"I'm not sure that our respected friend might not be more tolerable when he was _not_ at 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 a.s.sure you I was as civil as I knew how to be," a.s.serted Frederica.

"I'm sure you were!" said the Reverend Charles, stuffing a pipe as he spoke, and sn.i.g.g.e.ring 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 circ.u.mstances 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 a.s.similation 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 the _absolutely_ wrong way! But they _really_ are 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. _She_ didn't harangue about what she doesn't understand! _She_ said: '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 G.o.d, 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, you _did_ hear 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 impa.s.sioned 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 b.a.l.l.s 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 G.o.d, 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, Cnochan an Ceoil Sidhe, the Hill of Fairy Music, that gave its name to the house and demesne. Christian and Larry pa.s.sed 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 gla.s.s. 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 G.o.d!" 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.