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 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 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, 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 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.
* * * * *
The sunset
"bloomed and withered on the hill
Like any hill-flower";
but long those two stood by the Druid stone, knowing, perhaps, the
best moment that life could give them, facing the dying radiance with
hearts that were full of sunrise.