Chapter XXIX

Barty Mangan fulfilled his father's behests, and on Saturday, he drove his mother to Coppinger's Court.

He drove a motor well; not brilliantly, like Larry, because Barty did nothing brilliantly, but capably and gently, with consideration for donkey-carts, with respect for horses, with kindness towards pedestrians, even without animosity towards cur-dogs. The surprising aspect of the fact was that he should be able, in any degree, to handle a car, the control of energy being an effort foreign to his nature. What in his mother was laziness, was with him transmuted to languor; his father's vigour and decision became in Barty a sort of tepid obstinacy, and the Doctor's fierce and fighting allegiance to his Church reappeared in his son as a peevish conscientiousness, that had provoked a friend of the family to say: "Barty's a dam' bad solicitor! He'll take up no case but what pleases him, and he'll touch nothing if he thinks he'll make money out of it!"

"Ah! He was always a fool for himself!" replied, heartily, Barty's great-aunt, Mrs. Cantwell, to whom the comment had been offered.

One aspect of the practical affairs of life, and one only, had power to rouse Barty from the dreamy passivity which had excited Great-Aunt Cantwell's contempt. Where Ireland and Irish politics came into question, some deep spring of sentiment and enthusiasm in him was touched, and all the force that he was capable of became manifest. All the strength and tenacity that were in him were concentrated in the cause of Nationalism; Ireland was his religion, and he felt himself to be one of her priesthood.

There are some gentle natures, with deep affections, but without much brain-power in whom an idea, a mental attitude, and especially a personal liking or disliking, is very easily implanted; yet, easily as it is introduced, once it has taken hold it can never be dislodged. The intellect has not energy enough for reconstruction; it accepts too readily, and, once saturated, the stain is indelible, because there is no power of growth.

Behold, then, Barty, gentle and obstinate, timid and an enthusiast, loving, yet implacable, seated in Larry's studio, regarding with submissive adoration the being compact of the antithesis of his qualities, and ready, for that being's sake, to make any sacrifice save that of renouncing him.

The being in question, wholly and feverishly absorbed in his own affairs of the heart, while bound by his oath to say nothing about them, brought himself with difficulty to attend to the retrospect of financial operations, hitherto postponed, but now insisted upon, by his man of business.

"Oh, first-rate, old chap--quite all right--good business!--" With these, and similar interjections, did the employer ratify and approve of his agent's transactions. Barty's legal training abetted his conscientiousness, and in his mild and monotonous brogue he laid before Larry a statement of his money matters that was as unsparing in detail as it was accurate.

"So now you see," he concluded, "I didn't act without careful consideration, and I consulted me fawther, besides others of experience in such matters. I believe there are people who are saying we sold too cheap to the tenants. But, on the other hand, the money's good and safe now; you have a certain and secure income, and you're in a very favourable position in the eyes of the people."

Larry pulled himself from reverie to ejaculate further general approval; then he rose from the table, upon which Barty's books had been displayed, and drawing forward an easel on which was a framed canvas covered by some vivid oriental drapery, he arranged it carefully with regard to the light. Then he caught away the drapery, stepping back, quickly, from the easel.

"What do you think of that, Barty?"

Barty, who was short-sighted, stood up and adjusted his eye-glasses, while he endeavoured to readjust his ideas, and to abandon the realms of business for those of art.

"But you know, Larry," he apologised, "I know nothing about paintings. You wouldn't know what tomfoolery I mightn't--" The apology broke off abruptly.

"Oh, God!" he muttered, feeling, in the shock of meeting her eyes, as if a sudden wind had swept his mind bare of business, of Larry, of all things save Christian, "it's herself!"

His sallow face had turned a dull red. He moved back a step or two, and then went forward again. The easel was low, and Barty was very tall; he went on his knees, and gazed, speechless.

Thus might a devout Russian have greeted a lost icon, and worshipped, silently, a re-found saint. Larry, equally absorbed, as any painter will understand, in the contemplation of his work, took no heed of its effect upon Barty.

"By Jove!" he murmured, drawing a big breath, "I wonder if I did it! I don't feel as if I had--something outside me--" He stopped; he felt as if Christian herself were there; he felt as if her arms were round him, his head upon her bosom. He was giddy with emotion. Scarcely knowing what he did he walked across the room, and stared out of the window, looking across his own woods to the woods of Mount Music.

That morning he had said good-bye to her for three long days. She had met him at the old stepping stones across the Ownashee, and she had made him renew his promise of silence until her return; he was sorry he couldn't tell old Barty; but no matter, nothing mattered, except the marvel that she was his. He whispered adoration to her, breathing her name again and again, crowning it, as with a wreath, with those old, familiar adjectives that had so lately become intense with new meaning for him; he forgot Barty, forgot even her portrait, as he thought of herself.

Barty came over to him; the two young men, with their common secret, suspected by neither, a secret that for one was a living ecstasy, and for the other an impossible ideal, stood silent, full of their own thoughts. Barty spoke first.

"It's a wonder to me! I didn't think you could paint like that, Larry! I didn't think anyone could!"

"Well, no more I can, really. This was a sort of a miracle and it painted itself."

The same impulse moved them both, and they returned to the easel on which was the picture, but with a quick movement Larry flung the drapery over the frame again and hid the picture.

"Didn't you say you had a message for me from your father?"

Barty accepted the change of subject with his accustomed resignation to Larry's moods.

"I have. He said he'd be at home to-morrow afternoon--that's Sunday--and he wanted to see you on very special business."

"Do you know what about?" Larry asked, without interest, while he arranged the many-coloured silken drapery in effective folds over the picture.

"I believe old Prendergast's dying."

Barty hesitated; then, remembering that his father had not enjoined secrecy, he rushed into his subject. "Larry, I believe the chance we've been waiting for is come--or as good as come!"

"Do you mean that it's Prendergast the Member who's dying? Do you mean my getting into Parliament?"

Larry swung round on Barty, and fired the questions at him, quick as shots from a revolver.

The colour rose again in Barty's face. His dark, shortsighted eyes, that were set on Larry, had a sudden glow in them. He nodded.

"He's likely dead by now! Oh Larry!" he cried, panting in his eagerness. "May be the chance has come at last! I believe you might be the man Ireland wants! I believe you might take Parnell's place! Me fawther says you're certain to be nominated, and there's no opposition, of course. Anyhow, if there were, itself, you'd go in flying, just the same! You're the man we're all waiting for! Larry, old cock! The day will come when I'll be bragging that I was the one first gave you the notion to go into politics!"

Larry was gazing at his man of business, whose aspect, it may be conceded, was at this moment singularly at variance with the usual conception of such a functionary. The man of business gazed back at him, the glow intensifying behind his eye-glasses and gathering energy from the answering gleam in Larry's eyes.

"The Bloody Wars!" uttered Larry, slowly and quite irrelevantly, and with great emphasis. "By all the crosses in a yard of check! Let me hold on to something and think! This is a game and a half! I must think furiously!"

"Do not!" exclaimed Barty; "don't think at all! Don't be wasting time like that! No man ever had a greater chance than this! Lep at it, Larry, old lad! Give me the word I want, and I'll wire the Doctor to-night--a message he'll understand, and no one else. Oh Larry!" he implored, "don't cry off now! You've pots of money; you can do any damn thing you like! If you refuse this chance now you'll only regret it the once, and that'll be all your life!"

Then did that mysterious and mighty agency, the warp that a mind has received in childhood, come to reinforce the enthusiasms and ambitions of youth, and urge Larry to assent. That other and nobler Spirit of the Nation woke, and the passionate, irreconcilable voice, that had first spoken to him when he was a little boy, woke and uttered itself again, shouting to him its wild summons at a moment when the tide of life was running fiercest in him, when every emotion was at highest pressure and calling for great adventure.

"All right, Barty, my son, I'm for it!" said Larry, with the assumption of outward calm, when heart and pulses are pounding, that has been claimed as one of the assets of a public school education, and is, even without that advantage, the birthright of such as young Mr. Coppinger.