the last word had been "sometime," or "never," she knew not; she knew only that if what before her was the way of renunciation, she would find it a hard way to walk in.

Dr. Mangan stood, a massive presence, at the top of the stairs, and talked massively to Lady Isabel of Dick's condition.

"Very critical—no worries—nourishment—would he have a nurse?"

To which Lady Isabel, a poor, shaken, pallid Lady Isabel, with no more backbone than the shape of blancmange, which, it must be said, she somewhat resembled, replied: "Nothing would induce him!"

"Then I should like to have a little talk with Miss Christian," said the Big Doctor, beginning to walk downstairs, slowly, solemnly, solidly, like a trick-elephant at a circus.

Christian's quick ears had heard his voice on the stairs, and she met him in the hall. Larry stood irresolute at the door of the study. His eyes met those of the Doctor, and something during the interchange of glances suggested that his presence was not desired. He returned to the study and shut the door, and wished that he could have a word alone with the Doctor, just to put him up to what to say to Christian. He could hear the heavy rumble of the Doctor's bass voice, and the soft alto murmur of Christian's replies. She had the Irish voice, pitched on a low note, an instrument more apt for pathos than for gaiety, which is, perhaps, what gives to its gaiety so special a charm.

Larry stood by the window with his hands in his pockets, trying to steady himself. Deep under his panic uncertainty as to the strength of his hold on Christian, was the anger that Dick's denunciation had roused in him, and momently, as his mind went back over the interview, remembrance of the insults became more unendurable. Abuse from the old to the young, and from a sick man to a sound one, cannot fail to rankle, since it cannot be flung back. Generosity may impose silence, but it cannot obliterate an insult or heal a wound.

Christian came into the room; he heard her come, but he would not look round. She slid her hand into his arm.

"Larry! Dear! Listen to me; there's no way out of it but patience! Dr. Mangan says he must be kept absolutely quiet, and have nothing to annoy him. He says he might die in an instant in one of those attacks. He's not himself now, Larry—so little makes him lose self-control—" She paused, but Larry did not speak. "You couldn't want me to sacrifice the little share of life left to him to our happiness; I know you couldn't! Larry, he's an old man; it can't be for very long—"

"I don't see that that follows," said Larry, implacably. "He had strength enough to blackguard me very thoroughly, and it hasn't done him any harm. It seems to me, I'm the one to be sacrificed!"

"He spoke to Mother about us—about what you said to him. He began about it the instant he could speak. She—" Christian hesitated, "she could only quiet him by saying there was no engagement between us."

"Then she said what wasn't true!"

"Oh, it must be true!" said Christian, desperately; "it's got to be true—"

"Very well," said Larry, moving away, so that her hand fell from his arm. "If it's got to be true I suppose there's no more to be said. I may as well go. After all, I daresay you're well quit of me. Your father says I'm a damned Papist and—"

"I won't listen to you!" broke in Christian. "What's the use of hurting me and hurting yourself like this? Larry, I'll wait for you for ever—you know that—time will make no difference. Don't make it harder for me than it must be!"

"You don't seem to think much about me" said Larry, with a still rage that was a new thing with him. He left her side, and walked steadily to the door; then he turned, and in a few quick steps came back to her. He put his hands on her shoulders; he was not much taller than she, and his eyes looked straight into hers.

"Then it's true, is it? You're off it? You've given me the chuck?"

He spoke roughly, and gripped her harder than he knew, and in the tension of her nerves, the roughness of the words and action cut her like the stroke of a whip. Almost as if he had struck her, a splash of colour came in her face.

Larry was blind to the torture in her eyes, but he saw the quick red, and knew he had hurt her high spirit, and was glad.

"If you like to put it in that way!" said Christian, her head up, her mood answering his, "apparently it is the only thing to be done!"

There came a tap at the door. Dr. Mangan's voice said: "I'm going back to Cluhir now. Haven't you to meet Father Greer at twelve o'clock, Larry? I could give you a lift if you like—"

* * * * *

From an early work on the Fauna of the Indian Forest the following extract may be quoted:

"The elephant's trunk then encircled the young man's body, and placing him gently upon its back, the huge creature ambled away with its prize to the depths of the jungle."



CHAPTER XXXIII

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.



CHAPTER XXXIV

At a little before this time a sufficiently epoch-making scene had taken place between Dr. Mangan and his daughter, following not long on that day when the elephant had conveyed his captive to the depths of the jungle.

"Tishy!" said the Big Doctor, looming large at the door of the dining-room where his daughter was engaged in trimming a hat, "come down to the surgery a minute; I want you."

The feather to which Miss Mangan had just imparted the correct "set," was only fixed in position with a precarious pin, none the less, Tishy, albeit vexed, did not delay. She had a well-founded respect for the Fifth Commandment, as far, at all events, as her father was concerned. She abandoned the hat, and followed the Doctor through the narrow hall-passage and into the surgery, with a promptness that she was not wont to exhibit in obeying an order that was not convenient.

Dr. Mangan had seated himself at his desk, and was writing. Tishy stood by the seat dedicated to patients; she wished to imply that she had been interrupted in her work, and that her time was of value.

"There now," said Dr. Mangan, thumping the envelope that he had just closed and directed, on the blotting-paper, with his big fist, "I want you to run round to Hallinan's with this for me."

"Is it a hurry?" asked Tishy, unwillingly.

"It is. It's to order rooms for Larry Coppinger. He's coming to stay in town till the election's over. Sit down there a minute."

Tishy obeyed, and the Doctor surveyed her attentively. The position that is assigned to patients in a doctor's consulting room is one that faces the light, pitilessly, inescapably; but for Tishy, this was a negligible disadvantage. A peacock butterfly looks its best in sunlight, and Tishy's dark bloom, and intent eyes of luminous grey, faced the glare of October sunlight with confident unconcern.

"A right-down handsome girl!" he had called her, to himself, more than-once; now, he thought, she had good looks enough for any man in Europe. It was not his habit to betray his feelings; but as he sat there, appraising her, weighing her beauty, as a jeweller might appraise some rich-hued ruby that a kind fate had placed in his hands, sheer pride in her made him smile, and he was hard put to it to keep up the severity that he believed the occasion exacted.

"I've a couple of things to say to you," he resumed, "and you know as well as I do that I've no fancy for saying things twice. I've seen Ned Cloherty sneaking about the Mall very often lately—like as if he was waiting for somebody. I'm not saying it's for you or me he's waiting; you might know that better than I do. But he's no great ornament to the view there, or anywhere else, as far as I can see!"

Tishy put her strong, rounded chin in the air, and said, "I suppose other people have a right to use the roads as well as us!"

The Doctor was glad that his face was shadowed, as he noted the arrogant tilt of her head, and the smooth, cream-white pillar of her neck that it revealed, since the smile of paternal pride would not be denied. He didn't blame Ned Cloherty to be sneaking about after her; there wasn't her like in the county. But she very certainly was too good for the likes of Ned Cloherty. "Now, Babsey," he said, and Tishy knew that the old pet name denoted a satisfaction with her that might not otherwise betray itself, "you're a sensible girl, and I needn't go out of my way to tell you things that you're smart enough to see for yourself. You're 'pert enough without Latin'—as they say! Well, I'll just say one other thing to you, and it's this. Larry Coppinger's up for this election, and I've told him to use this house, like his own, as much as he wants to," the Doctor stood up and took a pocket-book from the breast-pocket of his coat. "You're to make it agreeable for him to come here. Mind that! And more than agreeable! I'll think very little of you if you don't have him at your feet before you're done with him!" he went on, selecting something from among the papers in the pocket-book as he spoke. "There's not a girl in Ireland that wouldn't half hang herself for the chance you'll have! And there's not a girl in Cluhir but will be gibeing you if you lose it!" He took a step towards where Tishy was sitting, and put his hand under his chin.

Her bright water-grey eyes were alight with mutiny; she laughed defiantly.

"Suppose I don't want it!"

Her father looked steadily at her; he saw, as clearly as if she had spoken, that the suggestion had excited her.

"Well, Babs," he said, with the laugh that always seemed an octave higher than matched with his voice, "if you're able to bring him to your feet—and I'm not saying you will! You might find it a bit of a job too!—you'll want a dandy pair of shoes on them! Put this in your pocket."

He had taken a ten-pound note out of his pocket-book, and he pushed it into Tishy's strong and supple white hand.



CHAPTER XXXV

Great pain paralyses the mind, as the torture of a limb makes the limb faint and helpless. When the heart-pain can be dealt with as a separate thing, it is no longer supreme.

This was the difference between Christian and Larry. Her love was herself, indivisible, a condition of her being. When it ceased, it would mean that the creature that called herself Christian Talbot-Lowry had ceased also. During the long, bright morning, after Larry and Dr. Mangan had departed together, she felt that this had happened; that the part of her that knew and suffered had gone away, or was lying dead in her. There was a weight in her breast, she could feel it, but she scarcely felt pain, only a great bewilderment, an incredulity that this thing, of whose reality her mind told her, but without conviction, should have happened to her, just precisely to her, out of all the people in the world. People have felt this when that iron shutter that is called Death has fallen between them and that one who was their share of the world. A part of them, some plausible imitation of them, can speak and act, and be extolled, perhaps, for facing the music stoutly; while the stricken thing that is themselves, is lying prone before the iron shutter; beating on it with broken hands, calling, and hearing no answer.

It was nearly a month now since Dick Talbot-Lowry had asserted his paternal rights, and had, following various classic and biblical precedents, sacrificed his daughter to his own particular formulae of religion and politics. He would never know that it had been the appeal that weakness makes to strength that had given him his victory. When he spoke to Lady Isabel of his scene with Larry, he told her that he had nipped the thing in the bud. The damned puppy of a fellow took for granted that Christian was in love with him; but here she was, going about as usual, as jolly as a sandboy; "in fact," Dick would say, plastering up with bromidic mortar the windows of the narrow dwelling wherein dwelt Lady Isabel's soul, "all's well that ends well!" With which valuable aphorism, sanctioned by a long and respectable past, the Major contentedly fed his heart, and tranquillised that of his wife.

Judith was less confident of the satisfactory end of all things. She was, in fact, exceedingly indignant that an engagement so entirely advantageous from all practical points of view should be broken off; "simply to gratify Papa's imbecile prejudices!" she declared, with her usual emphasis. "Christian, you were a fool to mind what he said or did. He wouldn't have died! Not a bit of him! Of course, Mother has got to agree with him—that's what he married her for!"

"Don't tire me, Judy, please," Christian would say, serenely. "It's all over now. These discussions only weary me. I assure you my philosophy is quite equal to the strain!"

"If that's the case, I don't know why you should look like a dying ghost!"

Judith had never entirely comprehended her younger sister, and she found her, as she said with indignation to the concurring Bill, absolutely dark and inscrutable over the whole affair.

"I know it's hit her hard, but nothing will make her admit it. I detest Spartan Boys!" said Judith.

The Spartan Boy in question, though aware of her sister's ardent desire to investigate her wounds, had no intention of removing the cloak that covered them. She wrapped it close about her, so close that Lady Isabel, while unable to stifle a motherly regret for the wedding that might have been, thanked heaven that Christian had not "really cared"; so close that even Judith said that, since Christian had not been hit too hard, though she regretted the coup manque she personally found some consolation in the fact that she would not be called upon to make apologies for the political aberrations of her brother-in-law.

The polling day came, and passed with but little excitement.

"You wouldn't har'ly know it," said a voter, who had returned to his normal avocations after a morning wasted, as he considered, in the task of recording his vote. "There was a few men drunk in the town. Which won is it? Bedad, they dunno yet. Father Sweeny it was marched in the Pribawn boys. Faith, he had them well regulated. Very nate they marched, very nate entirely. They never were in such rotation!"

The voter bent melancholy and slightly bloodshot eyes upon Christian, and awaited her reply.

Christian, with her usual miscellaneous company of dogs, was on her way to visit a woman whose husband had died not long before. Her way took her along the banks of the Broadwater, and during one of the frequent pauses, necessitated by the investigations into the private affairs of water-rats and others, made by her companions, she and Peter Callaghan had exchanged greetings. He and Christian had fallen into talk, with the absence of formality that is, perhaps, peculiar to intercourse between his class and hers. He leant upon his scythe, and discoursed seriously and courteously. He wore a soft, slouched black hat, that did not wholly conceal his thick and curly hair, in which there was scarcely a grey strand, though he was, as he told Christian, the one age with her father. His white flannel jacket was wrapped round him, its skirts pushed under the band of his brown frieze trousers. A red wisp of rag was knotted round his middle, and held all together. His pale grey and wistful eyes looked at Christian from above a tangled thicket of grizzled moustache and beard. He suggested almost equally, a conventional Saint Joseph and a stage-brigand—a brigand, as it might be, who had joined the Salvation Army. "As old as I am," he returned, dreamily, to the affair of the morning, "I stepped it away with them!"

He turned his eyes from Christian's face to the large and sliding brightness of the river.

There followed a moment of silence that was filled by the yelps of the little dogs who had marked a water-rat to ground, and the hobble-de-hoy shouts of the hound puppies, uttered with no definite idea of the cause of their enthusiasm, but none the less enthusiastic for that reason.

"Are you the youngest young lady, I beg your pardon?" Peter Callaghan asked presently. "It's long since I seen you. Your father knows me well. I remember of one time when the hounds was crossing my land, and I seen yourself and your sisther taking the hur'ls. I cries out to ye 'me heart'd rise at ye, my darlins!' and the Major, he laughs!"

"I remember jumping the hurdles," said Christian; "I'll tell my father I met you."

"He gave me permission to cut the 'looha' in these fields," resumed Peter Callaghan. "I'm thankful to him. I have a good sop of it cut."

He waved a hand; Christian saw, at a little distance, a heap of rushes, and, seated on it, a girl, of whose presence she had been unaware. She was very pale, and there was a fixity of sadness about her. Christian spoke to her, but she did not appear to notice.

"She's my daughter," said Peter Callaghan in his quiet voice. "She wouldn't know it was to her you spoke. She's dark, the creature. Blinded she is. She's not long that way."

"How did it happen?" said Christian, in a low voice.

"You could not say," said Peter Callaghan; his dreamy eyes roved again over the broad river; "God left a hand on her," he said.

Christian went on her way, and the words stayed with her. "God left a hand on her." There had been no resentment in the father's voice, only a profound and noble gravity.

"And here am I," thought Christian, "angry and whimpering—"

Mrs. James Barry lived a mile or so farther down the river. Christian gathered up her pack of terriers, hound puppies, and red setters, with the farm collie to complete its absurdity, and walked fast. October was just ending; the willows along the river-bank were yellow, the reeds in the ditches that ran beneath each fence were greying and withering. The successive profiles of wood and hill, down the valley of the river went from orange and brown to a reddish purple, until, in the large serenity of the autumn evening, they softened to the universal blue of distance.

Mrs. Barry's farm-house stood a little back from the river. A stream that widened to a pond, and narrowed again to a stream, divided the house from the fields that ran between it and the river; the decent thatched roofs and whitewashed walls of the farm, and the elm trees that grew beside it, were mirrored in the pond. A flotilla of geese and ducks paraded, in stately fatuity, to and fro across the mirror. A battered little wooden bridge, painted green, enabled the people of the farm to reach the banks of the river. Christian crossed it, and went up to the open door of the house.

In the kitchen a red-haired woman was seated, rocking a wooden cradle with her foot while she stitched at a child's frock. Hens, with their alert and affected reserve of manner, stepped in and out of the doorway, sometimes slowly, with poised claw, sometimes headlong, with greedy speed. Christian watched them and the hound puppies (in whose power of resistance to temptation she had no confidence), while she talked to the woman of the house, and heard the story of her trouble.

Her husband had been "above in the hospital at Riverstown. He was in it with a fortnight," said the red-haired woman in the idiom of her district, the noise of the rocker of the cradle on the earthen floor beating through her words; "he had a bunch, like, undher his chin, and they were to cut it." She paused, and the wooden bump of the cradle filled the pause.

"When they had it cut, he rose up on the table, and all his blood went from him; only one little tint, I suppose, stopped in him. Afther a while, the nurse seen the life creeping back in him. 'We have him yet!' says she to the Docthor. 'I thought he was gone from us!' says the Docthor." The voice ceased again. The speaker slashed the frock in her hand at an over-bold hen, who had skipped on to the table beside her and was pecking hard and sharp at some food on a plate.

"They sent him home then. We thought he was cured entirely. He pulled out the summer, but he had that langersome way with him through all."

She was silent a moment, then she looked at Christian, with grief, crowned and omnipotent, on her tragic brow.

"As long as he was alive, I had courage in spite of all, but when I thinks now of them days, and the courage I had, it goes through me!" Her red-brown eyes stared through the open door at the path twisting across the field to the high road.

"Ye'll never see him on that road again, and when I looks up it me heart gets dark. Sure, now when he's gone, I thinks often, if he'd be lyin' par'lysed above in the bed, I'd be runnin' about happy!"

When Christian went home Mrs. Barry walked with her to the little green bridge, and stood there until her visitor reached the bend of the river where the path passed from her sight.

At the turning Christian looked back and saw the lonely figure standing at the bridge-head, and again she said to herself: "Here am I, angry and whimpering!"



CHAPTER XXXVI

Doctor Mangan told himself that he had never laid out a ten-pound note to better advantage than the one he had pushed into the heel of Tishy's fist. It had, as he thought it would, clinched the matter. He had never been unaware of the menace of Cloherty, R.A.M.C., but he was confident in the three forces that he had at his command—authority, bribery, and propinquity.

"If I know my young lady," he said cheerfully to himself, "she'll think more of Larry at her elbow, than of that foxy devil back at Riverstown" (which was the present scene of Captain Cloherty's professional labours). "And what's more, if Tishy will only give her mind to it, it'll take a stiffer lad than Master Larry to be man enough for her! She downed him once, and she'll do it again, in spite of Christian Lowry!"

Even as the Big Doctor thought, there were many more that fought for him in this matter than against him. Potent had been his suggestion to his daughter that there wasn't a girl in Cluhir that wouldn't "be gibeing at her" if she lost so golden an opportunity, nor one that would believe she had not half hanged herself to secure it. (And though it has not been possible to include them in this chronicle, it may be accepted that there were many girls in Cluhir of the lively malevolence of whose gibes Tishy was entirely sensible.) Even more potent was the pull of Larry's position, the prestige of his money, of his "place," of his good looks; most potent of all, the fact of his nearness, the mere primary fact that he was a young man, in whose company she was daily thrown, whose unattached status (the Doctor had kept his own counsel as to that interview with Christian, and his deductions therefrom) was a continual challenge to her charms, whose mere presence was an excitement an a stimulus.

As the polling day approached, and effort became more strenuous, Larry fell ever more gratefully into the habit of No. 6, The Mall. Of coming in, in the gloom of the wet afternoon, and finding Tishy mending her gloves, or stitching something all lace and ribbons, something that would obviously blossom into a "Sunday blouse," but that, with flash of her grey eyes, she would tell him was "poor-clothes,' that the Nuns had asked her to make. Of sitting on the big sofa beside her, and teasing her about Captain Cloherty and the adventure in which Tinker took a leading part.

"If you go telling tales to the Doctor, you'll be sorry!"

"How can you make me sorry?"

"Wait awhile and you'll find out! There are plenty ways to teach little boys manners! Oh, look now what you've done! You've made me pull the thread out o' me needle. Thread it now, you!"

Then Larry, with his quick eye and steady hand, would annoy her by threading it as deftly as she herself could have done, would possibly contribute some enormous stitches to the confection, and, by the time its construction was seriously resumed, the collaborators on the big sofa would have advanced a stage further on the road through the jungle, that had, with so much foresight and patience, been prepared for them.

Young Mr. Coppinger's hopes and fears as to his prospects of becoming a Member of Parliament varied no more than was suitable in the possessor of the artistic temperament, but Barty, his agent in chief, maintained an attitude of unbroken pessimism. That whisper of the secret and late-declared antagonism of the Church had reached him, and in the secure seclusion of his own office he inveighed against clerical interference with all the fierceness of a dog chained in his kennel, who knows that his adversaries are as unable to touch him as he is to injure them. Only, in Barry's case, he was quite sure that his barkings were unheard, and he would have been exceedingly alarmed had he thought otherwise.

"I declare to God I don't care what way it goes!" Larry had said many times, but most often when fatigue and discouragement had together taken control.

Such times had come more often during the last week Before the election, and they reached their climax on the evening of the polling day. The two young men, mentally and physically demoralised by fatigue, had at length, at an hour considerably past midnight, escaped from their colleagues, and, having gained the sanctuary of Barty's office, were drearily reviewing the position by the light of a smoky lamp and over the ashes of a dead fire; counting possible votes, making unconvincing calculations based on supposition, wading hand-in-hand ever deeper into the Slough of Despond.

"I was talking to your father this evening," said Larry, lighting a cigarette and letting himself fall into an ancient rocking-chair. "He wouldn't give me an opinion one way or the other, but it's my belief he thinks it's a bad chance."

"I believe he's done his best for you," said Barty, dubiously; "but the way he's situated, he doesn't like to come out too strong one way or the other."

"Quite right too; I'm a rotten proposition," said Larry, "and this dam' cigarette won't draw!"

"I could stand getting licked," went on Barty, too preoccupied to consider the plaints of his principal, "if I thought the Clergy had played fair. Father Hogan and Father Sweeney stood to us well, and I know Father Greer was for you at the first go-off; but God knows what way he and the rest o' them went, after. I wouldn't trust them—" His dark and mournful eyes rested dejectedly upon Larry. "And what's more, they don't trust you!"

"They're perfectly right," said Larry; "shows their sense! You and I are what Father Greer and the rest of them would consider rotten bad Catholics, and I believe they know it!" He got up from the limping old rocking-chair and stretched himself, with a yawn that prolonged itself into a howl. "Oh Dark Rosaleen!—or Kathleen-ni-Houlihan—or anything else you like to call yourself—if you only knew how really and sincerely devoted I am to you! I believe I'm a perfectly single-minded Irish patriot, and ye you won't believe in me, and no more will any one else except this bloody old fool of a Barty here! Barry my hearty, I'm going to bed! I'm done! Don't wake me till the news comes in—" He gave vent to another heart-broken yawn.

"Well, for God's sake stop howling like a banshee, and go!" replied the hard-pressed Barty, "I'm about done myself!"

The opening Meet of the Broadwater Vale Hounds chanced to take place at Cluhir Bridge, on the day after the election. Larry, finishing a late breakfast at Hallinan's Hotel, heard the beloved sounds of the hunt, the pistol-cracks of the whips, the clatter of horse-hoofs, the jingle of bits, and the steady paddling of hounds' feet in the muddy street. Joined with these was the clamour of the town curs and the thunder of the following rush of town boys along Cluhir's narrow pavements. Larry ran to the window, and opening it, found himself practically face to face with young Georgy Talbot-Lowry, riding a horse of Bill Kirby's.

The sight of the hounds drove from his mind the resolve to have no dealings more with the house of Talbot-Lowry.

"Hullo, Georgy!" he shouted: "I didn't know you were home—"

Georgy gave a quick look at the window, and directed his gaze between his horse's ears; save that his face had turned as red as his coat, there was nothing, as he jogged on, to indicate that he had either seen or heard.

Larry banged down the window, in a state of conflagration, every strained nerve vibrating. What need to attempt to recount what he said or thought? Dark Rosaleen has made trouble often enough between nearer and dearer than Larry and his young cousin. She will send brothers to fight each other to the changing music of her harp, crowned and uncrowned; she will gather her sons under the sign of the Cross, and encourage them to hate one another for the love of God. This was only a trivial bit of mischief hardly worthy of our attention, were it not that it had its share in the macadamising of that jungle road in which, as is frequent in such routes, the preliminary labour had been undertaken by an elephant, under the direction of a skilful mahout.

It was dark when the news came to Cluhir, six o'clock of a wet night. The counting of the votes had taken place elsewhere, and the word was to come by wire. Barty and Larry, with others of the rival "Commy-tees," had hung about between the post-office, and their respective offices, and houses of call, all day. Many drinks had been drunk, many bets been laid; before the news came through, Larry's proclaimed indifference as to the result had worn so thin as to be imperceptible. It seemed to him, during the tedious hours of that dark and wet afternoon, that success in this enterprise was the only thing left in life worth having. To triumph, secretly, over that secret clerical opposition, to snap his fingers, openly, at Georgy Talbot-Lowry's impudence and all that it implied of hostility and contempt. These were the great objects of life, the things that justified all the double dealing, and the lies, and the humbug of the past weeks. There was no such thing as patriotism, and ideals were rot. He had claimed last night to be a single-minded patriot, but to-day he knew better; he had become a man, and had put ideals away, with love, and other childish things. The main thing was to have your desire of your enemy.

He was standing in the heavy downpour on the outskirts of the group that waited outside the post-office; he was sick with suspense and fatigue, and hardly troubled to move as a motor came slowly nosing its way through the crowd. It passed within a few inches of him and stopped. He heard the Big Doctor's voice.

"Get into the car out of the rain," it commanded. "D'ye want to be ill on my hands again? I'll run you down to No. 6. Let Barty 'phone the news to you. Isn't that what he's for?"

Larry was alone in the dining-room of No. 6 when the telephone summoned him. He had eaten nothing since breakfast; his hand shook with cold and excitement, and he could scarcely hold the switch firmly.

"Burke, 1047; Coppinger, 705;" Barty's voice sounded flat and without emotion. "Majority against us, 342. Can you hear? Adverse majority, 342! They've beaten us to babby-rags!" The voice ceased.

Larry said: "All right, old chap. Thanks!" and hung up the receiver.

He returned to the dirty, comfortable old sofa by the fire.

Beaten! and Larry was used to victory. In all his twenty-five years of life, he had never been thwarted. What he wished to do, that he did, in games, in sport, in art. He might have said, with Beatrice: "There was a star danced, and under that was I born!"

The first defeat he could remember was the one he had suffered at Christian's hands, and here he was, turned down again, twice in a month!

"My luck's out!" he said, staring at the flickering, whispering fire, and feeling that ebbing of life which will befall, even at five and twenty, when exhaustion, that has been held at bay by excitement and hope, comes to its own.

The door burst open, and Tishy came swiftly into the room.

"I've just heard!" she said. "Dad got it on the other 'phone. It's a wicked shame and a disgrace! That's what it is!" Her voice was hot with wrath and sympathy; she flung across the room and caught Larry's hand and shook it vehemently. "The fools!" she cried, furiously. "You were too good for them, that's what it was! The dirty, low, common—Oh, there's no words bad enough for them!" Her eyes blazed; she looked exceedingly handsome. She was moved by a perfectly genuine emotion of indignation; Larry was Mangan property, and it was not fitting that the leading family of Cluhir should be defeated.

"You look half dead this minute!" she cried, pushing him down on to the sofa by the hand that she had taken. "Sit down for gracious sake!"

Again the door opened, and from without the Doctor's deep voice said:

"Tishy! Come here a minute, I want you."

Larry, sitting on the sofa, watching his wet boots steaming, was conscious of a sense of consolation. It was something to know that these kind people cared. He heard the light chink of glasses, and looked round, and saw Tishy coming into the room, bearing a tray, on which were a cake, and wineglasses, and a bottle of champagne.

"Dad says he prescribes a little stimulant!" said Tishy, gaily, "the wire's cut—"

She took the cork out of the bottle with a strong, capable hand, and filled two glasses. "Drink that at once now! And I'll drink one drop myself—just for luck! Here now! Here's to the next time, and you at the top of the poll!"

"Sounds as if I were a bear!" said Larry, with a pale smile at her, as he lifted the glass, "Clink!" He touched her glass, and then drank the wine thirstily.

"I was just about cooked," he said apologetically. "Awfully good of you and the Doctor—"

"Ah, don't be talking nonsense!" interrupted Tishy. "Here, show me your glass—"

The glasses were very large and old fashioned; she refilled his, brimmingly. "Now, sit down, and drink that, and eat a bit of cake. Not a word out of you now! Only do as you're told!"

Then, as he obeyed her, she suddenly knelt beside him, and before he realised what she was doing she began to unlace his boots. Larry started up, horrified and protesting.

"Sit down at once and be good!" said Tishy, holding firmly to the foot on which she had begun operations, and with a vigorous jerk compelling him to obedience. "I'll do what I choose, I always do!"

Her nimble, white fingers made short work of the task that she had set herself; Larry's remonstrances availed him nothing. She had insisted on refilling his glass a third time, and the wine had begun to take away from him the feeling of reality, and to make everything seem hazy and indefinite, but quite agreeable.

"There now!" said Tishy, pushing the boots under the sofa, "aren't you obliged to me? I often did that for the Doctor, but I never saw such lovely green silk socks on him, I can tell you!"

The champagne had made her eyes very bright; there was a look in them that spoke to a dim memory in Larry's cloudy mind. She was still kneeling beside him, and as she prepared to rise, she rested one hand on his knee to help herself. Larry put his hand on hers, and leaned forward. Her brilliant, challenging face was very near his. His memory cleared in a flash, and he thought of the night, long ago, when they had played at forfeits.

"'My shoe buckle or my lips'? Do you remember?" he said, with an unsteady laugh, answering the challenge. "It's my turn now—which will you have?"

He did not wait for an answer, but looking straight into her eyes, he bent down and kissed her laughing, red lips.

The situation had not materially changed when Dr. Mangan's large presence was suddenly developed at the end of the sofa. He had come noiselessly in, and was surveying his daughter and guest with a benedictory smile.

"So that's the way, is it?" he said quietly.

The hot dream that held Larry, melted and reeled a little. He released Tishy from his enfolding arms, and wondered if he had better risk standing up. He wished old Mangan hadn't come bothering in. He had only just begun to find out how much he liked Tishy.

But he stood up, and met the Doctor's smile with a guilty and foolish grin, holding on with one hand to the end of the sofa. Tishy continued to hold his other hand; he felt as if he should fall if she relinquished it.

"Well, I suppose I may draw my own conclusions from what I see?" went on the Big Doctor, in a voice that oozed fatherliness at every syllable. "Eh, Larry?"

Larry swayed a little; his yellow hair was ruffled, his blue eyes shone, he looked like a child who had just been awakened.

"Oh quite so, sir," he said, laughing. "Apparently it's the only thing to do!" which was indisputable.

The bottle of champagne which had played its part so ably was finished later on, and the engagement was ratified and celebrated with the pomp that was its due.



CHAPTER XXXVII

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 fiance.

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 fiance 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 fiancee, 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.