But she enjoyed the consciousness of knowing more than he did; she even forgave him his superfluousness. She thought it was rather decent of him to have come, and she let him lead Amazon for a part of the way, only reserving to herself the entry into the presence of Cottingham, bringing her sheaf with her.

CHAPTER VI

Are childhood and youth indeed Vanity? When Christian looks back upon her childhood at Mount Music, it seems to her that the World, and Life, and Time, could hardly have bettered it for her, however they might have put their heads together over the job.

All her memories are steeped in sunlight. It was all fun and fights, and strawberries and dogs, and donkey-riding, and hot evenings on the big river, with the hum of flies in her ears, and Larry, hailing her from the farther bank of the Ownashee, across the stepping-stones. And whenever she thought about the schoolroom, it was always warm and rather jolly, especially in the Christmas holidays. They used to have drawing compet.i.tions, of which Larry was, of course, the promoter, in the old schoolroom, during the long winter evenings. Larry always had a pencil in his hand, and was renowned as an artist of horses and hounds, and Finn's wolf-dog, Bran, besides wielding a biting pen as a caricaturist. Christian could only compete in architectural designs that demanded neatness and exactness, but Georgy, the elder twin, had some skill in marine subjects, and, since he was going to the "Britannia," arrogated to himself the position of being an authority on shipping; so much so, indeed, that general satisfaction was felt when he was, one evening, worsted by Christian. The subject selected for compet.i.tion was "A Haunted Ship."

"Where shall I put the ghost?" Georgy debated, chewing the end of his pencil, with his head on one side.

"In the shrouds, of course!" said Christian.

"Funny dog!" sneered Georgy, who considered that his artistic efforts were no fit subject for jesting. "You'd better come and shove in one of your Midianites for me!"

Then Christian, with the disconcerting swiftness of action, mental and physical, that was peculiarly hers, s.n.a.t.c.hed, in a flash, the mug of painted-water from Larry's elbow, and poured its contents over Georgy's fair bullet-head; with which, and with a triumphing cry (learnt from a County Cork kitchenmaid, and very fashionable in the schoolroom) of "A-haadie!" she fled, "lighter-footed than the fox,"

and equally subtle and daring.

Christian was not easily roused to wrath, but when this occurred, youngest of the party though she was, it was but rarely that victory did not rest with her. Two subjects were marked dangerous among these children, during the combative years of "growing-up," and were therefore specially popular; of these, the one was Christian's reputed occult power, coupled with gibes based on that hymn to which reference has been made; the other was Larry's religion.

To the Talbot-Lowry children, their own religion was largely a matter of fetishes, with fluctuating restrictions as to what might or might not be done on Sundays, but they found Larry's a more stimulating subject. It was impossible for them to refrain from speculations as to what Larry said when he went to confession; equally impossible not to propose to the prospective penitent an a.s.sortment of sins to be avowed at his next shriving, even though the suggestions seldom failed to provoke conflict of the intensity usually a.s.sociated with religious warfare.

Lady Isabel, confronted with these problems, fell back on the manuals of her own youth, with their artless p.r.o.nouncements on the Righteous, the Wicked, their qualifications, their prospects; and, since the manuals had an indisputable _flair_ for the subjects most likely to seize the attention of the young, Lady Isabel was generally able to divert her offspring's attention from the Errors of Rome, with digested narratives of "Adamaneve" (p.r.o.nounced as one word) and the Serpent, Balaam's a.s.s, Jonah's Whale, and similar non-controversial matters.

"Wiser people than you and me, darlings," she would say, with a slight stagger in grammar, but none in orthodoxy, "have explained it all for us--"

"Larry's papa and mamma didn't quite think the same as we do, but we needn't think about that, my pet!"

"But, mother, Evans says that the Pope--" appalling prognostications as to the future of that dignitary would probably follow.

Unfortunate Lady Isabel! But parents and guardians have, at least, the power of the closure.

"We needn't talk about it now," says the hard-pressed mother, "when you're grown up you will understand it all better--"

With Christian, however, this formula was less efficacious than with her elder brothers and sister. Her questioning, a.n.a.lysing, unwearying brain ignored the closure, and evaded poor Lady Isabel's evasions. Her religious life had been singularly vivacious, and the scope and variety of the pet.i.tions that she nightly offered caused considerable embarra.s.sment to her mother. What was any good Church of England, or Ireland, mamma to do when an infant of four years implores its Deity:

"Make me to have a good, fat, lively conscience, and even if G.o.d curses me, help me not to mind a bit!"

The scandalised mamma decided that extempore prayer must be discouraged, and seeking out in one of the manuals a form of prayer of strictly limited range, repressed all additions and emendations.

Obedient to the traditions of her own youth, Lady Isabel, as her children successively attained the mature age of six years, bestowed Bibles upon them, but it was Christian, alone of the family, that applied herself with any diligence to the study of the Scriptures. She began with the Book of Esther (in which she found a satisfaction that in after life remained something of a bewilderment to her), and thence, but this was a year or two later, for no reason that can be a.s.signed, she pa.s.sed lightly to the Book of Revelation. With it, it may be said, the artistic side of her, that had leaped to sympathy with Larry's emotion over "Dark Rosaleen" and "The Spirit of the Nation," awakened, and her artistic life began. That glittering, prismatic chapter, that tells of the rainbow round about the Throne, in sight like unto an emerald, and the Sea of gla.s.s, like unto crystal, that was before the Throne, and the thunderings and the voices, and the Voice as it were a trumpet talking. Christian read the chapter over and over again, for the sheer glory of the beautiful words. She, also, knew of Voices, and Music, that other people did not seem to hear. She could understand, and could tremble to those strange shouts, and trumpet-blasts, and thunderings.

The Pale Horse that happened after the Fourth Seal was broken!

She would sit as still as if she were frozen, while she thought of the Pale Horse coming crashing through Dharrig Wood, with Death on his back, and h.e.l.l following with him--she always thought of him in that black wood of pine trees--

"Wake up, Christian!" Miss Weyman, the governess, would say.

One of the Twins would hiss between his teeth: "Christian, dost thou see them?"

Christian would feel a spiritual b.u.mp, as though she had been flung off her chair on to the schoolroom floor, and Miss Weyman (always enviously spoken of by adjacent mammas as "that most sensible little Englishwoman") would say:

"I wonder how much you heard of what I was reading! I wish I could see you learning to have a little more concentration!"

Whereas, did the excellent Miss Weyman only know it, a very little more concentration on Christian's part, and it is possible that she, and Judith, and the Twins, might all have seen the Pale Horse thundering past the schoolroom windows. Stranger things have happened.

The Indian rope and basket trick, for instance.

"A most curious child--a perfect pa.s.sion for animals, and so _dreamy_, if you know what I mean," Miss Weyman would say to a comrade visitor.

"And the things that she seems to have learnt from the huntsman! But really a nice little thing, and clever, too, though a _most_ erratic worker! Now, Judith--" Miss Weyman felt there was some satisfaction in teaching Judith. _She_ could concentrate, if the comrade visitor liked! Nothing was a difficulty to her! And her memory! And her energy--Miss Weyman freely admitted that Judith was three years older than Christian, but still--

In short, Judith was a credit to any sensible little Englishwoman, but Christian had a way of knowing nothing (as touching arithmetic, for example), or too much (as touching Shakespeare and the Book of Revelation), that implied considerable independence as to the instructions of Miss Weyman, and no sensible little Englishwoman could be expected to enjoy that.

CHAPTER VII

It is not peculiar to Irish incomes to fail to develop in response to increasing demands upon them. It was, however, a distinctive feature of the incomes of those who were Irish landlords during the latter years of the Victorian era, to shrink in steady response to the difficulties of English government in Ireland. Only Irish people can understand the complicated processes of erosion to which d.i.c.k Talbot-Lowry's resources were subjected, or can realise the tests of fort.i.tude and endurance to a man of spirit, that were involved by the visitations of "Commissioners," with their fore-ordained mission of lowering d.i.c.k's rents, rents that, in d.i.c.k's opinion, were already philanthropically low. Major Talbot-Lowry, like many of his tribe, though a pessimist in politics, was an optimist in most other matters, and found it impossible to conceive a state of affairs when he would be unable to do--approximately--whatever he had a mind for. At the age of fifty-eight, fort.i.tude and endurance are something of a difficulty for a gentleman unused to the exercise of either of these fine qualities, and after keeping the Broadwater Vale Hounds, for seventeen years, as hounds should be kept, regardless of the caprices of the subscription list, Major-Talbot-Lowry felt that he had deserved better of his country than that he should now have to inst.i.tute minor economies, such as putting his men into brown breeches, foregoing the yearly renewal of their scarlet coats, and other like humiliations.

Farther than details such as these, his sense of right and wrong did not permit him to go.

"There are some things that they can't expect a gentleman to do," he would say to his cousin, Miss Coppinger, "and as long as I keep the hounds--"

"Then, my dear d.i.c.k, if you can't afford them, why keep them?"

Frederica would rejoin, with unsparing common-sense.

Unmarried ladies of mature age, have, as a rule, learned not only fort.i.tude and endurance, but have also mastered the fact that ways are governed by means. Those processes of erosion, however, to which reference has been made, were, comparatively speaking, slow in operation, and there remained always Lady Isabel's twenty thousand golden sovereigns, as safe and secluded in the hands of trustees (who had a const.i.tutional disbelief in Irishmen), as if they were twenty thousand nuns under the rule of a royal abbess.

Therefore did Major Talbot-Lowry, M.F.H., and the Broadwater Vale Hounds, make a creditable show, brown breeches and last season's pink coats notwithstanding, at the meet at Coppinger's Court, on December 26th of the year 1897. The weather was grey and silver, with a light southeast wind and a rising gla.s.s. Sunshine was filtering down, as it were through muslin curtains that might at any moment be withdrawn; some crocuses and snowdrops had appeared in the gra.s.s round the wide gravel sweep in front of the house; there was a perplexed primrose or two, deceived by the sun as to the date; the scent of the violets in the bed under the drawing-room windows, came in delicate whiffs round the corner of the house. It would have been impossible to believe that but twenty-four hours ago, Christmas hymns had been shouted, and Christmas presents presented, had not a group of "Wran-boys" offered irrefutable testimony that this was indeed the Feast of Stephen.

These, a ragged and tawdry little cl.u.s.ter of mummers, shabby survivors of mediaeval mysteries, were gathered round their ensign holly-bush in front of the hall-door steps. From the holly-bush swung the corpse of the wren, and from the throats of the Wran-Boys came the song that recounts the wicked wren's pursuit and slaughter:

"The Wran, the Wran, the King of all birds, On Stephenses' Day was cot in the furze, And though he is little, his family is great, Rise up, good gentlemen, and give us a thrate--Huzzay!"

Wherever in South Munster two or three boys were gathered together, that song was being sung, and Major Talbot-Lowry and his staff had already met so many of such companies on their way to the Meet, that their horses' indignation at finding a further collection of nightmares at Coppinger's Court was excusable.

On the high flight of hall-door steps, stood Larry and Miss Coppinger, the former pale with excitement, the latter doggedly resigned to the convention that compelled her to offer intoxicating drinks to people who, as she said, had but just swallowed their breakfasts. Larry had learned many things since that day of abysmal ignorance when he had spoken of Amazon as a "nice dog." Among his many enthusiasms he now included a pa.s.sion for the chase, and all that appertains to its elaborate cult, that complied with Christian's, and even Cottingham's, sense of what was becoming, and, having dedicated a shelf in the library to books on hunting, he had read them all, with the same ardour that, four years earlier, he had brought to bear on The Spirit of the Nation and Irish history.

Major Talbot-Lowry looked down, from the top of his tall, white-faced chestnut, on his young cousin, and accepted the gla.s.s of port that Larry reverently offered to him, with a pleased appreciation of the reverence. Cousin d.i.c.k was not invariably pleased with his young cousin. He had gathered, hazily, from his wife, such of the tenets of the Companions of Finn as she, instructed by Miss Weyman, had been able to impart, and had not approved of them, nor of Larry's part in introducing them to his young; also it was annoying (especially when he remembered the brown breeches, etc.) to think of a young cub of a boy having more money than he knew what to do with; and, finally, and all the time, there was that almost unconscious, inbred distrust of Larry's religion.

Nevertheless, it has been said that "wise men live in the present, for its bounties suffice them," and d.i.c.k, if not very wise, was very good-natured, and was wise enough to realise that the fine weather, and the good horse under him, and even Larry's homage, were bounties sufficient unto the day.

"Got a fox for me, Larry? That's right. Good boy. Where d'ye think we'll find him?"

"He's using the Quarry Wood earth, Cousin d.i.c.k," said Larry, breathlessly, with the anxiety of the owner of the coverts alight in his eyes. "I'm certain he's there. I went round with Sullivan myself last night, and we stopped the whole place. I bet he'll not get in anywhere!"

"Good! I'll draw the Quarry Wood first," said Cousin d.i.c.k, with royal benignity. "You get away outside at the western end, and keep a look-out for him."