"I hadn't thought of any scheme," he said, pulling himself together; "I only wanted to give you a kind of notion of the rotten way England's always treated Ireland——"
"But let's!" cried Christian; "let's act the whole book!"
Truisms are of their essence dull, but they must sometimes be submitted to, and the truism as to a book's possible influence on the young and impressionable cannot here be avoided. What it is that decides if the book is to stamp itself on the plastic mind, or if the mind is to assert itself and stamp on the book, is a detail that admits less easily of dogmatism. The Companionage of Finn remained in being for but two periods of holiday. Before the boys had returned to school, it had seen its best days; the scheme for an armed invasion of England had been abandoned, even the more matured project of storming Dublin Castle was set aside; by the end of the Christmas holidays it had been formally dissolved.
It is not easy to understand, it is still harder to explain what it was in those fierce denunciations and complaints, outcome of that time of general revolt, the "Roaring Forties" of the nineteenth century, that made them echo in Larry's heart, nor why the restless, passionate spirit that inspired them should have remained with him, a perturbing influence from which he never wholly escaped. His young soul burned with hatred of England, borrowed from the Bards of "The Nation" Office; he lay awake at nights, stringing rhymes in emulation of their shouts of fury, or picturing rebellions, of which he was to be the leader and hero. Larry's enthusiasms were wont to devour not him only, but also his friends. It is impossible to escape from the conclusion that the career of the Companionage of Finn was abbreviated by Larry's determination to recite to the Companions of the Order, in season and out of season, the poems by which, during his first Irish summer, he was possessed. There came a time when he had, as he believed, put away childish things, that, returning to these venerable trumpet-blasts, he asked himself, in the arrogance of youth, how these stale metaphors, these conventional phrases, these decorations as meretricious as stage jewellry, and metres that cantered along, as he told himself, like solemn old circus-horses, could have had the power to shake his voice and fill his eyes with tears, as he spoke them to Christian, who had so soon become his sole audience.
The strange thing was, as he acknowledged to himself, that while he could mock at them as poetry, he could not ignore their power. The intensity of their hatred, and of their sincerity, made itself felt, as the light of the sun will shine through the crude commonness of a vulgar stained-glass window.
There was one person who viewed the enthusiastic intimacy that had sprung up between the houses of Coppinger and Talbot-Lowry, with a disapproval as deep as it was prejudiced. It was a person whose opinion might, by the thoughtless, be considered unimportant, but in this the thoughtless would greatly err. Robert Evans was the butler at Mount Music. He had held that position since the year 1859, from which statement a brief and unexacting calculation will establish the fact that he had taken office when his present master was no more than twenty-one years old and, it being now 1894, he had so continued for 35 years. Possibly a vision of an adoring and devoted retainer may here present itself. If so, it must be immediately dispelled. In Mr. Evans' opinion, such devotion and adoration as the case demanded, were owed to him by the House on which he had for so long a time bestowed the boon of his presence, and those who were privileged with his acquaintance had no uncertainty in the matter, since his age, his length of service, his fidelity, and the difficulties with which he daily contended, formed the main subjects of his conversation.
In the palmier days of the Irish gentry there were many households in which the religion of the servants was a matter of considerable importance, and those who could afford exclusiveness, were accustomed to employ only Protestants as indoor servants. This may seem like an unwarrantable invasion of the inner fortress of another individual, making his views spiritual responsible for his fortunes temporal. But in Ireland, in the earlier half of the troubled nineteenth century, such differentiation was inspired not by bigotry, but by fear. When a man's foes might be, and often were, those of his own household, that his servants should be of his own religion was almost his only safeguard against espionage. There is somewhat to be said on both sides; it will not be said here, but that there have been times in Ireland when such precautions were required, cannot be ignored.
Robert Evans was a survivor of such a period. Time was when he strutted, autocratic and imperious as a turkey-cock, ruler of a flock of lesser fowl, all of his own superior creed; brave days when he and Mrs. Dixon, the housekeeper, herded and headed, respectively, a bevy of "decent Protestant maids" into Family Prayers every morning, and packed "the full of two covered cars" off to the Knockceoil Parish Church on Sundays. Evans rarely went to church, believing that such disciplines were superfluous for one in a state of grace, but the glory of the House of Talbot-Lowry demanded a full and rustling pew of female domestics, while the coachman, and a footman or a groom, were generally to be relied on to give a masculine stiffening to the party. With Lady Isabel's régime had come a slackening of moral fibre, a culpable setting of attainments, or of convenience, above creed, in the administration of the household. Once had Lady Isabel been actually overheard by Evans, offering to a friend, in excuse for the indifferent show made by her household in the parish church, the offensive explanation that "R.C.'s were so sympathetic, and so easy to find, while Protestants were not only scarce, but were so proud of being Protestants, and expected so much admiration"—here she had perceived the presence of Evans, and had unavailingly begun upon the weather, but Evans' deep-seated suspicions as to the laxity of the English Church had been confirmed.
It is possible that the greatest shock that Evans was capable of sustaining was administered when he heard of the secession to the enemy of Colonel Tom Coppinger. Only second to it was the discovery that Colonel Tom's poisoned offspring was to be received at Mount Music and admitted to the fellowship of its children.