In the years that followed, “Larry’s
cads” came to be, for the young Talbot-Lowrys,
a convenient designation for the friends into whose
bosom Providence had seen fit to fling their cousin.
But Larry never either approved or accepted it.
He was entirely pleased with his new friends, and
especially with that son of the house whose position
he had usurped, Mr. Bartholomew Mangan.
Barty was a lengthy, languid, gentle
youth, of nearly nineteen, darkly, pallidly handsome,
sweet natured, and slovenly, like his mother, and,
unlike her, poetical, idealistic, unpractical, shy,
and self-conscious. He was, at this period, working
in the office of one of the two solicitors, who, with
the aid of a branch of a bank, a Petty Sessions Court,
and the imposing, plate-glass bow-windows of Hallinan’s
hotel, enabled Cluhir to convince itself of its status
as a town. Further proof of the civic importance
of Cluhir was found in the existence of a debating
club of very advanced political views among its young
men, of which Barty Mangan was secretary. Its
membership, if small, was select, since its Republican
principles did not compel it to admit to its privileges
shop-assistants, or artisans, while they automatically
excluded members of the class that were usually referred
to in the club discussions as “Carrion Crows,”
or if the orator’s mood was mild, “the
garrison.” In Ireland the attitude of mind
that is termed, alternately, Disloyalty or Patriotism,
is largely a matter of class, and Barty Mangan’s
introduction of Master St. Lawrence Coppinger, as
an honorary member of the club, partook of the nature
of a shock to those of the faithful who were present
at his first appearance in the club room, a severely
plain apartment, that offered no impediment in the
matter of luxury to high thinking. But the faithful
of the “Sons of Emmet” Club had nothing
to fear from this half-fledged young Carrion Crow.
The English school to which Larry had been sent had
dulled the fire lit by the poems of The Spirit of the
Nation, but it had not extinguished it. It had
flickered for a time, during which Hunting had superseded
Patriotism, and Mr. Jorrocks had reigned alone; but
the oratory of the Sons of Emmet, to which Larry was
now privileged to listen, had had the effect of restoring
to life and vigour the long-neglected, half-forgotten
tenets of the Companionage of Finn. Larry’s
store of enthusiasm was quite equal to supplying motive
power for running two engines; hunting still held its
own, and after a club debate in which he had taken
an energetic part, even the most exclusive of the
Sons of Emmet admitted that Barty’s importation
was worthy of the privilege that had been extended
to him.
A spell of cold weather had compelled
a postponement of Larry’s return to his own
home. When snow and frost visit a country unused
to their attentions, they are treated with a respect
that they do not receive elsewhere. The Doctor’s
orders were strict, and Larry spent the last days
of his stay at N, The Mall, seated in semi-invalid
state by the dining-room fire, occupied, mainly, in
the consumption of literature provided by his new
friend, Mr. Barty Mangan, that consisted of poems,
books, and pamphlets of precisely that shade of politics
of which his family most thoroughly disapproved, and
absorbing what would be, in their opinion, the most
entirely poisonous points of view.
The Big Doctor, smoking a comfortable
evening pipe over the fire, would join in the discussions
between his son and his visitor, offering just as
much opposition to Larry’s revolutionary flights
as was stimulating, and flattering his sense of youth
and daring.
“We mustn’t send him back
to his auntie too much of a rebel altogether!”
The Doctor would say, grinning at the enthusiast with
his pipe wedged under a tooth; “isn’t
it good enough for you to be a poor decent old Nationalist
like myself? I’m sure there’s no one
would disapprove of me, is there, Annie?”
“Don’t be too sure of
that at all!” Mrs. Mangan would reply coquettishly,
trying to look as if she did not agree with him; “wait
till his auntie hears the notions Larry’s taking
up with, and she’ll think we’re all the
worst in the world! And the Major! The Major’ll
go cracked-mad!”
“It doesn’t matter where
he goes!” says Larry, defiantly, “I’ve
had these ‘notions,’ as you call them,
for ages and ages!”
“Ah, God help you, child!”
Mrs. Mangan would probably say, “keep quiet
now, till I get you a glass of hot milk!”
Politics did not form the only point
of contact that had been established between Larry
and the Mangan household. Since his promotion
to comparative convalescence, Tishy, daughter of the
house, had entered more actively into his scheme of
life, and the point of entrance was music. Some
divergence in view as to music is more easily condoned,
on both sides, than in the other realms of the spirit.
It matters not from how far countries the travellers
may come, or how widely sundered may be their ideals,
there are rest-houses at which they can draw rein
and find agreement. One of these, possibly the
greatest of them, is folk song. Ireland, whose
head is ever turned over her shoulder, looking to
the past, has, in her folk song, at least, reason
and justification for her preoccupation with what has
been in her music, rather than with what is, or is
to come. It is difficult to reconcile the eternal
beauty of traditional Irish melody with the lack of
musical interest and feeling that distinguishes the
mass of modern Irish life. But, here and there,
a string of the harp that has hung, mute, on Tara’s
walls for so many centuries, utters a sigh of sweet
sound, and at Number 6, The Mall, Cluhir, the soul
of music had still some power of inspiration.
This is, perhaps, a rather elaborate
method of intimating that Dr. Mangan played the violin,
moderately as to technique, but soundly as to intonation,
and that he and his family sang, as a quartet, not
only at charity concerts, but also for their own pleasure,
in their own home. Music, more than the other
arts, demands sympathy, and an audience. In Larry,
the Mangan Quartet recognised that both requirements
were supplied, together with a glorifying enthusiasm
of appreciation though this they scarcely
recognised that gilded for him their achievements,
as the firelight had edged the profile of Nurse Brennan
with pure gold. Larry, it has already been said,
had the artistic temperament; he had also a generous
heart, and he was of an age when appreciation is spontaneous,
and criticism is either unborn, or is only an echo
of some maturer mind. Therefore, as he lay on
the Mangan blue rep-covered drawing-room sofa, with
a satin cushion adorned with Tishy’s conception
of roses, in water-colour, under his head, while pretty
Nurse Brennan gently massaged his wrist, and the Mangan
Quartet warbled: “O, believe me if all those
endearing young charms,” or “When thro’
life unblest we rove,” Larry passed into ecstasy,
that, had he been one degree less of a schoolboy, might
have been exhaled in tears; even as the sun draws
water from the sea, in a mist of glory, and returns
it to the world again in rain.
Tishy was accompanist, and sang alto;
her mother, who knew nothing of notation, and sang
by ear, sang treble; Barty had a supple and pleasing
tenor, and the Doctor possessed a solemn bass, deep
and dark as a thundercloud, yet mellow as the hum
of a hive of honey-bees on a summer morning; a rare
voice and a beautiful one, that had its counterpart
in the contralto that already, at sixteen and a half,
had given Tishy power and distinction among her fellows.
At this time, Miss Letitia Mangan’s
views, and those of her parents, as to her future,
musical or otherwise, were entirely divergent.
Hers held as central figure a certain medical student,
with an incipient red moustache, and a command of
boxes of chocolate that was bewildering to those acquainted
with his income. Quite other were Dr. Mangan’s
intentions with regard to his daughter, but he was
satisfied to keep them out of sight; he was aware
that, in all solid buildings, the deeper and farther
out of sight the foundation, the more assured is the
result.
It is possible that the idea of a
farewell entertainment in Larry’s honour emanated
from the Big Doctor; if so, he had erased his tracks
very thoroughly, and it was regarded by Mrs. Mangan’s
intimates as a final brandishing of her trophy before
she was forced to relinquish it. Larry was indisputably
a trophy, and Heaven was considered to have exercised
a very undue discrimination in Mrs. Mangan’s
favour when it threw him into her house and her hands.
It was a very select party, only a score or so of
boys and girls, with the elders appertaining to them.
Nurse Brennan had departed, taking with her Larry’s
young affections, and a gift, costly and superfluous,
of a silver-mounted mirror, which was accompanied
by some chaste lines, expressive of Master Coppinger’s
desire to share its privileges, whose composition
had kept him happy throughout a long, wet afternoon.
The party, having opened with lemonade,
tea and innumerable cakes, moved on through “a
little music,” (contributed exclusively by the
Mangan Quartet) to games. Larry, afflicted by
the discovery that he had, during his illness, outgrown
his evening clothes, found himself fated to do conspicuous
things in the centre of a space, cleared as for a
prize-fight, in the Mangan drawing-room. Problems
in connection with a ship that came from China.
Exhausting efforts in guessing absurdities, that usually
necessitated withdrawal to the landing outside the
door with a giggling schoolgirl, and collaboration
with her in a code of complicated signals. And,
blackest feature of all, mistakes in any of these
arduous matters entailed “forfeits,” and
the process entitled “paying the forfeits,”
meant a concentration of attention upon a young gentleman,
conscious to agony of the fact that his trousers left
his ankle-bones unshielded from the public gaze.
It was sufficiently distressing to
lie at full length on the carpet, and declare oneself
to be the length of a looby, and the breadth of a
booby, but what was that as compared with sitting,
blindfolded, on a chair, and guessing, among many
kisses, which had been bestowed by “the girl
he loved best?” As if he loved any of them!
These pert and blowsy schoolgirls, with hideous voices,
and arrogant curls, or crimped lion-manes of aggressive
hair! He, with “his heart set all upon
a snowy coif!” (as he chose to wrest Mr. Yeats’
line to his own purposes).
It was singular in how many of these
exercises, of which the greater number included kissing,
he found himself involved with Tishy Mangan.
Tishy was in a bad temper. The red-headed medical
student had not been honoured with an invitation.
Dr. Mangan had struck his name from the list of guests
saying that they had enough without him, and Tishy
knew her father too well to protest. Dr. Mangan
was in the habit of saying that he always left all
household affairs “in the hands of the ladies.”
He did not add, as he might have done, that these hands
lay within his, and that their owners had long since
realised that it was advisable to respond to any indication
of pressure. His daughter, however, while she
submitted to the inevitable, saw no reason why she
should deny herself the solace of sulking, nor of avenging
herself of his tyranny on “his fine pet,”
as she, in high indignation, described Larry to herself.
Master Coppinger might be a man of property and the
owner of Coppinger’s Court, yes, or Dublin Castle,
for all she cared! Pappy might say what he liked,
but she wouldn’t be bothered with a boy
like that! And there was Ned Cloherty (this
was the medical student) that she had as
good as asked to come and what could she
say to him now, she wondered? So Tishy sulked,
and resented the Hidden Hand, that so inevitably linked
her with the owner of Coppinger’s Court, as
much as did that man of property himself.
The evening wore on; with romping,
with screaming, with enormous consumption of various
foods, and with an ever-heightening temperature, that
was specially noticeable among those seniors who had
not disdained the brew of punch that had coincided
with the announcement of midnight, made, with maddening
deliberation, by Mrs. Mangan’s cuckoo-clock.
The usual delirium of cracker-head-dresses had befallen
the company. Larry, decorated with a dunce’s
cap, placed upon his yellow head by a jovial matron,
found himself fated, by a final effort of penalising
fancy on the part of another matron, to select “a
young lady,” to conduct her to the topmost step
of the staircase, and there, on his knees, to kiss
either her shoe-buckle or her lips; “whichever
he likes best!” decreed the matron, archly.
It is strange how the reserves and
réticences of childhood, the things that offend,
the things that bring agony, are forgotten by so many
of those who have left childhood behind. In extenuation
of this lively and kindly lady, it may be said that
the manners and customs of her early youth were not
those to which Larry was habituated. Yet, one
might have thought that a glance at Larry’s face
would have sufficed to induce Rhadamanthus himself
to remit the penalty. Not so Mrs. Whelply, the
arbitrator.
“Oh, look at the pout on him!
What a naughty boy! If you don’t take care,
I’ll put a worse task on you!”
Larry, oblivious of the dunce’s
cap, feeling himself in the grip of a social machine
that was too strong for him, looked round upon the
company. Hot, pink faces, shining eyes and teeth,
Moenad hair, on all sides. Then he caught sight
of Tishy’s eyes, scornful and amused, regarding
him as he stood irresolute, and his spirit responded
to the spur of contempt. He crossed the open
space of floor to where she was seated on the blue
rep sofa, took off the dunce’s cap with a flourish,
and, with a low bow, offered her his arm.
A chorus of approval, weighted by
the Big Doctor’s big laugh, greeted the action.
Tishy, cornered, accepted the arm, the door was swung
open for them, and ostentatiously slammed behind them.
Larry, silent, and very angry, mounted
the stairs quickly, and Tishy perforce, her hand gripped
by his elbow, followed him. At the highest step
but one, Larry stood aside, and Tishy ascended, and
turning, faced him from the top. They looked
at each other for a moment in silence. Both were
furiously angry, resenting the compulsion that had
forced them into an absurd position.
Then Tishy said insolently: “Well!
Which will you have? My shoe-buckle or my lips?
Take your choice!”
She poked her foot out over the edge
of the step confidently.
A spark shot from Larry’s angry
heart to his blue eyes. He looked up at Tishy,
and something suddenly masterful awoke in him.
Confound her! He wouldn’t have her laughing
at him!
“I’ll have your lips,
please!” he said, mounting to the step beside
her.
With schoolboy roughness he flung
his arm round her shoulders. She was a little
taller than he, but she did not withdraw herself; she
was curiously aware that her point of view was changing.
She looked for an instant in his eyes, and then she
laid her lips on his.
Larry found, with surprise, that they
returned the pressure of his own as he kissed her.
The spark that had been in his eyes seemed to have
flown to his lips, and met another spark in hers.
There was a moment of silence.
Larry found himself a little out of breath, and somehow
bewildered. There was more in it than he thought.
He didn’t quite know what to do next.
“Thank you very much,”
he said, stiffly, and offered his arm.
In silence they walked down the stairs
again. The piano had begun, and “Sir Roger
de Coverley” was being thundered forth.
At the door they met the Doctor. Larry released
Tishy’s arm.
“If you don’t mind,”
he said to the Doctor, “I think I’ll go
up to bed. I’m tired.”
After he had got to his room he shook
himself, much as a dog renews its vitality by shaking
its ears. Then he poured some water into the
basin and washed his hot face, scrubbing his lips with
the sponge.
Yet, to his infinite annoyance, he
seemed still to feel the pressure of Tishy’s
warm mouth on his.