Penelope's Irish Experiences Part 18

* p.r.o.nounced Graunia Wael, the M being modified. It is one of the endearing names given to Ireland in the Penal Times.

Benella, I fancy, never had so varied a week in her life, and she was in her element. We were obliged to hire a side-car by the day, as two of our residences were over a mile apart; and the driver of that vehicle was the only person, I think, who had any suspicion of our sanity. In the intervals of teaching Francesca cooking, and eating the results while the cook herself prudently lunched or dined with her friends, Benella 'spring-cleaned' the lodge at the Old Hall, scrubbed the gateposts, mended stone walls, weeded garden beds, made bags for the brooms and dusters and mattresses, burned coffee and camphor and other ill-smelling things in all the rooms, and devoted considerable time to superintending my little maid, that I might not feel neglected. We were naturally obliged, meanwhile, to wait upon ourselves and keep our frocks in order; but as long as the Derelict was so busy and happy, and so devoted to the universal good, it would have been churlish and ungrateful to complain.

On leaving the Wee Hut, as Francesca had, with ostentatious modesty, named her residence, she paid her landlady two pounds, and was discomfited when the exuberant and impetuous woman embraced her in a paroxysm of weeping grat.i.tude.

"I cannot understand, Penelope, why she was so disproportionately grateful, for I only gave her five s.h.i.+llings over the two pounds rent."

"Yes, dear," I responded drily; "but you remember that the rent was for the month, and you paid her two pounds five s.h.i.+llings for the week."

All the rest of that day Francesca was angelic. She brought footstools for Salemina, wound wool for her, insisted upon was.h.i.+ng my paint brushes, read aloud to us while we were working, and offered to be the one to discharge Benella if the awful moment for that surgical operation should ever come. Finally, just as we were about to separate for the night, she said, with insinuating sweetness, "You won't tell Ronald about my mistake with the rent-money, will you, dearest and darlingest girls?"

We are now quite ready to join in all the gaieties that may ensue when Rosnaree welcomes its master and his guests. Our page in b.u.t.tons at the lodge gives Benella full scope for her administrative ability, which seems to have sprung into being since she entered our service; at least, if I except that evidence of it which she displayed in managing us when first we met. She calls our page 'the b.u.t.ton Boy,' and makes his life a burden to him by taking him away from his easy duties at the gate, covering his livery with baggy overalls, and setting him to weed the garden. It can never, in the nature of things, be made free from weeds during our brief term of tenancy, but Benella cleverly keeps her slave at work on the beds and the walks that are the most conspicuous to visitors. The Old Hall used simply to be called 'Aunt David's house' by the Welsh Joyces, and it was Aunt David herself who made the garden; she who traced the lines of the flower-beds with the ivory tip of her parasol; she who planned the quaint stone gateways and arbours and hedge seats; she who devised the interminable stretches of paths, the labyrinthine walks, the mazes, and the hidden flower-plots. You walk on and on between high hedges, until, if you have not missed your way, you presently find a little pansy or rose or lily garden. It is quite the most unexpected and piquant method of laying out a place I have ever seen; and the only difficulty about it is that any gardener, unless he were possessed of unusual sense of direction, would be continually astray in it. The b.u.t.ton Boy, obeying the laws of human nature, is lost in two minutes, but requires two hours in which to find himself.

Benella suspects that he prefers this wandering to and fro to the more monotonous task of weeding, and it is no uncommon thing for her to pursue the recalcitrant page through the mazes and labyrinths for an hour at a time, and perhaps lose herself in the end. Salemina and I were sitting this morning in the Peac.o.c.k Walk, where two trees clipped into the shape of long-tailed birds mount guard over the box hedge, and put their beaks together to form an arch. In the dim distance we could see Benella 'bagging' the b.u.t.ton Boy, and, after putting the trowel and rake in his reluctant hands, tying the free end of a ball of string to his leg, and sending him to find and weed the pansy garden. We laughed until the echoes rang, to see him depart, dragging his lengthening chain, or his Ariadne thread, behind him, while Benella grimly held the ball, determined that no excuses or apologies should interfere with his work on this occasion.

Chapter XXVIII. Round towers and reflections.

'On Lough Neagh's banks, as the fisherman strays, When the cool, calm eve's declining.

He sees the round towers of other days Beneath the waters s.h.i.+ning.'

Thomas Moore.

A Dublin car-driver told me one day that he had just taken a picnic-party to the borders of a lake, where they had had tea in a tramcar which had been placed there for such purposes. Francesca and I were amused at the idea, but did not think of it again until we drove through the La Touche estate, on one of the first days after our arrival at Devorgilla. We left Salemina at Rosnaree House with Aunt La Touche and the children, and proceeded to explore the grounds, with the view of deciding on certain improvements to be made when the property pa.s.ses, so to speak, into our hands.

Truth to say, nature has done more for it than we could have done; and if it is a trifle overgrown and rough and rank, it could hardly be more beautiful. At the very furthest confines of the demesne there is a brook,--large enough, indeed, to be called a river here, where they have no Mississippi to dwarf all other streams and serve as an impossible standard of comparison. Tall trees droop over the calm water, and on its margins grow spearwort, opening its big yellow cups to the suns.h.i.+ne, meadow rue, purple and yellow loosestrife, bog bean, and sweet flag.

Here and there float upon the surface the round leaves and delicate white blossoms of the frogbit, together with lilies, pondweeds, and water starworts.

"What an idyllic place to sit and read, or sew, or have tea!" exclaimed Francesca.

"What a place for a tram tea-house!" I added. "Do you suppose we could manage it as a surprise to Dr. La Touche, in return for all his kindness?"

"It would cost a pretty penny, I fear," said Francesca prudently, "though it isn't as if it were going out of the family. Now that there is no longer any need for you to sell pictures, I suppose you could dash off one in an hour or two that would buy a tram; and papa cabled me yesterday, you know, to draw on him freely. I used to think, whenever he said that, that he would marry again within the week; but I did him injustice. A tram tea-house by the river,--wouldn't it be unique? Do let us see what we can do about it through some of our Dublin acquaintances."

The plan proved unexpectedly easy to carry out, and not ruinously extravagant, either; for our friend the American consul knew the princ.i.p.al director in a tram company, and a dilapidated and discarded car was sent to us in a few days. There were certain moments--once when we saw that it had not been painted for twenty years, once when the freight bill was handed us, and again when we contracted for the removal of our gift from the station to the river-bank--when we regretted the fertility of imagination that had led us to these lengths; but when we finally saw the car by the water-side, there was no room left for regret. Benella said that, with the a.s.sistance of the b.u.t.ton Boy, she could paint it easily herself; but we engaged an expert, who put on a coat of dark green very speedily, and we consoled the Derelict with the suggestion that she could cover the cus.h.i.+ons, and make the interior cosy and pretty.

All this happened some little time ago. Dr. La Touche has been at home for a fortnight, and we have had to use the greatest ingenuity to keep people away from that particular spot, which, fortunately for us, is a secluded one. All is ready now, however, and the following cards of invitation have been issued:--

The honour of your presence is requested at the Opening of the New Tea Tram On the River Bank, Rosnaree Demesne, Wednesday, June 27th, at 4 p.m.

The ceremony will be performed by H.R.H. Salemina Peabody.

The Bishop of Ossory in the Chair.

I have just learned that a certain William Beresford was Bishop of Ossory once on a time, and I intend to personate this dignitary, clad in Dr. La Touche's cap and gown. We spend this sunny morning by the river-bank; Francesca hemming the last of the yellow window curtains, and I making souvenir programmes for the great occasion. Salemina had gone for the day with the Colquhouns and Dr. La Touche to lunch with some people near Kavan and see Donaghmore Round Tower and the moat.

"Is she in love with Dr. Gerald?" asked Francesca suddenly, looking up from her work. "Was she ever in love with him? She must have been, mustn't she? I cannot and will not entertain any other conviction."

"I don't know, my dear," I answered thoughtfully, pausing over an initial letter I was illuminating; "but I can't imagine what we shall do if we have to tear down our sweet little romance, bit by bit, and leave the stupid couple sitting in the ruins. They enjoy ruins far too well already, and it would be just like their obstinacy to go on sitting in them."

"And they are so incredibly slow about it all," Francesca commented.

"It took me about two minutes, at Lady Baird's dinner, where I first met Ronald, to decide that I would marry him as soon as possible. When a month had gone by, and he hadn't asked me, I thought, like Rosalind, that I'd as lief be wooed of a snail."

"I was not quite so expeditious as you," I confessed, "though I believe Himself says that his feeling was instantaneous. I never cared for anything but painting before I met him, so I never chanced to suffer any of those pangs that lovelorn maidens are said to feel when the beloved delays his avowals: perhaps that is the reason I suffer so much now, vicariously."

"The lack of positive information makes one so impatient," Francesca went on. "I am sure he is as fond of her as ever; but if she refused him when he was young and handsome, with every prospect of a brilliant career before him, perhaps he thinks he has even less chance now. He was the first to forget their romance, and the one to marry; his estates have been wasted by his father's legal warfares, and he has been an unhappy and a disappointed man. Now he has to beg her to heal his wounds, as it were, and to accept the care and responsibility of his children."

"It is very easy to see that we are not the only ones who suspect his sentiments," I said, smiling at my thoughts. "Mrs. Colquhoun told me that she and Salemina stopped at one of the tenants' cabins, the other day, to leave some small comforts that Dr. La Touche had sent to a sick child. The woman thanked Salemina, and Mrs. Colquhoun heard her say, 'When a man will stop, coming in the doore, an' stoop down to give a sthroke and a scratch to the pig's back, depend on it, ma'am, him that's so friendly with a poor fellow-crathur will make ye a good husband.'

"I have given him every opportunity to confide in me," I continued, after a pause, "but he accepts none of them; and yet I like him a thousand times better now that I have seen him as the master of his own house. He is so courtly, and, in these latter days, so genial and sunny... Salemina's life would not at first be any too easy, I fear; the aunt is very feeble, and the establishment is so neglected. I went into Dr. Gerald's study the other day to see an old print, and there was a buzz-buzz-zzzz when the butler pulled up the blinds. 'Do you mind bees, ma'am?' he asked blandly. 'There's been a swarm of them in one corner of the ceiling for manny years, an' we don't like to disturb them.'...

Benella said yesterday: 'Of course, when you three separate, I shall stay with the one that needs me most; but if Miss Peabody SHOULD settle over here anywhere, I'd like to take a scrubbing brush an' go through the castle, or whatever she's going to live in, with soap and sand and ammonia, and make it water-sweet before she sets foot in it.'... As for the children, however, no one could regard them as a drawback, for they are altogether charming; not well disciplined, of course, but lovable to the last degree. Broona was planning her future life when we were walking together yesterday. Jackeen is to be 'an engineer, by the sea,' so it seems, and Broona is to be a farmer's wife with a tiny red bill-book like Mrs. Colquhoun's. Her little boys and girls will sell the milk, and when Jackeen has his engineering holidays he will come and eat fresh b.u.t.ter and scones and cream and jam at the farm, and when her children have their holidays they will go and play on 'Jackeen's beach.'

It is the little people I rely upon chiefly, after all. I wish you could have seen them cataract down the staircase to greet her this morning. I notice that she tries to make me divert their attention when Dr. Gerald is present; for it is a bit suggestive to a widower to see his children pursue, hang about, and caress a lovely, unmarried lady. Broona, especially, can hardly keep away from Salemina; and she is such a fascinating midget, I should think anybody would be glad to have her included in a marriage contract. 'You have a weeny, weeny line between your eyebrows, just like my daddy's,' she said to Salemina the other day. 'It's such a little one, perhaps I can kiss it away; but daddy has too many, and they are cutted too deep. Sometimes he whispers, 'Daddy is sad, Broona,' and then I say, 'Play up, play up, and play the game!' and that makes him smile.'"

"She is a darling," said Francesca, with the suspicion of a tear in her eye. "'Were you ever in love, Miss Fancy?' she asked me once. 'I was; it was long, long ago before I belonged to daddy'; and another time when I had been reading to her, she said 'I often think that when I get into the kingdom of heaven the person I'll be gladdest to see will be Marjorie Fleming.' Yes, the children are sure to help; they always do in whatever circ.u.mstances they chance to be placed. Did you notice Salemina with them at tea-time, yesterday? It was such a charming scene. The heavy rain had kept them in, and things had gone wrong in the nursery. Salemina had glued the hair on Broona's dolly, and knit up a heart-breaking wound in her side. Then she mended the legs of all the animals in the Noah's ark, so that they stood firm, erect, and proud; and when, to draw the children's eyes from the wet window-panes, she proposed a story, it was pretty to see the grateful youngsters snuggle in her lap and by her side."

"When does an artist ever fail to see pictures? I have loved Salemina always, even when she used to part her hair in the middle and wear spectacles; but that is the first time I ever wanted to paint her, with the firelight s.h.i.+ning on the soft, restful greys and violets of her dress, and Broona in her arms. Of course, if a woman is ever to be lovely at all, it will be when she is holding a child. It is the oldest of all old pictures, and the most beautiful, I believe, in a man's eyes.

"And do you notice that she and the doctor are beginning to speak more freely of their past acquaintance?" I went on, looking up at Francesca, who had dropped her work in her interest. "It is too amusing! Every hour or two it is: 'Do you remember the day we went to Bunker Hill?' or, 'Do you recall that charming Mrs. Andrews, with whom we used to dine occasionally?' or, 'What has become of your cousin Samuel?' and, 'Is your uncle Thomas yet living?'... The other day, at tea, she asked, 'Do you still take three lumps, Dr. La Touche? You had always a sweet tooth, I remember.'... Then they ring the changes in this way: 'You were always fond of grey, Miss Peabody.' 'You had a great fancy for Moore, in the old days, Miss Peabody: have you outgrown him, or does the 'Anacreontic little chap,' as Father Prout called him, still appeal to you?'... 'You used to admire Boyle O'Reilly, Dr. La Touche. Would you like to see some of his letters?'... 'Aren't these magnificent rhododendrons, Dr.

La Touche,--even though they are magenta, the colour you specially dislike?' And so on. Did you chance to look at either of them last evening, Francesca, when I sang 'Let Erin remember the days of old'?"

"No; I was thinking of something else. I don't know what there is about your singing, Penny love, that always makes me think of the past and dream of the future. Which verse do you mean?"

And, still painting, I hummed:--

"'On Lough Neagh's banks, as the fisherman strays, When the cool, calm eve's declining, He sees the round towers of other days Beneath the waters s.h.i.+ning.

Thus shall memory oft, in dreams sublime, Catch a glimpse of the days that are over, And, sighing, look thro' the waves of Time, For the long-faded glories they cover.'

"That is what our two dear middle-aged lovers are constantly doing now,--looking at the round towers of other days, as they bend over memory's crystal pool and see them reflected there. It is because he fears that the glories are over and gone that Dr. Gerald is troubled.

Some day he will realise that he need not live on reflections, and he will seek realities."

"I hope so," said Francesca philosophically, as she folded her work; "but sometimes these people who go mooning about, and looking through the waves of Time, tumble in and are drowned."

Chapter XXIX. Aunt David's garden.

'O wind, O mighty, melancholy wind, Blow through me, blow!

Thou blowest forgotten things into my mind From long ago.'

John Todhunter.

No one ever had a better opportunity than we, of breathing in, so far as a stranger and a foreigner may, the old Celtic atmosphere, and of reliving the misty years of legend before the dawn of history; when

'Long, long ago, beyond the s.p.a.ce Of twice two hundred years, In Erin old there lived a race Taller than Roman spears.'

Mr. Colquhoun is one of the best Gaelic scholars in Ireland, and Dr.

Gerald, though not his equal in knowledge of the language, has 'the full of a sack of stories' in his head. According to the Book of Leinster, a professional story-teller was required to know seven times fifty tales, and I believe the doctor could easily pa.s.s this test. It is not easy to make a good translation from Irish to English, for they tell us there are no two Aryan languages more opposed to each other in spirit and idiom. We have heard little of the marvellous old tongue until now, but we are reading it a bit under the tutelage of these two inspiring masters, and I fancy it has helped me as much in my understanding of Ireland as my tedious and perplexing worriments over political problems.

After all, how can we know anything of a nation's present or future without some attempt to revivify its past? Just as, without some slender knowledge of its former culture, we must be for ever ignorant of its inherited powers and apt.i.tudes. The harp that once through Tara's halls the soul of music shed, now indeed hangs mute on Tara's walls, but for all that its echoes still reverberate in the listening ear.

When we sit together by the river brink on sunny days, or on the greensward under the yews in our old garden, we are always telling ancient Celtic romances, and planning, even acting, new ones.