Mount Music Part 31

"Now boys! Cruisht them well, or they'll be at it again when they land!"

The "cruishting," which means pelting with stones, succeeded. The enemies landed at different points. Miss Mangan's charge was recaptured, his antagonist was stoned by his owners until out of range, and the incident closed.

It was not, however, without result.

"I think you never met Captain Cloherty, Mr. Coppinger?" said Tishy, with a glance at Captain Cloherty that spoke disapproval. "He's not as useful in a fight as you are, though he _is_ in the Army!"

"My branch of the service mends wounds, it doesn't go out of its way to get them!" returned Captain Cloherty, composedly, "and I haven't any use for getting bitten."

"Mr. Coppinger wasn't so nervous!" retorted Miss Mangan, scorchingly, "and it's well for me he wasn't! What'd I say to the Doctor if I had to tell him his pet dog was dead?"

"Something else, I suppose!" suggested Captain Cloherty, his red moustache lifting in a grin that Miss Mangan found excessively exasperating; "it wouldn't be the best time to tell the truth at all!"

"How funny you are!" said Tishy, with a blighting glance. "It's easy to joke now, when Mr. Coppinger has done the work!"

She swept another glance of her grey eyes at Larry, very different from that that she had bestowed upon the callous Cloherty.

Few young men object to exaltation at the expense of another, especially if that other has two or three inches the advantage in height, and they are themselves not unconscious of deserving. Larry led his bicycle and walked beside Tishy, and found pleasure in meeting her again after four years of absence. For one thing, she had become even better-looking than he remembered her--turned into a thundering handsome young woman, he thought--and it became him, as an artist, to be a connoisseur in such matters.

"Oh, so you're going to see the Doctor, are you?" she said, "I know he was expecting you." She hesitated. "I told him I thought I'd be at Mrs. Whelply's this afternoon. He--he might be surprised if he thought I had Tinker out, and that he was in a fight--"

"I'll keep it dark," Larry said, rea.s.suringly, while he wondered if the protecting darkness were also to envelop Captain Cloherty, R.A.M.C. He thought, on the whole, perhaps, yes.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

Major Talbot-Lowry had been in a pa.s.sion 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 finis.h.!.+ They mightn't be able to call us English invaders and to steal our property then!

Englis.h.!.+ 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!" d.i.c.k shouted, veering in the wind of his own words like a rudderless s.h.i.+p 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 a.s.set 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 d.i.c.k, 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.

d.i.c.k 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 cla.s.sified 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 att.i.tude 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 G.o.d, 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 d.i.c.k, 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 d.i.c.k, 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.