In the bad moments of life, when the bare and shivering soul stands defenceless, waiting for evil tidings, or nerving itself to endure condolence, Christian had ever a gentle touch; and she knew too, when it comforted wrong-doers to be laughed at.
"Oh, Larry! And you pretended you wanted to paint my picture!" she said, looking at his miserable face with eyes that shone as the Pool of Siloam might have shone after the Angel had troubled it; there were tears in them, but there was healing, too.
Larry took her hand and held it tight.
"You don"t mean it--how could you bear to look at me?"
"But I shan"t look at you! You will have to look at me--that is, if you can bear it! You must try and brace yourself to the effort!"
This, it may be admitted, was provocation on Christian"s part, but, as she told herself afterwards, desperate measures were necessary, or they would both have burst into tears.
CHAPTER XXV
The resolution to return to France, announced, as has been set forth, by Mr. St. Lawrence Coppinger, was not adhered to. In the first place, there was Barty Mangan and the various affairs that he represented; in the second place, there was the portrait; in the third place--which might as well, if not better, have come first--the resolve had expired, like the flame of a damp match, in the effort that gave it birth.
Aunt Freddy welcomed the suggestion of the portrait with enthusiasm.
She had had four years of peace, "careing" Coppinger"s Court for the reigning Coppinger; to "care" the reigning Coppinger himself, was, she felt, a far less peaceful undertaking. She agreed entirely with the well-worn adage relative to idle hands, and had no illusions as to her own capacity to offer alternative attractions.
"I felt," she remarked to Lady Isabel, "exactly as if someone had deposited a half-broken young horse in the drawing-room, and had told me to exercise it! My dear, Christian"s portrait is a G.o.dsend! But I may tell you, in strict confidence, that, so far, it"s far too clever for an ignoramus like me to make head or tail of it!"
"It certainly fills their mornings very thoroughly," responded Lady Isabel, rather dubiously; "Christian vanishes from breakfast time till lunch. I suppose _you_ see more of them?"
Aunt Freddy"s reply was less distinct and definite than was usual with her. Oh, well--occasionally--yes, generally--at least, always sometimes--he was painting her in the garden, on that seat by the yew hedge--so sheltered and sunny, and the weather was so perfect; she was working in the garden herself every morning. Thus did the righteous Frederica wriggle and prevaricate, causing Lady Isabel to a.s.sume that the full rigours of chaperonage were complied with, while to herself, Aunt Freddy thought that it would be perfectly ideal. But what "it"
was, she did not particularise to anyone.
Mr. St. Lawrence Coppinger was not a great artist, but it had been conceded to him, even in the studio, that he had pretty colour (which was quite without reference to his own complexion) and a knack of catching a likeness. Added to these gifts he possessed a third, in being able to talk without hindering the activities of his brush. They talked a great deal to each other during those long, delightful mornings in the sunny corner by the yew-hedge; idle, intimate talk, that wandered back to the days of the Companions of Finn, and on, through stirring tales of the _Quartier Latin_ into the future, and what it was to hold for them. Larry knew what his future must hold if it was to satisfy him. Since the moment when "Love"s sickness" had laid hold of him (the same as a person would get a st.i.tch leaning over a churn) he had known it. While he painted her, staring deep and hard, appraising, carefully, with his outer soul, the curve of her cheek, the delicate drawing of her small ear, the tender droop of her dark eyelashes, all the subtle values of light and shade, all the problem of inherent colour, and the colour that was lent by the sky and the green things round her, his inner soul was repeating the old saying: "I love my eyes for looking at you!"
Sometimes he thought he would stand it no longer, he would throw down his palette and his brushes, and let the portrait go to blazes, and kneel at her feet, telling her, over and over again, that he loved her, until she would have to believe him. Yet, for there is something inhuman about the artist, he refrained. The portrait was going so well--the best head he had ever done--out of sight better than anything he had done at the studio (what wouldn"t he give to have a lesson on it from old Chose!). He wouldn"t break the spell of successful work until he could carry the picture no farther. Then, he thought to himself, oh then, he would be strong to speak!
And, did he but know it, there was no need to speak; not any need at all. For Christian knew. Not enough has been said about her if it has not been made clear that, for her spirit, the barriers and coverings that other spirits take to themselves wherewith to build hiding-places and shelters were "of little avail. Motives and tendencies, the hidden forces that underlie action, were perceptible to her as are to the water-diviner the secret waters that bend and twist his hazel rod.
Well she knew that Larry loved her; he was not the first in whom she had divined it, but he was the first whose heart, crying to her, voicelessly, had wakened the answering chime in hers; the first, she said to herself, and the last. She wondered, sometimes, if he knew; it seemed incredible that he could be with her, watching her, studying her least look, and not know. Yet, she loved him for not knowing, for his boyishness, his babyishness, his simplicity. She wondered if she were a fairy-woman, who by her arts had beguiled a mortal. She had met an extraordinary woman once, in London, where anyone, however extraordinary, is possible, and this being, so she told Larry, had gazed at her, raptly, had then a.s.sured her that she saw her aura (blue shot with gold) and had told her that she had a very aged soul..
"I felt as if I were an old boot!" said Christian.
"Old idiot herself!" Larry said hotly; "what else did she pretend to know about you?"
"She said she had met me before, in a previous incarnation. She couldn"t believe that I didn"t remember her. But I couldn"t."
"I"m glad you couldn"t," said Larry, still angry. "I won"t have you remembering lives that I wasn"t in! Anyhow, I don"t believe they were half as good as this one. I call this a thundering good life. _I_ don"t want to have been Julius Caesar or Queen Anne."
"Oh, I daresay you weren"t," said Christian, consolingly; "you don"t remind me of either of them. What would be more to the point would be to know what you were going to be. In this life, I mean."
"Oh, a painter first," said Larry, responding with alacrity, as do most people, to the stimulus of discussing himself; "but not exclusively. I shouldn"t mind having the hounds for a bit, and I should like to travel--the gorgeous East, you know--that sort of thing. And I must say," he hesitated, "I"m rather keen to have a shot at politics."
He put down his palette and brushes and began to roll a cigarette, while he walked backwards away from his easel, staring alternately at his canvas and his model.
"Have you forgotten that I"m the prospective candidate for this const.i.tuency? The Home Rule ticket, you know!" He looked at his audience with a touch of defiance; "I don"t know what _you_ may think--_my_ notion is--"
The prospective candidate launched forth into a statement of his notions; what, precisely, they were, is a matter that may here be omitted. The kaleidoscope of Irish politics has made many new patterns since Larry outlined his views for Christian, and the pattern of 1907 interests us no more. The affinity that exists between politics and eggs is not limited to the function of the latter in emphasising criticism of the former; it also extends to individual characteristics.
The morning newspaper and the morning egg should be equally recent.
Larry"s political notions, when he stated them, had at least the merit of freshness, and it shall be left to them.
Christian, listening to his ambitions, felt herself older than ever.
"I think I should be a painter all the time, and let Bill keep the hounds for me," she said, indulgently, "and I certainly should _not_ play with politics--I"m certain you"d hate them."
"Well, but I"m pledged, you know! I"m absolutely in honour bound to play up if I"m wanted--"
"Whether you know the game or no?" said Christian, mockingly. "Very sporting! I"m _not_ a Home Ruler, as it happens. I"ve no breadth of outlook! _I_ haven" been in France for four years!"
"You"re a reactionary!" declared Larry; "I tell you Self-Government is in the air!"
With all her suppleness of mind, Christian had in her something of the inbred obstinacy of fidelity that often goes with long descent. Her colour rose.
"_We_ have always stood for the King!" she said, holding up her head, and looking past Larry to the high, sailing clouds.
Larry began to laugh.
"Christian! It"s awfully becoming to you to talk politics! Keep quite quiet and I"ll make a study of you as Britannia--or Joan of Arc--"
It was characteristic of these young people, that in the heat of political argument they joined battle as freely as if no other point of contact existed for them. This it is to be born and bred in Ireland, where people live their opinions, and everyone is a patriot with a different point of view, and politics are a hereditary disease, blatant as a port-wine mark, and persistent as a family nose.
Miss Frederica, with a guilty remembrance of Lady Isabel"s enquiries, had established her weeding apparatus at a bed near the yew-hedge. She heard the voices raised in discussion, and, catching words here and there, felt that if these were the topics that occupied her charges, Isabel need not have inflicted upon her the abominable nuisance of poking in her nose where it was not wanted. Thus did Miss Coppinger summarise the duties of a chaperon; but it must be remembered that she had never been broken to the work, and in any case she had been out of harness for four years.
The luncheon gong sounded to her across the Michaelmas daisies, and the tall scarlet lobelias, and the gorgeous dahlias of the September garden; she gathered her tools together and projected a shriek in the direction of the yew hedge.
"Children! Lunch!"
As, dizzy with stooping, she slowly reared herself to be full height, she saw a black, moving blur on the drive beyond the garden. She rubbed her eyes; the blur defined itself as a man in priestly black.
Not Mr. Fetherston, a she had first believed, but Father Sweeny.
"A wolf in sheep"s clothing!" thought Frederica, using as was her wont, the well-worn phrase with guileless zest. She held that although it might not, primarily, have been intended to describe the Roman Catholic Priesthood, its application in a later age was obvious.
With a cautious eye on the wolf, she approached the yew hedge.
"Larry! Father Sweeny"s at the hall door. You must ask him in to lunch!"
To herself she thought: "He"s Larry"s affair, thank goodness! And I"ll see that my young man does his duty!"
When Frederica spoke of, or to, her nephew, as "my young man," it was generally in connection with what she felt to be his duty, and felt also that it was her duty to see that his was not shirked.
Father Tim Sweeny, at lunch, at the house of his chief parishioner, was a very different being from the damaged and ferocious bull in hospital. Conscious of his priestly dignity and of the need of supporting it, but shaken by the minor stresses of the situation, the senseless multiplicity of forks and spoons, the bewildering restrictions by which he felt himself to be webbed about, hampered, mastered, Father Tim was as a wild bull in a net, and was even pathetic in his unavailing efforts to prove himself equal to his surroundings. He cleared his throat at intervals, with an authority that seemed to prelude something more epoch-making than an a.s.sent to one of Frederica"s industrious plat.i.tudes; he snuffled and fidgeted, eating scarcely at all, and repelling the reverential a.s.siduities of the servants with shattering abruptness.
"Christian saved the situation," Frederica said, in subsequent conversation with the Reverend Charles Fetherston; she absolutely "charmed him to a smile." She said afterwards that the smile made her think of a Druidic stone circle, slightly imperfect from age! She always thinks of absurd things; but I was grateful to her! She has an amazing gift for setting people at their ease."