Mount Music Part 24

Larry put down the third piece of cake, half-finished, and went round the tea-table, and sitting on the arm of Frederica's chair, put his arm round her thin shoulders.

"I'm so sorry!" he said, knowing his power, and using it, "dear Auntie Fred! I ought to have written to you. I forgot all about the beastly thing. But you wouldn't want me to go back of my word? As for the property--well, I thought that was only my own affair. I've come all right out of it; why shouldn't I give the tenants the best terms I could?"

"Cousin d.i.c.k says--" began Frederica, standing to her guns.

"And that other show," went on Larry, disregarding what Cousin d.i.c.k might have said. "Goodness knows when there'll be an election--"

"That doesn't alter the fact," said Frederica, firmly.

"Yes, I know. Of course I must hold by my own convictions, but let's put off the row until the time comes! One is bound to have rows at elections! I don't want to fight now!"

He pressed a kiss upon her forehead. He was feeling in love and charity with all men. To wheedle Aunt Freddy into forgiveness was the first outlet that presented itself for the excitement that was consuming him.

Larry walked to Mount Music through the Wood of the Ownashee, alone.

Miss Coppinger said she disliked the short way across the river by the stepping stones, and preferred to drive the now venerable Tommy round by the road; in her heart, brave as she was, she trusted that Larry would have got through his meeting with d.i.c.k before she arrived.

Therefore did Larry step along the pebbly path by the river, under the dense canopy of beechen boughs, with, for companions, only the two hound puppies that Bill Kirby did not fail to foist annually upon all amenable friends. These lumbered after Larry's quick foot, with all the engaging absurdity of their kind; tripping over their own enormous feet, chewing outlying portions of one another, as ill-brought-up babies chew their blankets; sitting down abruptly and unpremeditatedly, and watching with deep dubiety the departing form of their escort, as though a sudden and shattering doubt of his ident.i.ty had paralysed them, until some contrary wind of doctrine blew them into action again, and they hurled themselves upon his trail, filled with the single intention to rush between his legs. Nothing but that instinct of self-preservation that operates independent of the reason, preserved Larry from frequent and violent overthrow. His head was in the clouds; he was abandoning himself to dreams, with the very same headlong enthusiasm that Scandal and Steersman brought to bear upon the problems of existence. He strode past the glade that had been the scene of the Cluhir picnic without so much as a thought of Tishy Mangan. Had you or I reminded him of that brief, yet moving, episode, he would probably have regarded us with wide, bewildered, blue eyes, and asked for details. Then, as memory awakened, he would have laughed delightedly, and said: "Yes! By Jove! So I was! But Georgy cut me out, didn't he?"

And he might have added that there had been scores of them since Tishy, he had forgotten half of them--but this, THIS! Larry would then, inevitably, have lapsed into rhapsody, as would be no more than was decent and right in a young man of artistic temperament, and you or I, our malign intention baffled, would have retired in deserved confusion.

Old Evans was in the hall as Larry walked in through the open door. He received Larry's hand-shake coldly; the four years that had pa.s.sed since Larry had seen him had withered and greyed him; Larry, something dashed by the reception, remembered the t.i.tle given him long ago by Christian--"the many-wintered crow,"--and found satisfaction in deciding that the crow was a scald-crow, and a sour old divil at that; anyhow, Evans had always had a knife into him, so it made no difference.

In the drawing-room things went well enough, even though there was an unexplainable chill in the atmosphere. Cousin Isabel was as kind and gentle and vague as ever; Judith was there, very handsome and prosperous, not overenthusiastic in welcome, rather inclined to patronise a very young man, quite two months younger than a married lady of position and importance. Nevertheless, there was something unregenerate about her eye, that, taken in connection with the two subalterns in whose car she had come to call at Mount Music, suggested that Bill Kirby might at times find life stirring. John, recently ordained, now a very decorative curate in a London church, was there, even more patronising than Judith, and undecided whether to regard Larry with suspicion, as a brand still smouldering from the fires of secularist France, or affectionately, as a member of what, in one of his earlier sermons, he had described as "Our ancient Mother Church, dear Peopul! Beloved, but in some matters, that I will presently indicate to you, mistaken!"

The subalterns were remote, not approving of the style of Larry's tie (which he had bought in Paris, and differed from theirs) and Cousin d.i.c.k was not there.

"You must go and see him, dear Larry," says Cousin Isabel, "he's in the study."

"And Christian? Though, of course, I met her this morning--" says Larry.

Christian, poor child, went out for a little walk with the dogs just now. Christian (poor child) had felt that wretched business this morning so terribly. The wretched business was gone into, thoroughly and exhaustively, and yet Larry felt that across one corner of it there was a fold of curtain drawn. He said he would go and see Cousin d.i.c.k. There was always a chance that Christian, also, might be in the study. The axiom that "If a man want a thing he _mus'_ have it,"

should, in Larry's case, have the corollary that he must have it at once.

The Major was standing by the chimney piece in the study, warming one foot after the other at the fire that Evans had just replenished.

Larry met the scald-crow at the door, and Evans pa.s.sed him "as if,"

thought Larry, disgustedly, "he had been seeing me every day for a year! The old beast always hated me!" Larry did not like being hated.

Cousin d.i.c.k's greeting was more like old times. d.i.c.k was one of those people whose wrath has a tendency to intermit and get cold, even to perish, temporarily, from forgetfulness. On the other hand, in compensation, perhaps, for this failing, it was a fire easily rekindled. He was still shaking Larry's hand, and looking him up and down, affectionately, and withal, with the inevitable patronage of a long-legged man for one from whom Nature has withheld similar advantages, when Larry discovered the large presence of Dr. Mangan uplifting itself from the chair facing Cousin d.i.c.k's, by the fire.

(But Christian was not there. He resigned himself.) There was no want of warmth in the Big Doctor's reception. He was quite aware of this himself, and was artist enough to know how useful an a.s.set was the fact that he was genuinely fond of Larry. He had indeed proposed to exhibit his affection in pleasing contrast to the coolness of Larry's Protestant relatives, and that the Major had forgotten the role a.s.signed to him, was a little disappointing. "But wait awhile!"

thought the Big Doctor, who, among his other elephantine qualities, possessed that of patience.

The Major seated himself in front of the fire, and Larry pulled up a chair, wondering in his heart what these old boys wanted with a fire this lovely afternoon, and delivered himself to the old boys and to conversation. This, naturally, set with a single movement towards the event of the morning. "A real likely little mare, and shaping well, I'm told," says d.i.c.k, "and by the bye, Larry, that's a dev'lish nice horse of yours that Christian came back on. Where did you get him?"

These hunting men were incorrigible, the Doctor thought, seeing the Carmody question in danger of being side-tracked.

"Things have come to a funny way in this country," he observed, "when a fellow will deliberately chance killing a young lady, rather than let her ride over his land--and she having a right to ride over it into the bargain!"

It needed but little to start Major Talbot-Lowry again on the topic that had occupied him unceasingly since Christian's return that morning. Beginning with the burning of the Derrylugga gorse covert, and moving on through threatening letters, and rents deliberately withheld, he lashed himself into one of the quick furies that Larry remembered well. What Larry was less prepared for than was his friend, Dr. Mangan, was the sudden turn that the storm took in his direction.

"The blackguards think they can frighten me into selling on their own terms!" shouted d.i.c.k, "and that d.a.m.ned priest of theirs--I beg your pardon, Mangan, but the fellow doesn't behave like a clergyman, and it's impossible to think of him as one--is backing them up, and I may say"--here it was that the heart of the storm was revealed--"I may say that I'm very little obliged to your son, or to his princ.i.p.al here, for the part they have played in the affair! That was the beginning of the whole thing!" He turned fiercely upon Larry, his tenor voice pitched on a higher key. "How could I, with my property loaded with charges, that were no fault of mine, sell at the price you could afford to take? Look at the price that fellow--what's his d.a.m.ned name?--Brady, got for his farm, for the tenant-right alone, mind you!

Forty years' purchase! And I'm offered seventeen for the fee simple!"

d.i.c.k was standing up on the hearthrug, towering over the Doctor and Larry in their low chairs. Larry noticed how thin he had become, and how the well-cut grey clothes, that he always wore, hung loosely on his shrunken figure. "You're a young fellow now, Larry; wait till you've been for thirty years doing your best for your property and your country, and getting no thanks! Thanks!" d.i.c.k gave a brief and furious laugh. "I've kept the hounds for them. I've slaved on the Bench and on Grand Juries. I've got them roads and railways, and G.o.d knows what else--whatever they wanted--I've sat at the Board of Guardians, and done my best to keep down the rates, till they kicked me out to make room for men who would sell their souls for a sixpence, and made their living out of bribes!"

"Oh, come, come, Major, it's not so bad as all that!" said the Big Doctor, soothingly, as d.i.c.k stopped, panting for breath. "Don't mind it now!"

"But I _must_ mind it!" shouted d.i.c.k. "When I think of how I've been treated, and plenty more like me, loyal men who run straight and do their best, I declare to G.o.d I feel I don't know which I hate worst, the English Government, that pitches its friends overboard to save its own skin, or my own countrymen, that don't know the meaning of the word grat.i.tude!"

He turned again upon Larry: "And upon my word and honour, Larry, I didn't think that your father's son would have been tarred with that brush, anyhow!"

"Now, Major," broke in Dr. Mangan, again, "you know we agreed that there was no use in attaching too much importance to that transaction.

Barty and Larry here were in a very difficult position, and even though you and I might not have approved entirely of their action--"

"But, Doctor," interrupted Larry, bewildered, and dismayed, "You--I thought you had advised Barty--"

The Big Doctor frowned at him, and winked too, while he laid his huge white hand on his watch-pocket, tapping with his middle finger on the spot which, as he knew, the average layman dedicated to the heart. He trusted to Larry's quickness, and did not trust in vain.

"A sort of heart attack," Aunt Freddy had said.

"I'm most frightfully sorry, Cousin d.i.c.k," Larry began, hurriedly, before a worse thing happened. "Somehow, I never thought--you see I was out of the country--it seemed to me that--" he was going to repeat those comforting sedatives about leaving the man at the helm to bark for you--(Heavens! He had been on the point of saying that! Was he going to laugh?)--but he couldn't give Barty away. He rushed into apology, regret, abuse of his own ignorance, and imbecility, and the Big Doctor, at each pause in the penitence, poured a little oil and wine into the wounds for which Larry and the Carmodys were jointly responsible, and d.i.c.k's anger, like the red that had flared to his face, fell like a spent flame.

"Say no more, boy, say no more," he said, dropping into the chair from which he had leaped in the course of his _apologia pro vita sua_; "I daresay you knew no better--anyhow, you didn't mean to do me a bad turn--"

Larry took his hand. "You know that, Cousin d.i.c.k," he said, in profound distress. "Of all people in the world--the very last. If there was anything I could do now--"

"Well now, I'll tell you what you could do!" cut in Dr. Mangan, jovially, "you could tell our friend Evans to bring in the Major's tumbler of hot milk and whisky, and to look sharp about it too! I ordered he was to have it at six o'clock--"

He looked hard at Larry, who realised that his disturbing presence was to be removed, and forthwith removed it.

He delivered his message, and strayed back to the big, empty hall. A sense of aloofness, of having no place nor part in this well-remembered house, was on him. None of them wanted him; he could see that easily enough, and he had done Cousin d.i.c.k a bad turn. He had said so. If it came to that, he supposed he had done Christian a bad turn, too--Christian and Cousin d.i.c.k, the only two of the whole crowd who had been really glad to see him. He thought of her face as she came riding through the dusky wood to meet him. "The dawn was in it!"

he said to himself; again he saw it, lit with the light that the hunt had kindled; and then he thought of her stricken eyes, as she looked from one man to another, asking for the hope that they had to refuse her. It had been all his fault, or--here the inner apologist, that is always quick to console, interposed--not quite exactly his fault. How was he to have known? A remembrance of Cousin d.i.c.k's undeciphered letters came to him; even the inner apologist hung his head. In any case--Larry's active mind resumed its deliberations--it was quite clearly his business to find Christian and to explain to her, as far as was possible, how things stood.

He left the house. A garden-boy had seen Christian "going west the avenue"; Larry collected Scandal and Steersman from the ash-pit, and followed her "west the avenue." He walked slowly, noting how neglected was the general aspect, how badly the avenue was in need of gravel, remembering how in the old days, the bands of slingers had never failed of ammunition, wondering if the Major were really as hard up as he thought he was; wondering if they had all turned against him, and if they would set Christian against him too. He came to the turn near the river that led to the stepping stones, and stood, in deepening depression, waiting, in the hope that she might come. It was seven o'clock, the sun was setting, the sky was warming to its last loveliness of rose and amber, and amethyst, colours with names almost as beautiful as themselves. The long stretches of gra.s.s on either side of the avenue were a fierce green, the brakes of bracken were burning orange, the long shadows of the trees that fell across the roadway were purple. The grove of yew trees, that hid the course of the river from him, had the sharpness of a silhouette cut out of dark velvet.

"Not really black," Larry told himself, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up his eyes. He moved on to the gra.s.s, and kneeling, framed with his hands as much as seemed good to him. In a moment, in the intoxication of beauty, he had forgotton his troubles; Cousin d.i.c.k, singing the swan-song of the Irish landlords; Dr. Mangan, and his bewildering change of front; even Christian, and her views as to his responsibility for the tragedy of the morning, stood aside to make way for the absorbing problems of colour and composition.

The hound puppies strolled on, side by side, heads up, and high-held sterns, steering for nowhere in particular, oblivious as Larry of all save the moment as it pa.s.sed. A rush of rooks came like a tide across the sky; they flew so low that the drive and rustle of their wings scared the puppies and startled Larry. He stood up and watched the mult.i.tudinous host swing westward to his own woods, and just then, a couple of hundred yards ahead, at the turn where the avenue plunged into the velvet gloom of the yew-trees, he saw Christian coming towards him, alone, save for a retinue of dogs.

If that old saying (already quoted with reference to d.i.c.k Talbot-Lowry) be true, when it a.s.serts that "wise men live in the present, for its bounty suffices them," then was Larry Coppinger, like his cousin, indeed a wise man. Remorse, anxiety, the wonder of the sunset, were swept from his mind, and Christian filled it like a flood. She looked very tired, and he told her so, eyeing her so closely that she turned her face from him.

"I won't be stared at and scolded! Why shouldn't I be tired if I like?"

"If it were only tiredness--" said Larry, with more tenderness in his voice than he knew. "Christian, they've been telling me that it was my fault--the rows with the tenants, and that devil coming at you this morning--and--and everything!"

He could not speak directly of Nancy's death; he knew what Christian felt for her horses and dogs. "I've been looking for you everywhere. I wanted to try and tell you what I felt--but since I've seen your father and old Mangan, I feel too abject to dare to say I'm sorry--"

"Why should they think it was your fault? It was my own fault. I ought to have gone back when Kearney warned me--"

"They meant the whole show. Beginning with Barty's selling to my tenants, and then your father's people making trouble, and the Carmodys burning the covert, and all the rest of it! They're quite right! It's all my rotten fault! Christian, I'm going back to France!

I can't face you after what I've brought on you!"