This is a long-winded way of saying that Christian realised that she had to restore confidence in Larry"s young friend, and that she proceeded forthwith to do so. She would have laughed at the thought that anyone could be afraid of her, but she felt instinctively that a soothing monologue, a sort of cradle-song, was what the occasion demanded; so she began to speak of the bluebells, the woods, the weather, saying with a sort of languid simplicity, the things that the moment suggested; "babbling," as she subsequently a.s.sured Judith, "of green fields," until she had so lulled and bored him, that in self-defence he produced an observation.
"D"you read, Miss Christian?" said Barty, bringing forth his mouse with an abrupt and mountainous effort.
Christian repressed the reply that she had possessed the accomplishment for some years, and asked for further information.
"Poetry," said Barty, largely; "it"s--it"s the only reading I care for. I thought you might like it--" he added, hurriedly, and was again wrapped in the coc.o.o.n.
"Oh, I do, very much," said Christian, trying hard not to quench the smoking flax; "I"ve learnt quant.i.ties by heart, and Larry is always lending me new books of poetry. He says that you and he discuss it together."
"I never knew one like him!" said Barty, with sudden energy. "There"s no subject at all that he"s not interested in!" In the heat of his enthusiasm for Larry, the coc.o.o.n wrappings were temporarily shrivelled. He turned his dark short-sighted eyes on Christian, and took up his parable with excitement.
"Did he tell you he"s learning Irish? I"ll engage it"ll be no trouble to _him_!"
"He"s always getting hold of new ideas," said Christian; "I wish _I_ could learn Irish."
"There"s a branch of the Gaelic League in Cluhir," said Barty, eagerly. "There are a lot learning Irish. I suppose you wouldn"t be disposed to become a member, Miss Christian?" He gazed at her imploringly.
"I don"t know if I should be allowed," said Christian, hesitatingly.
"You see I"ve only just come home. I"ve been at school in Paris for the last two years--"
A memory of a ferocious denunciation of the Gaelic League by her father came to her; she wondered what Barty would do if she offered him one of the profane imitations of the Major that had earned for her the laurels of the schoolroom.
"Oh, I"m quite sure I mightn"t become a Gaelic Leaguer!" she repeated, beginning to laugh, while samples of her father"s rhetoric welled up in her mind.
Barty thought he had never seen anything so enchanting as her face, as she looked at him, laughing, with wavering lights, filtered through young beech leaves, in her eyes. He felt a delirious desire to show her that he was not a tongue-tied fool; that he also, like Larry, was a man of ideas.
"I wish to G.o.d!" he said, with the disordered violence of a shy man, "that there was anny league or society in Ireland that would override cla.s.s prejudice, and oblitherate religious bigotry!"
He had s.n.a.t.c.hed a paragraph from his last address to the Gaelic Leaguers of Cluhir, and with it was betrayed into the p.r.o.nunciation that mastered him in moments of excitement.
Christian said to herself that she thanked heaven Judith wasn"t there to make her laugh.
"I don"t _think_ I"m a religious bigot," she said, with a faint tremor in her voice, "but one never knows!" Her head was bent down, the brim of her large hat hid her face.
Barty was stricken. What devil had possessed him? She was hurt! She was a Protestant, and in his cursed folly he had made her think he was reproaching her for Bigotry. Good G.o.d! What could he do?
Two emotions, hung, as it were, on hair-triggers, held the stage. In Christian, the fiend of laughter held sway, in poor Barty, the angel of tears. It was perhaps well for them both that their next step in advance took them round a bend in the path, and brought them face to face with the picnic.
CHAPTER XVIII
Young Mr. Coppinger had been well inspired in his selection of a site for the entertainment. The trees along the river"s bank had ceased for a s.p.a.ce, leaving a level ring of gra.s.s, whereon certain limestone boulders had scattered themselves, with the deliberate intention, as it would seem, of providing seats for picnickers. Across that fairy circle of greenness a small va.s.sal-stream bore its tribute waters to the Ownashee, with as much dignity as it had been able to a.s.sume in the forty level yards that lay between its suzerain and the steep glen down which it had flung itself. Not only had young Mr. Coppinger been so gracious as to provide this setting for the revel, but he was even now sacrificing a spotless pair of white flannel trousers to the needs of the company, and had concentrated on the cajolery of the fire, which, obedient to the etiquette that rules picnic fires, refused to consume any fuel less stimulating than matches. Other of the young gentlemen of the party, including the half-twin, Mr. George Talbot-Lowry (now a sub-lieut. R.N.) were detailed to gather sticks, a duty that was so arranged as to involve, with each load of firewood, the jumping of the va.s.sal-stream, and thus gave opportunity for a display akin to that of the jungle-c.o.c.ks, who, naturalists inform us, leap emulatively before their ladies. Prominent among these was that youth who, as a medical student, had inspired Miss Mangan in flapperhood, with an admiration for his gifts, intellectual and physical, that was only equalled by his own appreciation of these advantages. His opinion remained unchanged, but he was beginning to fear that Tishy"s taste was deteriorating. None sprang more lightly across that little stream, or commented more humorously on men and things, than Captain Edward Cloherty, R.A.M.C.; yet Miss Mangan, to whom these exercises were dedicated, remained oblivious of them and aloof, apparently wholly absorbed by Martha-like attentions with regard to the public welfare, and particularly those connected with the fire. It was not for nothing that Tishy had had to rise early on many a winter morning to see that her father should go forth to his work suitably warmed and fed. Now, with scathing criticisms of the methods of Mr. Coppinger, she swept him from his position as stoker, and, as by magic, or so it seemed to him, the sticks blazed, the kettle began to sing. Miss Mangan"s skill was not limited to the prosaic lighting of material fires only. With the two most distinguished young men of the party at her feet, she rose to the height of all her various powers. The fire roared and crackled, the kettle bubbled, and Tishy"s grey and gleaming glances through the smoke were like a succession of boxes of matches, cast upon the responsive fires of Larry"s and Georgy"s holiday hearts.
The young May moon has often been a factor in affairs of the heart whose importance cannot be ignored. It is true that on this especial afternoon the mischief might seem to have been begun before she could, strictly, have been held responsible; none the less her madness must have been in the air, otherwise it is difficult to account for the joint and simultaneous overthrow of two young gentlemen of taste and quality, by Miss Tishy Mangan.
Georgy, aged but 19, just home from far and forlorn seas, with, as the poet says, a heart for any fate, might have been excused for swallowing any good provided for him by the G.o.ds, whole, and without criticism, but for Mr. St. Lawrence Coppinger, lately come of age, a man of taste, endowed with special _finesse_ of feeling, it might have been expected that a highly-coloured peac.o.c.k b.u.t.terfly would have had but scant appeal. In fact, one is driven back upon the young May Moon as the sole plausible explanation of the fact that, on that afternoon of bewitchment, Tishy Mangan went to Larry"s head.
These temporary aberrations are afflictions for which the most refined young men must occasionally be prepared, and Larry"s overthrow was not without justification. Quite apart from her looks--and anyone would have been forced to admit that they were undeniable--there was her voice, the true contralto _timbre_, thick and mellow, dark and sweet, like heather honey, he thought, while he and Georgy sprawled on the gra.s.s at her feet (and she had good feet) making very indifferent jokes, in that exaggerated travesty of an Irish brogue which is often all that an English school will leave with Irish boys, and vicing with each other in the folly proper to such an occasion.
"I don"t see your shoe-buckles!" Larry said, looking from her feet to her lips, with a meaning and impudent lift of his blue eyes. "Have you given up wearing them?"
Tishy"s colour deepened; she remembered instantly what she was meant to remember.
"You"re regretting the choice you made, are you?" she said, with a toss of her head. "Never fear! The buckles will be there when they"re wanted!"
"Don"t trouble about them!" says Larry, tremendously pleased with his success as a flirtatious man of the world; "I don"t think they will be required!"
It is necessary to have attained to a reasonably advanced age to be able to recognise pathos in the fatuities that so frequently form a feature of love"s young dream. Christian, listening with one ear to her brother and cousin, while into the other the genuine idiom of her native land flowed, ardently, from the now unsealed lips of Barty Mangan, began to wonder why the boys were talking like stage Irishmen; Georgy, she knew, was idiot enough for anything, but she had to admit to herself that Larry, also, was rather overdoing it. Christian was able to feel amused, but she also felt, quite illogically, that what had been distaste for Tishy Mangan was rapidly deepening into dislike.
The picnic raged on, with prodigious eatings and drinkings, with capsizings of teapots in full sail, with disastrous slaughterings of insects (disastrous to plates and tablecloths rather than to the insects) with facetious doings with heated tea-spoons and pellets of bread, with, in short, all that Mrs. Mangan and her fellow hostesses expected of a truly prosperous picnic.
Captain Cloherty, alone, of all the company, failed to contribute his share to the sum of success. He sat silent, a thing of gloom, the lively angle of whose waxed, red moustache only accentuated the downward droop of the mouth beneath it. But the skeleton at the feast has its uses, if only as a contrast, and Mrs. Mangan, who was more observant than she appeared to be, noted the gloom with a gratified eye, and being entirely aware of its cause, said to herself with satisfaction:
"Ha, ha, me young man!"
This picnic was, in truth, made ever memorable in the circle of Mrs.
Mangan"s friends by reason of the triumph of Tishy.
"Ah, that was the day she cot the two birds under the one stone!"
Great-Aunt Cantwell (who did not care for her great-niece) was accustomed to say. "Well! Such goings-on! And after all, Tishy"s nothing so much out of the way, for all Frankie Mangan thinks the world should die down before her!"
The two birds referred to were still fluttering round their captor, when a new element was added to the party in the large presence of "Frankie Mangan" himself. The Big Doctor approached slowly, elephant-like in his noiseless, rolling gait, impressive, as is an elephant, in size, in the feeling he imparted of restrained strength, of intense intelligence, masked, as in an elephant, with benevolence, and held watchfully in reserve.
He now advanced upon the scene of festivity with purpose in his manner.
"Now, ladies! Let me tell you I"m come on a very unpopular errand! To apply the closure! I think you"re all sitting out here long enough for the time of year. Remember it"s only May!"
"We"re more likely to remember it"s Mayn"t!" retorted Mrs. Whelply, who was a recognised wit, and opponent of the Big Doctor. "Isn"t it enough for him to bully us when we"re sick, but he comes tormenting us when we"re well, too!"
Thus she appealed to her fellow-matrons, looking round upon them for support with a festive eye.
"You"ll none of you be well long, if you don"t mind yourselves!"
answered, with equal spirit, the Doctor, with a quiet eye on his daughter and her attendant swains.
"Why then I have a sore throat this minute with scolding Mr. Coppinger for the nonsense he"s talking!" declared Mrs. Whelply. "Asking me to sing a cawmic at the concert he says he"s going to have! There"s no fear but whatever _I_ sing will be cawmic enough!"
"I"m sure I"ll have great pleasure in cauterising you!" responded the Doctor, gallantly; "but if you"ll take my advice now, you won"t want so much of it later on!"
"I thought you were going to take me on the river," said Tishy in a low voice to Larry, looking resentfully at her father.
"I"ll tell you what we"ll do," said Larry, quickly; "much better than the river--we"ll go back to the house and dance! I"ll fix it up with your father!"
"Good egg!" said Sub-Lieut. Talbot-Lowry, with seaman-like decision, "Miss Mangan will kindly note all waltzes are reserved for use of naval officers!"
"Miss Mangan will kindly do no such thing!" returned that young lady, dealing a flash from between her curled eyelashes that put the naval officer temporarily out of action, so devastating was its effect.