"I rather like it, Larry!" she said, beaming at him; "quitenice!"
"What? What's quite nice?" says Larry, beaming back; "oh,this?" He gave the moustache an extra upward twist. "Yes, rather so! Beats the Kaiser's to fits, I flatter myself! I'm glad you like it, but I don't see how you could help it!"
Yes! This was the old Larry, the right one; Christian felt very glad. It might so easily have been some one else, some one not half so nice as her own old Larry.
"Why on earth didn't you say you were coming? Cousin Freddy told us that you were painting at Étaples."
"So I was till one fine day I 'took the notion for to cross the raging ocean,' and I'm jolly glad I did too! Oh, by Jove! Look at old Bill and the hounds! What a swell! Christian, do you know I haven't seen a hound for four years! Do you mind if I call them 'dogs,' just till I get used to them a bit?"
There are few bonds more enduring than those that are woven round the playmates of childhood. In how many raids had Larry not been Christian's trusted leader! What stolen dainties had they not shared, what punishments not endured together! Larry's three years of seniority had only deepened the reverence and loyalty that he had inspired in his youngest follower; he had never presumed upon them; he had been a chieftain worthy of homage, and he had Had all Christian's. There are some people who appear to change their natures when they grow up. They may have been pleasing as little boys or girls; they may be equally agreeable as men and women, but there is no continuity and no development. They have become new creatures. Christian, alone of her family, was essentially as she had ever been, and, being of those whose inward regard is as searching as their outward observation, she knew it. Now, Larry had come back again, and in half-a-dozen sentences she knew that neither had he changed, and that with him her ancient leader had returned.
The Wood of Nad (which, being interpreted, means a nest) filled a pocket on the side of Lissoughter Hill, and had thence spread over the crest of the hill, and ended near the cross-roads at which the hounds had met.
"Don't holloa away an old fox. I want to kill a cub if I can. I'll let you know if the hounds get away below. You needn't be afraid I won't! Open the gate!"
Thus, magisterially, the Master, standing at the gate into the wood, with the hounds crushing round his horse's heels, "Leu in there!"
With a squeal or two of excitement from Dido and her brethren-puppies, the hounds squeezed through the narrow gateway, and were swallowed up by the wood.
Larry returned to Christian's side.
"I hate not seeing Cousin Dick out," he began; "what a pity he gave 'em up! Why did he? You know, Christian, you were pretty rotten about writing to me! Aunt Freddy never tells me a thing about the Hunt! I didn't even know Cousin Dick had chucked till I saw it inThe Field."
Larry was staring at Christian as he spoke. He, like her was searching for his former comrade; but, unlike her, was doing so unconsciously, as Larry did most things: What he believed himself to be doing was appraising her appearance from a painter's point of view. He found he had forgotten her eyes. He tried to think of them in terms of paint;Brun de Bruxelles, and a touch of cadmium, or was itVerte Émeraude? Hang it! How can paint do more than suggest the colours of a sunlit moorland pool? Was it the white hunting-tie that gave that special "value" to her face He had forgotten how delicious in tone was the faint colour that just tinted her cheek; so hopeless a word as pink was not to be thought of; just a hint ofRose Garance doré, might do it. And to get the drawing of those subtle outlines the ineffable refinement of all her features. Larry put his head on one side, and screwed up his eyes (remembering faithfully the injunctions of "dear old Chose,"en clignant bien les yeux) and said to himself that she would put dear old Chose himself to his trumps, and then maybe he wouldn't get her right!
Aloud he said, peremptorily and professionally:
"Christian, I'm going to paint you! Eight o'clock at the studio to-morrow morning,Ma'mselle, s'il vous plaît!"
Christian's response was closured by a wild outcry from the wood, hounds and horn lifting up their voices together in sudden delirium. Old horses pricked their ears, and young ones, and notably, Nancy, began to fret and to fidget. Some one said, unnecessarily: "That's him!" A man, farther down the road, turned his horse, and standing in his stirrups, stared over the wall into the thick covert, rigid as a dog setting his game. Then he held up his hat, and, a moment later, something brown glided, with the fluent swiftness of a fish in a stream, across the road and over the opposite wall. The scream that followed him was not needed; was, indeed, hardly heard in the crashing, clashing clamour of the back, as they came pitching headlong over the wall of the wood, and hurling themselves at the opposite wall. It was high, and had a coped, top, and the yelling hounds broke against it, and fell, like waves against a cliff. A couple achieved it, and the anguish of their comrades, as they heard them go away, full-cry, on the line, redoubled. In the same instant, Larry was off his tall bay. He flung his reins to Christian, and was into the struggling pack. It is no easy matter to heave a hound over a high wall, but Larry and a young farmer had somehow shoved over four couple, before Bill Kirby and his whipper-in came and swept the remainder to a place of possible entrance a little further on.
Larry snatched his plunging horse from Christian, and started to gallop before he was fairly in the saddle, kicking his right foot into the stirrup as he went, and shouting gratitude to Christian for having held the horse. It had not been easy. Nancy had proved the accuracy of her groom's statement by again "going up as straight as a ribbon" when the hounds crossed the road, and the bay had not been backward in emulating her efforts. Bill Kirby had had luck; the fox had run left-handed under the wall, and the leading hounds met the Master, with the body of the pack, at the verge of the wood on its farther side. A bank, pitted with rabbit-holes, a space of stony lane with a pole at its farther end, and Nad Wood was a thing of the past.
Outside, a fair stretch of grass presented itself, falling in mild gradients to the banks of the Broadwater, sprinkled with cattle, dotted with groups of trees clustering round white farm houses, from whose chimneys the thin, blue lines of the smoke of morning fires were just beginning to ascend.
But few are able to spare much thought for others during a first burst out of covert, their strictly personal affairs being as sufficient for them as is the day's share of good and evil for the day; but Larry, looking often over his shoulder as he galloped, did not fail to note, despite his engrossment in his new purchase, the ease and competence that marked Christian's dealings with the chestnut mare, to whom the twin gifts of imagination and invention had been lavishly granted. It has been ingeniously said that the enemy of the aboriginal horse was a creature of about the size of a dinner-plate, that lay hidden in grass; nothing less than a concealed dinner-service would have sufficed to account for the mysterious alarms that repeatedly swept Nancy from her course; wafting her, like a leaf, sideways from a stream, impelling her to swing, from the summit of a bank, back to the field from which she had wildly sprung; suggesting to her that safety from the besetting dangers could alone be secured by following the bay horse (whom, after the manner of young horses, she had adopted as a father) so closely, and at such a rate of speed, that a live torpedo attached to his tail could hardly have been a less desirable companion.
At a momentary check, an elderly farmer, many of whose horses had owed to Christian their first introduction to a side saddle, spoke to her.
"For God's sake, Miss Christian," he said, fervently, "go home with that mare! She's very peevish! I wouldn't like to be looking at her! She has that way of jumping stones her nose'd nearly reach the ground before her feet!"
"Never fear that young lady's able for her!" struck in another farmer, the former owner of Nancy. "How well yourself'd be asking her to be riding nags that couldn't see the way that little mare'd go! Didn't I see her go mountains over the stone gap awhile ago? And yourself seen the same, John Kearney!"
"If it was mountains and pressy-pices that was in it itself," returned John Kearney, severely, "I'd say the same, Michael Donovan. Miss Christian knows me, and I'm telling her——"
At this point, however, Christian's attention was absorbed by Dido, who was comporting herself with precocious zeal, and, an instant after, the dispute was ended by the shriek with which she proclaimed her success. For some fifteen minutes the hounds ran hard and fast; Nancy began to settle down, and to realise that her adopted parent invariably changed feet on a bank, and never jumped stones as if he were a cork bursting perpendicularly from a bottle of champagne. The fox was taking them through the best of the Broadwater Vale country; pasture-field followed pasture-field, in suave succession, the banks were broad and benevolent, the going clean and firm. The sun had just risen, and was throwing the long blue shadows of the hedge-row trees on the dew-grey grass. The river valley was full of silver mists, changing and thinning, like the visions of aclairvoyant, yielding slowly the beauty of the river, and of its garlanding trees, to those who had eyes to see. The sky became bluer each instant as the sun rushed up, and Bill Kirby said to himself that the hunt was too good to last, and the scent would soon be scorched out.
Not long afterwards came the check. The fox had run through a strip of plantation, and in the succeeding field the scent failed. It was a wide pasture-field, in which a number of young cattle were running, snorting, bellowing, and gathering themselves into defensive groups at the unwonted sight of hounds.
"That's a nice little plan of a mare!" said the young farmer who had helped Larry with the hounds, drawing up beside Christian, "and you have her in grand condition, Miss; she's as round as a bottle! She has a great jump in her!" he went on. "She fled the last fence entirely; she didn't leave an iron on it! She was hopping off the ground like a ball!"
"That was no credit to her!" said John Kearney, eyeing the mare and her rider gloomily.
"'Twas a sweet gallop altogether," said Nancy's former owner, addressing Christian, and ignoring Mr. Kearney's challenge, "and the mare carried you to fortune! But sure it'd be as good for you to take her home now, Miss Christian, she has enough done. The fences from this out aren't too good at all." He cast a glance at Kearney.
"Faith, and that's true for you," said Kearney quickly, "Be said by us now, Miss Christian, and go home. The road isn't but two fields back. The hounds'll do no more good, sure the sun's too strong."
"Where are we?" broke in Larry, joining the group; "I've lost my bearings."
"Them's the Carmodys' bounds, sir," said Michael Donovan in a colourless voice, indicating the next fence.
"Carmody's?" said Larry. "Then isn't the Derrylugga gorse somewhere hereabouts? I see he's casting them ahead."
"It's burnt down," said Christian, hurriedly. Something in her face checked Larry's exclamation. In Ireland people learn to be silent on a very imperceptible hint.
The farmers moved away. Said Michael Donovan in a low voice to John Kearney:
"Will she go back, d'ye think?"
"I d'no. Har'ly, I think!"
"It'd be a pity anything'd happen her. She's a lovely girl to ride!"
"You may say that, Michael! The father gave her the sate, but it was the Lord Almighty gave her the hands!" said old Kearney, devoutly.
"Maybe He'll mind her, so!" responded Michael Donovan, without irreverence.
The shifting of responsibility brought some ease of mind.
"God grant it!" said John Kearney.
Christian was ordinarily possessed of an innate reasonableness that responded to reason, but fear was not in her, and an appeal to reason was least potent with her when she was in the saddle. The veiled hints of danger, by which from, Evans onwards, she had been beset, only woke the spirit of revolt that slept in her but little less lightly than it had slept in her childhood, and were as fuel on the flame the run had kindled.
"Larry," she said, with a light in her eyes, and a flush in her cheeks, "doyouthink I ought to go back?"
"Go back? Why should you?"
Larry, having received a hasty sketch of the position, gave his advice with all the assurance of complete ignorance. "Your father has the sporting rights—anyhow, I don't believe they'll stop you. Irishmen are——"
Dissertation as to what Irishmen were or were not, attractive though it was to a young man who knew nothing of the subject, was checked by the success of Bill Kirby's cast ahead. Half way across the big field, the hounds, who had been industriously spreading themselves, and examining blades of grass and fronds of bracken with the intentness of botanists, came, with a sudden rush, to a deep note from old Bellman, and, as suddenly, broke into full-cry, with the unanimity of an orchestra when the baton comes down. They headed for "Carmody's bounds," and were over that solid barrier, and running hard across the succeeding field, before most of the riders had realised what had happened. The bounds fence was an honest jump—big, but safe. Nancy, at the heels of the bay horse, came up on to it with a perfection that banished all other thoughts from Christian's mind. On the landing side, under the bank, was a strong-running stream, and two or three of the horses, at sight of it, checked on the wide top of the bank, and tried to turn. Not so Nancy. It was enough for her that her father by adoption had not hesitated. She slid her forefeet a little way down the grassy side and went out over the water as if the bank had been a springboard. It was only then, at the gorgeous moment of successful landing, that Christian was aware of a young man running towards the riders, bawling, and demonstrating with something that might be a gun.
"That's one of the Carmodys, Miss," said old Kearney, galloping near her. "Don't mind him! It's as good for you to go on now. That's the house below——"
"Come on, Christian!" shouted Larry; "he'll do no harm!"
The thought crossed Christian's mind that it might be better to disregard these counsels, and to stop and speak to the assailant, but Nancy had views of her own, and such arguments as a snaffle could offer were quite unavailing. "I might as well go on," thought Christian, "we shall be off his land in a minute."
A very high bank, crowned with furze and thorn bushes, divided them from the next field; there was but one gap in it, near the farm-house, and this was filled with a complicated erection of stones and sods, built high, with light boughs of trees laid upon them; not a nice place, but the only practicable one. Bill Kirby and his whipper-in jumped it; some of the farmers drew back, but Larry's bay horse charged it unhesitatingly, and soared over it with the whole-souled gallantry of a well-bred horse. Nancy, pulling hard, followed him. Christian heard Larry shout, and, looking round, saw him turn in his saddle and strike with his crop at something unseen. At the last instant, as the mare was making her spring, a second man appeared on the farther side of the jump, yelling, and brandishing a wide-bladed hay-knife. To stop was impossible; Christian could only utter a sharp cry of warning, as Nancy, baulked by the suddenness of the attack, but unable to stop herself, went up almost straight into the air, and came down on the boughs, with her hindlegs on one side of them and her forelegs on the other. Then she fell forward on to her knees, and rolled on to her off shoulder, her hind legs still entangled in the boughs. Christian fell with her, and as the mare's shoulder came to the ground, her rider was thrown a little beyond her on the off side. The man, having saved himself by a leap to one side, had instantly taken to his heels.
Christian was on her feet before even Larry, quick as he was in stopping his horse and flinging himself from his back, could reach her.
"Are you hurt?" The question, so fraught with fear, and breathless with remembered disasters, was answered almost before it was uttered.
"Not a scrap! Absolutely all right; but I don't know about Nancy——"
One of the mare's hind feet was wedged in the fork of a bough; she struggled fiercely, and in a second or two she had freed both her hind legs from the tangle of twigs, and lay prone at the foot of the barricade.
"She's all right! He didn't touch her," said Larry, catching her by the bridle. "Come, mare!"
Nancy made an effort, attempting to get on to her feet, and rolled over again on to her side.
"Oh, get the mare up, one of you!" shouted Larry, wild with the rage that had gathered force from the terror by which it had first been strangled. "I want to go after that damned coward——"
He caught his horse's bridle from a man who had climbed over the bank, leaving his own horse on the farther side.
"Why the devil did none of you stop the brute?" he stormed at the little group, now standing on the bank, looking down upon the prostrate mare, while he tried to steady his plunging horse in order to mount.
"It's no good for you, sir!" called John Kearney to him; "he's away back of the house, ye'll never get him!"
"Don't go, Larry," said Christian, who was kneeling by Nancy, caressing her and murmuring endearments. "I'm afraid she's badly hurt."
The mare was lying still. Michael Donovan, who had bred her, slipped his hand under her, and drew it out, red with blood.
"Go after him, if ye like, the bloody ruffian!" he said, furiously, "but the mare will never rise from this! Oh, my lovely little mare!"
"What do you mean?" Larry let his horse go, and flung himself on his knees beside Donovan. Christian, colourless continued to try and soothe Nancy, who lay without moving, though her frightened eye turned from one to another, and her ears twitched.
"Staked she is!" roared Donovan; "that's what I mean! Look at what's coming from her!"
He broke into a torrent of crude statements, made, if possible, more horrible by curses.
Larry struck him on the mouth with his open hand.
"Shut your mouth! Remember the lady!"
Michael Donovan took the blow as a dog might take it, and without more resentment.
Christian quickly put her hand on his shoulder.
"Don't mind, Michael. Let me see what has happened to her——"
Nancy's eye rolled back at Christian, as she stooped over her, leaning on Donovan. Already, a dark pool was forming beside her.
"You couldn't see where the branch bet her, Miss," said Donovan, quieted by Christian's touch, "but there's what done it!" He pointed to the sharp, jagged end of one of the branches, red with blood.
"The Vet——" said Christian, trying to think, speaking steadily. "Couldn't someone fetch Mr. Cassidy?"
"No good, my dear," said old Kearney, wagging his head; "No good at all! There's no medicine for her now but what'll come out of a gun!"
Christian looked up into the faces of the little knot of men round her.
"Is that true?" she said, watching them.
And all the time a voice in her mind said to her that it was true.
"God knows I wouldn't wish it for the best money ever I handled," said one man, and looked aside from her eyes.
Another shook his head, and muttered something about the Will o' God. A third said it was the sharp end of the branch that played hammock with her; he lost a cow once himself the same way. Old Kearney summed up for the group.
"There is no doubt in it, Miss Christian, my dear child——"
Christian leaned hard on Larry's shoulder as she rose to her feet.
"I'm going to get Carmody's gun," she said, beginning to walk away. "He had one. I saw it. I don't suppose he'll mind lending it to me."
CHAPTER XXIV
There are illnesses that take possession of their victims slowly and quietly, with an imperceptible start, and a gradual crescendo of envelopment; others there are, that strike, sudden as a hawk, or a bullet. And this is true also of that other illness, the fever of the mind and heart that is called Love. An old song says, and says, for the most part, truly,
"I attempt from Love's sickness to fly in vain."
"I attempt from Love's sickness to fly in vain."
"I attempt from Love's sickness to fly in vain."
Larry Coppinger did not attempt to fly, even though he knew as precisely the moment when the fever struck him, as did Peter's wife's mother when her fever left her. Perhaps he might then have tried to escape; he knew it was too late now. That fatal rapturous moment had been when he saw Christian setting forth, a lonely, piteous figure, to fetch Carmody's gun. He had followed her, and his entreaties to her to let him deal with the matter had prevailed. She had turned back, and kneeling down again, kissed the white star on Nancy's forehead, murmuring something to her that Larry could not hear. He had put her saddle on his own horse; when he mounted her, she had stooped down from the tall horse's back, and had whispered: "'That thou hast to do, do quickly.'" He went over it all in his mind; that was all she had said, and he had not seen her since.
On that afternoon as he moved about the room he had chosen for his studio, and unpacked the monster cases he had brought from Paris, he remembered how, long ago, Mrs. Twomey had laughed at him when he told her he was never going to marry.
"Wait awhile!"' mocked Mrs. Twomey, "one day it'll sthrike ye all in the minute—the same as a pairson'd get a stitch when they'd be leaning-over a churn!"
Well, it had so struck him, and struck him hard, and he was reeling from the blow.
Her courage, oh God! her courage! How she had ridden that little mad devil of a mare! There wasn't a man out who would have got her over that big country as she had! And then, when that cur had done his dirty work and bolted, was there a whimper or a cry from her? She had faced the music; she had started off to get the gun herself. He knew, just a little, just dimly, he told himself humbly, what the sight of suffering was to her, and she had stood up to it. She, with her passion for animals; she, with her tender, tender heart! Larry, who believed himself to be profoundly introspective, did not know that it was his own flawless physical courage, finding and recognising its fellow in Christian, that had first lit the flame. He thought it was her face, with its delicate charm, its faint, elusive loveliness, that had felled him, laid him low, devastated him. He pleased himself in reiterating his overthrow, in enumerating its causes, while he banged bundles of canvases on to the floor, and pitched clattering sketching-easels and stools into corners, and covered tables and chairs with the myriad colour-boxes, sketch-books, palettes of every shape and variety, brushes, bottles, all the snares that the ingeniousmarchand à couleursspreads in the sight of the bird, and into which the bird, especially if he be, like Larry, a rich amateur, cheerfully hops. He hardly was aware of what he was doing, his hot thoughts raced in his brain. It seemed to him now to have been years ago that he saw her, in the grey light, riding towards him on Nancy. She had said that he might paint her; that was all that he had thought of then. Much had happened since then; the supreme thing had happened since then! Nothing else really mattered, he thought, sitting down on the edge of a half-empty packing case, and lighting a cigarette, not even the shooting of Nancy. He would give her a dozen Nancys if she wanted them! The first and most important thing in the world was to see her again; and he had to arrange how, and when, and where he should paint her. Obviously he must at once proceed to Mount Music.
There is a saying among Larry's countrymen: "If a man want a thing hemus'have it!" Fortune had, so far, been kind to Larry, and those things that he had wanted sufficiently, he had had. It now remained to be proved if the rule were to have an exception.
"I'm going over to Mount Music just now," he said to Frederica at tea time. "I want to see them all. Will you come, Aunt Freddy?"
Aunt Freddy looked perturbed.
"You haven't seen Cousin Dick yet, have you?"
"No. How could I? He wasn't out. I've seen no one yet but Christian."
His voice lingered on the beloved name, beloved, consciously, since so few hours.
But Aunt Freddy was not apt to perceive fine shades, and she was, moreover, occupied with the framing of a warning.
"You know that Cousin Dick is a good deal changed since you saw him?" she began. "He had a sort of heart attack about a year ago—Dr. Mangan was with him, luckily. They have to try and keep him very quiet, and the worst of it is that so little puts him out."
"Well, I shan't put him out, shall I?" said Larry, confidently, beginning on a third slice of cake, love not having, so far, impaired his appetite.
"He was fearfully put out about your selling to the tenants. He said young Mangan had no right to advise you to sell so low. He told me that even Dr. Mangan was quite against his doing so."
Miss Coppinger regarded her nephew with anxiety. After four years of absence, one never knew exactly how much a young man might not have changed. That little, upturned, golden moustache might not by any means be the whole of it. The ice barrier had been forgotten in the excitement of his return, but even though she understood—and tried not to feel that the fact had its mitigations—that all young men in France were atheists, that other fact remained, that next Sunday, when she started for Knock Ceoil church, Larry, if he went anywhere, would go to the white chapel on the hill. Aunt Freddy was afraid of no one where she believed herself to be right (and the Spirit of the Nation had long since assured her of this in matters of religion); least of all was she afraid of "a brat of a boy," whom, as she boasted, she had often whipped soundly when he deserved it. But, unfortunately, the brat had her heart in his hands, and her heart was softer than Aunt Freddy knew; and this gave the brat an unfair advantage.
"Then you know, Larry," she continued, her eyes showing what her firm mouth did not admit; "you know, my dear boy, it was rather—well, rather a shock to us to see in the papers your name proposed as the Nationalist candidate here. It upset Dick very much, and, I must say," she added, unflinchingly, "me too!"
Larry put down the third piece of cake, half-finished, and went round the tea-table, and sitting on the arm of Frederica's chair, put his arm round her thin shoulders.
"I'm so sorry!" he said, knowing his power, and using it, "dear Auntie Fred! I ought to have written to you. I forgot all about the beastly thing. But you wouldn't want me to go back of my word? As for the property—well, I thought that was only my own affair. I've come all right out of it; why shouldn't I give the tenants the best terms I could?"
"Cousin Dick says——" began Frederica, standing to her guns.
"And that other show," went on Larry, disregarding what Cousin Dick might have said. "Goodness knows when there'll be an election——"
"That doesn't alter the fact," said Frederica, firmly.
"Yes, I know. Of course I must hold by my own convictions, but let's put off the row until the time comes! One is bound to have rows at elections! I don't want to fight now!"
He pressed a kiss upon her forehead. He was feeling in love and charity with all men. To wheedle Aunt Freddy into forgiveness was the first outlet that presented itself for the excitement that was consuming him.
Larry walked to Mount Music through the Wood of the Ownashee, alone. Miss Coppinger said she disliked the short way across the river by the stepping stones, and preferred to drive the now venerable Tommy round by the road; in her heart, brave as she was, she trusted that Larry would have got through his meeting with Dick before she arrived. Therefore did Larry step along the pebbly path by the river, under the dense canopy of beechen boughs, with, for companions, only the two hound puppies that Bill Kirby did not fail to foist annually upon all amenable friends. These lumbered after Larry's quick foot, with all the engaging absurdity of their kind; tripping over their own enormous feet, chewing outlying portions of one another, as ill-brought-up babies chew their blankets; sitting down abruptly and unpremeditatedly, and watching with deep dubiety the departing form of their escort, as though a sudden and shattering doubt of his identity had paralysed them, until some contrary wind of doctrine blew them into action again, and they hurled themselves upon his trail, filled with the single intention to rush between his legs. Nothing but that instinct of self-preservation that operates independent of the reason, preserved Larry from frequent and violent overthrow. His head was in the clouds; he was abandoning himself to dreams, with the very same headlong enthusiasm that Scandal and Steersman brought to bear upon the problems of existence. He strode past the glade that had been the scene of the Cluhir picnic without so much as a thought of Tishy Mangan. Had you or I reminded him of that brief, yet moving, episode, he would probably have regarded us with wide, bewildered, blue eyes, and asked for details. Then, as memory awakened, he would have laughed delightedly, and said: "Yes! By Jove! So I was! But Georgy cut me out, didn't he?" And he might have added that there had been scores of them since Tishy, he had forgotten half of them—but this, THIS! Larry would then, inevitably, have lapsed into rhapsody, as would be no more than was decent and right in a young man of artistic temperament, and you or I, our malign intention baffled, would have retired in deserved confusion.
Old Evans was in the hall as Larry walked in through the open door. He received Larry's hand-shake coldly; the four years that had passed since Larry had seen him had withered and greyed him; Larry, something dashed by the reception, remembered the title given him long ago by Christian—"the many-wintered crow,"—and found satisfaction in deciding that the crow was a scald-crow, and a sour old divil at that; anyhow, Evans had always had a knife into him, so it made no difference.
In the drawing-room things went well enough, even though there was an unexplainable chill in the atmosphere. Cousin Isabel was as kind and gentle and vague as ever; Judith was there, very handsome and prosperous, not overenthusiastic in welcome, rather inclined to patronise a very young man, quite two months younger than a married lady of position and importance. Nevertheless, there was something unregenerate about her eye, that, taken in connection with the two subalterns in whose car she had come to call at Mount Music, suggested that Bill Kirby might at times find life stirring. John, recently ordained, now a very decorative curate in a London church, was there, even more patronising than Judith, and undecided whether to regard Larry with suspicion, as a brand still smouldering from the fires of secularist France, or affectionately, as a member of what, in one of his earlier sermons, he had described as "Our ancient Mother Church, dear Peopul! Beloved, but in some matters, that I will presently indicate to you, mistaken!"
The subalterns were remote, not approving of the style of Larry's tie (which he had bought in Paris, and differed from theirs) and Cousin Dick was not there.
"You must go and see him, dear Larry," says Cousin Isabel, "he's in the study."
"And Christian? Though, of course, I met her this morning——" says Larry.
Christian, poor child, went out for a little walk with the dogs just now. Christian (poor child) had felt that wretched business this morning so terribly. The wretched business was gone into, thoroughly and exhaustively, and yet Larry felt that across one corner of it there was a fold of curtain drawn. He said he would go and see Cousin Dick. There was always a chance that Christian, also, might be in the study. The axiom that "If a man want a thing hemus'have it," should, in Larry's case, have the corollary that he must have it at once.
The Major was standing by the chimney piece in the study, warming one foot after the other at the fire that Evans had just replenished. Larry met the scald-crow at the door, and Evans passed him "as if," thought Larry, disgustedly, "he had been seeing me every day for a year! The old beast always hated me!" Larry did not like being hated.
Cousin Dick's greeting was more like old times. Dick was one of those people whose wrath has a tendency to intermit and get cold, even to perish, temporarily, from forgetfulness. On the other hand, in compensation, perhaps, for this failing, it was a fire easily rekindled. He was still shaking Larry's hand, and looking him up and down, affectionately, and withal, with the inevitable patronage of a long-legged man for one from whom Nature has withheld similar advantages, when Larry discovered the large presence of Dr. Mangan uplifting itself from the chair facing Cousin Dick's, by the fire. (But Christian was not there. He resigned himself.) There was no want of warmth in the Big Doctor's reception. He was quite aware of this himself, and was artist enough to know how useful an asset was the fact that he was genuinely fond of Larry. He had indeed proposed to exhibit his affection in pleasing contrast to the coolness of Larry's Protestant relatives, and that the Major had forgotten the rôle assigned to him, was a little disappointing. "But wait awhile!" thought the Big Doctor, who, among his other elephantine qualities, possessed that of patience.
The Major seated himself in front of the fire, and Larry pulled up a chair, wondering in his heart what these old boys wanted with a fire this lovely afternoon, and delivered himself to the old boys and to conversation. This, naturally, set with a single movement towards the event of the morning. "A real likely little mare, and shaping well, I'm told," says Dick, "and by the bye, Larry, that's a dev'lish nice horse of yours that Christian came back on. Where did you get him?"
These hunting men were incorrigible, the Doctor thought, seeing the Carmody question in danger of being side-tracked.
"Things have come to a funny way in this country," he observed, "when a fellow will deliberately chance killing a young lady, rather than let her ride over his land—and she having a right to ride over it into the bargain!"
It needed but little to start Major Talbot-Lowry again on the topic that had occupied him unceasingly since Christian's return that morning. Beginning with the burning of the Derrylugga gorse covert, and moving on through threatening letters, and rents deliberately withheld, he lashed himself into one of the quick furies that Larry remembered well. What Larry was less prepared for than was his friend, Dr. Mangan, was the sudden turn that the storm took in his direction.
"The blackguards think they can frighten me into selling on their own terms!" shouted Dick, "and that damned priest of theirs—I beg your pardon, Mangan, but the fellow doesn't behave like a clergyman, and it's impossible to think of him as one—is backing them up, and I may say"—here it was that the heart of the storm was revealed—"I may say that I'm very little obliged to your son, or to his principal here, for the part they have played in the affair! That was the beginning of the whole thing!" He turned fiercely upon Larry, his tenor voice pitched on a higher key. "How could I, with my property loaded with charges, that were no fault of mine, sell at the price you could afford to take? Look at the price that fellow—what's his damned name?—Brady, got for his farm, for the tenant-right alone, mind you! Forty years' purchase! And I'm offered seventeen for the fee simple!"
Dick was standing up on the hearthrug, towering over the Doctor and Larry in their low chairs. Larry noticed how thin he had become, and how the well-cut grey clothes, that he always wore, hung loosely on his shrunken figure. "You're a young fellow now, Larry; wait till you've been for thirty years doing your best for your property and your country, and getting no thanks! Thanks!" Dick gave a brief and furious laugh. "I've kept the hounds for them. I've slaved on the Bench and on Grand Juries. I've got them roads and railways, and God knows what else—whatever they wanted—I've sat at the Board of Guardians, and done my best to keep down the rates, till they kicked me out to make room for men who would sell their souls for a sixpence, and made their living out of bribes!"
"Oh, come, come, Major, it's not so bad as all that!" said the Big Doctor, soothingly, as Dick stopped, panting for breath. "Don't mind it now!"
"But Imustmind it!" shouted Dick. "When I think of how I've been treated, and plenty more like me, loyal men who run straight and do their best, I declare to God I feel I don't know which I hate worst, the English Government, that pitches its friends overboard to save its own skin, or my own countrymen, that don't know the meaning of the word gratitude!"
He turned again upon Larry: "And upon my word and honour, Larry, I didn't think that your father's son would have been tarred with that brush, anyhow!"
"Now, Major," broke in Dr. Mangan, again, "you know we agreed that there was no use in attaching too much importance to that transaction. Barty and Larry here were in a very difficult position, and even though you and I might not have approved entirely of their action——"
"But, Doctor," interrupted Larry, bewildered, and dismayed, "You—I thought you had advised Barty——"
The Big Doctor frowned at him, and winked too, while he laid his huge white hand on his watch-pocket, tapping with his middle finger on the spot which, as he knew, the average layman dedicated to the heart. He trusted to Larry's quickness, and did not trust in vain.
"A sort of heart attack," Aunt Freddy had said.
"I'm most frightfully sorry, Cousin Dick," Larry began, hurriedly, before a worse thing happened. "Somehow, I never thought—you see I was out of the country—it seemed to me that——" he was going to repeat those comforting sedatives about leaving the man at the helm to bark for you—(Heavens! He had been on the point of saying that! Was he going to laugh?)—but he couldn't give Barty away. He rushed into apology, regret, abuse of his own ignorance, and imbecility, and the Big Doctor, at each pause in the penitence, poured a little oil and wine into the wounds for which Larry and the Carmodys were jointly responsible, and Dick's anger, like the red that had flared to his face, fell like a spent flame.
"Say no more, boy, say no more," he said, dropping into the chair from which he had leaped in the course of hisapologia pro vita sua; "I daresay you knew no better—anyhow, you didn't mean to do me a bad turn——"
Larry took his hand. "You know that, Cousin Dick," he said, in profound distress. "Of all people in the world—the very last. If there was anything I could do now——"
"Well now, I'll tell you what you could do!" cut in Dr. Mangan, jovially, "you could tell our friend Evans to bring in the Major's tumbler of hot milk and whisky, and to look sharp about it too! I ordered he was to have it at six o'clock——"
He looked hard at Larry, who realised that his disturbing presence was to be removed, and forthwith removed it.
He delivered his message, and strayed back to the big, empty hall. A sense of aloofness, of having no place nor part in this well-remembered house, was on him. None of them wanted him; he could see that easily enough, and he had done Cousin Dick a bad turn. He had said so. If it came to that, he supposed he had done Christian a bad turn, too—Christian and Cousin Dick, the only two of the whole crowd who had been really glad to see him. He thought of her face as she came riding through the dusky wood to meet him. "The dawn was in it!" he said to himself; again he saw it, lit with the light that the hunt had kindled; and then he thought of her stricken eyes, as she looked from one man to another, asking for the hope that they had to refuse her. It had been all his fault, or—here the inner apologist, that is always quick to console, interposed—not quite exactly his fault. How was he to have known? A remembrance of Cousin Dick's undeciphered letters came to him; even the inner apologist hung his head. In any case—Larry's active mind resumed its deliberations—it was quite clearly his business to find Christian and to explain to her, as far as was possible, how things stood.
He left the house. A garden-boy had seen Christian "going west the avenue"; Larry collected Scandal and Steersman from the ash-pit, and followed her "west the avenue." He walked slowly, noting how neglected was the general aspect, how badly the avenue was in need of gravel, remembering how in the old days, the bands of slingers had never failed of ammunition, wondering if the Major were really as hard up as he thought he was; wondering if they had all turned against him, and if they would set Christian against him too. He came to the turn near the river that led to the stepping stones, and stood, in deepening depression, waiting, in the hope that she might come. It was seven o'clock, the sun was setting, the sky was warming to its last loveliness of rose and amber, and amethyst, colours with names almost as beautiful as themselves. The long stretches of grass on either side of the avenue were a fierce green, the brakes of bracken were burning orange, the long shadows of the trees that fell across the roadway were purple. The grove of yew trees, that hid the course of the river from him, had the sharpness of a silhouette cut out of dark velvet.
"Not really black," Larry told himself, screwing up his eyes. He moved on to the grass, and kneeling, framed with his hands as much as seemed good to him. In a moment, in the intoxication of beauty, he had forgotton his troubles; Cousin Dick, singing the swan-song of the Irish landlords; Dr. Mangan, and his bewildering change of front; even Christian, and her views as to his responsibility for the tragedy of the morning, stood aside to make way for the absorbing problems of colour and composition.
The hound puppies strolled on, side by side, heads up, and high-held sterns, steering for nowhere in particular, oblivious as Larry of all save the moment as it passed. A rush of rooks came like a tide across the sky; they flew so low that the drive and rustle of their wings scared the puppies and startled Larry. He stood up and watched the multitudinous host swing westward to his own woods, and just then, a couple of hundred yards ahead, at the turn where the avenue plunged into the velvet gloom of the yew-trees, he saw Christian coming towards him, alone, save for a retinue of dogs.
If that old saying (already quoted with reference to Dick Talbot-Lowry) be true, when it asserts that "wise men live in the present, for its bounty suffices them," then was Larry Coppinger, like his cousin, indeed a wise man. Remorse, anxiety, the wonder of the sunset, were swept from his mind, and Christian filled it like a flood. She looked very tired, and he told her so, eyeing her so closely that she turned her face from him.
"I won't be stared at and scolded! Why shouldn't I be tired if I like?"
"If it were only tiredness——" said Larry, with more tenderness in his voice than he knew. "Christian, they've been telling me that it was my fault—the rows with the tenants, and that devil coming at you this morning—and—and everything!"
He could not speak directly of Nancy's death; he knew what Christian felt for her horses and dogs. "I've been looking for you everywhere. I wanted to try and tell you what I felt—but since I've seen your father and old Mangan, I feel too abject to dare to say I'm sorry——"
"Why should they think it was your fault? It was my own fault. I ought to have gone back when Kearney warned me——"
"They meant the whole show. Beginning with Barty's selling to my tenants, and then your father's people making trouble, and the Carmodys burning the covert, and all the rest of it! They're quite right! It's all my rotten fault! Christian, I'm going back to France! I can't face you after what I've brought on you!"
In the bad moments of life, when the bare and shivering soul stands defenceless, waiting for evil tidings, or nerving itself to endure condolence, Christian had ever a gentle touch; and she knew too, when it comforted wrong-doers to be laughed at.
"Oh, Larry! And you pretended you wanted to paint my picture!" she said, looking at his miserable face with eyes that shone as the Pool of Siloam might have shone after the Angel had troubled it; there were tears in them, but there was healing, too.
Larry took her hand and held it tight.
"You don't mean it—how could you bear to look at me?"
"But I shan't look at you! You will have to look at me—that is, if you can bear it! You must try and brace yourself to the effort!"
This, it may be admitted, was provocation on Christian's part, but, as she told herself afterwards, desperate measures were necessary, or they would both have burst into tears.
CHAPTER XXV
The resolution to return to France, announced, as has been set forth, by Mr. St. Lawrence Coppinger, was not adhered to. In the first place, there was Barty Mangan and the various affairs that he represented; in the second place, there was the portrait; in the third place—which might as well, if not better, have come first—the resolve had expired, like the flame of a damp match, in the effort that gave it birth.
Aunt Freddy welcomed the suggestion of the portrait with enthusiasm. She had had four years of peace, "careing" Coppinger's Court for the reigning Coppinger; to "care" the reigning Coppinger himself, was, she felt, a far less peaceful undertaking. She agreed entirely with the well-worn adage relative to idle hands, and had no illusions as to her own capacity to offer alternative attractions.
"I felt," she remarked to Lady Isabel, "exactly as if someone had deposited a half-broken young horse in the drawing-room, and had told me to exercise it! My dear, Christian's portrait is a Godsend! But I may tell you, in strict confidence, that, so far, it's far too clever for an ignoramus like me to make head or tail of it!"
"It certainly fills their mornings very thoroughly," responded Lady Isabel, rather dubiously; "Christian vanishes from breakfast time till lunch. I supposeyousee more of them?"
Aunt Freddy's reply was less distinct and definite than was usual with her. Oh, well—occasionally—yes, generally—at least, always sometimes—he was painting her in the garden, on that seat by the yew hedge—so sheltered and sunny, and the weather was so perfect; she was working in the garden herself every morning. Thus did the righteous Frederica wriggle and prevaricate, causing Lady Isabel to assume that the full rigours of chaperonage were complied with, while to herself, Aunt Freddy thought that it would be perfectly ideal. But what "it" was, she did not particularise to anyone.
Mr. St. Lawrence Coppinger was not a great artist, but it had been conceded to him, even in the studio, that he had pretty colour (which was quite without reference to his own complexion) and a knack of catching a likeness. Added to these gifts he possessed a third, in being able to talk without hindering the activities of his brush. They talked a great deal to each other during those long, delightful mornings in the sunny corner by the yew-hedge; idle, intimate talk, that wandered back to the days of the Companions of Finn, and on, through stirring tales of theQuartier Latininto the future, and what it was to hold for them. Larry knew what his future must hold if it was to satisfy him. Since the moment when "Love's sickness" had laid hold of him (the same as a person would get a stitch leaning over a churn) he had known it. While he painted her, staring deep and hard, appraising, carefully, with his outer soul, the curve of her cheek, the delicate drawing of her small ear, the tender droop of her dark eyelashes, all the subtle values of light and shade, all the problem of inherent colour, and the colour that was lent by the sky and the green things round her, his inner soul was repeating the old saying: "I love my eyes for looking at you!"
Sometimes he thought he would stand it no longer, he would throw down his palette and his brushes, and let the portrait go to blazes, and kneel at her feet, telling her, over and over again, that he loved her, until she would have to believe him. Yet, for there is something inhuman about the artist, he refrained. The portrait was going so well—the best head he had ever done—out of sight better than anything he had done at the studio (what wouldn't he give to have a lesson on it from old Chose!). He wouldn't break the spell of successful work until he could carry the picture no farther. Then, he thought to himself, oh then, he would be strong to speak!
And, did he but know it, there was no need to speak; not any need at all. For Christian knew. Not enough has been said about her if it has not been made clear that, for her spirit, the barriers and coverings that other spirits take to themselves wherewith to build hiding-places and shelters were "of little avail. Motives and tendencies, the hidden forces that underlie action, were perceptible to her as are to the water-diviner the secret waters that bend and twist his hazel rod. Well she knew that Larry loved her; he was not the first in whom she had divined it, but he was the first whose heart, crying to her, voicelessly, had wakened the answering chime in hers; the first, she said to herself, and the last. She wondered, sometimes, if he knew; it seemed incredible that he could be with her, watching her, studying her least look, and not know. Yet, she loved him for not knowing, for his boyishness, his babyishness, his simplicity. She wondered if she were a fairy-woman, who by her arts had beguiled a mortal. She had met an extraordinary woman once, in London, where anyone, however extraordinary, is possible, and this being, so she told Larry, had gazed at her, raptly, had then assured her that she saw her aura (blue shot with gold) and had told her that she had a very aged soul..
"I felt as if I were an old boot!" said Christian.
"Old idiot herself!" Larry said hotly; "what else did she pretend to know about you?"
"She said she had met me before, in a previous incarnation. She couldn't believe that I didn't remember her. But I couldn't."
"I'm glad you couldn't," said Larry, still angry. "I won't have you remembering lives that I wasn't in! Anyhow, I don't believe they were half as good as this one. I call this a thundering good life.Idon't want to have been Julius Caesar or Queen Anne."
"Oh, I daresay you weren't," said Christian, consolingly; "you don't remind me of either of them. What would be more to the point would be to know what you were going to be. In this life, I mean."
"Oh, a painter first," said Larry, responding with alacrity, as do most people, to the stimulus of discussing himself; "but not exclusively. I shouldn't mind having the hounds for a bit, and I should like to travel—the gorgeous East, you know—that sort of thing. And I must say," he hesitated, "I'm rather keen to have a shot at politics."
He put down his palette and brushes and began to roll a cigarette, while he walked backwards away from his easel, staring alternately at his canvas and his model.
"Have you forgotten that I'm the prospective candidate for this constituency? The Home Rule ticket, you know!" He looked at his audience with a touch of defiance; "I don't know whatyoumay think—mynotion is——"
The prospective candidate launched forth into a statement of his notions; what, precisely, they were, is a matter that may here be omitted. The kaleidoscope of Irish politics has made many new patterns since Larry outlined his views for Christian, and the pattern of 1907 interests us no more. The affinity that exists between politics and eggs is not limited to the function of the latter in emphasising criticism of the former; it also extends to individual characteristics. The morning newspaper and the morning egg should be equally recent. Larry's political notions, when he stated them, had at least the merit of freshness, and it shall be left to them.
Christian, listening to his ambitions, felt herself older than ever.
"I think I should be a painter all the time, and let Bill keep the hounds for me," she said, indulgently, "and I certainly shouldnotplay with politics—I'm certain you'd hate them."
"Well, but I'm pledged, you know! I'm absolutely in honour bound to play up if I'm wanted——"
"Whether you know the game or no?" said Christian, mockingly. "Very sporting! I'mnota Home Ruler, as it happens. I've no breadth of outlook!Ihaven' been in France for four years!"
"You're a reactionary!" declared Larry; "I tell you Self-Government is in the air!"
With all her suppleness of mind, Christian had in her something of the inbred obstinacy of fidelity that often goes with long descent. Her colour rose.
"Wehave always stood for the King!" she said, holding up her head, and looking past Larry to the high, sailing clouds.
Larry began to laugh.
"Christian! It's awfully becoming to you to talk politics! Keep quite quiet and I'll make a study of you as Britannia—or Joan of Arc——"
It was characteristic of these young people, that in the heat of political argument they joined battle as freely as if no other point of contact existed for them. This it is to be born and bred in Ireland, where people live their opinions, and everyone is a patriot with a different point of view, and politics are a hereditary disease, blatant as a port-wine mark, and persistent as a family nose.
Miss Frederica, with a guilty remembrance of Lady Isabel's enquiries, had established her weeding apparatus at a bed near the yew-hedge. She heard the voices raised in discussion, and, catching words here and there, felt that if these were the topics that occupied her charges, Isabel need not have inflicted upon her the abominable nuisance of poking in her nose where it was not wanted. Thus did Miss Coppinger summarise the duties of a chaperon; but it must be remembered that she had never been broken to the work, and in any case she had been out of harness for four years.
The luncheon gong sounded to her across the Michaelmas daisies, and the tall scarlet lobelias, and the gorgeous dahlias of the September garden; she gathered her tools together and projected a shriek in the direction of the yew hedge.
"Children! Lunch!"
As, dizzy with stooping, she slowly reared herself to be full height, she saw a black, moving blur on the drive beyond the garden. She rubbed her eyes; the blur defined itself as a man in priestly black. Not Mr. Fetherston, a she had first believed, but Father Sweeny.
"A wolf in sheep's clothing!" thought Frederica, using as was her wont, the well-worn phrase with guileless zest. She held that although it might not, primarily, have been intended to describe the Roman Catholic Priesthood, its application in a later age was obvious.
With a cautious eye on the wolf, she approached the yew hedge.
"Larry! Father Sweeny's at the hall door. You must ask him in to lunch!"
To herself she thought: "He's Larry's affair, thank goodness! And I'll see that my young man does his duty!"
When Frederica spoke of, or to, her nephew, as "my young man," it was generally in connection with what she felt to be his duty, and felt also that it was her duty to see that his was not shirked.
Father Tim Sweeny, at lunch, at the house of his chief parishioner, was a very different being from the damaged and ferocious bull in hospital. Conscious of his priestly dignity and of the need of supporting it, but shaken by the minor stresses of the situation, the senseless multiplicity of forks and spoons, the bewildering restrictions by which he felt himself to be webbed about, hampered, mastered, Father Tim was as a wild bull in a net, and was even pathetic in his unavailing efforts to prove himself equal to his surroundings. He cleared his throat at intervals, with an authority that seemed to prelude something more epoch-making than an assent to one of Frederica's industrious platitudes; he snuffled and fidgeted, eating scarcely at all, and repelling the reverential assiduities of the servants with shattering abruptness.
"Christian saved the situation," Frederica said, in subsequent conversation with the Reverend Charles Fetherston; she absolutely 'charmed him to a smile.' She said afterwards that the smile made her think of a Druidic stone circle, slightly imperfect from age! She always thinks of absurd things; but I was grateful to her! She has an amazing gift for setting people at their ease."
"I'm not sure that our respected friend might not be more tolerable when he wasnotat his ease!" said the Reverend Charles.
"Larry simply sulked," continued Miss Coppinger; "I'm afraid Paris life does not inculcate much respect for religion."
"Very possibly!" said the Reverend Charles, non-committally. "I feel for poor Sweeny! He knows now what Purgatory is like!"
"I assure you I was as civil as I knew how to be," asserted Frederica.
"I'm sure you were!" said the Reverend Charles, stuffing a pipe as he spoke, and sniggering into the bowl.
Miss Coppinger was justified in believing that Christian had been a success with Father Sweeny.
"I declare I could like that gerr'l, Christian Lowry," he said to Father Greer. "She's a good gerr'l enough. Decent! Civil!" Each adjective of approval was launched on a snort that indicated some co-existing irritation; "but I have me own opinion of young Coppinger!"
"A good one?" simpered Father Greer.
"The reverrse!" said Father Tim, and a least four r's rang and rolled in the word.
CHAPTER XXVI
The portrait of that civil and decent girl, Christian Talbot Lowry, was finished; it had been conveyed to Mount Music and was there established on an easel in the billiard-room The artist and the model, having raised and lowered blinds and arranged curtains to their liking, or as nearly to that unattainable ideal as circumstances permitted, were now recovering from the criticism of their relations on the completed work.
The artist who works in the bosom of his own family has much to bear, and, so the family consider, much to learn. Neither in endurance, nor in the docile assimilation of instruction, had Mr. Coppinger been conspicuously successful, and his model, on whom had rested the weighty responsibility of keeping the peace, or, at least, of averting open warfare between the painter and the critics, was now, albeit much spent by her efforts, engaged in binding up the wounds inflicted on the former by the latter.
"If you hadn't argued with them, they would have liked it very much; you took them theabsolutelywrong way! But theyreallyare deeply impressed by it."
"I don't care what they think; I know jolly well it's the best thing I've ever done!" said Larry, whose temperature was still considerably above normal. "Your mother is the only one of the lot with a soul to be saved.Shedidn't harangue about what she doesn't understand!Shesaid: 'It makes me think of when she was a little child, and used to say she saw things, and the other children used to tease her so dreadfully'!"
"Quite true," said Christian. "So they did! And now they're going for you! But you never teased me, Larry."
"Thank God, I didn't!" said Larry; he had been glowering at his picture, but as he spoke he wheeled round, and sat down beside Christian on the long billiard-room sofa. "Christian, you know——" he began, stammering, and hesitating in a way that was unlike himself.
Christian interrupted him quickly.
"What shall you call the picture? I met Barty Mangan the other day, and he was asking me all sorts of questions about it."
"I shall call it 'Christian, dost thou hear them?'" said Larry, telling himself that the moment had come. "I was feeling that about you all the time—I mean when I was painting. Christian, youdidhear them, didn't you? What were they saying? Did they say anything about me?"
He caught her hand and leaned to her, compelling her eyes to meet his; "Let her see into my heart!" he thought; "she will find only herself there!"
And just then the door opened, and old Evans appeared.
Larry released Christian's hand, and went red with rage up to the roots of his fair hair. What he thought of Evans' incursion was written so plainly on his face, that Christian, in that impregnable corner of her mind where dwelt her sense of humour, felt a bubble of laughter rise.
"You asked Mrs. Dixon, Miss, to see the picture," said Evans, with a sour look at Larry. "She's outside now."
"Come in, Dixie," called Christian, with a sensation of reprieve. Suspense had been trembling in the air round her; it trembled still, but Dixie would bring respite, if not calm.
Mrs. Dixon, ceremonially clad in black silk, sailed up the long billiard room, majestic as a full-rigged ship. Time had treated her well; the increase of weight that the years had brought had done little more than help to keep the wrinkles smoothed; her love for Christian, having survived the depredations of the larder that had once tried it, had triumphed over the enforced economies that marked Christian's rule as housekeeper and was now her consolation for them. To apprehend the intention of a painting is not given to all and is a matter that requires more experience than is generally supposed. To find a landscape has been reversed by the hand that wields the duster, so that the trees stand on their heads, and the sky is as the waters that are beneath the firmament, is an experience that has been denied to few painters, and Mrs. Dixon would have found many to sympathise with her, as she stood in silent stupefaction before the portrait. Larry had been justified in his belief in it, but for such as Mrs. Dixon, its appeal was inappreciable. Christian's face was in shade, the brown darkness of her loosened hair framed it, and blended with the green darkness of the yew hedge. Faint reflected lights from her white dress, touches of sunlight that came through the leaves of the surrounding trees gave the shadowed face life. In the clear stillness of the eyes, something had been caught of the wonder that was latent in Christian's look, the absorption in things far away, seen inwardly, that in childhood had set her in a place apart; rarer now, but still there for those to see who could give confidence to her shy spirit to forget the limitations of this world, and to stray forth to meet invisible comrades from other spheres. Sometimes it has been given to an artist to rise, not by his conscious volition, above his wonted power; to portray one beloved face with the force of his emotion rather than that of his capacity, transcending the limits of his ordinary skill, just as a horse will put forth his last ounce of effort in response to the magnetism of one rider, and may never again touch the same level of achievement.
But although the very fact that in this canvas something had lifted Larry's art to greatness, made it for Mrs. Dixon a mystery and a bewilderment, she had no intention of admitting defeat. After a moment or two of silence, she cast up her eyes in an appeal to what seemed to be a familiar near the ceiling, and said in impassioned tones:
"Well, well, isn't that lovely?"
The familiar apparently confirmed the opinion, for she repeated, with a long sigh: "Wonderful altogether! I could be looking at it all day!" She turned to Christian with profound deference. "And what might it be intended to represent, Miss?"
Larry, who had picked up a cue, and was knocking the balls about, gave a short and nettled laugh.
"Oh, Dixie!" said Christian, suffering equally with artist and critic, "don't you see, it's a picture of me!"
Mrs. Dixon took the blow gallantly.
"Well, wasn't I the finished fool to forget my specs! I that couldn't see the harp on a ha'penny without them!"
"Don't worry, Dixie," said Larry, smacking a ball into a pocket; "I'm not surprised you didn't recognise it—it's not half good enough."
"Master Larry, my dear," returned Mrs. Dixon, whose social perceptions were more acute than her artistic ones, "I'll go bail there isn't one could take Miss Christian's picture the way you could, you that was always her companion!" She moved away from the easel, and murmuring; "and, please God, always will be!" she rustled away down the long room. Mrs. Dixon, indomitable Protestant though she was, did not share Evans' opinion of Larry.
Larry threw down the cue and opened the high French window into the garden at the back of the house.
"Christian, for heaven's sake come out! I can't stand this stinking room any longer! I feel as if all the imbecilities that I've had to endure this afternoon were hanging in a cloud over the billiard table. Come up to the old stone on the hill, and have some fresh air."
He stepped out into the garden, and Christian followed him, smiling within herself at his impatience, the absurd impatience that she loved because it was his. It wouldn't be Larry if he suffered fools, or anything else that he disliked, gladly or peaceably. The feeling that she was immeasurably older than he was was always at its most convincing when his painting was in question; even she could not quite realise what it meant to him to have rude hand laid upon the child of his soul.
The garden was dank and heavy with overgrown, dying things, as ill-cared-for gardens are wont to be at the end of September, but the tall bush of sweet-scented verbena, that grew by the door in the south wall, was still as green and sweet as in high summer. Christian broke off some sprays and drew them through her hands before she put one into the front of her shirt.
"Here, Larry," she said, giving him one, "this will help you to forget the billiard room!"
Larry gave her a long look as he took it; "I don't altogether want to forget it," he said. "I daresay good old Dixie was a useful discipline."
Had Christian heard Mrs. Dixon's final aspiration she would have realised that with it Dixie had covered her failure as an art critic.
Outside the garden was a wide belt of fir trees, and beyond and above the trees, stretched the great hill, Cnochán an Ceoil Sidhe, the Hill of Fairy Music, that gave its name to the house and demesne. Christian and Larry passed through the shadowy grove, walking side by side along the narrow track, their footsteps made noiseless by its thick covering of pine needles. It was dark in the wood; the fir trees towered in gloom above them; here and there in the deep of the branches there was the stir of a wing, as a pigeon settled to its nest; from beyond the wood came a brief, shrill bicker of starlings; all things beside these were mute, and in the silent dusk, spirit was sensitive to spirit, and the air was tense with the unspoken word.
The sun was low in the west when they came out on to the open hillside, and went on up the path, through the heather, that led to the Druid stone beside the Tober an Sidhe, the fairies' well. The mist, golden and green, that comes with an autumn sunset, half hid, half transfigured the wide distances of the valley of the Broadwater; the darkness of the woods, blended from this aspect into one, of Mount Music and Coppinger's Court, was softened by its veils; the far hills were transparent, as if the light had fused them to clearest brown, and topaz, and opal glass. The hill side, above and beneath them, glowed and smouldered with the ruby-purple of heather.
Christian and Larry stood in the path beside the ancient stone and looked out over the valley; the vastness and the glory of the great prospect whelmed them like a flood, the sense of imminence that was over them strung their nerves to vibrating and held them silent.
"My God!" sighed Larry, at last, trembling, turning to her who had never failed to understand him, "Christian! it's too beautiful—the world is too big—I can't bear it alone——" He caught her arm. "You've got to help me. Oh Christian!——"
Christian turned her face from him.
"I believe I could," she said in a very low voice.
Even as she spoke, the truth broke out of her soul and ran through her, running from her soul to his, like the flame of oil spilled upon clear water. A voice cried a warning in her heart. "Too late!" she answered it with triumph.
"Darling!" said Larry, holding her close.