Mount Music Part 14

"That's what you says, Miss," said Cottingham; "but I reckon what her wanted was what her got from _me_--a good 'idin'!"

Having made his point, Cottingham, a true artist, departed at the little toddling run that in kennels indicates devotion to duty, combined with a slippery floor.

"I had forgotten about your breaking your wrist--I remember about my own, right enough!" said Larry. "What rotten luck!"

"Oh, it's dead sound now," said Christian. "Look!" She stood up, and held out both her slender hands to him across the intervening hounds'

backs. "I bet you don't know which is which!"

Larry took a hand in each of his, and flexed the wrists. "The left, wasn't it?" he said, without releasing them. "Not that I see any difference, only I remember now that I heard you had smashed the same one that I did."

"It did hurt--horribly! I expect you know. It hurts still a little, sometimes." She looked at him for sympathy. She was nearly eighteen now, and had caught him up in height, so that her brown eyes looked straight into his blue ones.

"Poor little paw!" said Larry patronizingly; he was going to be twenty-one in a week, and felt immeasurably older than Christian. "Oh, by the way, I forgot! I mustn't say paw. Must I call it 'foot'? I'll make it well, anyhow!" he ended, and, in what he felt to be the manner of a kind uncle, he kissed the injured wrist.

"_Quite_ well now, thank you!" said Christian, mockingly, withdrawing her hands. "If I had only thought of it, I could have got Nancy to lick it! It might have done just as well!" Her colour had risen a little. "Let's come out; it's rather stuffy in here."

At a little distance from the kennel precincts were waiting two small, smooth, white dogs, daughters of the adored companions of Christian's childhood, themselves scarcely less adored than were their parents.

Seated, as was their practice, in a well-chosen position, that combined seclusion with a commanding view of the detested hounds, they had not ceased (as was also their practice) from loud and desolate barking, an exercise that in the case of Dooley, the younger and more highly-strung of the couple, was accustomed to develop into a sustained contralto wail. As Christian and Larry left the kennel yard, this moment had been reached. Dooley's nose was in the air, her mouth was as round as the neck of a bottle, her white throat looked as long as a swan's throat, and the bark was softening into sobs. Christian flung herself down, and gathered her and her sister, the second Rinka, into her arms.

"Let's sit down here," she said, sending her hat spinning down the gra.s.sy slope; "it's too lovely to go in, and I want a cigarette."

"Haven't got one," said Larry. "Sorry. I gave them up in Lent, and now I'm doing as well without 'em."

"Nerve gone already," said Christian. "That's what comes of missing a season!" She laughed up at him.

"Don't know," said Larry, dropping down beside her on the dry, sun-hot gra.s.s; "quite likely; but it wasn't that. The fact was"--he hesitated--"I met a very decent Padre at Murren. We used to talk a lot about--oh, no end of things! When he found I was Irish he was awfully pleased. He congratulated me on belonging to the Old Faith--he's Irish himself, but he's never lived over here. He said it was such a wonderful link with the people and the past--such a romantic religion!

And so it is, you know. It hadn't struck me, somehow, till Father Nugent talked of it. I'm sorry for you, Christian! Don't you feel being a Protestant is a bit--well--stodgy--and respectable--no sort of poetry?"

"I like stodge," said Christian, serenely.

Larry paid this frivolity no attention. He had only recently discovered that he possessed a soul, and he was as much pleased with it as he had been with his first watch, and he found much the same enjoyment in producing and examining it, that had been afforded to him by the watch.

"It was Father Nugent's suggestion to give up smoking," he said, unable to eliminate from his voice a touch of pride, "I knocked off whiskies and sodas, too--but that was off my own bat."

"'Smite them by the merit of the Lenten Fast!'" murmured Christian.

Unlike Larry, she evaded personalities and especially those that involved a discussion of religion. "Larry do you remember the awful rags we used to have over that hymn! What ages it is since you were at home! Not since I've had my hair up!"

"By Jove, I hardly knew you when I saw you first!" responded Larry, his sails filling on a fresh tack with characteristic speed. "It's not as light as it used to be. I'm not sure that I like it up."

He looked at her critically. Her hair, thick and waving lay darkly on her forehead, and was stacked in ma.s.ses upon her small head on a system known only to herself.

"That's a pity," said Christian, coolly, "and I hate it, too. But unluckily, whether you and I hate it or not, it's got to stay up now--that's to say, when it will. I am supposed to be 'out.' I'm nearly eighteen, you know. I never thought I'd live to such an age."

"Oh, wait till you're 'of age,' like me!" said Larry, impressively.

"Then you'll know the horrors of longevity. I've got to take over the show--the tenants and all the rest of it--from your father, and Aunt Freddy, next week! An awful job it's going to be! Cousin d.i.c.k says that these revisions of rent have played the deuce all round. I shall make old Barty Mangan my agent. He's a solicitor now all right. He can run the show. I like old Barty, don't you?"

"I hardly ever see him," said Christian, cautiously. "He has rather nice looks--more like a poet than a solicitor."

"You see, I want to go abroad, and do some music, and paint," said Larry, pressing on with his own subject. "Take painting on seriously, you know--"

"I know," said Christian, thoughtfully, "I don't envy Barty Mangan! I know Papa's having botheration with our people--"

"All the more reason for me to earn my living by painting!" responded Larry cheerfully.

They were sitting at the edge of a patch of plantation. It was the middle of May, and the young larches behind them were clad in a cloud of pale emerald; the clumps of hawthorn, that were dotted about the park, between the kennels and the river, were sending forth the fragrance of their whiteness; the new green had come into the gra.s.s, though it was almost smothered in the snow of daisies; primroses and wild hyacinths had strayed from the little wood, and straggling down the hillside, had joined hands and agreed, the first, to linger, the latter, to hasten into blow, and so to share the month between them.

Just below, on the turn of the hill, was a big thicket of furze bushes, more golden than gold, sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. From Larry's woods across the Ownashee, the cuckoo's voice came, as melodiously monotonous and as full of a.s.sociations as the bell of a village church. Silvery clouds were sailing very high in a sky of thinnest, sweetest blue; little jets of sparkling sound, rising and falling in it, bespoke the invisible, rapturous larks, tireless as a playing fountain; and the sun blazed down on the boy and the girl and the two little dogs seated there in the full of it.

Larry rolled over and over on the gra.s.s like a young colt.

"Oh, murder-in-Irish!" he groaned, in sheer ecstasy, "isn't it gorgeous! I always forget how entirely stunning Ireland is, till I come back to it!"

He could say no more, as both dogs had sprung from Christian's arms, and were feverishly licking his face.

"Your own fault!" said Christian, answering his expostulations. "Kind little things, they thought you asked for it."

"I repeat," said Larry, lying on his back, and holding off his a.s.sailants with difficulty, "eliminating badly brought-up dogs, that Ireland is the finest country in the world, and--listen to this, Christian!--the Irish are the finest people, _and_ the worst governed!"

"'The foinest pisanthry in Europe'!" said Christian, in gibing exaggeration. "Larry, you've got awfully English!" Larry rolled over and came into play again, sitting bolt upright; "I'm a Home Ruler!"

"Don't be absurd," said Christian, tranquilly.

"I'm not the least absurd," returned Larry. "I _mean_ it. If not a Republican!" he added, ostentatiously, and began to chant:

"And Ireland shall be free, From the centre to the sea, And huzza for Libertee, Says the Shan Van Voght!"

"I say, you remember the old companions of Finn? Well they're rolling up again! I've started them at Oxford. Six members already! Two men in my college, and--"

"English, of course!" interrupted Christian, with an effective tone of elderly superiority. "People like yourself, who know nothing about it!"

This was an insult not easily to be tolerated; the gage of battle did not lie long at Larry's feet, and it may be admitted that the challenger would have been ill pleased had it been ignored.

In the five years that had pa.s.sed since the curtain of this narrative went down on Christian, she had changed more than had Larry. It was as though that extra-worldly endowment of her childhood having ceased to manifest in external ways, had turned its light inwards. The power of hearing what others could not hear, had faded, but a subtlety of mind, a clarity, a sort of pondering, intellectual self-consciousness (that had no kinship with that other form of self-consciousness that is only inverted self-conceit) had taken the place of those voices that she had once refused to deny to the inquisitorial John.

The battle, with regard to the resurrected Companions of Finn, having waxed and waned in a course that need not here be followed, the argument took on another phase.

"You know, Larry," Christian said, half-absently twisting and arranging Dooley's little tan ears, in order to express, on Dooley's behalf, with them, various emotions, "it seems to me that all these political revolutions that you are so anxious to start, for the good of Ireland, are like putting the cart before the horse."

"What do you mean?" asked Larry, eyeing her with undisguised surprise.

"Well," said Christian, slowly, gazing across the valley with eyes more than ever like the clearest brown stream, "you've got to begin with the individual. After all, Ireland is made up of individuals, and each of them contributes in some way to the big result. It seems to me that the real Spirit of the Nation is--is--"

Her gaze at the far woods became fixed, and her hands ceased to play with the soft, tan ears.

"Is what?" said Larry, rather impatiently. He was bewildered by this grave, young debater, and was trying to reconcile her with the child he had left behind him last year, or even with the child who, five minutes ago, had wished to impress a comprehensive kiss on all the hounds at once. Moreover, a young gentleman on the imminent verge of official manhood, is justified in resenting ideas, in opposition to his own, being offered to him by a little girl, with her hair only just "up," whom he regards as no more than a niece, or thereabouts.

"Well," said Christian, still more slowly, her eyes lifting from the woods and resting on a shining s...o...b..ll of a cloud, "it's Religious Intolerance, I think! That seems to me the Spirit of the Nation--my side as bad as yours, and yours as bad as mine--"

"Oh, the parsons and the priests," said Larry, airily. "Oh you wait, Christian! You don't know! You've been stuck down here in a hole. If you met Father Nugent--"