A fortnight or so after the moving
incidents that have just been recited, Miss Frederica
Coppinger, and her nephew, St. Lawrence of that ilk,
were spending a long and agreeable Sunday afternoon
with their relatives at Mount Music, elders and youngsters
being segregated, after their kind, and to their mutual
happiness.
Major Talbot-Lowry, very well pleased
with himself, very tall and authoritative, was standing,
from force of habit, on the rug in front of the fire-place
in the Mount Music drawing-room, and was cross-examining
Miss Coppinger on her proposed arrangements for herself
and her nephew, while he drank his tea in gulps, each
succeeded by burnishing processes, with a brilliant
silk bandanna handkerchief, such as are necessitated
by a long and drooping moustache.
All good-looking people are aware
of their good looks, but the gift of enjoying them,
that had been lavishly bestowed on Dick, is denied
to many; on the other hand, the companion gift, of
realising when they are becoming pleasures of memory,
had been withheld from him. Dick was of the happy
temperament that believes in the exclusive immortality
of his own charms, and he was now enjoying his conversation
with his cousin none the less for the discovery that
Miss Coppinger, who was younger than he, had preserved
her youth very much less successfully than he had
done.
The cross-examination had moved on
to the subject of Larry’s religion, and the
combative fervour of Major Dick’s Protestantism
might have edified John Knox.
“But look here, Frederica,”
he said, putting down his cup and saucer, with a crash,
on the high mantelpiece, “you don’t mean
to tell me that the boy has to go to Mass with the
servants on the cook’s lap, I suppose on
the outside car! Good Heeavens! Poor old
Tom! Talk about turning in his grave! I
should think he was going head over heels in it by
this time!”
This referred to the late Colonel
Coppinger, the genuineness of whose conversion to
his wife’s Church had never been accepted by
Major Talbot-Lowry.
“My dear Dick!” said Lady Isabel.
Miss Coppinger closed her lips tightly
with an air of high self-control.
“That is a matter of opinion!”
she said blandly. “Tom was perfectly aware
of what changing his religion involved, in this country though
it’s probably quite different in India.
In any case, the thing is done, and as I believe it
to be my Duty to send Larry to his chapel, to his
chapel he shall go!”
Unimaginative people, or those of
limited vocabulary, affixed to Miss Coppinger the
ancient label: “A typical old maid,”
and considered that no further definition was required;
and, since her appearance conformed in some degree
with stage traditions, there is something to be said
for them. If labels are to be employed, even the
least complex of human beings would suggest a much-travelled
portmanteau, covered with tags and shreds from hotels
and railways. Frederica shall not be labelled;
let it suffice to say that she was tall and thin, and
nearer fifty than forty (which was a far greater age
thirty years ago than it is now), and that she had
a sense of fair play that was proof against her zeal
as an Irish Church-woman. It is true that she
mentioned what she regarded as the disaster of Larry’s
religion in her prayers, but she did so without heat,
leaving the matter, without irreverence, to the common
sense of Larry’s Creator, who, she felt must
surely recognise the disadvantages of the position
as it stood.
“I cannot possibly interfere
with Larry’s religion,” pursued Miss Coppinger,
with a defiant eye on her cousin, “and as soon
as we are a little more settled down I shall ask the
priest to lunch. Farther than that I don’t
feel called upon to go.”
“Draw the line at dinner, eh?”
said Major Dick, with large and humorous tolerance:
“I know very little about the feller he’s
newly come to the parish he mayn’t
be a bad sort for all I know I’m
bound to say he’s got a black-muzzled look about
him, but we might go farther and fare worse.
I should certainly have him to lunch if I were you.
Have a good big joint of roast beef, and don’t
forget to give him his whack of whisky!”
“I never have whisky in the
house,” said Miss Coppinger repressively.
“Claret, I could give him ?”
Major Talbot-Lowry looked down at
his cousin with the condescending amusement that he
felt to be the meed of female godliness especially
when allied with temperance principles.
“Well, claret might do for once
in a way,” he conceded, shaking his long legs
to take the creases out of his trousers, “and
you mightn’t find Father Sweeny so anxious to
repeat the dose and that mightn’t
be any harm either! I daresay you wouldn’t
object to that, Frederica! Well, good-bye, ladies!
I’m going down to the kennels
Lady Isabel’s and Miss Coppinger’s
eyes followed him, as he swung, with that light halt
in his leisurely stride, down the long drawing-room,
trolling in the high baritone, that someone had pleased
him by likening to a cavalry trumpet,
“Oh, Father McCann was a beautiful
man,
But a bit of a rogue, a bit
of a rogue!
He was full six feet high, he’d
a cast in his eye,
And an illigant brogue, an
illigant brogue!”
In both his wife’s and his cousin’s
faces was the same look, the look that often comes
into women’s faces when, unperceived, they regard
the sovereign creature. Future generations may
not know that look, but in the faces of these women,
born in the earlier half of the nineteenth century,
there was something of awe, and of indulgence, of
apprehension, and of pity. Dick was so powerful,
so blundering, so childlike. Miss Frederica expressed
something of their common thought when she said:
“Dick seems to forget that he
is Larry’s guardian as well as I. Also that
Larry is a Roman Catholic, and it is not only useless
but dishonourable to ignore it!”
It has been said that Lady Isabel
had les qualities de ses défauts; in Miss Coppinger’s
case the words may be restored to their rightful sequence.
She had the inevitable défauts de ses qualités.
The sense of duty was as prominent a feature of her
soul as a hump on her long straight back would have
been, but toleration was inconspicuous. She ran
straight herself, and though she could forgive deviations
on the part of others, she could not forget them.
She was entirely and implacably Protestant, a typical
member of that Church that expects friendship from
its votaries, but leaves their course of action to
their own consciences. It was a very successful
example of the malign humour of Fate that Miss Coppinger’s
ward should belong to the other Church, that exacts
not only obedience, but passion, and it was a master-stroke
that Frederica’s sense of duty should compel
her to enforce her nephew to compliance with its demands.
“Dear Frederica, Dick will leave
all religious things to you, I know ”
warbled Lady Isabel, in her gentle, musical voice,
that suggested something between the tones of a wood
pigeon and an ocarina. “And they couldn’t
be in better hands!”
“But my dear Isabel, that is
precisely what I complain of! Dick’s solitary
suggestion has been that we should send Larry to Winchester,
which is perfectly impracticable! I entirely agree
with him, but, unfortunately, I know that it
is our duty to send him to one of those ”
Miss Coppinger hesitated, swallowed several adjectives,
and ended with Christian tameness “one
of those special schools for Roman Catholics.”
“Well, dear, I daresay it won’t
make very much difference,” consoled Lady Isabel.
“I have always heard that Monkshurst was a charming
school, and dear Larry will be so well off I
don’t suppose his religion will interfere in
any way. It seldom does, does it?”
“Not, I admit, unless he wanted
a job in this country!” began Miss Coppinger
grimly, and again remembered that intolerance was not
to be encouraged. “The end of it is that
I shall endeavour to do my duty which
is, apparently, to do everything that I most entirely
disapprove of and that on the day Larry
is twenty-one, I shall march out of Coppinger’s
Court, and dance a jig, and then he may have the Pope
to stay with him if he likes!”
While Miss Coppinger was thus belabouring
and releasing her conscience in the drawing-room,
quite another matter was engaging the attention of
her ward, and of his entertainers at the school-room
tea-table. This was no less a thing than the
dissolving of the existing Bands, and the formation
of a new society, to be known as “The Companions
of Finn.”
Larry Coppinger’s entrance,
literally at a bound, into the Talbot-Lowry family
group, had landed him, singularly enough, into the
heart of their affection and esteem. He was now
the originator of this revolutionary scheme, and having
in him that special magnetic force that confers leadership,
the scheme was being put through.
“The point is,” he said,
eagerly, “that when we are split up into two
bands, we can do nothing much, but the lot of us together
might might make quite a difference.”
“Difference to what?”
said Richard, ex-chief of the Elder Statesmen, unsympathetically.
Like his father before him, he disliked change.
“Well, hold on!” said
Larry, quickly, “wait just one minute, and I’ll
tell you. I got the notion out of a book I found
in the library. I don’t expect I’d
have thought of it myself ” Larry’s
transparent sky-blue eyes sought Richard’s appealingly.
“It’s it’s only poems,
you know, but it’s most frightfully interesting I
brought it with me
“Oh poems!”
said Richard, without enthusiasm. “Are they
long ones?”
“I don’t seem to care
so awfully much about poetry,” abetted Judith,
late Second-in-command.
John looked sapient, and said, neutrally,
that some poetry wasn’t bad.
The Twins, who were engaged in a silent
but bitter struggle for the corpse of a white rabbit,
recently born dead, made no comment. Only Christian,
her small hands clenched together into a brown knot,
her eyes fastened on Larry’s flushed face, murmured:
“Go on, Larry!”
Larry went on.
“It’s called the Spirit
of the Nation,” he said. “It’s
full of splendid stuff about Ireland, and the beastly
way England’s treated her. It sort of sort
of put the notion into my head that we might start
some sort of a Fenian band, and that some day we might well,”
he turned very red, and ended with a rush, “we
might be able to strike a blow for Ireland!”
“Moy oye!” said Richard,
intensifying his favourite invocation in his surprise,
“but what’s wrong with Ireland?”
The position wanted but the touch
of opposition. Larry rather well bet Richard
that there was plenty wrong with her! Penal laws!
Persecution! Saxon despots grinding their heels
into a down-trodden people! Revolution!
Liberation! Larry had a tongue that was hung loosely
in his head and was a quick servant to his brain.
“Of course I know we’re
rather young well, you’re nearly fourteen,
Richard, and I’m thirteen and three months, that’s
not so awfully young. Anyway, everything’s
got to have a beginning ” He glowed
upon his audience of six, his fair hair in a shock,
his eyes and his cheeks in a blaze, and one, at least,
of that audience caught fire.
The Revolutionary or Reformer, who
hesitates at becoming a bore, is unworthy of his high
office; and Larry, like most of his class, required
but little encouragement. He produced a large
book, old and shabby, the green and gold of its covers
stained and faded, but still of impressive aspect.
“There are heaps of them, and
they’re all jolly good. It’s rather
hard to choose ” began the Revolutionary
with a shade of nervousness. Then he again met
Christian’s eyes, shining and compelling, and
took heart from them.
“Well, there’s ‘Fontenoy,’
of course that’s a ripper Well, I
don’t know what you’ll all think,
but I think this is a jolly good one,”
he said with a renewal of defiance, and began to read,
at first hurriedly, but gathering confidence and excitement
as he went on:
“Did they dare, did they dare, to
slay Owen Roe O’Neill?
Yes, they slew with poison, him they feared
to meet with steel.
May God wither up their hearts! May
their blood cease to flow!
May they walk in living death, who poisoned
Owen Roe!
We thought you would not die we
were sure you would not go,
And leave us in our utmost need to Cromwells cruel blow
Sheep without a shepherd, when the snow shuts out the sky
Oh! Why did you leave us, Owen?
Why did you die?”
The Elder Statesmen listened in critical
silence, while Larry, not without stumbles, stormed
on through the eight verses of the poem. When
he had finished it, there was a pause. The audience
was impressed, even though they had no intention of
admitting the fact. Christian gave a tremendous
sigh. The contest for the defunct rabbit, that
had been arrested, broke out again, fiercely, but with
caution. Then Richard said, dubiously:
“Well, that’s all right,
Larry I meant it’s jolly sad, and
awfully good poetry, I’m sure but
how on earth are you going to work a show out of it?
I can’t see
“Unless,” interrupted
Judith, thoughtfully, “unless we sort of acted
it ?”
John, who loved “dressing up,”
woke to life; even Richard began to see daylight.
“That’s not a bad notion,
Judy!” he said briskly: “bags I Cromwell!
Larry, you can be Owen what’s-his-name.”
Larry came down like a shot bird from
the sphere of romance to which the poem had borne
him.
“I hadn’t thought of any
scheme,” he said, pulling himself together;
“I only wanted to give you a kind of notion of
the rotten way England’s always treated Ireland
“But let’s!” cried
Christian; “let’s act the whole book!”
Truisms are of their essence dull,
but they must sometimes be submitted to, and the truism
as to a book’s possible influence on the young
and impressionable cannot here be avoided. What
it is that decides if the book is to stamp itself
on the plastic mind, or if the mind is to assert itself
and stamp on the book, is a detail that admits less
easily of dogmatism. The Companionage of Finn
remained in being for but two periods of holiday.
Before the boys had returned to school, it had seen
its best days; the scheme for an armed invasion of
England had been abandoned, even the more matured project
of storming Dublin Castle was set aside; by the end
of the Christmas holidays it had been formally dissolved.
It is not easy to understand, it is
still harder to explain what it was in those fierce
denunciations and complaints, outcome of that time
of general revolt, the “Roaring Forties”
of the nineteenth century, that made them echo in
Larry’s heart, nor why the restless, passionate
spirit that inspired them should have remained with
him, a perturbing influence from which he never wholly
escaped. His young soul burned with hatred of
England, borrowed from the Bards of “The Nation”
Office; he lay awake at nights, stringing rhymes in
emulation of their shouts of fury, or picturing rebellions,
of which he was to be the leader and hero. Larry’s
enthusiasms were wont to devour not him only, but
also his friends. It is impossible to escape from
the conclusion that the career of the Companionage
of Finn was abbreviated by Larry’s determination
to recite to the Companions of the Order, in season
and out of season, the poems by which, during his
first Irish summer, he was possessed. There came
a time when he had, as he believed, put away childish
things, that, returning to these venerable trumpet-blasts,
he asked himself, in the arrogance of youth, how these
stale metaphors, these conventional phrases, these
decorations as meretricious as stage jewellry, and
metres that cantered along, as he told himself, like
solemn old circus-horses, could have had the power
to shake his voice and fill his eyes with tears, as
he spoke them to Christian, who had so soon become
his sole audience.
The strange thing was, as he acknowledged
to himself, that while he could mock at them as poetry,
he could not ignore their power. The intensity
of their hatred, and of their sincerity, made itself
felt, as the light of the sun will shine through the
crude commonness of a vulgar stained-glass window.