“It was Coppinger—Mary Coppinger. I never saw the name anywhere else.” He added hesitatingly: “My brother told me that her father was a soldier—an officer—who became in his old age very poor, and was at last a gardener for some rich man at Malta, and my mother gave lessons as a governess to support herself, and it was there she met my father.”
The lady seemed most interested in the name. “Coppinger, is it!” she exclaimed, nodding her head at him. “No wonder my heart warmed at the sight of you. Why, now, to look at you—of course you’re County Cork. You’re our slender dark type to perfection.”
“I am afraid I do not understand,” he murmured.
“Why, she could not have that name and be anything but a County Cork woman. Who ever heard of a Coppinger anywhere else? Only it is pronounced with a soft ‘g,’ not hard, as you speak it. I wonder—but that can wait; her father will be easily enough traced. And so you are an Irishman, too!”
Christian looked abashed at the confusing suggestion. “I think I am all English,” he said vaguely.
She laughed again. “Are you turning your back on us? Did you not know it? I also am Irish. No doubt I am some sort of cousin of yours on my own account, as well as on Emanuel’s. There are Coppingers in my own family, and in most of those that we have intermarried with. Your mother was a Protestant, of course.”
He shook his head apprehensively, as if fearful that his answer must give pain. “No, she went to mass like other people, and I was sent to the Brothers of the Christian School. But she was not in any degree a dévotée, and for that matter,” he added in a more confident tone, “I myself am still less dévot.”
“Ah!” was her only comment, and he quite failed to gather from it any clue to her sentiments on the subject. “Well,” she began again, “I’ll not put you through any more of your catechism now. Are you finished? Then come with me and we will find Emanuel, and incidentally you will see the place—or portions of it. It will take you a long time to see it all. Do you want to smoke? Put some of these cigars in your pocket—or here are cigarettes if you prefer them. Oh, we smoke everywhere. There is nothing on earth that we want to do that we don’t do—and there’s nothing we don’t want to do that any mortal power can make us do. There you have the sum of our philosophy.”
He had followed her into the hallway, where the doors were open wide to the mellow autumn afternoon. He put on the soft shapeless hat she gave him from a collection on the antlers, and was inspired to select a stick for himself out of the big standful at the door.
“Now I shall walk about,” he said, gaily, “quite as if I had never been out of England in my life. Is your husband—perhaps-shooting?”