"That only made it worse! If she had sung a solo it would have been less humiliating," replied Mrs. Kirby, with a masterly change of front. "I was indignant! Christian, with her charming voice, only playing accompaniments and singing in the glees, and that unendurable Mangan girl posing as the Prima Donna, and oh! her clothes!"

"Or her want of them!" interposed Mrs. St. George, on a profound ba.s.s note.

"And her songs! I don't profess to know much about music, but I _do_ know what I like!" continued Mrs. Kirby with the finality and decision that usually accompany the admission. "People may tell me she has a fine voice, but I _detest_ enormous contralto voices!

_What_ I suffered during the last thing she sang as an encore!

And that final yell of 'Asth.o.r.e'! at least an octave below her voice!

I could only think of the bellow of the cow that jumped over the moon!"

"What made _me_ indignant," said Mrs. St. George, in emulous depreciation, ignoring this flight of fancy, "was their not having 'G.o.d save the King'! A cowardly concession to the Gaelic League, of course! I really think that Georgy, who is in the Navy, might have insisted upon it!"

"They did discuss it," said Frederica, forced by her friend into the position of devil's advocate, "but they were afraid of the sixpenny seats. The Mangans said that there would inevitably be rows. They have had to give up having it at anything now."

This was unanswerable, and Mrs. St. George tacitly accepted defeat.

"I believe that young Mangan is simply a _Rebel_" resumed Mrs.

Kirby, portentously. "Bill thinks he'll go too far some day, and the police will _have_ to take notice of him. But with the Government yielding and pandering--"

Here, at least, was a subject on which all three disputants were in complete agreement. Wolfe Tone or Robert Emmet could hardly have abhorred the Government of England more heartily than did these three respectable, law-abiding, unalterably-Unionist ladies, and for some time the more recent enormities of the rule upon which they theoretically bestowed their unshakable, allegiance, took precedence of Miss Mangan as a subjct of disapproval.

"Nevertheless," summed up Mrs. St. George gloomily at the end of a sweeping condemnation, "we must submit. We can do nothing. As Courtney says, _we_ can't cut off cows' tails and shoot our tenants for not paying their rent! _He_ says--"

Colonel St. George's further views were lost in the entrance of the lawn tennis players, rain-sprinkled, heated, bringing with them a lively aroma of trodden gra.s.s and wet flannel, and convinced of their superiority to those who had sought shelter, and were now (to quote Miss Talbot-Lowry) soddenly eating all the hot cakes. Judith had recently returned from one of her forays, and had not spared her family her views on the _rapprochement_ with the musical world of Cluhir that the concert had involved. She was now seated with Bill Kirby on a secluded sofa in a corner of the long drawing-room, and was entertaining that deeply-enamoured young man with her accustomed fluency.

Mr. Kirby, having petted and patronised Judith in her youth, when he was still nine years older than she, had, since her recent return, awakened to the fact that this difference in age had been mysteriously obliterated, and that at present, Judith was not only his superior in intelligence, but also in all those subsidiary matters in which age is generally and erroneously believed to confer an advantage.

"If it had even been a good concert," Judith remarked, gobbling tea and cake with a heartiness that, taken in connection with an admirable complexion and very clear blue eyes, was in itself attractive to a hungry young man, "I could have borne it better. But it was absolutely deadly--all but just our own people's turns, of course--a sort of lyrical geography--the map of Ireland set to music! Bantry Bay, Killarney, the Mountains of Somewhere, the Waters of Somewhere else, all Irish, of course! I get so sick of Ireland and her endearing young charms--and all the entreaties to Erin to remember! As if she ever forgot!"

"She remembers her enemies, all right," rejoined Bill Kirby, gloomily, "but she forgets her friends! I know someone who hasn't got any enemies to remember, but she's just like Ireland in one way!"

"What way?" demanded Judith, "and who do you mean?"

"You know very well who I mean! And the reason she is like Ireland is that she forgets her friends! People who use to give her leads out hunting when she was a little girl and never forgot _her_!"

"In the first place, I deny it, and in the second place, serves them right if she does forget them," replied Judith tranquilly; "I don't know the injured beings you refer to but I _do_ know my own family. I take my eye off them for five minutes, and I come home to find they have not only forgotten my existence, but they have plunged into the heart of that appalling Cluhir crowd, and are indignant with me--at least the boys and papa are--because I don't do the same!

Strange as it may appear, _I_ like nice people!"

"I wasn't talking of your family," said Bill Kirby morosely, "Hang it all. _I'm_ quite a nice person, and haven't plunged into the heart of Cluhir, but it's only by sort of accident, like this, that you will ever say a word to me!"

"You'd better insure against accidents of this kind!" said Judith, who was frankly enjoying herself; "and if you choose to renounce the charms of Cluhir, you needn't make a virtue of it! Perhaps they don't want you! They mayn't realise what a nice person you are! Would you like me to explain to Tishy Mangan--"

Bill Kirby, who was possessed of good brown eyes and a profile like a handsome battle-axe, was a young man of no special intellectual gifts, but the sound judgment that distinguished him in the hunting-field was wont to stand his friend in other emergencies. He was entirely aware that he was no match for Judith in debate, but he was also aware that deeds sometimes speak louder than words. He attempted no spoken reply, but after a wary glance round the room, he permitted his large, brown hand to descend upon and envelop Judith's, that rested on the sofa beside him.

"You know you're talking rot," he murmured, cautiously. "No, don't struggle. If you say things like that, you've got to be punished. Are you sorry?"

"Not in the least!" replied Judith, with an equal caution; "but you will be, soon! Mrs. St. George is looking at you!" The battle-axe profile of Mr. Kirby betrayed no hint of the situation.

"Keep quiet, and say you're sorry! _I_ don't mind sitting here all the afternoon--like this," he added, with a slight additional pressure.

"I shall count three," said Judith suavely, "and then I shall ask you in a loud, clear voice to get me another cup of tea. One--"

Further developments of the situation need not be attempted, the more so as at this juncture the entrance of two uninvited guests caused a redistribution of seats, whose most marked feature was the creation of a desert s.p.a.ce round the new arrivals and their hostess.

It would perhaps be irregular to say that the Reverend Matthew and Mrs. Cotton were the inc.u.mbents of the parish church of Cluhir (and had been profanely described as "the inc.u.mbrance of Cluhir"); even to speak of them as, respectively, its curate and its rector, might, though more accurate, be, perhaps, considered flippant. It would also be open to the reproach of lack of originality. Yet, unoriginal though the dominant clergywoman of fiction may be, it cannot be denied that St. Paul's injunctions in connection with the subjection of wives did not commend themselves to Mrs. Cotton. It may be, indeed, that her views on matrimony, being more instructed, were sounder than those of St. Paul, and she could at least argue that had he been acquainted with Mr. Cotton he might have modified them. In any case, whatever St.

Paul might think about it, Mrs. Cotton was quite sure that she was better fitted than was her husband to deal with the matter that had brought them to Mount Music.

She did not, however, as becomes a sound tactician, approach the point with undue directness. Lady Isabel had sent her daughters to school in Paris; Lady Isabel had, on a bygone occasion, been goaded by Mrs.

Cotton into a declaration that her servants' religion was a matter with which she only concerned herself if they neglected their religious duties. Mrs. Cotton, remembering these things and being ever filled to br.i.m.m.i.n.g with what Christian has called The Spirit of the Nation, opened with a general attack upon the Church of Rome, and narrowed to a tale of "a friend of mine and Mr. Cotton's. A clergyman.

A man of private means." After this stimulating prelude, the tale ceased for a moment, while Mrs. Cotton blinked her small black eyes at her hostess, several times, as was her practice. "Oh, a very wealthy man!" she continued, imposingly, "and he bought a lovely house, with a garden; a lovely garden!" The thought of a garden was a fortunate one, and enlisted Lady Isabel's wandering attention. "But at the end of the garden what was there but a Nunnery. And the clergyman found that his daughters were always slipping out into the garden, and what was it but the nuns that were getting hold of the girls! Very refined women they were, and well able to deceive young girls!" The tale was flowing swiftly now, but Mrs. Cotton paused dramatically, and continued on a lower key. "The clergyman had had bookshelves made to fit the study, and a splendid antique sideboard to fitanitch--" Mrs. Cotton spoke fast, and the last three words ran bewilderingly into one. "But he sold the house AT ONCE! Yes, indeed, Lady Isabel! Weren't his daughters' souls more to him than bookshelves?"

Lady Isabel, who was still wrestling with the apparently Russian problem in connection with the antique sideboard, attempted no reply to this inquiry, and Mrs. Cotton, considering that her hostess' mind was now sufficiently prepared, did not wait for her opinion, and swept on to her objective, which was the denunciation of the conduct of the recent concert, and more especially of the disposition of the proceeds. "Of course, _I_ don't know in whose hands it lay, Lady Isabel," she said, raising her tea cup to her lips, and in order to do so curtaining it behind her ample veil, "but the Roman Catholics seemed to consider that it was _all_ to go to them, and the paltry sum I have mentioned was all they gave Mr. Cotton and me for _our_ charities!" Her black eyes snapped nenacingly at Lady Isabel over the rim of the veiled tea cup.

Lady Isabel uttered a soothing and indefinite murmur, and the indictment proceeded.

"Considering that _your_ family, Lady Isabel, took a leading part in the programme, and that I may say the greater number of the half-crown seats were Protestants, I _do_ think that _our_ Church--"

It avails not to follow Mrs. Cotton's diatribes further. Lady Isabel had lived for some five and twenty years in Ireland, but they had not sufficed to expound to her the intricacies of the web of jealousies, hatreds, fears, and stupidities, that has been spun by that intolerant Spirit of the Nation, in order to separate, as far as may be, the two Churches who divide the kindly people of the Island of Saints between them. Lady Isabel might see that in the distribution of the spoils Mrs. Cotton had possibly a lawful grievance, but she could not, even after five and twenty years, quite understand how solacing to the soul of Mrs. Cotton was the consideration of the wrongs endured by her Church.

"Yes, indeed, Lady Isabel! Not one penny more! And then Dr. Mangan to say to Mr. Cotton when I sent him to complain about it, that it was better than a poke in the eye with a blunt stick! That was by the way of making a joke of it! And that the Hunt wanted it more than we did!

I wonder how much Father Greer left the Hunt!"

Again Mrs. Cotton's beady eyes snapped several times, in an emotion that was not far from enjoyment. The iniquities of Father Greer were very dear to her, and she was confident that in this matter of dividing the spoil he had not disappointed her.

Pa.s.sing on from the concert, Mrs. Cotton dealt with many subjects in a harangue that turned the seamy side of Cluhir to the sun, with the skill of a buyer of old clothes. Lady Isabel, behind the prisoning tea-table, after a hopeless, helpless glance round an a.s.sembly that was either preoccupied or wilfully blind, relapsed into the brain stupor that was sometimes sent, like an anodyne, to those whom fate had consigned to Mrs. Cotton's keeping. The Reverend Matthew, in whom a prolonged course of his wife had developed a condition, when in her society, of semi-hypnotic trance, sat in silence at his hostess' side, devouring cake, and swallowing cups of tea, until what had apparently been starvation was averted; he then dreamily withdrew, and joined himself vaguely, to the group of which Miss Coppinger formed one.

Frederica's early training had, as has been said, implanted in her an ineradicable interest in the Church. Even the dulled, almost obliterated personality of Mr. Cotton still held for her some of the magic of his cloth. She moved her chair to admit him to the fellowship of which she was one, and offered him the seat that had been hastily vacated by Mrs. Kirby on his approach, with a darkling eye of reproof at that experienced lady.

Conversation with Mr. Cotton resembled conversation with his wife, in that it was apt to be one-sided, life having taught him to take the side not patronised by Mrs. Cotton. When, however, severed from her, he was capable of imparting rudimentary fragments of fact, and one of these he now offered to Miss Coppinger.

"I hear your nephew is the candidate chosen by the Nationalists here for the next election, Miss Coppinger," he said, his pale eyes regarding her drearily over the top of his spectacles.

Frederica sat erect in her chair with a jerk, and a hot red sprang, like a danger-signal, to her face.

"I've heard nothing of it," she said stoutly, but with a leaping heart of horror. "How do you know it is the case?"

"It is commonly reported in the town," replied Mr. Cotton, "One hears these things--"

"I can't believe it--I can't believe it," said Frederica; the colour had left her cheeks, and her eyes hurried from Mr. Cotton's face to Mrs. St. George's, and roved on to Mrs. Kirby, who was seated near, and had evidently felt the wind of the shot.

"Why, the boy is only just twenty-one!" said Mrs. Kirby, rolling herself and her chair back into action to the support of her friend.

"With all deference to you, Mr. Cotton, I don't believe a word of it!

Of course, Larry would have told you, Frederica! I can well believe that those Gaelic League people would like to have him if they can get him! Depend upon it, the wish is father to the thought!"

Frederica made no reply; her lips were tightly compressed, and her unseeing eyes, though they appeared to be fixed on Mrs. Kirby's broad and friendly face, were looking along the paths of memory to the time when that barrier of ice had not arisen between her and Larry.

"I understand that the suggestion emanated from Dr. Mangan," went on Mr. Cotton, faintly stimulated by his unaccustomed success. "I am not aware if young Mr. Coppinger has made any reply."

Mrs. Kirby put her plump white hand on Frederica's narrow knee. "I shouldn't distress myself if I were you, my dear," she said in a low voice. "Quite possibly it's all a mistake--" She turned to Mr.

Cotton, who was relapsing into trance; his eyes had followed the movement of her hand, and were being held, hypnotically, by the sparkle of the diamonds in her rings. "At all events," went on Mrs.

Kirby, "a general election now is very unlikely, and our valued member--upon my word, I don't even remember his name!--isn't likely to resign in Larry's favour, so we needn't discuss it now! I am sure, Mr.

Cotton, that you will agree with me, that the less said about it the better; most probably the whole thing will die out and come to nothing!" She glanced at Mrs. St. George, and perceiving that the news had shattered her in only less degree than Frederica, she continued to address Mr. Cotton, "Such weather! Isn't it? How does your garden like all this rain, Mr. Cotton? Our strawberries _won't_ ripen, and as for the poor hay--! You really ought to have prayers for fine weather for us next Sunday!"