Major Talbot-Lowry had been in a passion
for three days, and Lady Isabel, who had borne the
storm alone, longed for Christian’s return,
as the lone keeper of a lighthouse might long for the
support of his comrade during a gale.
Judith came to visit her parents on
Monday, but Judith was very far from being Christian,
and could be relied on merely as far as a counter-irritant
might prove of service.
“Well, of course, it was abominable
impertinence of the priest to come up with the tenants
to try and bully you, Papa, but you know, I see their
point.” Thus, Judith, annoyingly, and with
pertinacity.
“You do, do you!” interjected
Judith’s progenitor, his once ruddy face now
a congested purple. “It seems to me, Judith,
you’re always deuced ready to see any one’s
point but mine!”
“After all,” went on Judith,
with all the self-confidence and intolerance of five
and twenty, “it’s in your interest to sell,
just as much as theirs to buy! With this detestable
Government in power it will be a case of the Sibylline
Books. You’ll see the Nationalists will
have it all their own way, and the next Act
“Nationalists!” roared
the Major, sitting upright in his chair, and panting,
his utterance temporarily checked by the sheer pressure
of all that he wished to say. “Don’t
talk to me of Nationalists! Common thieves!
That’s all they are! There’s no Nationalism
about them! Call it Socialism, if you
like, or any other name for robbery! They’d
look very blue if we took to shouting ’Ireland
a Nation!’ and expecting to come in at the finish!
They mightn’t be able to call us English invaders
and to steal our property then! English!
I’ve got Brian Boroihme in my pedigree and that’s
more than they can say! A pack of half-bred descendants
of Cromwell’s soldiers! That’s what
they are, and the best of them, too! That’s
the best drop of blood they’ve got!” Dick
shouted, veering in the wind of his own words like
a rudderless ship in a storm. “That’s
what gives them tenacity and bigotry! Look at
the old places that they’re squeezing the old
families out of! It’s the Protestant farmers
and the Religious Orders that are getting them, swarming
into them like rats! Don’t tell me that
I and my family aren’t a better asset to any
country than a lot of fat, lazy Monks and Nuns!”
“But, Papa, they’re not
all fat!” said Judith, beginning to laugh.
“Deuce a many of them’s
thin for want of plenty to eat!” returned Dick,
with the confidence of a man whose faith in his theories
has never been interfered with by investigation.
He was recovering his temper, having enjoyed the delivery
of his diatribe; and the fact that he had not only
silenced Judith but had tickled her to a laugh, restored
his sense of domination.
Poor old King Canute, with the tide
by this time well above the tops of his hunting-boots,
and all the familiar landmarks becoming submerged,
one after the other! It may be easy to deride
him, but it is hard not to pity him.
This was on Monday, and Christian
returned from her week-end visit that evening.
Judith stayed, and went with Christian to her room.
“Well, my dear,” she began,
eagerly, as the door closed, “when are you going
to announce it?”
Christian sat down on her bed.
She was looking very tired.
“Never, I think!”
Without paying attention to Judith’s
exclamation she took a newspaper out of the pocket
of her top-coat, and handed it to her sister.
“This is this evening’s
paper. I got it at the Junction. Read that.”
She pointed to a paragraph.
Judith read it; then she dropped the
paper, and gazed at Christian with dramatic consternation.
“The idiot!” she said,
at length. “Couldn’t you stop him?”
“He had promised years ago.
I didn’t try. He couldn’t break his
word.”
“Oh, rot!” said Judith, briefly.
“You know he couldn’t, Judy.”
“Well, you know, this will finish
him with Papa,” said Judith, gloomily.
“He’s bad enough as it is about the sales
to the tenants, and I was prepared for rows over the
religious business, of course, but this! Can’t
you”
“I can’t do anything,”
interrupted Christian, getting up. “I heard
from him this morning, fearfully keen about it, but
he didn’t know then if the Party were going
to adopt him. Evidently they have.”
“Trust them for that!”
said Judith, with a heavy groan. “I suppose
Larry thinks we shall all be delighted! What fools
men are! Bill did say once that it had been suggested oh,
ages ago, when Larry came of age; Ma-in-law told him but
we thought it had died out.”
Christian hardly heard what she said.
She was standing at the open window, in the stillness
that tells of intense mental engrossment. Self-deception
was impossible for her; her mind was too acute for
tolerance of subterfuge; and for her, also, away and
beyond the merciless findings of intellect was the
besetment of presentiment, intuition, inward convictions
that can override logical conclusions, words that
are breathed in the soul as by a wind, and, like the
wind, are born and die in mystery.
The last of the daylight had gone;
there was a touch of frost; the sky was clear and
hard, the stars shone with sharp brilliance, some of
them had long, slanting rays on either hand that looked
like wings of light; a new moon glittered among them,
keen and clean, and vindictive as a scimitar; in the
quiet, the low murmur of the Broadwater pervaded the
night. Judith watched her sister with unconsciously
appraising eyes, noting the straight slenderness of
her figure, the small, high-held, dark head.
“Old people are intolerable!”
she thought; “she shall not sacrifice
herself to Papa’s prejudices! If she likes
Larry she shall have him!”
But she was too wise to argue with Christian.
Dick Talbot-Lowry, though now arrived
at the age of sixty-nine, was as unconvinced as ever
of the fact that time had got the better of him, and
that its despotism was daily deepening. He admitted
that he had become something of an invalid, but that
his elder daughter should have classified him as an
old person would have appeared to him as absurd and
offensive. There are minds that keep this inveterate
youthfulness; that learn nothing of age, and forget
nothing of youth. It is an attitude sometimes
charming, sometimes undignified, always pathetic.
Christian saw old age as a tragedy, a disaster, to
alleviate which no effort on the part of the young
could be too great; the pathos and the pity of it
were ever before her eyes. In contest with her
father, if contest there were to be, she would go into
the arena with her right hand tied behind her back.
Without any definite admission of
failure, Major Talbot-Lowry had been brought to submit
to having his breakfast in bed, and Robert Evans, a
sour and withered Ganymede, was the bearer of it.
He was also the bearer of any gossip that might be
available, and seldom failed to provide his master
with a stimulant and irritant. On the morning
following on Christian’s return it was very evident
that intelligence of unusual greatness seethed in
the cauldron wherein fermented Mr. Evans’ brew
of news. His rook-like eye sparkled, his movements,
even that walk for whose disabilities it may be remembered
that the pantry boy had thanked his God, were alert
and purposeful.
“Ye didn’t see the Irish
Times yet, I think?” he began, standing
over his master, and looking down upon him with an
expression as triumphant and malign as that of a carrion-crow
with a piece of stolen meat. He rarely bestowed
the usual honorifics upon Dick, considering that his
five years’ seniority relieved him of such obligations.
“I wouldn’t believe all I’d read
in the papers, but this is true, anyway!”
“What’s true?” said
Major Dick, irritably; “you’ve forgotten
the salt again, Evans! How the devil can I eat
an egg without salt? Send one of the maids for
it don’t go yourself,” he added,
as Evans left the room. “The old fool’d
be all day getting it,” he said to himself, with
an old man’s contempt for old age in another.
“Now, then,” as Evans returned, “what’s
your wonderful bit of news?”
“Ye can read it there for yourself,”
replied Evans, coldly; he was ruffled by the episode
of the salt.
“Damn it, man, I can’t
read the paper and eat an egg!” snapped the
Major. “Out with your lie, whatever it is!”
“Master Larry’s chosen
for the Member in place of Prendergast,” said
Evans, sulkily.
If Evans had been unfortunate in the
way in which his sensation had been led up to, its
reception left him nothing to desire. Dick was
stricken to an instant of complete silence. Then
he roared to Evans to take the damned tray out of
his way, and to give him the (otherwise qualified)
paper.
It would serve no purpose, useful
or otherwise, to attempt to record Dick Talbot-Lowry’s
denunciations of Larry, of his religion, and of his
politics; of, secondarily, his ingratitude; his treachery,
and his lack of the most rudimentary elements of a
gentleman. They lasted long, and lacked nothing
of effect that strength of lung and vigour of language
could bring to them. And Evans, the many-wintered
crow, hearkened, and rejoiced that he was seeing his
desire of his enemy.
“No! I won’t eat
it! Take it away I don’t want
it, I tell you! Curse you, can’t you do
as you’re bid?” Thus spake Dick Talbot-Lowry,
flinging himself back on his pillows, and shoving the
breakfast-tray from him. The hot purple colour
that had flooded his face was fading; his voice was
getting hoarse and weak. Evans, with an apprehensive
eye on his master’s changed aspect, carried
the tray out of the room.
There was a quick step on the stairs,
and Larry came lightly along the landing.
“The Major up, Evans? No?
Oh, all right! May I come in, Cousin Dick?”
He swung into the room.
Old Evans carefully shut the door behind him.
“Now me laddy-o!” he whispered,
rubbing his hooked grey beak with one finger, and
chuckling low and wheezily: “Now, maybe!
Me fine young Papist! Ye’ll be getting
your tay in a mug! Hot and strong! Hot and
strong!”
He moved away from the door with the
tray of untouched breakfast things.