CHAPTER VI

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.