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, Cnochan 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.