It was Barty who had brought out the
car, and, on his father’s departure, he released
the grip of the railings that had enabled him to keep
his footing, and was, literally, blown into the house.
“Shut the door, my Pigeon-pie!”
said his mother, “the wind’s too strong
for me.”
Barty was too well accustomed to this
expression of his mother’s affection to resent
it, and having done her bidding, he followed her into
the Doctor’s room, which alone had a fire in
it.
“Nothing would please Tishy
only to go down to the Whelplys,” complained
Mrs. Mangan, poking the fire, and seating herself in
front of it with a long, groaning sigh of exhaustion;
“some nonsense about a wreath. A wreath
indeed! Any one’d be lucky that kept their
hair on their heads in this wind, let alone a wreath!
You’ll have to go fetch her, my poor boy!
I’ll not be easy till I see her and Pappy home
again! I thought maybe Larry might have come over,
but I declare now I’m glad he did not.”
“Larry’s not like himself
lately,” said Barty, sitting down in his father’s
chair, and taking from his pocket a paper packet and
extracting a crushed cigarette from it. “I
think the loss of th’ election disappointed
him greatly.”
“’Twas well he had Tishy
to console him,” said Mrs. Mangan, “it
was in the nick of time she cot him!”
“It was,” replied Barty,
tepidly. “I think also,” he went on,
“he’s put out about his aunt not coming
down for the wedding, and even young Mrs. Kirby away.
It’s funny to think Coppinger’s Court and
Mount Music are empty now, the two of them or
will be after to-morrow. Miss Christian went
to-day.”
("See now how he’s talking of
her!” thought his mother. “I wonder
did Francis say anything to him?”) Aloud she
said: “It’s a pity she’s gone,
but it mightn’t be for long.”
“I saw her yesterday. The
Doctor sent me there for a map,” said Barty,
with elaborate unconcern.
("Look at that now!” again commented
Mrs. Mangan to herself. “How well they
never told me he’d gone to see her! Aren’t
men a fright the way they’ll hide things!”)
“She’s a sweet girl, my
Pidgie,” she resumed, to her son, “And
Pappy’s always said the same thing.”
Barty looked at her like a horse prepared to shy. Had
his father said anything to her? The longing to speak of Christian had
mastered him, but if his mother knew
“I think I’d better go
for Tishy now,” he said abruptly, “It might
be a job to get down the town later on.”
He left the room, and Mrs. Mangan,
in her husband’s big chair, by his big fire,
fell into tired yet peaceful ease of body and mind.
How wonderful was Francis! Who but he would have
dared to aspire for his children as he had? He
had secured for Tishy the very pick of the country;
and now, her own darling Barty! Was it possible?
Yes! It was, if Francis said so! But what
was “the argument he had up his sleeve?”
Never mind! Francis would tell her when he came
home. There was no hurry. But again, how
wonderful was Francis!
She fell asleep. Barty woke her,
coming into the room, dripping and shining in oilskins
and sou’wester, like a lifeboat man.
“I couldn’t get further
than West Street, Mammie,” he said, still breathless.
“I had on my waders, but the water was up over
them. They had boats going about, I believe,
but I couldn’t get hold of one. Tishy’ll
have to stay the night at the Whelplys’.
I met a man that told me there was a big flood in
the river, and haystacks, and cattle, and all sorts,
coming down in it. It was up over the line, and
the train hardly got out. It was near putting
out the engine fires.”
“Oh, my God!” said Mrs.
Mangan, with her big eyes that were so like Barty’s
fixed on his, “the Riverstown road! Oh!
Francis! ” she groped at the front
of her blouse for her Rosary, her lips moving in hasty
supplication, her eyes wild, roving from her son’s
face to the blackness of the window. Suddenly
she thrust back the Rosary.
“Why do you tell me these things?”
she cried, furiously, “you great omadhaun!
Is it to frighten me into my grave you want? Is
it nothing to you that your father’s out alone?
Oh God! Oh God! Why couldn’t he think
of me as well as of that damned woman away at Riverstown!”
She began to cry, wildly, her forehead pressed against
one of the streaming panes of the window. “Oh
Francis, Francis!
There were many more than Mrs. Mangan
and her son that sat up all through that night in
the Valley of the Broadwater. Trembling people
in little low-lying cottages, with thatched roofs held
in place with ladders, and ropes, and stones, with
doors and windows barricaded against the wind.
But of what avail are barricades against the creeping
white lip of water, crawling in under the doors over
the earthen floors, soaking in, through mud-built
walls, coming against them at first as a thief in
the night, falling upon them later as a strong man
armed?
From the lower side-streets of Cluhir
the people fled before the flood to any shelter that
the upper parts of the town could offer them.
Ghastly stories were told of drowned cattle that were
swept against the closed doors, and came pushing and
banging at the windows, carried there by their conqueror
as it were with mockery, to entreat for the succour
that was too late.
When the pale dawn looked out through
wind-torn clouds, it saw a half-mile breadth of racing
water where had been pasture-fields; the yellow, foam-laced
river was half way up the tall, slender arches of
Cluhir Bridge, lapping ever higher, as if in envy,
to hide the sole beauty of the ignoble town.
Trees, and hayricks, broken boats, and humble pieces
of cottage furniture, jostled each other between the
piers, tossing and dancing in grotesque gaiety, like
drunken holiday-makers on their way to the sea.
The great river that is credited with exacting six
lives each year, was claiming its toll. How many
it took that December night does not now concern us,
save, indeed, where one sad house was in question,
where a wife and a son waited a long night through
for the man who would not return to them.
Down below Cluhir, at Mount Music,
old Evans crept out of the shuttered house, and fought
his way in the wind, amid fallen trees, down to the
big river, to see what still stood of the boathouse.
The boathouse had weathered out the night. Its
roof had held, its door stood firm. Old Evans
surveyed it with pride.
“Aha! Protestant building!”
he said, old inveterate that he was.
Then he saw on the submerged bank,
amid a debris of broken rushes, and clots of
foam, and branches, something that he knew instantly
for what it was. The drowned body of a man.
Cautiously, and holding by shrubs
and tree-stems, he reached the place, where, half
ashore, half lying in thin flood through which tufts
of grass were showing, with arms stretched out, grasping
at the shore, the intruder lay. Old Evans knew
well that fur-collared coat. Often enough he
had held it for the Big Doctor. He had no need
to turn the defeated face from its pillow in the broken
reeds. He stared down at the man whom he had
hated, with something of pity, more of cynicism.
“Well, ye wanted Mount Music!”
he said, at last. “How d’ye like it
now ye’ve got it?”
The things that a man has accomplished
we sum him up by, and the things of which he was capable,
and did not accomplish, are of no account, and the
net that held him is of a mesh beyond the vision of
most.
Who shall pity the Big Doctor, or
blame him over-much? He died in the fullness
of his powers, with his ambitions, as he believed,
attained. He knew himself to be a good son of
the Church, a faithful husband, a successfully-scheming
father. What his priest thought of him is known
only to his priest, but we may be sure he regretted
him. A jury of his peers would have approved
him in his every action. If the paths that he
had followed were sometimes tortuous, along many of
them he had been guided by the ankus of that
mahout in whose directions his faith had taught him
to confide. He had lived according to the light
that he had received, and in his last act he took his
life in his hand, and gave it for another.
For my part, I believe that the Big
Doctor viewed with a justified composure
"
... that last
Wild pageant of the accumulated past
That clangs and flashes for a drowning
man.”