And paced above the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a cloud of stars.’
Powerscourt wondered if the words bitch goddess were about to appear but they did not. The third girl blew out the third candle of lost love and left. James said, ‘William Butler Yeats’ in a voice of great reverence and bowed. There was tumultuous applause and cheering. All the children came back on stage and formed a great semicircle. James returned to the piano. They gave a united rendering of ‘Molly Malone’ with the audience belting out the chorus. As the last Alive Oh was fading away, people beginning to rise from their seats and stretch themselves, there was a loud knock on the door in the centre of the Long Gallery. As it opened two footmen stood there, carrying a large parcel almost six feet across and about four feet high.
‘This was dumped at the bottom of the drive, sir,’ said the senior footman. ‘We thought you’d like to see it straight away.’ Everybody in the room, looking at the shape of the package, wrapped in brown paper secured with heavy string, knew what it was,
‘My God, it’s one of Butler’s stolen paintings.’
‘It’s been recovered, thank the Lord.’
‘One of the pictures, it’s come back.’
One or two people cast admiring glances at Powerscourt as if he were responsible for the miracle but he was apprehensive, very apprehensive.
‘Let’s have a knife and a pair of scissors, by God,’ said Butler, advancing towards his property.
Powerscourt had shoved his way through the crowd to stand at his side.
‘Don’t open it now, Butler, for heaven’s sake. Not in front of all these people.’
‘Damn it,’ said Butler, ‘it’s my house, it’s my picture. I’ll open it whenever I bloody well like.’
‘Don’t you see,’ Powerscourt pleaded, ‘there’s going to be some trick or other, maybe some horrible message contained in the thing. Please don’t open it now. Do it later. Somewhere quieter.’
Everybody in the room was staring at the parcel left at the bottom of the drive. The scissors and knife had appeared. Powerscourt made one last plea.
‘Please do it later, I beg you, when all the visitors have gone. You can open it then.’
‘I’m going to open it now, damn your eyes,’ said Richard Butler, beginning to hack at the brown paper and string. When it was finally clear, he placed it on a chair for everybody to see before he turned and had a look at the contents.
In one sense this certainly was one of the stolen paintings. It was the one called The Master of the Hunt. There was Butler’s Court, looking elegant as ever. There were the riders in their scarlet coats and the horses ready to ride off. There in the background were the hounds. But the faces were different. Richard Butler’s had been replaced with a passable likeness of Pronsias Mulcahy, proprietor of Mulcahy and Sons, Grocery and Bar. The rider to his left now had the disagreeable features of Father O’Donovan Brady. Two of the Delaneys of the solicitors’ firm of Delaney, Delaney and Delaney, down in the town square, were sitting happily on horseback to one side of Pronsias Mulcahy, formerly Richard Butler. Diarmuid McSwiggin of MacSwiggin’s Hotel and Bar was there, and Horkan the man who sold agricultural machinery and offered drink in his bar. The cast of the original painting had been replaced with the leading citizens of Butler’s Cross. The Town had replaced the Big House. ‘I’m sure Papa was in the middle of that picture,’ said a small Butler, his voice breaking the shocked silence that filled the room, ‘but he’s changed into that nice Mr Mulcahy who sells you sweets down in the square.’
‘My God,’ said Richard Butler and fled the room. Powerscourt and Johnny Fitzgerald managed to remove the painting before anybody could stop them. Sylvia Butler, assisted by Lady Lucy, ushered her guests down the stairs and out the front door. By the time they had all gone Richard Butler had reappeared in his Long Gallery. He looked as if he had been weeping.
‘My God, Powerscourt,’ he said, ‘you were right and I was wrong about the painting. Forgive me. But what, in heaven’s name, does it mean?’
‘Mean?’ said Powerscourt. ‘It’s a message. Your time is up. You’re not wanted. Others are going to replace you.’
‘I think it means something else too, Mr Butler,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald.
‘And what might that be?’
‘It’s this,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald. ‘It’s the changing of the guard. Welcome to the new Ireland.’
PART THREE
PILGRIM’S PROGRESS
I do most earnestly beseech you, as Irishmen, as citizens, as husbands, as fathers, by everything most dear to you, to consider the sacred obligation that you are called upon to discharge, to emancipate your country from a foreign yoke, and to restore to liberty yourselves and your children; look to your own resources, look to those of your friends, look to those of your enemies; remember that you must instantly decide; remember that you have no alternative between liberty and independence, or slavery and submission.
9
Lord Francis Powerscourt took himself for a walk by the Shannon the next morning. A mist was rising slowly from the waters. He was thinking about the returned painting and the havoc it had caused in Butler’s Court. For Richard Butler, he felt, it must have been like a lash from a whip across his face, an assault this time not upon the faces of his ancestors but on himself and his family, and all the current residents of the Big House. There was, he thought, one small consolation. The painting left at the bottom of the drive was a copy, he was sure of it. He had checked it again early that morning. Where had it been painted? The unknown artist must have taken a good look at Messrs Mulcahy, Horkan, MacSwiggin and the rest of them. Had he been hidden away in the store rooms of the grocery or some unused part of Father O’Donovan Brady’s disagreeable residence? Nobody, he was sure, nobody who was in on the secret would tell him a thing. Down there in the square where they sold sweets to the Butler children, that was now enemy territory. Then another terrible thought struck him. If there was one copy there could be another. Who would be the new faces next time? Would The Master of the Hunt effect a second coming into Butler’s Court, adorned with the faces of Theobald Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmett and Charles Stewart Parnell and the martyred heroes of the nation’s past? Even worse perhaps, would they replace the Master and his companions with the servants, the steward and the footmen now riding off to hounds, the cook and the parlour maids bringing up the rear? God in heaven.
He met Lady Lucy on his way back.
‘Francis,’ she said, smiling rather feebly at him, ‘is there nothing we can do for these poor people? It’s like a funeral in there only the corpse is still in the building. I’ve seldom seen people look so miserable. The only consolation is the children, they think the whole thing is the most enormous joke. They’ve a theory the other pictures will come back soon with famous cricketers in them or stars from the stage and the music hall.’
‘I’ll have to go and talk to Richard Butler about it all,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Maybe he’ll show me the original blackmail letter now, though I rather doubt it. Have you seen him this morning, Lucy? How is he bearing up?’
‘I saw him a few minutes ago. He was picking at his breakfast as if the sausages were poisoned and the tomatoes about to explode. Oh, I nearly forgot, Francis, there’s a letter for you, forwarded from London. I don’t know if it’s important or not.’
‘“Dear Lord Powerscourt,”’ her husband read aloud, ‘“Thank you for sending me the details of the stolen paintings. I am writing to inform you of the results of our fishing expedition in the American art market with the New York firm of Goldman and Rabinowitz. You will recall that they offered eight Irish ancestor portraits for sale, four full-length and four half. So far, they have received sixteen queries about the works, all of them serious, none of them over-concerned about price. For the time being the dealers are fobbing off their potential clients with excuses about complications with customs, that sort of thing. But Goldman’s have asked me to secure a dozen or more of these pictures with all possible speed in case their clients lose interest. I have therefore placed advertisements in a number of Irish newspapers offering good prices for such material. Mr Farrell, of Farrell’s Gallery, is also looking for such portraits for me. Maybe, Lord Powerscourt, we have discovered a new niche in the art market! I trust the Irish air is refreshing, Yours etc, Michael Hudson.”’