Mount Music. Ross Martin

      He rose from behind a spur of rock and furze, and came towards Christian.

      "Oh, good for you!" he said, admiringly, "I was afraid to show up till you had got her."

      Christian was not sure that she was pleased at this intervention.

      "How did you know where I was?"

      "The servants told me you had gone to the kennels, and Jimmy showed me the hill, and then I spotted your white coat—not that it's so awfully white!—I thought it was rather rotten to let you go alone."

      "And why not, pray?" enquired Christian, haughtily. Male assumption of the duties of guardianship was a thing she found highly offensive; "I always go about alone!"

      "Well, I wanted to come, anyway," said Larry, with a placating grin. "I say, that is an awful nice dog!"

      "You never call foxhounds 'dogs'!" said Christian, still with hauteur; "Larry, you are an owl!"

      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

       Table of Contents

      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 competitions, 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 competition 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, snatched, 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 assortment of sins to be avowed at his next shriving, even though the suggestions seldom failed to provoke conflict of the intensity usually associated with religious warfare.

      Lady Isabel, confronted with these problems, fell back on the manuals of her own youth, with their artless pronouncements 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" (pronounced as one word) and the Serpent, Balaam's Ass, 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, analysing, 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 petitions that she nightly offered caused considerable embarrassment 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 God 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 assigned, she passed 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 glass, 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 Hell 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 bump, as though she had been flung off her chair on to the schoolroom floor, and Miss Weyman (always enviously