Mount Music Part 9

Michael had made a luckier hit than he knew. Little Mary Driscoll recognised the sporting quality of the suggestion, and being a girl of spirit acceded to it.

Mary had been to America. She was one of the many of her cla.s.s who put forth fearlessly for the United States, adventuring upon the unknown without any of the qualms that would beset them were the bourne London, or even one of the cities of their native land. Wasn't Mary's mother's sisther's daughter, and Maggie Brian from Tullagh, and the dear knows how many more cousins and neighbours, before her in it?

Didn't her brother that was marrit in it, send her her ticket, and wasn't there good money to be airned in it?

These queries, that, as may be seen by anyone with half an eye, answered themselves, having been propounded by little Mary Driscoll, she, roaring crying, and keened by all her relatives to the coach-door--no railway being within thirty miles of her home--departed to America, and was swallowed up by "Boyshton" for the s.p.a.ce of five years, during the pa.s.sage of which, since she could neither read nor write, no communication pa.s.sed between her and her parents, save only the postal orders that, through an intermediary, she unfailingly sent them. Then there was a month that the postal order came not, and while the old father and mother were wondering was Mary dead, or what ailed her, Mary walked in, uglier than ever in her Boyshton clothes, and it was gloriously realised that not only was not Mary dead at all, but that she had as much saved as would bury the old people, or maybe marry herself.

Mary had not enjoyed America. She wouldn't get her health in it, she said.

("Ye wouldn't see a fat face or a red cheek on one o' thim that comes back," a.s.sented Mary's mother); and for as little as she was, Mary continued, she'd rather bring her bones home with herself to Cunnock-a-Ceoil. (A cryptic phrase signifying that though she recognised, humorously, her own unworthiness, she still attached sufficient importance to her person to wish to bestow it upon the place of her birth.) Not long after her return and restoration to health, the episode of her marriage had occurred, and she had settled down into the soil of Ireland again, with, possibly, a slightly increased freedom of manner, but, saving this, with no more token on her of her dash into the new world, than has the little fish that lies and pants on the river bank for a moment, before the angler contemptuously chucks him into the stream again.

Michael and Mary Twomey had been on the staff of Coppinger's Court for a full thirty years when, in the fullness of time, Frederica returned to her ancient home, bringing with her the young heir to it, and all its accessory tenanted lands. Not Green Dragon or The Norreys King-at-Arms, or any other pontiff of pedigrees, could attach a higher importance to gentle blood than did little elderly Mary Twomey, elderly, but still as indomitably nimble and resolute as when in Frederica's childhood she would catch the donkey for her, and run after it, belabouring it in its rider's interest, for half an afternoon.

In spite of the fact that Miss Coppinger's youth had been spent, chiefly, in a town, the love of the country, ingrained during her first years, was merely dormant, and it revived with her return to Coppinger's Court. The garden, the farm, the hens, the cattle, the dairy, were all interests to which she returned with that renewal of early pa.s.sion, that has in it the fervour of youth as well as the depth of maturity. She read agricultural papers insatiably, and believed all that she read, accepting the verbal inspiration of their advertis.e.m.e.nts with the enthusiasm of her religious beliefs. She was a doctrinaire farmer, and she applied to the garden, the farm and the poultry-yard, the same zeal and intensity that had made her in earlier days the backbone of committees, and the leading exponent of the G.o.dly activities of St. Matthew's. She was regarded by the heretofore rulers of these various provinces with a mixture of respect, contempt, and apprehension. She was an incalculable force, with a predisposition towards novelty, and novelty, especially if founded on theory, is abhorrent to such as old Johnny Galvin the steward, or Peter Flood the gardener, or, stiffest in her own conceit of all, Mrs. Twomey of the dairy.

"Master Larry's coming home from Cluhir tomorrow, Mary," Miss Coppinger announced, with satisfaction, to the peculiar confection of grey hair and black chenille net that represented the back of Mrs.

Twomey's head, her forehead being pressed against the side of the cow that she was milking.

"Thang-aade!" replied Mrs. Twomey fervently, expressing in this concise form her grat.i.tude to her Creator for what she considered to be Larry's release from a very vile durance "He's long enough in it already!"

"The Doctor wouldn't let me move him any sooner," replied Miss Coppinger, apologetically.

"The divil doubt him, what a fool he'd be!" said Mrs. Twomey with a bitter laugh. "Aren't they all sayin' as sure as gun is iron it's what he wants that he'll see his daughter in Coppinger's Court before he dies!"

"What nonsense!" said Miss Coppinger, warmly; "I should like to know who is saying it!"

Mrs. Twomey, milking ceaselessly, slewed her head a little and looked at her employer out of the corner of an eye as bright and as cunning as a hen's, and said: "As rich as your Honour is, you couldn't put a penny into the mouth of every man that's sayin' it!"

"I'm surprised at you, Mary," said Frederica, indignantly, "You ought to have more sense than to repeat such rubbis.h.!.+"

To this reproach, Mrs. Twomey responded with a long and jubilant crow of laughter.

"Yerra, gerr'l alive--!" she corrected herself quickly. "My lady alive, I should say--sure a little thing like me'd tell lies as fast as a hen'd pick peas!"

The modesty, as well as the accuracy, of this statement silenced Miss Coppinger for a moment.

"Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself!" she resumed with much severity. "It is amazing to me how a decent, respectable little woman like you can not only tell lies, but boast of it!"

"Ah ha! I'm the same owld three and fourpince, an' will be till I die!" triumphed Mrs. Twomey, with another screech of laughter, removing her tiny person, her milk-pail, and her stool from under the cow. "An' I won't be long dyin'!" another screech; "an' it won't take many to carry me to Cunnock-a-Ceoil Churchyard!"

A final and prolonged burst of mirth succeeded this announcement, during which the unrepentant Three and Fourpence swung the pail on to the hook of the swinging-balance for weighing the milk that was Miss Coppinger's latest and most detested innovation.

"Look at that now what she has for you, Miss! s.h.i.+xteen pints! An' I'll engage I'll knock thirteen ounces o' b.u.t.ther out of it! That's the little bracket cow that yourself and Johnny Galvin wanted to sell, an'

I withstood ye!"

This was of the nature, jointly, of a counter-attack and of a truckle to the system of milk-records, but Frederica heeded it not As a matter of fact, she was still somewhat discomposed by the insinuations that were more numerous than the pennies she was believed to possess.

"I hope, Mary," she said, repressively, "that if you should hear any more talk of that kind about Dr. Mangan, you will do your best to contradict it. He has been extremely kind to Master Larry, and it annoys me very much that such things should be said."

Mrs. Twomey's supple mind was swift to realise that a change of att.i.tude was advisable.

"Why then, upon my truth and body, I'd blame no one that wanted Master Larry! That little fella is in tune with all the world!" she declared; "but those people do be always gibbing and gabbing! Give them a smell, and they're that suspeecious they'll do the rest! Sure I said to that owld man below, Mikey Twomey"--thus dispa.s.sionately was Mrs. Twomey wont to speak of her husband--"I says to him, that your Honour was satisfied to leave Master Larry back in Cluhir till he'd be well agin.

They were all sayin' the child wouldn't be said by ye to come back!

Didn't I have to put the heighth o' the house o' curses to it before he'd believe me!"

"Intolerable nonsense!" said Frederica, hotly.

CHAPTER XIII

People have said, retrospectively, that the rise of the Mangan family dated from the fall of Larry Coppinger into the Feorish River. This may, or may not have been the case but it is certain that Mrs.

Mangan's way through the world took at about this time an upward trend, and one of the most perceptible ascending jerks was the result of Lady Isabel Talbot-Lowry's Sale of Work.

This function had been ordained with, for object, the provision of a fund for the renovation of the parish church of Knock Ceoil, and was obviously a matter without interest for persons of another denomination. Lady Isabel, and Miss Coppinger, and others of their friends and neighbours slaved at the provision of munitions for it, as good women will slave at such enterprises, squandering energy on the construction of those by-products of the rag-bag that wen specially consecrated to charitable purposes by the ladies of their period.

"No one will want to buy this rubbish," said Miss Coppinger, who never tried to deceive even herself, "but people will have to spend their money on something, and _we're_ not going to raffle bottles of brandy--as they did at that R.C. Bazaar in Riverstown!"

Frederica could be just, but when a question of religion intervened, she found it hard to be generous.

The Sale of Work took place during the September that followed the winter of Larry's disaster, and it was indisputable that the Mangan family contributed materially to its success. Mrs. Mangan was of a cla.s.s that is accustomed to get its money's worth, and was herself known and respected as an able and inveterate haggler. Yet, at the Mount Music Sale, she was content to hide her talent beneath innumerable chair-backs and night-dress cases, purchased, uncomplainingly, at the prices marked on them, and to permit the contents of an apparently inexhaustible purse to flow in a golden stream from stall to stall. Her family were no less in evidence, the Big Doctor offering himself a cheerful victim on the shrine of raffles, even attaching himself to Christian as a coadjutor in the sale of tickets for the disposal of one of Rinka's latest progeny.

Mrs. Mangan's son and daughter, something subdued by unfamiliar surroundings, were, on the disposal of the puppy-tickets, taken in hand by their father, and were, with an eloquence that seemed meant for a larger audience, made acquainted with the notable objects of the house.

"If I could get hold of your mother, now," the Big Doctor would say, "I'd like her to see this," or "Look at that picture, Tishy! That's a lovely woman! The Major's grandmother, I believe. We'll ask Miss Judith--'pon my honour, it might have been done of herself!"

Miss Judith, with a fruit and flower stall near the portrait in question, coldly admitted the relations.h.i.+p, and ignored the question of the likeness. Judith was of the age of intolerance; moreover, she was at that moment in the act of selling a b.u.t.ton-hole to Bill Kirby, and the Doctor's enthusiasm was undesired.

The little family party moved on, while Dr. Mangan, with the ease of an _habitue_, indicated to his son and daughter the ancestral portraits in the dining-room, the Cromwellian arms on the staircase, the coats-of-arms, the Indian weapons, the foxes' masks in the hall.

The son and daughter received the information coldly. It was their first introduction to the interior of Mount Music, and while Tishy was filled with a great resolve to be impressed by nothing, Barty was silenced by those tortures that unfamiliar surroundings have power to inflict upon the shy.

In his determination to instruct his young in all the possible objects of interest, Dr. Mangan strolled away from the crowded scene of the sale, and led them down the long pa.s.sage, dedicated to sporting prints, that led to the library.

"There's a picture there that's worth seeing, of a Meeat Coppinger's Court in the time of Larry's grandfather," he announced impressively, as he opened the door. "The Talbot-Lowrys and the Coppingers were always fine sports men--"

A tall old screen stood between the door and the fireplace from behind it a hunted voice said:

"Who the devil's there now?"

Dr. Mangan thought, complacently: "My diagnosis was correct!" Aloud he said to his son and daughter, in a tone of hoa.r.s.e consternation: "To think of our blundering in on the Major like this! Here! Away now, the pair of you!"

He advanced from behind the screen.

"Major! My most humble apologies! I never thought of you being here! I was showing that boy and girl of mine some of your beautiful things."

Major Talbot-Lowry was unlike his daughter Judith in many things, and not least in his easy sufferance of those whom she, in youthful arrogance, called cads.

"Come in, Doctor, and have a cigar in peace," he said, hospitably, putting on one side the novel he was reading. "I thought you were Evans, or one of the maids, coming to bother me. This d.a.m.ned show has turned the house upside down!"