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People have said, retrospectively, that the rise of the Mangan family dated from the fall of Larry Coppinger into the Feorish River. This may, or may not have been the case but it is certain that Mrs. Mangan's way through the world took at about this time an upward trend, and one of the most perceptible ascending jerks was the result of Lady Isabel Talbot-Lowry's Sale of Work.
To triumph, secretly, over that secret clerical opposition, to snap his fingers, openly, at Georgy Talbot-Lowry's impudence and all that it implied of hostility and contempt. These were the great objects of life, the things that justified all the double dealing, and the lies, and the humbug of the past weeks. There was no such thing as patriotism, and ideals were rot.
George to boast of his limitations, and yet no one better than Dick knew what must be the feeling of emancipation that prompted the boast. Dick Talbot-Lowry's pigheadedness was at the root of the downsliding of Mount Music.
I thought it was a shabby thing of the Unionists not to have supported him " he stopped abruptly, remembering Major Talbot-Lowry's abstention, remembering also the feud, of which he knew only that he had never wholly divined its origin, between Coppinger's Court and Mount Music. He cursed himself for a fool.
Cottingham, Major Talbot-Lowry's First Whip and kennel huntsman, a single-souled little Devonshire man, whose dyed hair was the solitary indication of the age it was intended to conceal, awaited her outside the kennels. "Well, Missie, I knew you'd come," he said, approvingly.
Dusty and composite squirrel-hoards of objects that defy classification, covered outlying tables, and lay in heaps on the floor, awaiting that resurrection to useful life that Major Talbot-Lowry's faith held would some day be theirs, and were, in the meantime, the despair and demoralisation of housemaids.
"On the head of what, woman?" shouted Dick, now passing, by the well-worn channel of anxiety, from boredom to anger. "On the head of the Dispinsary! Sure they says 'twas your Honour gave it to Danny Aherne!" It is unnecessary to record Major Talbot-Lowry's indignation on hearing this charge.
It would serve no purpose, useful or otherwise, to attempt to record Dick Talbot-Lowry's denunciations of Larry, of his religion, and of his politics; of, secondarily, his ingratitude; his treachery, and his lack of the most rudimentary elements of a gentleman. They lasted long, and lacked nothing of effect that strength of lung and vigour of language could bring to them.
Not merely for the sake of Major Talbot-Lowry's health had this upheaval taken place; an even more imperious factor had been the state of the family finances. The cloud of debt that had so long brooded over Mount Music was lower and darker than ever it had been before.
Mangan's thoughts ran back to that little affair of the Knock Ceoil Dispensary, and of Major Talbot-Lowry's part in the matter. Danny had just nipped in before the Local Government Bill took the power away from the old Dispensary Committees. Dam' luck for Danny. The Major had been useful enough. It hadn't been his vote, so much as his influence, that had got the boy the job.
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