Penelope's Irish Experiences Part 12

As she came she smiled, And the smile bewitching, On my word and honour, Lighted all the kitchen!

This I do declare, Happy is the laddy Who the heart can share Of Peg of Limavaddy.

Married if she were, Blest would be the daddy Of the children fair Of Peg of Limavaddy.

Beauty is not rare In the land of Paddy, Fair beyond compare Is Peg of Limavaddy.'

This cheered us a bit; but the wind sighed in the trees, the rain dripped on the window panes, and we felt for the first time a consciousness of home-longing. Francesca sat on a low stool, looking into the fire, Ronald's last letter in her lap, and it was easy indeed to see that her heart was in the Highlands. She has been giving us a few extracts from the communication, an unusual proceeding, as Ronald, in his ordinary correspondence, is evidently not a quotable person. We smiled over his account of a visit to his old parish of Inchcaldy in Fifes.h.i.+re. There is a certain large orphanage in the vicinity, in which we had all taken an interest, chiefly because our friends the Macraes of Pettybaw House were among its guardians.

It seems that Lady Rowardennan of the Castle had promised the orphans, en bloc, that those who pa.s.sed through an entire year without once falling into falsehood should have a treat or festival of their own choosing. On the eventful day of decision, those orphans, male and female, who had not for a twelve-month deviated from the truth by a hair's-breadth, raised their little white hands (emblematic of their pure hearts and lips), and were solemnly counted. Then came the unhappy moment when a scattering of small grimy paws was timidly put up, and their falsifying owners confessed that they had fibbed more than once during the year. These tearful fibbers were also counted, and sent from the room, while the non-fibbers chose their reward, which was to sail around the Ba.s.s Rock and the Isle of May in a steam tug.

On the festival day, the matron of the orphanage chanced on the happy thought that it might have a moral effect on the said fibbers to see the non-fibbers depart in a blaze of glory; so they were taken to the beach to watch the tug start on its voyage. The confessed criminals looked wretched enough, Ronald wrote, when forsaken by their virtuous playmates, who stepped jauntily on board, holding their sailor hats on their heads and carrying nice little luncheon baskets; so miserably unhappy, indeed, did they seem that certain sympathetic and ill-balanced persons sprang to their relief, providing them with sandwiches, sweeties, and pennies. It was a lovely day, and when the fibbers' tears were dried they played merrily on the sand, their games directed and shared by the aforesaid misguided persons.

Meantime a high wind had sprung up at sea, and the tug was tossed to and fro upon the foamy deep. So many and so varied were the ills of the righteous orphans that the matron could not attend to all of them properly, and they were laid on benches or on the deck, where they languidly declined luncheon, and wept for a sight of the land. At five the tug steamed up to the home landing. A few of the voyagers were able to walk ash.o.r.e, some were a.s.sisted, others were carried; and as the pale, haggard, truthful company gathered on the beach, they were met by a boisterous, happy crowd of Ananiases and Sapphiras, sunburned, warm, full of tea and cakes and high spirits, and with the moral law already so uncertain in their minds that at the sight of the suffering non-liars it tottered to its fall.

Ronald hopes that Lady Rowardennan and the matron may perhaps have gained some useful experience by the incident, though the orphans, truthful and untruthful, are hopelessly mixed in their views of right-doing.

He is staying now at the great house of the neighbourhood, while his new manse is being put in order. Roderick, the piper, he says, has a grand collection of pipe tunes given him by an officer of the Black Watch.

Francesca, when she and Ronald visit the Castle on their wedding journey, is to have 'Johnnie Cope' to wake her in the morning, 'Brose and b.u.t.ter' just before dinner is served, a reel, a strathspey, and a march while the meal is going on, and, last of all, the 'Highland Wedding.' Ronald does not know whether there are any Lowland Scots or English words to this pipe tune, but it is always played in the Highlands after the actual marriage, and the words in Gaelic are, 'Alas for me if the wife I have married is not a good one, for she will eat the food and not do the work!'

"You don't think Ronald meant anything personal in quoting that?" I asked Francesca teasingly; but she shot me such a reproachful look that I hadn't the heart to persist, her face was so full of self-distrust and love and longing.

What creatures of sense we are, after all; and in certain moods, of what avail is it if the beloved object is alive, safe, loyal, so long as he is absent? He may write letters like Horace Walpole or Chesterfield--better still, like Alfred de Musset, or George Sand, or the Brownings; but one clasp of the hand that moved the pen is worth an ocean of words! You believe only in the etherealised, the spiritualised pa.s.sion of love; you know that it can exist through years of separation, can live and grow where a coa.r.s.er feeling would die for lack of nourishment; still though your spirit should be strong enough to meet its spirit mate somewhere in the realms of imagination, and the bodily presence ought not really to be necessary, your stubborn heart of flesh craves sight and sound and touch. That is the only pitiless part of death, it seems to me. We have had the friends.h.i.+p, the love, the sympathy, and these are things that can never die; they have made us what we are, and they are by their very nature immortal; yet we would come near to bartering all these spiritual possessions for the 'touch of a vanished hand, and the sound of a voice that is still.'

How could I ever think life easy enough to be ventured on alone! It is so beautiful to feel oneself of infinite value to one other human creature; to hear beside one's own step the tread of a chosen companion on the same road. And if the way be dusty or the hills difficult to climb, each can say to the other, 'I love you, dear; lean on me and walk in confidence. I can always be counted on, whatever happens.'

Chapter XIX. 'In ould Donegal.'

'Here's a health to you, Father O'Flynn!

Slainte, and slainte, and slainte agin; Pow'rfulest preacher and tenderest teacher, And kindliest creature in ould Donegal.'

Alfred Perceval Graves.

Coomnageeha Hotel, In Ould Donegal.

It is a far cry from the kingdom of Kerry to 'ould Donegal,' where we have been travelling for a week, chiefly in the hope of meeting Father O'Flynn. We miss our careless, genial, ragged, southern Paddy just a bit; for he was a picturesque, likable figure, on the whole, and easier to know than this Ulster Irishman, the product of a mixed descent.

We did not stop long in Belfast; for if there is anything we detest, when on our journeys, it is to mix too much with people of industry, thrift, and business sagacity. St.u.r.dy, prosperous, calculating, well-to-do Protestants are well enough in their way, and undoubtedly they make a very good backbone for Ireland; but we crave something more romantic than the citizen virtues, or we should have remained in our own country, where they are tolerably common, although we have not as yet anything approaching over-production.

Belfast, it seems, is, and has always been, a centre of Presbyterianism.

The members of the Presbytery protested against the execution of Charles I., and received an irate reply from Milton, who said that 'the blockish presbyters of Clandeboy' were 'egregious liars and impostors,' who meant to stir up rebellion 'from their unchristian synagogue at Belfast in a barbarous nook of Ireland.'

Dr. La Touche writes to Salemina that we need not try to understand all the religious and political complications which surround us. They are by no means as violent or as many as in Thackeray's day, when the great English author found nine shades of politico-religious differences in the Irish Liverpool. As the impartial observer must, in such a case, necessarily displease eight parties, and probably the whole nine, Thackeray advised a rigid abstinence from all intellectual curiosity.

Dr. La Touche says, if we wish to know the north better, it will do us no harm to study the Plantation of Ulster, the United Irish movement, Orangeism, Irish Jacobitism, the effect of French and Swiss Republicanism in the evolution of public sentiment, and the close relation and affection that formerly existed between the north of Ireland and New England. (This last topic seems to appeal to Salemina particularly.) He also alludes to Tories and Rapparees, Rousseau and Thomas Paine and Owen Roe O'Neill, but I have entirely forgotten their connection with the subject. Francesca and I are thoroughly enjoying ourselves, as only those people can who never take notes, and never try, when Pandora's box is opened in their neighbourhood, to seize the heterogeneous contents and put them back properly, with nice little labels on them.

Ireland is no longer a battlefield of English parties, neither is it wholly a laboratory for political experiment; but from having been both the one and the other, its features are a bit knocked out of shape and proportion, as it were. We have bought two hideous engravings of the Battle of the Boyne and the Secret of England's Greatness; and whenever we stay for a night in any inn where perchance these are not, we pin them on the wall, and are received into the landlady's heart at once. I don't know which is the finer study: the picture of his Majesty William III. crossing the Boyne, or the plump little Queen presenting a huge family Bible to an apparently uninterested black youth. In the latter work of art the eye is confused at first as the three princ.i.p.al features approach each other very nearly in size, and Francesca asked innocently, "Which IS the secret of England's greatness--the Bible, the Queen, or the black man?"

This is a thriving town, and we are at a smart hotel which had for two years an English manager. The scent of the roses hangs round it still, but it is gradually growing fainter under the stress of small patronage and other adverse circ.u.mstances. The table linen is a trifle ragged, though clean; but the circle of red and green winegla.s.ses by each plate, an array not borne out by the number of vintages on the wine-list, the tiny ferns scattered everywhere in innumerable pots, and the dozens of minute gla.s.s vases, each holding a few blue hyacinths, give an air of urban elegance to the dining-room. The guests are requested, in printed placards, to be punctual at meals, especially at the seven-thirty table d'hote dinner, and the management itself is punctual at this function about seven forty-five. This is much better than in the south, where we, and sixty other travellers, were once kept waiting fifteen minutes between the soup and the fish course. When we were finally served with half-cooked turbot, a pleasant-spoken waitress went about to each table, explaining to the irate guests that the cook was 'not at her best.' We caught a glimpse of her as she was being borne aloft, struggling and eloquent, and were able to understand the reason of her unachieved ideals.

There is nothing sacred about dinner to the average Irishman; he is willing to take anything that comes, as a rule, and cooking is not regarded as a fine art here. Perhaps occasional flashes of starvation and seasons of famine have rendered the Irish palate easier to please; at all events, wherever the national G.o.d may be, its pedestal is not in the stomach. Our breakfast, day after day, week after week, has been bacon and eggs. One morning we had tomatoes on bacon, and concluded that the cook had experienced religion or fallen in love, since both these operations send a flush of blood to the brain and stimulate the mental processes. But no; we found simply that the eggs had not been brought in time for breakfast. There is no consciousness of monotony--far from it; the n.o.bility and gentry can at least eat what they choose, and they choose bacon and eggs. There is no running of the family gamut, either, from plain boiled to omelet; poached or fried eggs on bacon it is, weekdays and Sundays. The luncheon, too, is rarely inspired: they eat cold joint of beef with pickled beetroot, or mutton and boiled potatoes, with unfailing regularity, finis.h.i.+ng off at most hotels with semolina pudding, a concoction intended for, and appealing solely to, the taste of the toothless infant, who, having just graduated from rubber rings, has not a jaded palate.

How the long breakfast bill at an up-to-date Belfast hostelry awed us, after weeks of bacon and eggs! The viands on the menu swam together before our dazed eyes.

Porridge Fillets of Plaice Whiting Fried Sole Savoury Omelet Kidneys and Bacon Cold Meats.

I looked at this array like one in a dream, realising that I had lost the power of selection, and remembering the scientific fact that unused faculties perish for want of exercise. The man who was serving us rattled his tray, s.h.i.+fted his weight wearily from one foot to the other and cleared his throat suggestively; until at last I said hastily, "Bacon and eggs, please," and Salemina, the most critical person in the party, murmured, "The same."

It is odd to see how soon, if one has a strong sense of humanity, one feels at home in a foreign country. I, at least, am never impressed by the differences, but only by the similarities, between English-speaking peoples. We take part in the life about us here, living each experience as fully as we can, whether it be a 'hiring fair' in Donegal or a pilgrimage to the Doon 'Well of Healing.' Not the least part of the pleasure is to watch its effect upon the Derelict. Where, or in what way, could three persons hope to gain as much return from a monthly expenditure of twenty dollars, added to her living and travelling expenses, as we have had in Miss Benella Dusenberry? We sometimes ask ourselves what we found to do with our time before she came into the family, and yet she is as busy as possible herself.

Having twice singed Francesca's beautiful locks, she no longer attempts hair-dressing; while she never accomplishes the lacing of an evening dress without putting her knee in the centre of your back once, at least, during the operation. She can b.u.t.ton shoes, and she can mend and patch and darn to perfection; she has a frenzy for small laundry operations, and, after was.h.i.+ng the windows of her room, she adorns every pane of gla.s.s with a fine cambric handkerchief, and, stretching a line between the bedpost and the bureau k.n.o.b, she hangs out her white neckties and her bonnet strings to dry. She has learned to pack reasonably well, too. But if she has another pa.s.sion beside those of was.h.i.+ng and mending, it is for making bags. She buys sc.r.a.ps of gingham and print, and makes cases of every possible size and for every possible purpose; so that all our personal property, roughly speaking--hair-brushes, shoes, writing materials, pincus.h.i.+ons, photographs, underclothing, gloves, medicines,--is bagged. The strings in the bags pull both ways, and nothing is commoner than to see Benella open and close seventeen or eighteen of them when she is searching for Francesca's rubbers or my gold thimble. But what other lady's-maid or travelling companion ever had half the Derelict's unique charm and interest, half her conversational power, her unusual and original defects and virtues? Put her in a third-cla.s.s carriage when we go 'first,' and she makes friends with all her fellow-travellers, discussing Home Rule or Free Silver with the utmost prejudice and vehemence, and freeing her mind on any point, to the delight of the natives. Occasionally, when borne along by the joy of argument, she forgets to change at the point of junction, and has to be found and dragged out of the railway carriage; occasionally, too, she is left behind when taking a cheerful cup of tea at a way station, but this is comparatively seldom. Her stories of life belowstairs in the various inns and hotels, her altercations with housemaid or boots or landlady in our behalf, all add a zest to the day's doings.

Benella's father was an itinerant preacher, her mother the daughter of a Vermont farmer; and although she was left an orphan at ten years, educating and supporting herself as best she could after that, she is as truly a combination of both parents as her name is a union of their two names.

"I'm so 'fraid I shan't run across any of grandmother's folks over here, after all," she said yesterday, "though I ask every nice-appearin'

person I meet anywheres if he or she's any kin to Mary Boyce of Trim; and then, again, I'm scared to death for fear I shall find I'm own cousin to one of these here critters that ain't brushed their hair nor washed their apurns for a month o' Sundays! I declare, it keeps me real nerved up... I think it's partly the climate that makes 'em so slack,"

she philosophised, pinning a new bag on her knee, and preparing to backst.i.tch the seam. "There's nothin' like a Ma.s.sachusetts winter for puttin' the git-up-an'-git into you. Land! you've got to move round smart, or you'd freeze in your tracks. These warm, moist places always makes folks lazy; and when they're hot enough, if you take notice, it makes heathen of 'em. It always seems so queer to me that real hot weather and the Christian religion don't seem to git along together.

P'r'aps it's just as well that the idol-wors.h.i.+ppers should get used to heat in this world, for they'll have it consid'able hot in the next one, I guess! And see here, Mrs. Beresford, will you get me ten cents'--I mean sixpence--worth o' red gingham to make Miss Monroe a bag for Mr.

Macdonald's letters? They go sprawlin' all over her trunk; and there's so many of 'em I wish to the land she'd send 'em to the bank while she's travellin'!"

Chapter XX. We evict a tenant.

'Soon as you lift the latch, little ones are meeting you, Soon as you're 'neath the thatch, kindly looks are greeting you; Scarcely have you time to be holding out the fist to them-- Down by the fireside you're sitting in the midst of them.'

Francis Fahy.

Roothythanthrum Cottage, Knockcool, County Tyrone.

Of course, we have always intended sooner or later to forsake this life of hotels and lodgings, and become either Irish landlords or tenants, or both, with a view to the better understanding of one burning Irish question. We heard of a charming house in County Down, which could be secured by renting it the first of May for the season; but as we could occupy it only for a month at most we were obliged to forego the opportunity.

"We have been told from time immemorial that absenteeism has been one of the curses of Ireland," I remarked to Salemina; "so, whatever the charms of the cottage in Rostrevor, do not let us take it, and in so doing become absentee landlords."

"It was you two who hired the 'wee theekit hoosie' in Pettybaw," said Francesca. "I am going to be in the vanguard of the next house-hunting expedition; in fact, I have almost made up my mind to take my third of Benella and be an independent householder for a time. If I am ever to learn the management of an establishment before beginning to experiment on Ronald's, now is the proper moment."

"Ronald must have looked the future in the face when he asked you to marry him," I replied, "although it is possible that he looked only at you, and therefore it is his duty to endure your maiden incapacities; but why should Salemina and I suffer you to experiment upon us, pray?"

It was Benella, after all, who inveigled us into making our first political misstep; for, after avoiding the sin of absenteeism, we fell into one almost as black, inasmuch as we evicted a tenant. It is part of Benella's heterogeneous and unusual duty to take a bicycle and scour the country in search of information for us: to find out where shops are, post-office, lodgings, places for good sketches, ruins, pretty roads for walks and drives, and many other things, too numerous to mention. She came home from one of these expeditions flushed with triumph.

"I've got you a house!" she exclaimed proudly. "There's a lady in it now, but she'll move out to-morrow when we move in; and we are to pay seventeen dollars fifty--I mean three pound ten--a week for the house, with privilege of renewal, and she throws in the hired girl." (Benella is hopelessly provincial in the matter of language: butler, chef, boots, footman, scullery-maid, all come under the generic term of 'help.')

"I knew our week at this hotel was out to-morrow," she continued, "and we've about used up this place, anyway, and the new village that I've b'en to is the prettiest place we've seen yet; it's got an up-and-down hill to it, just like home, and the house I've partly rented is opposite a fair green, where there's a market every week, and Wednesday's the day; and we'll save money, for I shan't cost you so much when we can housekeep."

"Would you mind explaining a little more in detail," asked Salemina quietly, "and telling me whether you have hired the house for yourself or for us?"

"For us all," she replied genially--"you don't suppose I'd leave you?

I liked the looks of this cottage the first time I pa.s.sed it, and I got acquainted with the hired girl by going in the side yard and asking for a drink. The next time I went I got acquainted with the lady, who's got the most outlandish name that ever was wrote down, and here it is on a paper; and to-day I asked her if she didn't want to rent her house for a week to three quiet ladies without children and only one of them married and him away. She said it wa'n't her own, and I asked her if she couldn't sublet to desirable parties--I knew she was as poor as Job's turkey by her looks; and she said it would suit her well enough, if she had any place to go. I asked her if she wouldn't like to travel, and she said no. Then I says, 'Wouldn't you like to go to visit some of your folks?' And she said she s'posed she could stop a week with her son's wife, just to oblige us. So I engaged a car to drive you down this afternoon just to look at the place; and if you like it we can easy move over to-morrow. The sun's so hot I asked the stableman if he hadn't got a top buggy, or a surrey, or a carryall; but he never heard tell of any of 'em; he didn't even know a shay. I forgot to tell you the lady is a Protestant, and the hired girl's name is Bridget Thunder, and she's a Roman Catholic, but she seems extra smart and neat. I was kind of in hopes she wouldn't be, for I thought I should enjoy trainin' her, and doin' that much for the country."

And so we drove over to this village of Knockcool (Knockcool, by the way, means 'Hill of Sleep'), as much to make amends for Benella's eccentricities as with any idea of falling in with her proposal. The house proved everything she said, and in Mrs. Wogan Odevaine Benella had found a person every whit as remarkable as herself. She is evidently an Irish gentlewoman of very small means, very flexible in her views and convictions, very talkative and amusing, and very much impressed with Benella as a product of New England inst.i.tutions. We all took a fancy to one another at first sight, and we heard with real pleasure that her son's wife lived only a few miles away. We insisted on paying the evicted lady the three pounds ten in advance for the first week. She seemed surprised, and we remembered that Irish tenants, though often capable of shedding blood for a good landlord, are generally averse to paying him rent. Mrs. Wogan Odevaine then drove away in high good humour, taking some personal belongings with her, and promising to drink tea with us some time during the week. She kissed Francesca good-bye, told her she was the prettiest creature she had ever seen, and asked if she might have a peep at all her hats and frocks when she came to visit us.