Mount Music Part 13

Father Greer ignored the look, and continued his recital: "As was quite right and proper for them to do."

There was a blink of the black eyes, and Barty recognised that he had not been un.o.bserved.

"There was what is called a Reading-party of young min, with a tutor, at the hotel," went on the priest. "Protestants they were--so far as they had any religion--but only wun of them attended that service. It was said he was the wun and only person able to play the piano in the hotel. Some English ladies requested him to play--I believe there was some very unsuitable joking about it--and he consented. He attended that service; he played their English hymns," Father Greer paused, and gathered up the table with a glance before his climax. "That young man, I regret to say, was an Irish Catholic, one whom you all know--young Mr. St. Lawrence Coppinger!"

Mrs. Mangan, who had been too much hara.s.sed by Hannah's failure to decode her signals, to attend, heard the name only, and said lovingly:

"The dear boy! How nice for him and you to meet so far away from home, Father!"

Barty's satisfaction at his mother's unexpected comment took the form of kicking his sister, heavily. Tishy, who sang in the chapel choir, and was at this time inclined to regard herself as a pillar of the Church, returned the kick with a viciousness that indicated a hostile point of view, and said loftily:

"But to think they'd ask him! The English are very lax. Don't you think so, Father?"

Dr. Mangan laughed apologetically.

"Well, it's a wonder that a party of sheep would let a poor goat into their fold at all!" he said, in a voice that asked for forgiveness for the erring goat. "I suppose the young ladies got him in a corner, and 'twas hard for him to refuse. You'd hardly blame him for that!"

Father Greer looked bleakly down his nose and said nothing.

Barty scowled, considering that his hero stood in no need of apology.

Dr. Mangan continued his endeavour to save the situation.

"But there's no understanding of Protestants!" he resumed, good-humouredly; "I met an old fellow on the train th' other day, old William Henderson of Glen Brickeen, and he was telling me of a row he had with his clergyman, the Reverend Wilson. 'Oh,' says he, 'I gave up going to church on the head of it!' 'And isn't that a great sin for you,' says I, 'to give up going to church?' 'Oh,' says he, 'I explain that to G.o.d every Sat.u.r.day. He understands well what Mr. Wilson done to me, and why I wouldn't go to church as long as he was in it.'

'Maybe,' said I, funning him, 'some day he might be before you in Heaven with his story, and what'll you do then?' 'Oh,' said he, I'll make out a place for myself, never fear! There's places of all sorts in it!' says he. 'I suppose it's the many mansions you're thinking of!' said I. 'You think the poor Roman Catholics don't know their Bibles, but I know that much!'"

"Well, Francis," said Mrs. Mangan, admiringly, "I never knew you that you'd be without an answer, no matter what anyone'd say to you! 'Many mansions,' says you! I declare I'd never have thought of that! Father, wouldn't you say he answered him well!"

Father Greer, having made his point, smiled indulgently, and, as he was deeply involved in a mouthful of tough goose, the smile, blended with the act of mastication, made him look more than ever like a fox, a fox in a trap, gnas.h.i.+ng at his captors.

"I always knew the Doctor could be trusted to 'give a knave an answer,' as Shakespeare says," he said, when the power of speech was restored to him; "I'm often surprised at the liberty, I might almost say the licence, that is met with in Protestants in connection with their religion. Take the case of young Mr. Coppinger that I was speaking of. That was a melancholy instance of evil communications corrupting good manners. I may say that I regard with anxiety a too great freedom, what I may call an unrestrained intercourse, between members of the two churches--that is, indeed, if I am justified in describing as a church that which I have heard stigmatised as 'a fortuitous concourse of atheistic atoms'!"

Father Greer's nose came down over his upper lip, the corners of his mouth went up, and a succession of sniffs indicated that he was laughing.

"That may be rather severe," he conceded, "but I may say that, for my part, I consider that Catholics have a sufficiency of pleasing society within their own communion, without striving to go beyond it!"

Father Greer paused, looked round the table as if to receive the general a.s.sent, and put his sharp nose into the tumbler of brown whisky and water, to whose replenis.h.i.+ng the Doctor had not failed to attend.

A rather stricken silence followed. Mrs. Mangan's large and handsome brown eyes turned guiltily to her husband, and moved on from his face to one of the many trophies of the Mount Music Sale, a Protestant chair back, now flaunting itself on a Catholic chair, under the very eyes of the Parish Priest!

Barty glowered at his plate; Tishy, who had not enjoyed herself at the Sale, felt, in consequence, that she was now justified in doing so at the expense of her family, and held up her head, and looked at her father. It was plain to see that the elephant had felt the p.r.i.c.k of the Mahout's _ankus_. The Big Doctor's face was perturbed. Tishy saw him look at the little priest's gla.s.s, and knew that he wished it were empty, in order that he might pour into it a propitiatory oblation. He cleared his throat once or twice before he spoke.

"Very true, Father, very true. I used to think the same thing in England. The chaps I used to meet there--no one would know what religion they belong to, no more than if they were heathens. That young lad that you weren't pleased with--young Coppinger--I believe he's as good a Catholic as any of us, but he happens to be thrown mostly among Protestants. I often think it's no more than our duty as Catholics to try and see as much as we can of him. He and Barty here, got to be very great with each other the time he was with us, but it's only an odd time now that we get a sight of him."

"I was talking to him a long while, the last time he was home," said Barty, looking up, with something smouldering in his voice, "he told me he was going to Oxford next October. It's well to be him!" he ended defiantly.

"Now, I wouldn't be too sure of that at all!" said Father Greer, with a smoothness that implied the laying aside of the _ankus_; "I think, my young friend, that your good father's house is as safe and happy a place for you as you could wish for!" He turned to the Doctor.

"I may say that there is a belief among certain cla.s.ses that no one is properly edjucated without they've been sent to England. I thought my friend Barty, was a better Irishman than it seems he is!"

"I'm as good an Irishman as any man!" said Barty, in a sudden blaze, "and may-be better than some!"

His face had turned white, and his eyes, that were as large and dark as his mother's, met those of Father Greer with the courage of anger.

"What harm is it to want to get a better education than what I have? I don't see why I shouldn't want to go to Oxford, or Switzerland either, for the matter o' that--as well as another!"

Father Greer, as Dr. Mangan remarked subsequently, took Barty's making a fool of himself very well. He put his head on one side, his black eyebrows went up, and he again uttered that succession of sniffs that served him for a laugh.

"It seems that I have made a railing accusation without meaning it, and brought down fire from heaven, like the Prophet Elijah, only to find that I am myself to forrum the burnt offering!" he said, pleasantly. "Well, well, Barty, don't consume me entirely in your just indignation, and I'll promise you to make no insinuendoes in future as to whether you're a good or bad Irishman!"

I am unable to determine if Father Greer deliberately devised this felicitous amalgamation of the two words that were in his mind, or if it was unintentional, and an indication that Barty's brief flare of revolt had fl.u.s.tered him a little. I am inclined to the latter theory.

In any case, the word is a useful one.

CHAPTER XVI

Christian was in the kennels, in their innermost depths. She was, in fact, seated on the bench of "the ladies" lodging-house, on the dry and rustling cus.h.i.+on of bracken on which Major Talbot-Lowry bedded his pack.

Yearning to her, sitting all over her, covering her with their ponderous affection, were the hounds. Two large ladies had each a head on each of her shoulders; two more had laid their chins on her knees, and were gazing raptly into her face. The less favoured stood, and squeezed, and pushed, and panted, with glowing eyes and waving sterns, in as close a circle round her as it was possible to form.

"Dearest things!" apostrophised Christian, "I feel like Nero--I wish you had only one lovely head, so that I might kiss you all at once!"

"Rot!" said Larry, who was leaning against the wall, facing her, and saying: "Down, you brute!" at intervals, to hounds, who, having failed to force their way to Christian, were directing their attention to him, to the detriment of his grey flannel trousers. "And look at your dress from their filthy paws!"

"Good Gawd, Mr. Larry Sir! Don't say paws! 'Ounds 'ave _feet_"

responded Christian, whose imitation of Cottingham was no less accurate now than it had been some eight years earlier; "and I don't care a pin for this old skirt anyway--"

"I'm as fond of hounds as anyone," said Larry, reprovingly, "but I must say I should draw the line at their licking my face!"

"They don't!" said Christian, indignantly; "that's the beauty of them, They never lick--except perhaps my darling Nancy, because I nursed her when she had pneumonia."

"If I were you, Cottingham, I wouldn't let Miss Christian into the kennels," said Larry, with severity, "she makes lap-dogs of the hounds!"

Cottingham had joined the party, and was leaning on the half-door of the kennel, watching his hounds with the never-failing interest of a good kennel-huntsman.

"I couldn't be too 'ard on Miss Christeen, sir," replied Cottingham; "her's the best walk I have. That there Nancy was a sickly little thing enough when I sent 'er to Miss Christeen, and look at 'er now! A slapping fine b.i.t.c.h!"

Christian turned a slow and expressionless eye upon her accuser, indicating triumph.

"It's like this with that Nancy," continued Cottingham, with whom the preaching habit, fostered by years of laying down the law on subservient fields, was inveterate. "Her got that fond of Miss Christeen, her follered 'er about, the way the ole lamb followed Mary, as they say. And that artful she got! Wouldn't try a yard! An' she 'ad the 'ole o' the young entry like 'erself. Any sort of a check, and back they all comes an' looks at me, wi' their 'eads a one side, and their sterns agoin' like this," he wagged a stubby fore-finger to and fro in so precisely the right rhythm, that, stubby as it was, no magic wand could evolve more instantly the scene to be presented; "an'

that's 'ow it'd be, th' old 'ounds workin' 'ard, and the young uns lookin' like they 'as nothin' to do only admire of me!"

"Quite right, too!" truckled Christian.

"Ah, Miss Christeen, I'm too used to soft soap, I am!"

"Well, you know, Cottingham, it was _I_ cured Nancy when she took to following _me_ about." She turned to Larry. "Luckily, I broke my wrist, and by the time I was able to ride again she had given me up and taken to hunting."