MOUNT MUSIC
by
E. OE. SOMERVILLE and MARTIN ROSS
Authors of _The Real Charlotte_, _Some Experiences of an Irish R.M._,
_All on the Irish Shore_, etc., etc.
1920
By the same Authors
Some Experiences of An Irish R.M.
Further Experiences of An Irish R.M.
In Mr. Knox's Country
All On The Irish Shore
Some Irish Yesterdays
An Irish Cousin
The Real Charlotte
The Silver Fox
Irish Memories
PREFACE
This book was planned some years ago by Martin Ross and myself. A
few portions of it were written, and it was then put aside for other
work.
Without her help and inspiration, it would not have been begun, and
could not have been completed. I feel, therefore, that to join her
name with mine on the title-page is my duty, as well as my pleasure.
E. OE. SOMERVILLE.
CHAPTER I
"Christian, dost them see them?" sang an elder brother, small enough
to be brutal, large enough to hurt, while he twisted Christian's arm
as though it were indeed the rope that it so much resembled.
"I won't say I saw them, because I didn't!" replied Christian, who had
ceased to struggle, but was as far as ever from submission; "but if I
had, you might twist my arm till it was like an old pig's tail and I
wouldn't give in!"
Possibly John realised the truth of this defiance. He administered a
final thump on what he believed to be Christian's biceps, and released
her.
"Pretty rotten to spoil the game, and then tell lies," he said, with
severity.
"I don't tell lies," said Christian, flitting like a gnat to the open
window of the schoolroom. "You sang the wrong verse! It ought to have
been '_hear_ them,' and I _do_!"
Having thus secured the last word, Miss Christian Talbot-Lowry, aged
nine in years, and ninety in spirit, sprang upon the window-sill,
leapt lightly into a flower-bed, and betook herself to the resort most
favoured by her, the kennels of her father's hounds.
What person is there who, having attained to such maturity as is
required for legible record, shall presume to reconstruct, either from
memory or from observation, the mind of a child? Certain mental
attitudes may be recalled, certain actions predicated in certain
circumstances, but the stream of the mind, with its wayward currents,
its secret eddies, flows underground, and its course can only be
guessed at by tokens of speech and of action, that are like the
rushes, and the yellow king-cups, and the emerald of the grass, that
show where hidden waters run. Nothing more presumptuous than the
gathering of a few of these tokens will here be attempted, and of
these, only such as may help to explain the time when these children,
emerging from childhood, began to play their parts in the scene
destined to be theirs.
This history opens at a moment for Christian and her brethren when,
possibly for the last time in their several careers, they asked
nothing more of life. This was the beginning of the summer holidays;
the sky was unclouded by a governess, the sunny air untainted by the
whiff of a thought of a return to school. Anything might happen in
seven weeks. The end of the world, for instance, might mercifully
intervene, and, as this was Ireland, there was always a hope of a
"rising," in which case it would be the boys' pleasing duty to stay at
home and fight.
"Well, and Judith and I would fight, too," Christian would say,
thinking darkly of the Indian knife that she had stolen from the
smoking-room, for use in emergencies. She varied in her arrangements
as to the emergency. Sometimes the foe was to be the Land Leaguers,
who were much in the foreground at this time; sometimes she decided
upon the English oppressors of a down-trodden Ireland, to whose
slaughter, on the whole, her fancy most inclined. But whatever the
occasion, she was quite determined she was not going to be outdone by
the boys.
At nine years old, Christian was a little rag of a girl; a rag, but
imbued with the spirit of the rag that is nailed to the mast, and
flaunts, unconquered, until it is shot away. She had a small head,
round and brown as a hazel-nut, and a thick mop of fine, bright hair,
rebellious like herself, of the sort that goes with an ardent
personality, waved and curled over her little poll, and generally
ended the day in a tangle only less intricate than can be achieved by
a skein of silk. Of her small oval face, people were accustomed to say
it was all eyes, an unoriginal summarising, but one that forced itself
inevitably upon those who met Christian's eyes, clear and shining, of
the pale brown that the sun knows how to waken in a shallow pool in a
hill-stream, set in a dark fringe of lashes that were like the rushes
round the pool. Before she could speak, it was told of her eyes that
they would quietly follow some visitor, invisible to others, but
obvious to her. Occasionally, after the mysterious power of
speech--that is almost as mysterious as the power of reading--had come
to her, she had scared the nursery by broken conversation with
viewless confederates, defined by the nursery-maid as "quare turns
that'd take her, the Lord save us!" and by her mother, as "something
that she will outgrow, and the less said about it the better,
darlings. Remember, she is the youngest, and you must all be very wise
and kind--" (a formula that took no heed of punctuation, and was
practically invariable).
But as Christian grew older the confederates withdrew, either that, or
the protecting shell of reserve that guards the growth of
individuality, interposed, and her dealings with things unseen ceased
to attract the attention of her elders. It was John, her senior by two
years, who preserved an interest, of an inquisitorial sort, in what he
had decided to call the Troops of Midian. There was a sacerdotal turn
about John. He had early decided upon the Church as his vocation, and
only hesitated between the rôles of Primate of Ireland and Pope of
Rome. He had something of the poet and enthusiast about him, and
something also of the bully, and it was quite possible that he might
do creditably in either position, but at this stage of his development
his ecclesiastical proclivities chiefly displayed themselves in a
dramatic study, founded upon that well-known Lenten hymn that puts a
succession of searching enquiries, of a personal character, to a
typical Christian. A missionary lecture on West Africa had supplied
some useful hints as to the treatment of witches, and Christian's
name, and the occult powers with which she was credited, had indicated
her as heroine of the piece.
On this particular afternoon the game had begun prosperously, with
Christian as the Witch of Endor, and John as a blend of the Prophet
Samuel and the Head Inquisitor of Spain. A smouldering saucer of
sulphur, purloined by the witch herself from the kennels
medicine-cupboard, gave a stimulating reality to the scene, even
though it had driven the fox terriers, who habitually acted as the
Witch's cats, to abandon their parts, and to hurry, sneezing and
coughing indignantly, to the kitchen. The twins, Jimmy and Georgy,
however, obligingly took their parts, and all was going according to
ritual, when one of the sudden and annoying attacks of rebellion to
which she was subject, came upon the Witch of Endor. The orthodox
conclusion involved a penitential march through the kitchen regions,
the Witch swathed in a sheet, and carrying lighted candles, while she
was ceremonially flagellated by the Prophet with one of his father's
hunting crops. This crowning moment was approaching, Christian had but
to reply suitably to the intimidating riddles of the hymn, and the
final act would open in all its solemnity. For, as has been said, the
spirit of revolt whispered to her, and ingeniously persuaded her that
the required recantation committed her to a falsehood.
As she told John, when the formal inquisition had passed through acrid
dispute to torture, she didn't tell lies.