The origin of the Coppinger’s
Court picnic was complicated and has remained obscure.
Whether its author had been Mrs. Mangan, or her friend,
Mrs. Whelply, or young Mr. Coppinger himself, was uncertain,
but the fact remained that a picnic, with indirect
reference to the blossoming of the bluebells (i.e.,
the wild hyacinths) was decided upon, and that Larry,
in the course of the visit that he never failed to
pay to the Mangan household, had placed the demesne
of Coppinger’s Court at the disposal of the
ladies of Cluhir, as a scene for the entertainment.
Larry’s fidelity to the Mangans
was a matter that was undoubtedly something of a trial
to his Aunt Freddy. She was too inflexibly conscientious
to attempt to deny, even to Lady Isabel, still less
to herself, that such fidelity was creditable, but
she felt justified in considering it superfluous;
when, as now, it took the form of inviting a party
of unknown size, under the patronage of Mrs. Mangan,
to accept the Ownashee as its washpot, and (as it
were) to cast forth its shoe over Coppinger’s
Court, Aunt Freddy may be forgiven the manoeuvre that
arranged a séance with her Dublin dentist for
the date decided upon for the picnic, and may be felt
to deserve the sympathy of those who can appreciate
the inwardness of her position. And this last,
improbable though it may seem to some people, was made
immensely more difficult by the simple and irrelevant
fact that she, on Sundays, betook herself to the Knock
Ceoil Protestant church, while Larry went to the white
chapel on the hill. It was to the grey, stone
Protestant church that Larry’s forbears had
gone for one hundred and fifty years or more, even
since the then reigning Coppinger had fallen in love
with an English heiress, and, agreeing with Henri Quatre,
that Paris was well worth a Mass, had ’verted
to marry her. Never in living memory had the
congregations that filled full the white chapel on
the hill, included in their dutiful ranks any being
of higher degree than might have been found in those
other congregations, that, some nineteen hundred years
earlier, were gathered in the hills of Galilee; those
humble crowds who came to hear Christ preach, of whom
it was said that they were of the common people, and
that they heard Him gladly. Miss Frederica was
as good a Christian in some ways probably
a better one as might have been found in
the white chapel, but it was impossible for her not
to feel, what was, indeed, felt, with a singular mixture
of satisfaction and disapproval, by the majority of
the white chapel’s congregation, that Larry’s
parents had, socially, been ill-advised when they
“made a Roman of him.” In the creed
of Mary Twomey, and her fellows, it was only in conformity
with natural law in the spiritual world that ginthry
should go to church, and the like of herself to chapel.
She, no more than Frederica, could subdue the feeling
of incongruity imparted by the fact of Master Larry
and herself worshipping together; it was as though,
if she had run into the kitchen to get a sup of hot
water, or the wetting of her mouth o’ tay, she
had found him sitting among the maids in the servants’
hall. Mary Twomey, and her fellows, would have
indignantly repudiated the idea of taking service
with one of their own church. “No!
Thank God! I never sank to that!” Mary
had once said, when such had been imputed to her.
There was no question of religion in it. Merely
of fitness. So inveterate in the older Ireland
is, or was, what Christian might have considered to
be the outcome of The Spirit of the Nation, but that,
in this special connection, may with, perhaps, greater
accuracy, be ascribed to the aristocratic instinct.
Something like a sheet of thin ice
had come into existence between Larry’s life
and that of his aunt. It had come gradually, almost
imperceptibly. There had been a time, after his
First Communion, when Larry had confided in Frederica.
He had even told her of the anxieties he had felt
before his first Confession, and of how difficult he
had found it to decide upon the sins that he could,
without arrogance lay to his own charge. He told
her that he had invented several crimes, in order
to dignify the occasion. Frederica wondered secretly
how that charming Jesuit Father, to whom, at Monkshurst,
she had been introduced as her nephew’s spiritual
director, had dealt with the sinner; but this, Larry
had not divulged. There were, from that time
forward, an increasing number of things that Larry
did not divulge to his Aunt Freddy, and the sheet
of ice slowly became thicker. It was “the
religious aspect of the case,” as Miss Coppinger
complained to Mr. Fetherston, that made it so impossible
for her to speak her mind to Larry about the Mangans.
“Do you remember you advised
us to send him to Oxford?” she reproached him.
“I’m afraid it has only had the effect
of making him take his religion more seriously for
which, I suppose, one ought to be thankful
“And why not?” the Reverend
Charles had replied. “They say all roads
lead to Rome, so no doubt the converse holds good,
and out of Rome some road must lead to Heaven!”
The Reverend Charles was pleased with
his aphorism, but Frederica could not enjoy it.
Not even Mr. Fetherston could console her on this
matter.
“His very niceness and simplicity
make him a prey for undesirables,” she mourned,
“and he has that peculiar gift of making every
one fond of him. I suppose it is his looks
“Then you cannot blame the undesirables,”
her rector responded.
Larry’s looks had, certainly,
a spell that was something in excess of what may be
called their “face-value.” Though
legal manhood was so soon to be his status, he had
still some of the radiance of childhood about him.
His hair was of the same pure and infantine gold that
it had been when he charged down on the Eldest Statesman
on the stepping-stones of the Ownashee; his blue eyes
had lost none of their candour; the touch of gilding
on his upper lip was effective only at short range,
but, when taken in connection with a very white and
even set of teeth, and a beaming and ever-ready smile,
it carried considerable weight. His fair skin
had not yet taken on its summer scorch of carmine,
and its soft and babyish pinkness softened the salience
of his short nose, and induced the critic to condone
the want of decision in his chin.
“Not a handsome boy,
exactly,” people said, “but,” and
here people would smile relentingly, “if he
had been a girl, one would certainly quite
have said ’pretty’ so attractive-looking,
and so so clean!” which might seem
to be the condemnation of faint praise, but was, in
reality, merely the tribute that Larry’s new-minted
goldenness of aspect startled from the beholder.
He was no more than five foot nine
in height, which was a trial that at times he felt
deeply, but there are practical advantages for a young
man who rides, in being able to do so at something
considerably under eleven stone. At boxing, rowing,
and games, what he lost in weight and reach, he made
up for in speed and elasticity and endurance.
Finally, it may be said that his figure had the gift
of making old clothes like new, and new clothes look
unaggressive, and when to these attributes is added
a faculty for wearing hunting kit with accuracy and
finish, it will be understood that Larry had early
achieved standing in his college.
The Cluhir picnic, that had so justifiably
perturbed Miss Frederica, debouched, like a mighty
river, from its wagonettes and outside cars, upon
the lawns of Coppinger’s Court, at about four
of the clock, of a beautiful, balmy May afternoon,
and to Larry fell the task of deciding upon its course
of procedure. Clad in very white flannels and
a prismatic blazer, and looking, as his most tepid
supporter would have to allow, a picture of cleanliness,
he advanced upon Mrs. Mangan’s wagonette, and
proffered an arm, fortunately of steel, to facilitate
her descent. The five years that had elapsed since
Larry was her guest, had effected less change in her
than in him. Save that the bisonian fringe now
held a grey hair or two in its dark depths, and the
curves, that had suggested a Chesterfield sofa to her
young friend, were now something more opulent than
they had been, Mrs. Mangan’s progress along
the corridor of eternity had made no perceptible mark
on her. Still, in assisting her descent from a
high wagonette, an arm of steel was not out of place.
Larry was at the age that, believing
itself critical to the point of extinction of the
rejected, yet accepts with enthusiasm any female creature
that can wear a smart hat with assurance, and wag a
flattering tongue with address. The Cluhir ladies
were proficient in these arts. Mr. Coppinger
was congratulated on his weather; arranged by his
skill, poured forth of his benevolence! On his
demesne, so green with young leaves, so gay with spring
flowers! Kind Mr. Coppinger to have created them
in such profusion! And what warmth was there
in the Coppinger’s Court sun! The second
rate luminary dedicated to Cluhir was no more than
a candle to it! Mr. Coppinger’s Ant was
enquired for (this, it should, perhaps, be explained,
referred to Frederica, and had no entomological application)
suitable regrets at her absence from home were expressed,
with a delicate implication that with such a host,
and in such weather, the loss was the Ant’s,
and was practically negligible, so far as the ladies
of Cluhir were concerned. And who were these,
coming up the path from Mr. Coppinger’s lovely
river? Ah, yes, the youngest Miss Talbot-Lowry,
of course, and which brother was it? Oh, the
youngest one? Mrs. Cassidy had thought the youngest
of Lady Isabel’s family was a twins or
were a twins? Which ought she to say?
“Well, this is half of it, anyhow!”
says young Mr. Coppinger, facetiously, with which
Mrs. Cassidy, like the Miss Flamboroughs, thought
she would have died with laughing.
With the arrival of the youngest Miss
Talbot-Lowry, and half the twins, a slight change
fell upon Mr. Coppinger’s voluble guests.
A stiffening faint, almost imperceptible, yet electric,
enforced the circle round Larry. Even Mrs. Whelply’s
confluent simper, that suggested an incessant dripping
from the tap of loving kindness, failed a little.
A young Mr. Coppinger was a simple affair, but a Miss
Talbot-Lowry, however young, might want watching.
The youngest Miss Talbot-Lowry was,
happily for herself, quite unaware of the estimation
in which she was held. She had, like Larry, that
quality of selflessness that is so rare and so infinitely
engaging; what was she (she would have thought) that
respect should be paid to her? It was a tenet
of her eccentric creed that age was not only honourable
but was also pathetic, so, when the picnic at large
had begun its leisurely advance through the woods
to the promised land, Christian selected the oldest
and least promising of the Cluhir matrons for her
special attention, and made herself so agreeable to
her, that Barty Mangan, “mooching” (as
his mother afterwards reproached him) solitary, in
the rear of the procession, found himself in the remarkable
position of wishing that he were his own great-aunt,
Mrs. Cantwell.
Barty Mangan’s opportunities
for meeting Christian had been but few, but they had
sufficed to light a fatal star in his sky, and to induce
in him, when, as now, he found himself in her vicinity,
an attitude towards the rest of the world that justified
his mother’s employment of the verb to “mooch”
(a word that may be taken as implying a moody and
furtive aloofness).
There was, Mrs. Mangan was pleased
to observe, no mooching about her daughter. On
the launching of the picnic, Tishy had immediately
assumed the lead, with an aplomb and assurance
justified by her family’s special intimacy with
young Mr. Coppinger, and all who knew Tishy, knew
also that she meant to keep it. Dr. Mangan had
not over-stated the case when, three years earlier,
he had said to himself that she was a right-down handsome
girl. Now, at twenty-one and a half, his paternal
pride was well justified. Like him, she was tall
and strongly built, tall, that is to say, for a class
that rarely excels in height, and Tishy’s five
and a half feet enabled her to look down on most of
her friends. Her broad, dark eyebrows grew straight
and low over brilliant grey eyes, and were nearly reached
by thick upward curled black eyelashes. If her
mouth was large, it was well-shaped, and if her nose
did not possess the classic severity of her brother’s,
its challenging tilt was not unattractive. To
these charms must be added shining masses of dark
hair, and a complexion of so vivid a tone, that it
seemed sometimes as though a fog of carmine coloured
the very atmosphere about her glowing face. She
radiated vitality, the richness and abundance of high
summer; she suggested a darkly gorgeous peacock-butterfly,
and in the delicate radiance of the spring woods,
she seemed out of key with their slender elegance of
leaf and spray the soft reticence of their faint greens
and greys.
It is indeed hardly fair to expect
of Tishy Mangan that she should be worthy of such
a setting as southern Irish woods can offer in the
month of May. It is the month of the Mother of
God, and in the fair demesne of Coppinger’s
Court, Heaven had truly visited the earth, and was
chiefly and specially manifest in the Wood of the Ownashee.
The trees stood with their feet bathed in the changeful,
passionate blue of the wild hyacinths, a blue that
lay sometimes in deep pools, sometimes in thin drifts,
like the azure of far skies; the pale ferns rose in
it, “like sweet thoughts in a dream”; the
grey stems of the beeches were chequered with the
sunlight that their thin branches and little leaves
tried in vain to baffle and keep at bay. From
the unseen river came varying voices; sometimes a
soft chuckle that had the laughing heart of the spring
in it, sometimes a rich and rushing harmony, that
told of distant heights and the wind on the hills.
There was a blackbird who was whistling over and over
again the opening bar of the theme of a presto, that,
only last week, Larry had heard, whipped out with
frolic glee by the violins of a London orchestra.
He wondered if, with such themes, it is the blackbirds
who inspire the musicians, or if both have access
to the same secret well of music, in which each can
dip his little bucket, and bring listeners in the outer
world a taste of the living water of melody. But
since (in spite of the Artistic Temperament) he was
a normal boy, what he said was:
“Stunning! Isn’t
it!” while he stood still, waiting, for the hidden
artist to favour them with another flourish of that
gay string of jewels. “He’s ‘recapturing’
it all right, eh?”
The much-quoted quotation passed by
Tishy as the idle wind. Even had she recognised
the allusion, she would have considered the professional
raptures of a blackbird a rather dull subject of conversation.
The gallants of Cluhir did not deal in such matters
in tete a tete with her, and she thought, as
she had thought at the children’s party, long
ago, that Larry, if not quite a bore, might, in spite
of Coppinger’s Court, rather easily become one.
“Oh, he’s stunning enough!”
she replied, with her full-throated, contralto laugh;
“It must be his first cousin we have in the garden
behind Number Six! Dad says he doesn’t know,
does him or me sing the loudest!”
By Jove! She sings! thought Larry
(as he was meant to think). Of course! What
a fool he was to have forgotten it! And as, at
this period of his career, of the three arts, who
were always riding a pace in his soul, Music, Painting,
and Literature, Music happened to be the leading horse,
Larry looked upon Tishy with eyes in which a new ardour
had awakened, and proceeded with his accustomed speed
to mature the details of the concert upon which he
had, during the last sixty seconds, enthusiastically
decided.
Old Mrs. Cantwell, although unpromising
of aspect, was by no means as deplorable, socially,
as Christian had assumed her to be. The fact
that she was the untrammelled owner of a soundly-invested
fifteen thousand pounds, that she was the aunt whom
Dr. Mangan delighted to honour, combined with the
allied fact that she had paid for the hiring of the
picnic-bearing wagonette, gave her an importance that
could be undervalued only by one as ignorant of the
greater concerns of life as was Christian. Mrs.
Cantwell accepted the companionship of the youngest
Miss Talbot-Lowry as no more than her due, and the
thought that compassion had prompted its bestowal,
was very far from her mind. None the less, the
Noah’s Ark principles that governed implicitly,
if not ostensibly Cluhir entertainments of this nature,
were firmly embedded in her being, and she was entirely
aware of the furtive presence of Barty, at the rear
of the procession of which she and Christian formed
the last couple.
“Now, my dear,” she observed,
while she and Christian paced side by side, along
the river path, “you shouldn’t be wasting
time on an old woman like me! When I was young,
we’d have called this a Two and Two party, and
I promise you that the likes o’ you and me wouldn’t
have been reckoned a proper couple at all! Not
when I was a girl!”
“I should have said that
you and I were irreproachably proper, Mrs. Cantwell,”
responded Christian, gaily; “it isn’t very
kind of you to say that we aren’t behaving as
we should!” She laughed into Mrs. Cantwell’s
old face, and she, being quite unused to girls who
took the trouble to flirt with her, began to think
that Frankie Mangan (thus she designated her nephew,
the doctor) was right when he said that the youngest
of the Talbot-Lowrys was the best of the bunch.
“Ho! Ho! Ho!”
she said, with a laugh like the whinny of an old horse;
“it’s a long time since I kicked my heels
over anything higher than a hearth-rug! But I
can tell you, my dear, I was a good warrant for a
play-boy when I was your age! There wasn’t
a young girl, no, nor a young man either, that I couldn’t
dance down if I gave my mind to it!”
Christian’s response was satisfactory,
and Mrs. Cantwell, moved to give a sample of her bygone
prowess, executed a hippopotamus-like hop and shuffle
among the rustling, orange beech leaves of last year.
“Polkas and Mazoorkas!”
she exclaimed. “Them was all the go in my
time! Come on here, Barty, ye omadhaun! I
believe I could dance you off those long legs of yours
this minute, if I was to give me mind to it!”
Barty, thus adjured by his great-aunt,
drew near. Mrs. Cantwell was not a person to
be lightly disobeyed, but his dark eyes were full of
apprehension. What might Aunt Bessie not say!
She was incalculable, terrible.
There are old people who appear to
find an indemnity for their lost youth in permitting
to themselves, in dealing with later generations,
a scarifying freedom of humour in connection with subjects
which once they held sacred (for there are few souls
that have not at some time enshrined a tender emotion).
Barty had suffered before now from
Aunt Bessy, and he thought that if she made of him
an offence to Miss Talbot-Lowry, he would straightway
rush into the river and drown himself. Aunt Bessy,
however, potentially Rabelaisian though she might
be, was perfectly aware of the fact that there is
a time to speak and a time to keep silence.
“See here, Barty,” she
said, “let you go on now, and tell your mother
not to be waiting tea for me. I’ll take
me own time. Tell her never fear I’ll turn
up, only I like to go me own pace!” She turned
to Christian. “Go on you too, my dear;
I’m well enough pleased with me own company,
and I hate to be delaying you. I’ll sit
down for a while and admire the scenery.”
Thus did Aunt Bessy, as she complacently
told herself, watch over the interests of her great-nephew,
and though her method was crude, it indisputably achieved
its object.
Christian and Barty Mangan walked
on in silence that was made companionable by the gurgling
whisper of the river behind its screen of hazels and
alders; a whisper broken now and again by the tittering
laugh of the flying water over a shallow place, like
someone with a good story that he cannot quite venture
to tell out loud.
Barty was saying to himself, distractedly:
“What’ll I say to her? What’ll
I talk to her about?” with each repetition winding
himself, like a cocoon, deeper in webs of shyness.
Christian’s social perceptions
were hypersensitive, and the cris de coeur
of her suffering companion were only too audible to
her spiritual ear. At eighteen, the quality of
mercy has seldom developed; the young demand mercy,
they expect to receive, not to bestow it; but in this
girl was something that made her different from her
fellows. It was as though a soul more tempered,
more instructed, more subtle and refined, had been
given to her, than is vouchsafed to the majority of
the poor creatures who are sent into this difficult
world with an equipment that rarely meets its demands.
This is a long-winded way of saying
that Christian realised that she had to restore confidence
in Larry’s young friend, and that she proceeded
forthwith to do so. She would have laughed at
the thought that anyone could be afraid of her, but
she felt instinctively that a soothing monologue,
a sort of cradle-song, was what the occasion demanded;
so she began to speak of the bluebells, the woods,
the weather, saying with a sort of languid simplicity,
the things that the moment suggested; “babbling,”
as she subsequently assured Judith, “of green
fields,” until she had so lulled and bored him,
that in self-defence he produced an observation.
“D’you read, Miss Christian?”
said Barty, bringing forth his mouse with an abrupt
and mountainous effort.
Christian repressed the reply that
she had possessed the accomplishment for some years,
and asked for further information.
“Poetry,” said Barty,
largely; “it’s it’s the
only reading I care for. I thought you might
like it ” he added, hurriedly, and
was again wrapped in the cocoon.
“Oh, I do, very much,”
said Christian, trying hard not to quench the smoking
flax; “I’ve learnt quantities by heart,
and Larry is always lending me new books of poetry.
He says that you and he discuss it together.”
“I never knew one like him!”
said Barty, with sudden energy. “There’s
no subject at all that he’s not interested in!”
In the heat of his enthusiasm for Larry, the cocoon
wrappings were temporarily shrivelled. He turned
his dark short-sighted eyes on Christian, and took
up his parable with excitement.
“Did he tell you he’s
learning Irish? I’ll engage it’ll
be no trouble to him!”
“He’s always getting hold
of new ideas,” said Christian; “I wish
I could learn Irish.”
“There’s a branch of the
Gaelic League in Cluhir,” said Barty, eagerly.
“There are a lot learning Irish. I suppose
you wouldn’t be disposed to become a member,
Miss Christian?” He gazed at her imploringly.
“I don’t know if I should
be allowed,” said Christian, hesitatingly.
“You see I’ve only just come home.
I’ve been at school in Paris for the last two
years
A memory of a ferocious denunciation
of the Gaelic League by her father came to her; she
wondered what Barty would do if she offered him one
of the profane imitations of the Major that had earned
for her the laurels of the schoolroom.
“Oh, I’m quite sure I
mightn’t become a Gaelic Leaguer!” she
repeated, beginning to laugh, while samples of her
father’s rhetoric welled up in her mind.
Barty thought he had never seen anything
so enchanting as her face, as she looked at him, laughing,
with wavering lights, filtered through young beech
leaves, in her eyes. He felt a delirious desire
to show her that he was not a tongue-tied fool; that
he also, like Larry, was a man of ideas.
“I wish to God!” he said,
with the disordered violence of a shy man, “that
there was anny league or society in Ireland that would
override class prejudice, and oblitherate religious
bigotry!”
He had snatched a paragraph from his
last address to the Gaelic Leaguers of Cluhir, and
with it was betrayed into the pronunciation that mastered
him in moments of excitement.
Christian said to herself that she
thanked heaven Judith wasn’t there to make her
laugh.
“I don’t think
I’m a religious bigot,” she said, with
a faint tremor in her voice, “but one never
knows!” Her head was bent down, the brim of
her large hat hid her face.
Barty was stricken. What devil
had possessed him? She was hurt! She was
a Protestant, and in his cursed folly he had made her
think he was reproaching her for Bigotry. Good
God! What could he do?
Two emotions, hung, as it were, on
hair-triggers, held the stage. In Christian,
the fiend of laughter held sway, in poor Barty, the
angel of tears. It was perhaps well for them
both that their next step in advance took them round
a bend in the path, and brought them face to face
with the picnic.