"Well, it seems a great success," said Dr. Mangan cordially.

"Very good of you to come," responded his host, "more especially when it's--er--it's--er--such a purely local affair--"

Dr. Mangan understood that he was receiving the meed of religious tolerance.

"Well, Major," he said, expansively, "I lived long enough one time in England to learn that we mustn't give in too much to the clerical gentlemen! My own instinct is to be neighbourly, and to let my friends mind their own religion."

"Quite so, quite so," said Major d.i.c.k, magnanimously, forgetting, for the moment, those epithets that, in his more heated moments, he was accustomed to apply to the ministers of the Church to which he did not belong. "Quite so, Doctor. I'm all for toleration, and let the parsons fight it out among 'em! Busy men, like you and me, haven't time to worry about these affairs--we've other things to think about!" He stretched a long arm for a box of cigars, and handed it to his visitor; "sit down for a bit. There's no hurry. The ladies can have it all their own way for a while!"

Dr. Mangan lowered his huge person into an armchair of suitable proportions, and for some moments smoked his cigar in appreciative silence. As a matter of fact, he was planning an approach to the subject that had instigated his visit to the library, but he was in no hurry to begin upon it, remembering that the longest way round is often the shortest way home.

"By the way, Major," he said, taking the cigar from his mouth, and regarding it with affection, "did some one tell me that you were looking for a farming horse?"

"If they didn't, they might have," replied d.i.c.k. "McKinnon's at me to get another. I was going to ask you if you knew of anything?"

"Well, now, that's funny. I was wondering to myself this morning what I'd do with that big brown horse of mine. He'll not go hunting again, he never got the better of that hurt he got. But he's the very cut of a farm-horse. You see, the poor devil had to carry _me_!" ended the Big Doctor, with a laugh at himself.

"I'll tell McKinnon of him. He wants a horse that will--" a recital of the accomplishments exacted by d.i.c.k's steward followed.

Dr. Mangan listened with attention.

"Tell McKinnon he'd better have him over on trial. I know him and his requirements! The horse mightn't be able to play the piano for him!"

said the Doctor, facetiously. "I'm not afraid of _you_, Major, but I've a great respect for Mr. McKinnon!"

"Oh, I'll tell old Mack he'll be lucky to get him," said d.i.c.k, with his pleasant laugh; "you and I will strike the bargain!"

The approach had been pegged out, and Dr. Mangan turned, for the moment, to other subjects.

It was a damp and sodden day near the beginning of September, and a comfortable turf fire centralised and gave point to the room, as a fire inevitably does. Major Talbot-Lowry was in the habit of saying that the day of the month never warmed anybody yet, and if it was only for the sake of the books--the truth being that the library fire at Mount Music had never, in the memory of housemaid, been extinguished save only when "the Major was out of home." d.i.c.k, like most out-of-door men, considered that fresh air should be kept in its proper place, outside the walls of the house, and an ancient atmosphere, in which the varied scents of turf, tobacco, old books, and old hound-couples, all had their share, filled the large, dingy old room. Dusty and composite squirrel-h.o.a.rds of objects that defy cla.s.sification, covered outlying tables, and lay in heaps on the floor, awaiting that resurrection to useful life that Major Talbot-Lowry's faith held would some day be theirs, and were, in the meantime, the despair and demoralisation of housemaids.

Deep in the bearskin rug in front of the fire (a trophy of one of the rifles that filled a gla.s.s-fronted case over the mantel-shelf) lay the two little fox-terriers, Rinka and Tashpy, in moody and determined repose. For a brief period of suffering they had attempted to cleave to Christian; but as the throng grew, and the time for tea lingered, they had, in high offence, betaken themselves to their ultimate citadel, the library.

"I suppose it was her pup I was raffling awhile ago," remarked Dr.

Mangan, presently, as Rinka languidly rose, and having stretched herself, and yawned, musically and meretriciously, put her nose on his broad knee, deliberating as to whether the distinction of a human lap outweighed the lowly comfort of the bearskin.

"Doggie! Poor doggie! Down, now, down!" Dr. Mangan had no idea how to talk to dogs, and he did not wish Rinka to sit on his best grey trousers.

"Hit her a smack!" said Major d.i.c.k; "don't let her bother you.

Christian has spoilt these dogs till they're perfect nuisances! Yes, it's her pup. Who won it? It ought to be a clinker; it was the best of the lot--"

"I d'no did they draw for it yet. I took three tickets for it myself,"

said the Doctor. "I want it for a sort of a cousin of me own--a very sporting chap that's coming to Cluhir; he asked me could I get him a dog."

"What's he going to do in Cluhir?" asked d.i.c.k, carelessly.

The approach was now clear, and Dr. Mangan began to advance.

"Well, he's just taken his degree. He's a doctor, and he's coming here for a while. He can give me a help while he's looking out for a dispensary. He'd like some place where he'd get a little hunting now and then. I expect you know his father, Major--old Tom Aherne, of Pribawn--"

Major Talbot-Lowry became more interested.

"You don't say old Tom's son is a doctor! By Jove! That's very creditable to him--a decent old fellow Tom was--and you say he wants to hunt? That's the right sort of doctor! Look here!"

d.i.c.k sat up, the light of inspiration woke in his ingenuous blue eyes, he wrinkled his forehead with the super-intelligent concentration of a not very brilliant intellect. "Didn't I hear that old Fogarty is giving up the Dispensary here? Why don't you run him for that?"

The shepherding of d.i.c.k Lowry was really an affair of a simplicity unworthy of preparation made by that _ruse_ old collie, the Big Doctor. Nevertheless, being an artist, he continued to play the game.

"Knock Ceoil! Begad, that's a great notion! Now I come to think of it, I did hear something of old Fogarty giving up, but somehow I never thought of young Danny Aherne in connection with it. I thought I was as well able as any man to put two and two together, but I declare I might never have thought of it if it hadn't been for you! They say, if you're too close to a thing, you can't see it!"

Thus did the collie yap, while the sheep (who was a member of the Dispensary Committee) gratified, and pleasantly conscious of originality, trotted up the path and into the fold that had been prepared for it.

Meanwhile, in what house-agents call the reception-rooms, the Sale of Work raged on, with auctions, with raffles, with card-fortunes, told in a cave of rugs by a devoted sorceress, in a temperature that would inure her to face with composure the witch's destiny at the stake; with "occasional music," that fell upon the turmoil of talk more softly than any petals from blown roses on the gra.s.s, and was just sufficiently perceptible to impart the requisite flavour of festivity.

One item of the musical programme had indeed had power to still the storm, but since it was contributed by the Mangan Quartet, it must be admitted that, charming though it was, it owed something of its success to surprise. The countryside had rallied to Lady Isabel with a response that did credit to her as to them, yet, thronged though the rooms were the Mangan family shone with a unique l.u.s.tre as alone representing the mighty Church of Rome.

"Wonderful of them to come!" said the Church of Ireland ladies approvingly; "the only R.C.'s here!"

Yet the Mangan family was not quite alone in this representative position; young Mr. Coppinger, their (as it were) inventor and patentee, shared it with them, and was, moreover, beginning, for the first time, and not without displeasure, to realise something of the social complications that are involved by the difference of creed. It was a matter of atmosphere; quite intangible, and quite perceptible.

Larry was discovering that he was something of an anomaly. "Only an R.C. by accident," as he had heard someone say, in apparent extenuation (a benevolence that he found irritating). He was learning the meaning of the sudden silences, the too obvious changes of the course of conversation, that seemed to occur when he drew near. He had not, as yet, formulated these things to himself, but, on this turbulent afternoon, it was possibly some livelier apprehension of them that made him gravitate towards Barty Mangan, as towards a fellow pariah, and induced him to seek with him the far asylum of the schoolroom. There, save for the schoolroom cat, they were alone, and they sat for some minutes in grateful silence, looking out, across misty stretches of gra.s.s, to the river, and beyond it to the dense green of the trees of Coppinger's Court. The sky was very low and grey; by leaning out of the window a little, a far-off reach of river, at the western end of the valley, could be descried; above it there was a narrow slit in the clouds, and through it a faint and lovely primrose light fell, like a veil, that hid, while it told of the deathbed repentance of the dying day. Larry dragged his chair into the corner of the window, and watched the growing glory of the sunset with all his ardent soul in his eyes.

Whatever this boy did, he did vividly, and to Barty Mangan, seated on the shadow side, watching him, he was, as ever, a pageant, a being of incalculable impulse, of flashing intensity and splendour.

"Where on earth did you go, Barty? I looked about for you for ages before I found you; but there was such an awful crowd of women--I'm jolly glad to get out of it!" Larry leaned back in his chair and proceeded to light a cigarette, as an a.s.sertion of the rights of a man of nearly seventeen.

"My father was taking Tishy and me about, showing us the house,"

replied Barty, apologetically. (As a matter of fact, he said "me fawther," but if this, and similar details of p.r.o.nunciation, are not known by nature, it is labour in vain to attempt to indicate them by means of the wholly inadequate English alphabet.) "Larry," he went on, with the candour that made a gentleman of him, "I never was in a house like this before. I declare to you it frightens me! I feel like a rat gone astray! I was in the dining-room by myself, looking at the pictures, and that old fella' of a butler came in and frightened the heels off me! He kept an eye on me that was like a flame from a blow-pipe! You'd say he thought I was going to steal the house!"

"I expect he did, too," said Larry, "especially if he thought that you were a pal of mine. He hates me like blazes. He's one of those d.a.m.ned Orangemen. I say, do you remember that thing in The Spirit of the Nation, 'Orange and Green will carry the Day'? I bet old Evans would rather lose, any day, than be 'linked in his might' with a Papist like you or me! It's a most extraordinary thing how religion plays the devil with Ireland!"

There are certain standard truisms that must be rediscovered by each successive generation (possibly because they have bored the preceding one to extinction), and Larry was of the age at which truisms reveal themselves as new ideas, and sing and shine with the radiancy of morning stars. He was also young enough, and just sufficiently interested in religion, to find it exciting to denounce it. The fervour of his indictment lifted him from his chair, and he stood, with the evening light on his hot face, enjoying his theme, and his audience.

"I stayed with some people in England last holidays, friends of my people's; Protestants they were, too--Sour-faces,' as the 'Leader'

calls them!--and they didn't give a blow what religion I was! That was _my_ affair, they thought--and so it was, too! Not like this crowd here--I don't mean my _own_ people, you know," he added hastily, "they're all right!"

"Oh, I'm sure!" said Barty, in instant a.s.sent.

"I hate England, of course," continued the student of The Spirit of the Nation, hurriedly, "but I must say I get sick of this eternal blackguarding of Catholics by Protestants, and Protestants by Catholics--"

"Ah, they don't mean it half the time!" put in Barty, pacifically; "it's just a trick they have!"

"Well, I don't care," said Larry, who didn't like being interrupted, with a fling of his head; "they shouldn't do it! I hear people shutting up when I come into the room--just as if I didn't jolly well know they were abusing the priests or something like that. And if they only knew it, _I_ don't care a curse how much they abuse them!"

He took an angry pull at his cigarette, glaring at the unoffending Barty. "''Tisn't the man I respects, 'tis the office!' That's what Mrs. Twomey said, when I was chaffing her for dragging gravel up from the river to put in front of her house, because the priest, whom she loathes, was going to have a 'station' there!"

The orator paused for breath, as well as for the duty of keeping his cigarette alight.

"Well, and isn't she quite right, too?" said Barty. "I've no great fancy for Father Greer, but that doesn't affect my feeling for the Church."

He rose, and resting his elbows on the window-sill, leaned out into the still air.