It is, or should be, superfluous to
say that Miss Frederica Coppinger viewed with disfavour,
that was the more poignant for its helplessness, Larry’s
adoption and assimilation by the Mangan family.
“Disastrous!” she said
in a tragic voice, to the Rector of Knockceoil parish.
“If he were a Protestant it wouldn’t matter
so much; but, as things are, for him to be
thrown among these second-rate, Nationalistic, Roman
Catholics !”
The intensity of Miss Coppinger’s
emotions silenced him. She had indeed beaten
her biggest drum, and she knew it.
The Rector, the Reverend Charles Fetherston,
nodded his head with solemnity, and made a conscientious
effort to remember what she was speaking of.
He was not much in the habit of attending to what was
said to him, finding his own thoughts more interesting
than those of his parishioners. The parishioners,
being aware of this peculiarity, put it down, very
naturally, to eccentricity for which he was rather
to be pitied than condemned, and his popularity was
in no way abated by it. Mr. Fetherston was unmarried,
in age about sixty; tall, stout, red-faced, of good
family, a noted woodcock shot and salmon fisher, a
carpenter, and an incessant pipe-smoker. These
being his leading gifts, it will probably, and with
accuracy, be surmised by persons conversant with the
Irish Church, that he was a survival of its earliest
days, when it was still an avocation suitable for gentlemen,
and one in which they could indulge without any taint
of professionalism being laid to their charge.
He was immensely respected and admired by the poor
people of the parish (none of whom were included in
his small and well-to-do congregation), the fact that
he was what is known as “old stock,” giving
him a prestige among the poorer Roman Catholics, that
they would have denied to St. Peter. He shared
with Major Talbot-Lowry the position of consultant
in feuds, and relieving officer in distress, and,
being rich, liberal, easily bored, and not particularly
sympathetic to affliction, he was accustomed to stanch
the flow of tears and talk alike, with a form of solace
that rarely failed to meet the case, and was always
acceptable. With Miss Coppinger, he felt, regretfully,
that five shillings could in no way be brought to
bear upon her problem, and with an effort he withdrew
his mind from a new hinge that he thought of fitting
to a garden-gate, and applied it to Larry.
“How old is the boy now?
Sixteen last October? He doesn’t look as
much you’ll see he’ll outgrow
all that nonsense of Nationalism! Send him to
Oxford as soon as you can. He’ll soon get
hold of some other tomfoolery there, and forget this.
Seven devils worse than the first, in fact!”
The Reverend Charles laughed, wheezily,
and began, automatically, to fill a pipe, an indication
of a change of mental outlook.
“Worse?” cried Miss Frederica,
ardently; “no indeed, Mr. Fetherston! Better!
Far better! Anything is preferable to this this
Second-rate Sedition!”
When Frederica perorated, and this
remark partook of the nature of peroration, it was
as though she took a header into deep water. By
the time she had again risen to the surface of her
emotions, the Reverend Charles Fetherston had returned
to the hinge of the garden-gate, and Miss Coppinger,
knowing her man, made no attempt to recall him.
She had a very special regard for her rector, of a
complex sort that is not quite easy to define.
There was veneration in it, the veneration that was
inculcated in her youth for the clergy; there was the
compassion that many capable and self-confident women
bestow upon any man to whom Providence has denied
a feminine protector; there was a regretful pity for
his shortcomings (but half-acknowledged,
even to herself) as a Minister of the Word,
counterbalanced by respect for his worldly wisdom;
above all, there was the deep, peculiar interest that
was excited in her by any clergyman, merely in virtue
of his office, a person whose trade it was to occupy
himself with the art and practice of religion, which
was a subject that had, quite apart from its spiritual
side, the same appeal for her that the art and practice
of the theatre has for many others. (It is hard to
imagine any simile that would have shocked Frederica
more than this; in all her years of strenuous, straightforward
life, she had never, as she would have said, set foot
in a theatre.)
Frederica had been born at Coppinger’s
Court, and she had passed her childhood there, but
her youth had been spent in Dublin, in the hot heart
of a parish devoted to good works, and to a pastor
whose power and authority was in no degree less absolute
than that of any of the “Romish priests”
whom he so heartily denounced. She was brought
up in that school of Irish Low Church Protestantism
that makes more severe demands upon submission and
credulity than any other, and yet more fiercely arraigns
other creeds on those special counts. It is quite
arguable that Irish people, like the Israelites who
so ardently desired a king, enjoy and thrive under
religious oppression, and it is beyond dispute that
among the oppressed, of both the rival creeds, are
saints whose saintliness has gained force from the
systems to which they have given their allegiance.
To Frederica the practice of her cult both inwardly
in her heart, and outwardly in the work of St. Matthew’s
Parish, was the mainspring of her existence. It
was also her pastime. She would analyse a sermon,
as Dick Lowry would discuss a run, and with the same
eager enjoyment. She assented with enthusiasm
to the Doctrine of Eternal Damnation, and a gentler-hearted
creature than she never lived. She would have
gone to the stake for the Verbal Inspiration of the
Bible; she was as convinced that the task of Creation
was completed in a week, as she was that she paid the
Coppinger’s Court workmen for six days’
work every Saturday evening. In short, the good
Frederica was a survival of an earlier and more earnest
period, and her religious beliefs were only comparable,
in their sincerity and simplicity, with those of the
Roman Catholic poor people, whose spiritual prospects
were to her no less black (theoretically) than were
hers to them.
Those who know Ireland will have no
difficulty in believing that Miss Coppinger had no
warmer sympathisers in her feelings concerning Larry
and the Mangan household than the Coppinger’s
Court retainers, despite the fact that none of them
were of her communion, nor did they share her political
views. And no less will those who know Ireland,
recognise that in the Irish countryside it is the extremes
that touch, and that there is a sympathy and understanding
between the uppermost and the lowest strata of Irish
social life, which is not extended, by either side,
to the intervening one. Thus, it was that Frederica
could, and did converse with her work-people and her
peasant neighbours, with a freedom and an implicit
confidence in their good breeding, that it is to be
feared she was incapable of extending to Larry’s
new acquaintances in Cluhir. Possibly the outdoor
life, and the mutual engrossment in outdoor affairs,
explain, in some degree, this sympathy, but at the
root of it is the certainty on both sides, that the
well-bred, even the chivalrous point of view, will
govern their intercourse.
It may seem somewhat excessive to
use the word chivalry in connection with Mrs. Twomey,
the Coppinger’s Court dairy-woman. Yet,
I dare to say that as great a soul filled the four
feet four inches that comprised her excessively plain
little person, as ever inspired warrior or fighting
queen in the brave days of old. Bred and born
under the Talbot-Lowrys, she had crossed the river
when she married one of the Coppinger’s Court
workmen, and for close on thirty-five years she had
milked the cows and ruled the dairy according to her
own methods, which were as rigorous as they were remarkable,
and altered not with modern enlightenment, or conformed
with hygienic laws. Her husband was a feeble
creature, whose sole claim to distinction was his
inability to speak English. At the time that “The
Family,” (which is, say, Frederica and Larry)
returned, he had become quite blind, and he passed
a cloistered existence in a dark corner of his little
cottage, sitting, with his hat always upon his head,
a being seemingly as withdrawn from the current of
life as one of the smoky brown and white china dogs
on the shelf above the wide hearth.
The legend ran that when he was young,
a marriage had been arranged for him. On the
appointed wedding-day he had gone to the chapel, the
priest was there, and the wedding-guests, but no bride
came. Michael Twomey therefore, after a fruitless
exercise of patience, left the chapel in deep wrath
and humiliation, and proceeded to walk home again.
On the road he was faced by a string of laughing girls,
and among them there was little Mary Driscoll.
Mary had then, no doubt, such grace as youth can give,
and that she had, at least, good teeth, was obvious
to the disgruntled Michael Twomey, as she was grinning
at him from ear to ear. Also, possibly, his sight
may not even then have been of the best. Be that
as it may, Michael caught at Mary’s arm.
“Come on to the chapel, Mary!”
he shouted at her, in the Irish that was a more common
speech in those days than it is now; “The priest
is there yet, and the money is in my pocket.
I’ll marry you!”
Michael had made a luckier hit than
he knew. Little Mary Driscoll recognised the
sporting quality of the suggestion, and being a girl
of spirit acceded to it.
Mary had been to America. She
was one of the many of her class who put forth fearlessly
for the United States, adventuring upon the unknown
without any of the qualms that would beset them were
the bourne London, or even one of the cities of their
native land. Wasn’t Mary’s mother’s
sisther’s daughter, and Maggie Brian from Tullagh,
and the dear knows how many more cousins and neighbours,
before her in it? Didn’t her brother that
was marrit in it, send her her ticket, and wasn’t
there good money to be airned in it?
These queries, that, as may be seen
by anyone with half an eye, answered themselves, having
been propounded by little Mary Driscoll, she, roaring
crying, and keened by all her relatives to the coach-door no
railway being within thirty miles of her home departed
to America, and was swallowed up by “Boyshton”
for the space of five years, during the passage of
which, since she could neither read nor write, no
communication passed between her and her parents, save
only the postal orders that, through an intermediary,
she unfailingly sent them. Then there was a month
that the postal order came not, and while the old
father and mother were wondering was Mary dead, or
what ailed her, Mary walked in, uglier than ever in
her Boyshton clothes, and it was gloriously realised
that not only was not Mary dead at all, but that she
had as much saved as would bury the old people, or
maybe marry herself.
Mary had not enjoyed America.
She wouldn’t get her health in it, she said.
("Ye wouldn’t see a fat face
or a red cheek on one o’ thim that comes back,”
assented Mary’s mother); and for as little as
she was, Mary continued, she’d rather bring
her bones home with herself to Cunnock-a-Ceoil. (A
cryptic phrase signifying that though she recognised,
humorously, her own unworthiness, she still attached
sufficient importance to her person to wish to bestow
it upon the place of her birth.) Not long after her
return and restoration to health, the episode of her
marriage had occurred, and she had settled down into
the soil of Ireland again, with, possibly, a slightly
increased freedom of manner, but, saving this, with
no more token on her of her dash into the new world,
than has the little fish that lies and pants on the
river bank for a moment, before the angler contemptuously
chucks him into the stream again.
Michael and Mary Twomey had been on
the staff of Coppinger’s Court for a full thirty
years when, in the fullness of time, Frederica returned
to her ancient home, bringing with her the young heir
to it, and all its accessory tenanted lands.
Not Green Dragon or The Norreys King-at-Arms, or any
other pontiff of pedigrees, could attach a higher
importance to gentle blood than did little elderly
Mary Twomey, elderly, but still as indomitably nimble
and resolute as when in Frederica’s childhood
she would catch the donkey for her, and run after
it, belabouring it in its rider’s interest, for
half an afternoon.
In spite of the fact that Miss Coppinger’s
youth had been spent, chiefly, in a town, the love
of the country, ingrained during her first years,
was merely dormant, and it revived with her return
to Coppinger’s Court. The garden, the farm,
the hens, the cattle, the dairy, were all interests
to which she returned with that renewal of early passion,
that has in it the fervour of youth as well as the
depth of maturity. She read agricultural papers
insatiably, and believed all that she read, accepting
the verbal inspiration of their advertisements with
the enthusiasm of her religious beliefs. She was
a doctrinaire farmer, and she applied to the garden,
the farm and the poultry-yard, the same zeal and intensity
that had made her in earlier days the backbone of
committees, and the leading exponent of the godly
activities of St. Matthew’s. She was regarded
by the heretofore rulers of these various provinces
with a mixture of respect, contempt, and apprehension.
She was an incalculable force, with a predisposition
towards novelty, and novelty, especially if founded
on theory, is abhorrent to such as old Johnny Galvin
the steward, or Peter Flood the gardener, or, stiffest
in her own conceit of all, Mrs. Twomey of the dairy.
“Master Larry’s coming
home from Cluhir tomorrow, Mary,” Miss Coppinger
announced, with satisfaction, to the peculiar confection
of grey hair and black chenille net that represented
the back of Mrs. Twomey’s head, her forehead
being pressed against the side of the cow that she
was milking.
“Thang-aade!” replied
Mrs. Twomey fervently, expressing in this concise
form her gratitude to her Creator for what she considered
to be Larry’s release from a very vile durance
“He’s long enough in it already!”
“The Doctor wouldn’t let
me move him any sooner,” replied Miss Coppinger,
apologetically.
“The divil doubt him, what a
fool he’d be!” said Mrs. Twomey with a
bitter laugh. “Aren’t they all sayin’
as sure as gun is iron it’s what he wants that
he’ll see his daughter in Coppinger’s Court
before he dies!”
“What nonsense!” said
Miss Coppinger, warmly; “I should like to know
who is saying it!”
Mrs. Twomey, milking ceaselessly,
slewed her head a little and looked at her employer
out of the corner of an eye as bright and as cunning
as a hen’s, and said: “As rich as
your Honour is, you couldn’t put a penny into
the mouth of every man that’s sayin’ it!”
“I’m surprised at you,
Mary,” said Frederica, indignantly, “You
ought to have more sense than to repeat such rubbish!”
To this reproach, Mrs. Twomey responded
with a long and jubilant crow of laughter.
“Yerra, gerr’l alive !”
she corrected herself quickly. “My lady
alive, I should say sure a little thing
like me’d tell lies as fast as a hen’d
pick peas!”
The modesty, as well as the accuracy,
of this statement silenced Miss Coppinger for a moment.
“Then you ought to be ashamed
of yourself!” she resumed with much severity.
“It is amazing to me how a decent, respectable
little woman like you can not only tell lies, but
boast of it!”
“Ah ha! I’m the same
owld three and fourpince, an’ will be till I
die!” triumphed Mrs. Twomey, with another screech
of laughter, removing her tiny person, her milk-pail,
and her stool from under the cow. “An’
I won’t be long dyin’!” another screech;
“an’ it won’t take many to carry
me to Cunnock-a-Ceoil Churchyard!”
A final and prolonged burst of mirth
succeeded this announcement, during which the unrepentant
Three and Fourpence swung the pail on to the hook
of the swinging-balance for weighing the milk that
was Miss Coppinger’s latest and most detested
innovation.
“Look at that now what she has
for you, Miss! Shixteen pints! An’
I’ll engage I’ll knock thirteen ounces
o’ butther out of it! That’s the
little bracket cow that yourself and Johnny Galvin
wanted to sell, an’ I withstood ye!”
This was of the nature, jointly, of
a counter-attack and of a truckle to the system of
milk-records, but Frederica heeded it not As a matter
of fact, she was still somewhat discomposed by the
insinuations that were more numerous than the pennies
she was believed to possess.
“I hope, Mary,” she said,
repressively, “that if you should hear any more
talk of that kind about Dr. Mangan, you will do your
best to contradict it. He has been extremely
kind to Master Larry, and it annoys me very much that
such things should be said.”
Mrs. Twomey’s supple mind was
swift to realise that a change of attitude was advisable.
“Why then, upon my truth and
body, I’d blame no one that wanted Master Larry!
That little fella is in tune with all the world!”
she declared; “but those people do be always
gibbing and gabbing! Give them a smell, and they’re
that suspeecious they’ll do the rest! Sure
I said to that owld man below, Mikey Twomey” thus
dispassionately was Mrs. Twomey wont to speak of her
husband “I says to him, that your
Honour was satisfied to leave Master Larry back in
Cluhir till he’d be well agin. They were
all sayin’ the child wouldn’t be said by
ye to come back! Didn’t I have to put the
heighth o’ the house o’ curses to it before
he’d believe me!”
“Intolerable nonsense!” said Frederica,
hotly.