Chapter XLI

In that same wind-wild dawn, Larry awoke, and tried to believe that he was a bridegroom, and was going to espouse Tishy Mangan in the course of the next few hours.

"_C'est toujours l'imprévu qui arrive_!" he told himself. That ancient ditty, "The Yeoman's Wedding," that he had often heard Dr. Mangan sing, attacked him like an illness, and enforced its galloping metres on all he did.

"Through the valley we'll haste,
For we've no time to waste!
For it is my wedding morning, my wedding morning!"

The housemaid (that same Upper Housemaid who had spoken of the riff-raff of Cluhir) heard him, in the bathroom, loudly announcing his intentions.

"Ding dong! We'll gallop along!" Larry sang, and the Upper Housemaid said to her subordinate, "What a hurry he's in! Well! Bright's his fancy!"

The Upper Housemaid was rash in thus giving her opinion. Larry's fancy was far from bright, but he was of those unfortunates who, when obsessed by a tune, must yield to its importunity, even though it followed him to the steps of the scaffold.

It is not insinuated that Larry was now, metaphorically, or otherwise, in such a case. He was, as he told himself, quite prepared to go through with the job, but, he likewise told himself, it was a rotten sort of business dressing for your wedding with not a soul, bar the servants, to say good morning to, and even they looked as sour as lemons and hadn't a smile among the lot of them. Larry drank some coffee, and crumbled some toast, and brutally and wastefully broke into a poached egg, turning what had been a triumph of snow, into a yellow peril, and gave its attendant bacon to Aunt Freddy's old Pomeranian, and found that he had finished his breakfast, and that it was no more than ten o'clock. The rain was coming down in torrents; he could not go out, not even to the stables. What on earth was he to do from now till one o'clock? The blooming wedding was at two.

He thought of it as some one else's, and realised that he so thought of it, and then just tripped himself up in the middle of the further reflection that he wished it were.

"Probably getting married is always a bore," he said to himself, consolingly. "'E's all right when you know 'im, but you've got to know 'im fust'! Why do these rotten old songs stick in my head like this? Because I'm a fool, no doubt, and always was!"

He walked into the hall, and there surveyed his luggage, packed and ready, and appallingly new.

"It'll give the show away, even if they let us off confetti," he thought.

He wished he hadn't given in to this High Nuptial Mass business, and a big wedding, and all the rest of it, but the Doctor and Tishy were dead keen on it, and he had been sat on.

He and Tishy were going to London, and if this gale lasted, they would have a devil of a crossing. He wondered if Tishy were a good sailor. He wasn't, anyhow. He would warn her that he would be no more use to her than a sick headache, which she would probably have, to start with, and she wouldn't want another. The Mount Music people were across the Channel by this time, ahead of the gale too. Luck for them! Old Mrs. Twomey had told him they were gone, and she said they would never come back again. Silly old ass, what did she know about it?

He had wandered into his studio; now, without his own volition, almost as if he were hypnotised, he took the canvas on which he had painted Christian, from where it was leaning, face inwards, against the wall, and put it on an easel. He had not looked at it since the day of conflict, and he told himself that he was now regarding it with the frigid rye of the art critic.

Yes, it was good. Better than he thought. The technique was jolly good, slick, and unworried, and the likeness was all right too. He had somehow just got hold of that ethereal look she always had had. She was hearing those voices they used to chaff her about. How she had gone for John one day, when he began ragging her about that old hymn! She always had the pluck of the devil! He frowned. She hadn't had pluck enough to stand up to her father! He would look at her picture no longer. He wouldn't think of her. She had chucked him. But his eyes were held by the eyes that he had painted; with a rush, the thought of her possessed him. She was everywhere, penetrating his very being, "his heart in her hands"; he shook in the grip of remembrance, almost of realisation, of her presence. For a moment, Time stood still for him; he hung, like a ship that has been flung up into the wind, trembling. Then the sails filled, the present re-asserted itself. He was going to marry Tishy Mangan, and Christian had chucked him. He turned the canvas again.

Why had he thought of that beastly hymn? It had got hold of him now! The measured tramp of the tune fitted itself to the tick of the clattering little tin clock on the studio chimney-piece.

"How the troops of Mid-ian,
Prowl, and prowl around!
Christian! Up and at them--"

No, that was what the Duke of Wellington said to the Guards at--Oh, _damn_ the clock, anyhow! He caught it up, and pitched it across the room on to a sofa, and hurled a bundle of draperies after it and on top of it. But the tune would not stop, and the muffled, unbaffled tick of the clock went on. He swung out of the studio, and went back to the hall.

The house had its back to the storm, and it was only when he looked down the Cluhir avenue, that he realised with what fury the rain was falling. The wind had moderated a little, but the barograph-needle was still almost off the paper it had gone so low. It was only eleven o'clock. Two hours before the motor was to come for him. He felt, as he told himself, using the adjective that has had to undertake the duties of so many others, rotten. Empty and rather sick, and, well, generally beastly--a sort of vague funk. Yes, by Jove! He was in a regular blue funk! That was what was wrong with him. (But he certainly felt sick too.)

What on earth was he afraid of? The service couldn't last for ever, and he had barred speeches at the Collation (as Mrs. Mangan insisted on calling it). His thoughts took a twist. Surely he wasn't afraid of the Mangans? He liked Mrs. Mangan; he was quite fond of her, quite a good sort of mother-in-law she'd make. And Barty, his best man, good old Barty! And the Doctor--Of course he wasn't afraid of the Doctor either. He had always liked him. There only remained Tishy. Hang it all! He wasn't afraid of the girl he was going to marry! She might have a bit of a temper--she certainly had been rather rattled these last few days, but you couldn't blame her for that. The very last time he had seen her--the evening before the big storm began, wasn't it?--he had overtaken her in the dark in the Mall, going home after shopping, and that long-legged cad of a fellow, Cloherty, carrying her parcels for her. By Jove! She had let drive at him after Cloherty had gone and they were in the house! By Jove, yes! He laughed a little at the remembrance. She had said it was a nice time of day for him to be coming over. She had jolly nearly cried, she was so mad with him. For the life of him he didn't know why. But, after all, that wasn't exactly temper.--Blowed if he knew what it was. He supposed it was temperament--quite a different thing! He laughed and had a look at a large and splendid photograph of Miss Mangan, that had been a sort of corollary of the Dublin trousseau. Tishy was all right. Tishy was a topper! He said it aloud, and, with that, another tune, the old nigger-tune, "Nelly was a Lady," fitted itself absurdly to the words.

"Tishy was a topper!" he sang. "Last night she--No, she didn't! By Jove, there's the motor! What's it coming at this hour for?"

He watched the car turn into the wide sweep in front of the house, and wheel round it, and draw up at the foot of the hall-door steps. It looked like the car he had hired, he knew the shover's face, but there was someone in it. He saw, with pleasure, that it was Barty who was in the car. Good old Barty, come over early to buck him up a bit. Larry sprang to the door, and as he opened it, Barty was coming up the steps. He stood still on the top step. He was very pale, Barty always had a pasty face, Larry thought, but this whiteness was different, and there was a look in his eyes that made Larry, over-strung, tuned to vibrate to ill tidings, catch his arm, and say:

"What is it? Tell me quick!"

Barty did not answer at once. He seemed as if he could not speak. He came into the hall and shut the door behind him and leaned against it, one hand still on the handle, his breath coming short and fast.

"My father was drowned last night!" he said at last, in a low, hurried voice. "He drove into the river. The flood was up on the road. Wait, Larry! That isn't all--" he went on quickly, holding up his other hand to keep Larry from speaking. "That's bad enough, God knows! But this other thing is Disgrace!"

Larry waited.

"It isn't easy to tell you," said Barty, moistening his dry lips. "There's just one good thing about it, my father didn't know--"

"What _is_ it? Look sharp!"

Larry was shaking with the strain of waiting for this withheld horror.

"Tishy was caught out by the flood last night; she didn't come home--"

"What! She also--?" stammered Larry.

"I wish to God she were!" said Barty, fiercely. "No. But while my father was going to his death, maybe when he was drowning itself, she bolted with Ned Cloherty! They went to Dublin on the mail--a porter at the station saw them--there's no doubt about it!"

Larry sat down by a table, and put his head on his arms and tried to think. His brain was whirling. He had covered his eyes, because he knew if he saw Barty's tragic face again he would laugh, and if he began to laugh, he said to himself, God only knew when he would stop. It was a fatal trick of his nerves, he could never make Barty understand. He would be shocked and scandalised for ever.

The Doctor drowned! He must fix his mind on that. He mustn't think of Tishy; if he did, he knew that this horrible, inhuman surge of joy that was pulsing in him would betray itself in his face, would overwhelm him, like the flood in the river, would sweep away all decency, sympathy, would leave him bare of all that he ought to feel and express. (But to think that he hadn't to get married to-day! Oh, blessed, beautiful Cloherty!) He was going to be very angry with Cloherty, as soon as he had pulled himself together. Cloherty had behaved like a blackguard; he had blackened Larry's face; he had shamed him; had stolen his girl--(but, for all that, oh, Blessed and Beautiful--!)

Larry and Barty sat for awhile and talked, saying, as people will, at such moments, dull things over and over again, uninspired, conventional, stupid things. Both were equally afraid to say the things that were in their minds about Tishy and Cloherty; Barty, because he was so angry with her that he feared he might hurt Larry; Larry, because he told himself he would have to sit down to the thing squarely, and think it out, before he knew what to say about it. He tried to concentrate on the death of Barty's father, but here, strangely enough, Barty seemed equally unable to respond without restraint.

"I've got to go on to Mount Music. They say the flood's down, and you can get there now," he said, presently, in the voice from which all the colour and life had died, "I've arranged for a hearse. I had a wire, early, telling me what--what had happened. I was wondering, Larry, would you come with me? I've no right, now, to ask you, but--" His tired voice died on the sentence, his mournful eyes sought Larry's and said what his lips failed to say.

"My dear old chap," said Larry, ardently, grateful for the chance of showing Barty that he bore no ill will to him, "Of course I will! Anything I could do to help you, I'd be only too glad--you mustn't think anything will make a difference--"

They said little to each other as the motor splashed along the flooded road. Each was absorbed in the effort to envisage the profound changes that had befallen himself in a single night. More than once Barty turned to Larry as if he were about to speak, and then turned away; they came to the Mount Music entrance, and as the car turned in through the gateway, Barty suddenly put his bony and pallid hand on Larry's knee.

"There's a thing no one here knows but myself, and I didn't hear it till two days ago, but I can't bear the weight of it any longer. I can't give you all the details, but you may rely on what I say being correct." He looked away from Larry out of the window. The car was running swiftly up the smooth levels of the long avenue; he knew he had no time for circumlocution. "My father told me," he began, "that in some way, between himself and the Major a lot of money had passed. The Major was greatly pressed for money--he wasn't getting his rents, and there were many liabilities--my father got hold of them all. I think he lent him a lot of money too--" He paused an instant, then he rushed on with his story. "Anyway, whatever was between them, the Major gave my father the title-deeds of this house and the demesne in security for what he had borrowed. My father has them now, I mean," he corrected himself, "they're in my office. He said they were for me--he as good as gave them to me." Barty slowly turned a dusky red. He thought of what his father had said of Mount Music, of Christian; the arrogance, the hateful facetiousness; he had felt as if brutal hands had been laid on a saint; even now, he shuddered in spirit as remembrance came to him.

"Good God! Was that why they went away?" Larry said, with a horror that scarcely permitted of speech. "Do you mean the place isn't theirs any more?" He thought: "I wish he'd take his hand off my knee! Thank God, I'm out of it!"

"It" meant marriage with the daughter and the sister of men who could do such things.

Perhaps some telepathic vibration from that wave of repulsion reached Barty.

"You needn't think I had anything to do with it," he muttered, withdrawing his hand, "or ever will!" he added, as if to himself.

Larry remained silent; the car ground into the heavy river-gravel on the sweep in front of the house, and ceased at the door that he had not seen since that day of wrath when he had cast his cousins behind him for ever.