"You've got to help me. Oh Christian!--"

Christian turned her face from him.

"I believe I could," she said in a very low voice.

Even as she spoke, the truth broke out of her soul and ran through her, running from her soul to his, like the flame of oil spilled upon clear water. A voice cried a warning in her heart. "Too late!" she answered it with triumph.

"Darling!" said Larry, holding her close.

The sunset

"bloomed and withered on the hill Like any hill-flower";

but long those two stood by the Druid stone, knowing, perhaps, the best moment that life could give them, facing the dying radiance with hearts that were full of sunrise.

CHAPTER XXVII

Doctor Francis Mangan, driving his car at something even more than his usual high rate of speed, to the Parochial House, a mile or so from the town of Cluhir, what time the sun's last rays were falling upon the Druid stone on Cnochan an Ceoil Sidhe, would have been far from pleased had he seen what the sun then saw. On their knees by the Tober an Sidhe, Larry and Christian were looking into the tiny cave in which the fairy water rose, and were giving each to each their plighting word, the old word that they had known since they were children:

"While water stands in Tubber an shee, My heart in your hands, your heart in me,"

and, observing scrupulously the prescribed rite, were drinking a mouthful of the water, each from the other's hand.

Dr. Mangan would probably have said that it was all children's nonsense, and that it was easier to break a promise than to keep it, but it may be a.s.serted with tolerable certainty that he would not have been pleased.

He was a strong and able driver, and his big car whirled up Father Greer's neat and narrow drive, holding undeviatingly the crown of the high-cambered track, and stopped dead at the front door of the Parochial House.

That Spirit of the Nation to whom allusion has occasionally been made in these pages, was by now well accustomed to the discouragement that she had ever received from the two young lovers whose betrothal she had been powerless to forbid. She had fled from the benign fairy influences of the Tober an Sidhe; but now, full of hope, she was hovering with wide-spread wings over the Parochial House, and, as its door was opened by Father Greer's elderly and ugly housekeeper, the Spirit folded her wings and slipped past her, as by a familiar path, into the priest's sitting-room.

Father Greer was "inside," the elderly and ugly housekeeper said; "would the Doctor sit in the parlour a minute and he'd come down?"

The Doctor "sat" as requested, in the parlour, noting, as he had often noted before, its arid asceticism, wondering how any man could stand the life of a priest, respecting the power that could enable a man to dispense with all the things that, in his opinion--which, by the way, he p.r.o.nounced "oping-en"--made life worth living.

Father Greer came imperceptibly into the room while the Doctor was still pondering upon the hardness of the black horsehair-covered armchair in which he was seated.

"Why, Doctor, this is an unexpected pleasure! I heard you were away,"

the priest said, laying a limp hand in the Doctor's big fist.

"So I was too. I was summoned to a consultation. That's what I'm come to you about, Father. It's old Prendergast. I'm thinking he won't last much longer."

"D'ye mean Daniel? The Member?"

"I do."

Father Greer took his thin nose, with the nostrils edged with red, between his finger and thumb, and pinched it slowly downwards several times.

"Well, what then?" he said at length.

"That's the point," said the Big Doctor, looking at the priest's pale and b.u.mpy forehead, and trying in vain to catch his eye. "You know that young Coppinger's name was sent up by our local Committee four years ago, and the Party approved it."

"I wonder were they in the right!" said Father Greer, still pinching his nose, and looking up at the Doctor over his knuckles.

"I don't see who we could find that'd do better," said Dr. Mangan, apologetically. "He's well off, and he holds strong Nationalist oping-ens; and then, of course, he's a Catholic."

"I'm told he didn't go to Ma.s.s since he came home"; Father Greet let the statement fall without expression.

"Ah well, he's only just back from France. Give him a little time, and he'll come to himself," said the Doctor, still apologetic.

"I understand he's been painting Miss Christian Talbot-Lowry's portrait," pursued Father Greer, with limpid simplicity. "I'm told she's as pretty a young girl as there is in this neighbourhood."

Whether this slight prod of the mahout's _ankus_ was, or was not, intentional, it is not easy to say, but it took instant effect upon the Big Doctor.

"There are other pretty young girls in the neighbourhood besides Christian Lowry," he said sharply. "And maybe prettier! I don't think it would give us much trouble to find one that Larry Coppinger would be well satisfied with, and one that's in the bosom of the Church, too!"

"I greatly deplore mixed marriages," said Father Greer; permitting his eyes to meet those of Dr. Mangan. "I had hoped that in the case of this young man beneficial influences might have been brought to bear--"

"If you want to put a spoke in that wheel," interrupted the Doctor with eagerness, "you'll support his nomination. I'll undertake to say there won't be much talk of mixed marriages then!"

Father Greer's small eyes again rested for a second on the Doctor's broad face, with its strong, overhanging brows and heavy under-jaw, and drew his own conclusions from the confident smile that showed the white teeth under the drooping, black moustache that had still scarcely a grey hair in it.

"I was thinking that might be what he was after!" thought Father Greer. "Well, he's a good warrant to play his hand well, and more unsuitable things have occurred before now. Yet, didn't I hear something--!" Even in thought Father Greer observed a studied mildness and moderation, and there were contingencies which might remain unformulated until they crystallised into certainty.

"I'll think it over, Doctor," he said. "I'm inclined to your view, of the case, and I might be disposed to advocate the candidature of your nominee. But,"--here Father Greer sniffed several times, indicating that a humorous aspect of the case had occurred to him, "what will we do if he turns 'sour-face,' as they say, on us?"

This euphuism, which had been adopted by some of the more extreme of the Nationalist party to indicate members of the opposing communion, was received by Dr. Mangan as an apt and entertaining quotation on the part of his clergyman.

"No fear, no fear!" he said, laughing jovially, "but if you'll allow me to say so, I think a good deal depends on this business going through."

The Spirit of the Nation smiled also; it was evident to her that these ministers of hers were conscientiously intent on doing her pleasure, and, leaving them with confidence, she spread her wide wings and followed the broad stream of the river down the valley in the direction of Mount Music.

Dr. Mangan drove home as swiftly and capably as was his wont. It had been fair-day in Cluhir, and the people from the country were slowly and reluctantly forsaking the enjoyments of the town. Large women piled voluminously on small carts, each with a conducting little boy and a labouring little donkey somewhere beneath her; men in decent blue cloth garments, whose innate respectability must have suffered acutely from the erratic conduct of the limbs inside them; wandering knots of cattle, remotely attended by the wearers of blue cloth aforesaid; horses carting themselves and their owners home, with entire self-control and good sense; and, anch.o.r.ed in the tide of traffic, the ubiquitous beggar-women, their filthy hands proffering matches, green apples, bootlaces, their strident tongues mastering the noises of the street, their rapacious, humorous eyes observant of all things. All these did Dr. Mangan encounter and circ.u.mvent, frustrating their apparent determination to commit suicide by those diverse methods of abuse, cajolery, and, on the part of the car, mechanical activity, that formed an important part of the necessary equipment of an Irish motorist of the earlier time. Nevertheless, the more intimate portion of his brain was deeply engaged in those labyrinths of minor provincial intrigue in which so many able intellects spend themselves, for want of wider opportunity.

Mrs. Mangan was in the kitchen, where, indeed, she was not infrequently to be found, when the Doctor came in by the back-door from the yard.

"I want you, Annie," he said, shouldering his enormous bulk along the narrow pa.s.sage, and treading heavily on the cat, who, her mystic meditations thus painfully interrupted, vanished in darkness, uttering the baleful cry of her kind, that is so inherently opposed to the blended forgiveness and apology that give poignancy to a dog's reproach for a similar injury.

"Look here, Annie. Before I forget it, I want you to take the car on Sat.u.r.day--I'll want it myself to-morrow--and call upon Miss Coppinger.

Barty can drive you. I got a wire awhile ago, and I have to go on the nine o'clock to-night to Broadhaven. It's that unfortunate Prendergast the Member. There's nothing can be done for the poor fellow, but whether or no, I must go."

"They'll not be satisfied till they have you dead, too, dragging at you!" protested Mrs. Mangan. "What nonsense they have, and you there only this morning! On earth, what can you do more for him?"

"They think more of me, my dear, than you do!" said the Doctor, cheerfully. "Be listening, now, to what I'm saying. You're to be as civil as be d.a.m.ned to old Frederica, and tell Barty he's to fix up with Larry to come here--what day is this to-day is? Thursday?--Tell him I'll be in on Sunday afternoon, and I want to talk to him on very special business. Now, will you remember that?"

He repeated his commands, as people will who have learnt, as most Doctors must learn, the fallibility of the human memory and its infinite powers of invention and subst.i.tution.