Chapter Thirty-Seven

MRS LEAPER-CARAHAR'S AT HOME

CHRISTMAS passed, and, Lent at hand, Barbara Burns married Mr Leaper-Carahar. Mr Macarthy found an excuse for not going to the wedding in the fact that there was a war on. A little while before he had brought Adam for a change of air to Cork, and showed him Kilcrea Abbey, which, he told him, was the inspiration of one of Sir David's poems which Adam had learnt to recite at the Muses Club:

In by the hole in the old Abbey wall

My love and I passed with a solemn foot-fall, And we drove out the dogs, that their feet might not tread

On the lowly, holy bones of the dead.

And she turned from me, in the cloistral gloom,
To peer through a reft in her father's tomb,

And she shrank from the sight of the things that were
And the foulness that mouldered upon the fair

And she cried: 'The terrors that there I see,
Are they one day to come to me?'

And I promised her then that when she should die
Then I, on guard, by her side should lie.

One moonlight night Adam went off by himself and tried the effect of reciting it in the Abbey, but, frightened by rats, came home in the middle of the third line. He thought it would be easier to keep a promise of this kind at Glasnevin, and consoled himself by

reflecting that the baronet himself, if he promised anything of the kind in real life, made no effort to keep it. 'D'you suppose that poem was written to anyone in particular?' he asked Mr Macarthy.

'I suppose it was,' said Mr Macarthy. 'Do you know?' Adam pursued.

'Know what?' said Mr Macarthy testily. 'Who the lady was?' Adam faltered.

'Yes,' Mr Macarthy said, in a tone which did not encourage further questioning.

Adam tried plain statement. 'I suppose it was the Marchesa?' and, as Mr Macarthy did not deny it, felt some confidence that he was right.

When they returned to town Adam informed the Marchesa that he had visited her family burial-place with his guardian. The Marchesa looked at him surprisedly: 'Whatever made him bring you there?' she asked, and, without waiting for answer to a question which he was surprised to find her so little interested in, she went on: 'Your flame, Barbara Burns, is back with that loathsome husband of hers.'

Kilcrea Abbey was at once forgotten, and the affairs of Sir David Byron-Quinn vanished before those of his granddaughter. 'Why,' said the Marchesa, 'you've gone pale; you don't mean to say you really care? ... Why, you're as bad as Sir David himself. They say he fainted once, when he was seventeen, when he heard of the death of a schoolgirl, just as the other Byron, the poet, did. Anyhow, I'm rather amused, for they're giving a reception at their new house in Waterloo Road next week, and Mrs Burns has insisted that I must go, although Mr Carahar, you know . . . Well, you know what Mr Leaper-Carahar is, don't you?'

Adam answered between his teeth: 'I'd like to knock his head off.'

The Marchesa stooped and kissed his forehead. 'Darling,' she said, 'some day let us do it.'

The idea of assisting the Marchesa to knock the head off Mr Leaper-Carahar, C.B., made Adam look forward to the meeting with Barbara Leaper-Carahar with greater pleasure than he had anticipated. When his guardian was for declining the invitation to the At Home, Adam expressed his desire to go; and so Mr Macarthy, rejoiced to find him recovered from his love-sickness, accepted for both.

Yet, the day of this first At Home of Mrs LeaperCarahar Adam wakened with a premonition of evil. Calling for Mr Macarthy at Mountjoy Square, he told him as much, and Mr Macarthy laughed. 'There is no such thing as evil,' said he.

'But,' Adam protested, 'I feel it so clearly.'

'So do all Irishmen,' his guardian explained: 'it comes from our long inheritance of fear. I am terrified in my dreams by the howling of a banshee, that existed only in the imagination of my ancestors.'

'But if you heard the howling of a real banshee?' Adam suggested.

'If I heard the howling of a real banshee, it would give me unqualified pleasure,' Mr Macarthy assured him, provided that I knew it was a banshee and not a cat.' 'You don't believe in the supernatural at all?' Adam queried.

'If by supernatural you mean something opposed to the natural, I do not,' said Mr Macarthy firmly; 'but if by supernatural you mean things that might appear unnatural to a congenital idiot like your friend Leaper-Carahar, or a zany such as Tinkler, then I do not deny the existence of such supernatural things. I will grant you that there are more things in heaven and earth than were ever dreamed of by the committee of the Kildare Street Club or the senate of either of the universities. . . . At all events, the knowledge of them has not been recorded on the minutes of these corporations,' he added with characteristic caution.

'Do you think the world is just a joke?' said Adam. 'If I do,' said Mr Macarthy, 'I think it a thundering good one, and not a disgusting piece of folly as it is represented by the Fathers.'

After all, the day promised to be an amusing one; for, lunching at the Muses Club on the way to Waterloo Road, they encountered Mr Tinkler, in a new fancy costume, and unusually dapper: his breast bulged with a freshly typed manuscript.

'Dear Mrs Burns,' he explained, 'has induced me most charmingly to read my revised version of "Deirdre" to the people at Mrs Carahar's At Home.' 'The dickens she has !' said Mr Macarthy smoothly, as if it were a compliment. And what did LeaperCarahar say to that?'

Mr Tinkler looked around him and dropped his voice: 'I don't think he knows yet: dear Mrs Burns means it as a charming surprise.'

'She has a gift for that sort of thing,' said Mr Macarthy.

...

'She has indeed,' Mr Tinkler agreed, 'a charming gift. She really loves poetry. Even my poor efforts. . . . Though I know that I am not as great as some people tell me.'

'Come,' said Mr Macarthy, filling the poet's glass, 'You know in your heart that your poetry is much better than even I have ever pretended to think.'

'It is very charming of you,' said the poet vaguely, and emptied his glass. 'I am sure that you would never say anything you did not mean, any more than Idear Mrs Burns.'

Mr Macarthy said in an undertone to Adam: 'He got home on me that time.' To Mr Tinkler he said: You believe in necromancy, don't you?'

'Necromancy,' Mr Tinkler repeated, of course. I passed through that stage of enlightenment; I did believe in it until dear Lady Bland . . .'

'Converted you?' Mr Macarthy suggested.

...

'I was not going to say quite that,' Mr Tinkler declared, and added, looking at his wine-glass, which Mr Macarthy had again filled: 'I forget what I was going to say. Lady Bland and I . . .' he broke off to put his lips to his glass again, pouring some of it down his throat and more not, which seemed to recall him to himself: 'Nobody knows what she suffers from that man, that man .' here he dropped his serviette, and, looking for it, continued, in a voice that was muffled by the tablecloth: 'It is natural that she should have the illusion that she is carrying her cross to . . .' the last word was inaudible.

'Very natural,' Mr Macarthy agreed, and the conversation would have flagged, but that Adam took it up. 'Where did you say Lady Bland was carrying her cross?'

'Did I say that?' Mr Tinkler inquired. 'I thought we were talking about necromancy.'

'We were,' said Mr Macarthy. 'Our friend Adam here dreamt last night of some disastrous happening to-day, quite in the manner of Plutarch, you know, and then your mentioning the reading of your play.

'My God!' said Mr Tinkler, 'he thought I might have lost the manuscript!' and unbuttoned his breast, suffering the manuscript to escape and knock over his wine-glass. 'That's nothing,' he explained to the waitress; 'it's safe, besides, I have two carbon copies.'

'I should have all the copies carbonised if I were you,' suggested Mr Macarthy, and Adam thought his guardian had gone a little too far. But Mr Tinkler gravely explained that in typewriting you were bound to have one top copy.

'Every man is a cad at times,' said Mr Macarthy as they left Mr Tinkler sobering himself with coffee, 'and you have seen me behaving like one just now. Nothing can be more contemptible than to make game of a man whose intellect you despise.'