Young Mr. Coppinger had been well
inspired in his selection of a site for the entertainment.
The trees along the river’s bank had ceased for
a space, leaving a level ring of grass, whereon certain
limestone boulders had scattered themselves, with
the deliberate intention, as it would seem, of providing
seats for picnickers. Across that fairy circle
of greenness a small vassal-stream bore its tribute
waters to the Ownashee, with as much dignity as it
had been able to assume in the forty level yards that
lay between its suzerain and the steep glen down which
it had flung itself. Not only had young Mr. Coppinger
been so gracious as to provide this setting for the
revel, but he was even now sacrificing a spotless
pair of white flannel trousers to the needs of the
company, and had concentrated on the cajolery of the
fire, which, obedient to the etiquette that rules
picnic fires, refused to consume any fuel less stimulating
than matches. Other of the young gentlemen of
the party, including the half-twin, Mr. George Talbot-Lowry
(now a sub-lieut. R.N.) were detailed to gather
sticks, a duty that was so arranged as to involve,
with each load of firewood, the jumping of the vassal-stream,
and thus gave opportunity for a display akin to that
of the jungle-cocks, who, naturalists inform us, leap
emulatively before their ladies. Prominent among
these was that youth who, as a medical student, had
inspired Miss Mangan in flapperhood, with an admiration
for his gifts, intellectual and physical, that was
only equalled by his own appreciation of these advantages.
His opinion remained unchanged, but he was beginning
to fear that Tishy’s taste was deteriorating.
None sprang more lightly across that little stream,
or commented more humorously on men and things, than
Captain Edward Cloherty, R.A.M.C.; yet Miss Mangan,
to whom these exercises were dedicated, remained oblivious
of them and aloof, apparently wholly absorbed by Martha-like
attentions with regard to the public welfare, and
particularly those connected with the fire. It
was not for nothing that Tishy had had to rise early
on many a winter morning to see that her father should
go forth to his work suitably warmed and fed.
Now, with scathing criticisms of the methods of Mr.
Coppinger, she swept him from his position as stoker,
and, as by magic, or so it seemed to him, the sticks
blazed, the kettle began to sing. Miss Mangan’s
skill was not limited to the prosaic lighting of material
fires only. With the two most distinguished young
men of the party at her feet, she rose to the height
of all her various powers. The fire roared and
crackled, the kettle bubbled, and Tishy’s grey
and gleaming glances through the smoke were like a
succession of boxes of matches, cast upon the responsive
fires of Larry’s and Georgy’s holiday hearts.
The young May moon has often been
a factor in affairs of the heart whose importance
cannot be ignored. It is true that on this especial
afternoon the mischief might seem to have been begun
before she could, strictly, have been held responsible;
none the less her madness must have been in the air,
otherwise it is difficult to account for the joint
and simultaneous overthrow of two young gentlemen of
taste and quality, by Miss Tishy Mangan.
Georgy, aged but 19, just home from
far and forlorn seas, with, as the poet says, a heart
for any fate, might have been excused for swallowing
any good provided for him by the gods, whole, and without
criticism, but for Mr. St. Lawrence Coppinger, lately
come of age, a man of taste, endowed with special
finesse of feeling, it might have been expected
that a highly-coloured peacock butterfly would have
had but scant appeal. In fact, one is driven back
upon the young May Moon as the sole plausible explanation
of the fact that, on that afternoon of bewitchment,
Tishy Mangan went to Larry’s head.
These temporary aberrations are afflictions
for which the most refined young men must occasionally
be prepared, and Larry’s overthrow was not without
justification. Quite apart from her looks and
anyone would have been forced to admit that they were
undeniable there was her voice, the true
contralto timbre, thick and mellow, dark and
sweet, like heather honey, he thought, while he and
Georgy sprawled on the grass at her feet (and she
had good feet) making very indifferent jokes, in that
exaggerated travesty of an Irish brogue which is often
all that an English school will leave with Irish boys,
and vicing with each other in the folly proper to
such an occasion.
“I don’t see your shoe-buckles!”
Larry said, looking from her feet to her lips, with
a meaning and impudent lift of his blue eyes.
“Have you given up wearing them?”
Tishy’s colour deepened; she
remembered instantly what she was meant to remember.
“You’re regretting the
choice you made, are you?” she said, with a
toss of her head. “Never fear! The
buckles will be there when they’re wanted!”
“Don’t trouble about them!”
says Larry, tremendously pleased with his success
as a flirtatious man of the world; “I don’t
think they will be required!”
It is necessary to have attained to
a reasonably advanced age to be able to recognise
pathos in the fatuities that so frequently form a
feature of love’s young dream. Christian,
listening with one ear to her brother and cousin,
while into the other the genuine idiom of her native
land flowed, ardently, from the now unsealed lips of
Barty Mangan, began to wonder why the boys were talking
like stage Irishmen; Georgy, she knew, was idiot enough
for anything, but she had to admit to herself that
Larry, also, was rather overdoing it. Christian
was able to feel amused, but she also felt, quite
illogically, that what had been distaste for Tishy
Mangan was rapidly deepening into dislike.
The picnic raged on, with prodigious
eatings and drinkings, with capsizings of teapots
in full sail, with disastrous slaughterings of insects
(disastrous to plates and tablecloths rather than to
the insects) with facetious doings with heated tea-spoons
and pellets of bread, with, in short, all that Mrs.
Mangan and her fellow hostesses expected of a truly
prosperous picnic.
Captain Cloherty, alone, of all the
company, failed to contribute his share to the sum
of success. He sat silent, a thing of gloom, the
lively angle of whose waxed, red moustache only accentuated
the downward droop of the mouth beneath it. But
the skeleton at the feast has its uses, if only as
a contrast, and Mrs. Mangan, who was more observant
than she appeared to be, noted the gloom with a gratified
eye, and being entirely aware of its cause, said to
herself with satisfaction:
“Ha, ha, me young man!”
This picnic was, in truth, made ever
memorable in the circle of Mrs. Mangan’s friends
by reason of the triumph of Tishy.
“Ah, that was the day she cot
the two birds under the one stone!” Great-Aunt
Cantwell (who did not care for her great-niece) was
accustomed to say. “Well! Such goings-on!
And after all, Tishy’s nothing so much out of
the way, for all Frankie Mangan thinks the world should
die down before her!”
The two birds referred to were still
fluttering round their captor, when a new element
was added to the party in the large presence of “Frankie
Mangan” himself. The Big Doctor approached
slowly, elephant-like in his noiseless, rolling gait,
impressive, as is an elephant, in size, in the feeling
he imparted of restrained strength, of intense intelligence,
masked, as in an elephant, with benevolence, and held
watchfully in reserve.
He now advanced upon the scene of
festivity with purpose in his manner.
“Now, ladies! Let me tell
you I’m come on a very unpopular errand!
To apply the closure! I think you’re all
sitting out here long enough for the time of year.
Remember it’s only May!”
“We’re more likely to
remember it’s Mayn’t!” retorted Mrs.
Whelply, who was a recognised wit, and opponent of
the Big Doctor. “Isn’t it enough
for him to bully us when we’re sick, but he comes
tormenting us when we’re well, too!”
Thus she appealed to her fellow-matrons,
looking round upon them for support with a festive
eye.
“You’ll none of you be
well long, if you don’t mind yourselves!”
answered, with equal spirit, the Doctor, with a quiet
eye on his daughter and her attendant swains.
“Why then I have a sore throat
this minute with scolding Mr. Coppinger for the nonsense
he’s talking!” declared Mrs. Whelply.
“Asking me to sing a cawmic at the concert he
says he’s going to have! There’s no
fear but whatever I sing will be cawmic enough!”
“I’m sure I’ll have
great pleasure in cauterising you!” responded
the Doctor, gallantly; “but if you’ll
take my advice now, you won’t want so much of
it later on!”
“I thought you were going to
take me on the river,” said Tishy in a low voice
to Larry, looking resentfully at her father.
“I’ll tell you what we’ll
do,” said Larry, quickly; “much better
than the river we’ll go back to the
house and dance! I’ll fix it up with your
father!”
“Good egg!” said Sub-Lieut.
Talbot-Lowry, with seaman-like decision, “Miss
Mangan will kindly note all waltzes are reserved for
use of naval officers!”
“Miss Mangan will kindly do
no such thing!” returned that young lady, dealing
a flash from between her curled eyelashes that put
the naval officer temporarily out of action, so devastating
was its effect.
Had not Frederica Coppinger, resting
in her club in Dublin, after a severe afternoon with
her dentist, some intuition, some spirit-warning,
of what was befalling at the home of her ancestors?
I believe that those spear-thrusts of nerve-pain that
assailed her just before dinner, must have been the
result of the wireless summons of distress sent forth
to her by her upper-housemaid.
“What next, I wonder, will Master
Larry be asking for?” said the upper housemaid
to the cook. “The drawing-room carpet pitched
into the study, and Miss Coppinger’s own room
turned upside down for the riff-raff of Cluhir to
be powdering their noses in! ’Haven’t
she no powder?’ says they. ‘No matter,’
says the Doctor’s daughter, ’sure I have
a book of it in me little bag!’”
“I wouldn’t at all doubt
her!” said the cook, saturninely, “But
what’s the drawn’-room carpet to conjuring
a supper out of me pocket in five minutes? I
ask you that, Eliza Hosford!”
None the less, with that deep loyalty
to the honour of the house that is a feature in Irish
domestic life as wonderful as it is touching, the
staff of Coppinger’s Court were resolved that as
they say in China the face of Master Larry
should not be blackened, and The Riff-Raff of Cluhir
were served with a ceremony and a success that left
nothing to be desired.
Dr. Mangan sat in a very large armchair
in front of a big fire of logs, in the hall, and smoked
meditatively, and was seemingly quite unaware of the
couples who moved past him between the dances, passing
out through the open hall-door into the moon-lit May
night. He did not even raise an eyelid when his
daughter sailed by him, as she did many times, with
the ostentation of the young lady who is aware that
her prowess is the subject of comment, in company,
alternately, with the two captives of her bow and
spear who had offered so feeble a resistance to those
weapons. Tishy and her father alike ascribed her
victory to that redoubtable and already creditably
battle-scarred bow and spear; they neither of them
recognised the acknowledgments that were due to a
certain powerful ally, the May moon. She had stolen
up the sky at the back of the woods. The first
Larry knew of her was the vast, incredible, pale disc
behind the topmost boughs of the pine trees, so near
that it seemed to him as though the crooked black
branches alone were holding her back, and that her
white fire that was pouring through them must consume
them, “and then it will be our turn,”
he said, seriously, and without preamble, to Tishy.
“Our turn for what?” asked Tishy, very
naturally.
“Our turn to be resolved into
moonshine. You’ll see me fading away into
silver smoke in a minute,” replied Larry.
“Let’s get out of this, I’m getting
frightened! Hold my hand tight!”
“Go on with your nonsense!”
said Tishy. “And will you tell me how can
I hold your hand when it’s round my waist?”
Which was reasonable enough, and may
be taken as a sufficient indication of what the moon
was already responsible for.
A point of red light moved in the
darkness above the seat under the laurels, to which
they were repairing, and the scent of a Virginian
cigarette was wafted to them.
“Who’s that?” Tishy
whispered, pressing nearer to Larry; but she was agreeably
certain that it was the gloomy and misanthropic Captain
Cloherty, whose place of refuge they had invaded.
Christian, meanwhile, unlike Captain
Cloherty, was conscientiously endeavouring to enjoy
herself, and was finding that the wheels of the chariot
of pleasure drave heavily. That Barty Mangan
was a good dancer was an alleviation, but among those
stigmatised by Eliza Hosford as the riff-raff of Cluhir,
those now forgotten measures of the first years of
this century, the prancing barn-dance, the capering
pas-de-quatre, lent themselves to a violence
that, even at the uncritical age of eighteen, Christian
found overpowering. “They danced like the
Priests of Baal,” she told Judith. “One
expected to see them cut themselves with knives!”
The information that the dog-cart
had come for her was of the nature of a release.
Barty put her into it. The May moon shone on his
pale face as he looked up at Christian, and reverently
took her hand in farewell. She had begun to find
his dark and humble devotion oppressive; she liked
him, which did not prevent her from thanking heaven
when he released her hand from a pressure that had
lasted longer than he knew. He stood on the gravel
and watched the departing dog-cart vanish, like a
ghostly thing, into the elusive mist of moonlight.
The May moon, now sailing full overhead, looked with
a broad satisfaction on the hardest hit of her victims.