Lady Isabel"s and Miss Coppinger"s eyes followed him, as he swung, with that light halt in his leisurely stride, down the long drawing-room, trolling in the high baritone, that someone had pleased him by likening to a cavalry trumpet,
"Oh, Father McCann was a beautiful man, But a bit of a rogue, a bit of a rogue!
He was full six feet high, he"d a cast in his eye, And an illigant brogue, an illigant brogue!"
In both his wife"s and his cousin"s faces was the same look, the look that often comes into women"s faces when, unperceived, they regard the sovereign creature. Future generations may not know that look, but in the faces of these women, born in the earlier half of the nineteenth century, there was something of awe, and of indulgence, of apprehension, and of pity. d.i.c.k was so powerful, so blundering, so childlike. Miss Frederica expressed something of their common thought when she said:
"d.i.c.k seems to forget that he is Larry"s guardian as well as I. Also that Larry is a Roman Catholic, and it is not only useless but dishonourable to ignore it!"
It has been said that Lady Isabel had _les qualities de ses defauts_; in Miss Coppinger"s case the words may be restored to their rightful sequence. She had the inevitable _defauts de ses qualites_. The sense of duty was as prominent a feature of her soul as a hump on her long straight back would have been, but toleration was inconspicuous. She ran straight herself, and though she could forgive deviations on the part of others, she could not forget them. She was entirely and implacably Protestant, a typical member of that Church that expects friendship from its votaries, but leaves their course of action to their own consciences. It was a very successful example of the malign humour of Fate that Miss Coppinger"s ward should belong to the other Church, that exacts not only obedience, but pa.s.sion, and it was a master-stroke that Frederica"s sense of duty should compel her to enforce her nephew to compliance with its demands.
"Dear Frederica, d.i.c.k will leave all religious things to you, I know--" warbled Lady Isabel, in her gentle, musical voice, that suggested something between the tones of a wood pigeon and an ocarina.
"And they couldn"t be in better hands!"
"But my dear Isabel, that is precisely what I complain of! d.i.c.k"s solitary suggestion has been that we should send Larry to Winchester, which is perfectly impracticable! I entirely agree with him, but, unfortunately, _I_ know that it is our duty to send him to one of those--" Miss Coppinger hesitated, swallowed several adjectives, and ended with Christian tameness--"one of those special schools for Roman Catholics."
"Well, dear, I daresay it won"t make very much difference," consoled Lady Isabel. "I have always heard that Monkshurst was a charming school, and dear Larry will be _so_ well off--I don"t suppose his religion will interfere in _any_ way. It seldom does, does it?"
"Not, I admit, unless he wanted a job in this country!" began Miss Coppinger grimly, and again remembered that intolerance was not to be encouraged. "The end of it is that I shall endeavour to do _my duty_--which is, apparently, to do everything that I most entirely disapprove of--and that on the day Larry is twenty-one, I shall march out of Coppinger"s Court, and dance a jig, and then he may have the Pope to stay with him if he likes!"
While Miss Coppinger was thus belabouring and releasing her conscience in the drawing-room, quite another matter was engaging the attention of her ward, and of his entertainers at the school-room tea-table.
This was no less a thing than the dissolving of the existing Bands, and the formation of a new society, to be known as "The Companions of Finn."
Larry Coppinger"s entrance, literally at a bound, into the Talbot-Lowry family group, had landed him, singularly enough, into the heart of their affection and esteem. He was now the originator of this revolutionary scheme, and having in him that special magnetic force that confers leadership, the scheme was being put through.
"The point is," he said, eagerly, "that when we are split up into two bands, we can do nothing much, but the lot of us together might--might make quite a difference."
"Difference to what?" said Richard, ex-chief of the Elder Statesmen, unsympathetically. Like his father before him, he disliked change.
"Well, hold on!" said Larry, quickly, "wait just one minute, and I"ll tell you. I got the notion out of a book I found in the library. I don"t expect I"d have thought of it myself--" Larry"s transparent sky-blue eyes sought Richard"s appealingly. "It"s--it"s only poems, you know, but it"s most frightfully interesting--I brought it with me--"
"Oh--poems!" said Richard, without enthusiasm. "Are they long ones?"
"I don"t seem to care so awfully much about poetry," abetted Judith, late Second-in-command.
John looked sapient, and said, neutrally, that some poetry wasn"t bad.
The Twins, who were engaged in a silent but bitter struggle for the corpse of a white rabbit, recently born dead, made no comment. Only Christian, her small hands clenched together into a brown knot, her eyes fastened on Larry"s flushed face, murmured:
"Go on, Larry!"
Larry went on.
"It"s called the Spirit of the Nation," he said. "It"s full of splendid stuff about Ireland, and the beastly way England"s treated her. It sort of--sort of put the notion into my head that we might start some sort of a Fenian band, and that some day we might--well,"
he turned very red, and ended with a rush, "we might be able to strike a blow for Ireland!"
"Moy oye!" said Richard, intensifying his favourite invocation in his surprise, "but what"s wrong with Ireland?"
The position wanted but the touch of opposition. Larry rather well bet Richard that there was plenty wrong with her! Penal laws! Persecution!
Saxon despots grinding their heels into a down-trodden people!
Revolution! Liberation! Larry had a tongue that was hung loosely in his head and was a quick servant to his brain.
"Of course I know we"re rather young--well, you"re nearly fourteen, Richard, and I"m thirteen and three months, that"s not so awfully young. Anyway, everything"s got to have a beginning--" He glowed upon his audience of six, his fair hair in a shock, his eyes and his cheeks in a blaze, and one, at least, of that audience caught fire.
The Revolutionary or Reformer, who hesitates at becoming a bore, is unworthy of his high office; and Larry, like most of his cla.s.s, required but little encouragement. He produced a large book, old and shabby, the green and gold of its covers stained and faded, but still of impressive aspect.
"There are heaps of them, and they"re all jolly good. It"s rather hard to choose--" began the Revolutionary with a shade of nervousness.
Then he again met Christian"s eyes, shining and compelling, and took heart from them.
"Well, there"s "Fontenoy," of course that"s a ripper--Well, I don"t know what _you"ll_ all think, but _I_ think this is a jolly good one," he said with a renewal of defiance, and began to read, at first hurriedly, but gathering confidence and excitement as he went on:
"Did they dare, did they dare, to slay Owen Roe O"Neill?
Yes, they slew with poison, him they feared to meet with steel.
May G.o.d wither up their hearts! May their blood cease to flow!
May they walk in living death, who poisoned Owen Roe!
We thought you would not die--we were sure you would not go, And leave us in our utmost need to Cromwell"s cruel blow-- Sheep without a shepherd, when the snow shuts out the sky-- Oh! Why did you leave us, Owen? Why did you die?"
The Elder Statesmen listened in critical silence, while Larry, not without stumbles, stormed on through the eight verses of the poem.
When he had finished it, there was a pause. The audience was impressed, even though they had no intention of admitting the fact.
Christian gave a tremendous sigh. The contest for the defunct rabbit, that had been arrested, broke out again, fiercely, but with caution.
Then Richard said, dubiously:
"Well, that"s all right, Larry--I meant it"s jolly sad, and awfully good poetry, I"m sure--but how on earth are you going to work a show out of it? I can"t see--"
"Unless," interrupted Judith, thoughtfully, "unless we sort of acted it--?"
John, who loved "dressing up," woke to life; even Richard began to see daylight.
"That"s not a bad notion, Judy!" he said briskly: "bags I Cromwell!
Larry, you can be Owen what"s-his-name."
Larry came down like a shot bird from the sphere of romance to which the poem had borne him.
"I hadn"t thought of any scheme," he said, pulling himself together; "I only wanted to give you a kind of notion of the rotten way England"s always treated Ireland--"
"But let"s!" cried Christian; "let"s act the whole book!"
Truisms are of their essence dull, but they must sometimes be submitted to, and the truism as to a book"s possible influence on the young and impressionable cannot here be avoided. What it is that decides if the book is to stamp itself on the plastic mind, or if the mind is to a.s.sert itself and stamp on the book, is a detail that admits less easily of dogmatism. The Companionage of Finn remained in being for but two periods of holiday. Before the boys had returned to school, it had seen its best days; the scheme for an armed invasion of England had been abandoned, even the more matured project of storming Dublin Castle was set aside; by the end of the Christmas holidays it had been formally dissolved.
It is not easy to understand, it is still harder to explain what it was in those fierce denunciations and complaints, outcome of that time of general revolt, the "Roaring Forties" of the nineteenth century, that made them echo in Larry"s heart, nor why the restless, pa.s.sionate spirit that inspired them should have remained with him, a perturbing influence from which he never wholly escaped. His young soul burned with hatred of England, borrowed from the Bards of "The Nation"
Office; he lay awake at nights, stringing rhymes in emulation of their shouts of fury, or picturing rebellions, of which he was to be the leader and hero. Larry"s enthusiasms were wont to devour not him only, but also his friends. It is impossible to escape from the conclusion that the career of the Companionage of Finn was abbreviated by Larry"s determination to recite to the Companions of the Order, in season and out of season, the poems by which, during his first Irish summer, he was possessed. There came a time when he had, as he believed, put away childish things, that, returning to these venerable trumpet-blasts, he asked himself, in the arrogance of youth, how these stale metaphors, these conventional phrases, these decorations as meretricious as stage jewellry, and metres that cantered along, as he told himself, like solemn old circus-horses, could have had the power to shake his voice and fill his eyes with tears, as he spoke them to Christian, who had so soon become his sole audience.
The strange thing was, as he acknowledged to himself, that while he could mock at them as poetry, he could not ignore their power. The intensity of their hatred, and of their sincerity, made itself felt, as the light of the sun will shine through the crude commonness of a vulgar stained-gla.s.s window.
CHAPTER V