Penelope's Irish Experiences Part 20

Oliver Goldsmith.

It is almost over, our Irish holiday, so full of delicious, fruitful experiences; of pleasures we have made and shared, and of other people's miseries and hards.h.i.+ps we could not relieve. Almost over! Soon we shall be in Dublin, and then on to London to meet Francesca's father; soon be deciding whether she will be married at the house of their friend the American amba.s.sador, or in her own country, where she has really had no home since the death of her mother.

The ceremony over, Mr. Monroe will start again for Cairo or Constantinople, Stockholm or St. Petersburg; for he is of late years a determined wanderer, whose fatherly affection is chiefly shown in liberal allowances, in pride of his daughter's beauty and many conquests, in conscientious letter-writing, and in frequent calls upon her between his long journeys. It is because of these paternal predilections that we are so glad Francesca's heart has resisted all the shot and sh.e.l.l directed against it from the batteries of a dozen gay worldlings and yielded so quietly and so completely to Ronald Macdonald's loyal and tender affection.

At tea-time day before yesterday, Salemina suggested that Francesca and I find the heart of Aunt David's labyrinth, the which she had discovered in a less than ten minutes' search that morning, leaving her Gaelic primer behind her that we might bring it back as a proof of our success.

You have heard in Pearla's Celtic fairy tale the outcome of this little expedition, and now know that Ronald Macdonald and Himself planned the joyful surprise for us, and by means of Salemina's aid carried it out triumphantly.

Ronald crossing to Ireland from Glasgow, and Himself from Liverpool, had met in Dublin, and travelled post-haste to the Shamrock Inn in Devorgilla, where they communicated with Salemina and begged her a.s.sistance in their plot.

I was looking forward to my husband's arrival within a week, but Ronald had said not a word of his intended visit; so that Salemina was properly nervous lest some one of us should collapse out of sheer joy at the unexpected meeting.

I have been both quietly and wildly happy many times in my life, but I think yesterday was the most perfect day in all my chain of years. Not that in this long separation I have been dull, or sad, or lonely. How could I be? Dull, with two dear, bright, sunny letters every week, letters throbbing with manly tenderness, letters breathing the sure, steadfast, protecting care that a strong man gives to the woman he has chosen. Sad, with my heart br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with sweet memories and sweeter prophecies, and all its tiny crevices so filled with love that discontent can find no entrance there! Lonely, when the vision of the beloved is so poignantly real in absence that his bodily presence adds only a final touch to joy! Dull, or sad, when in these soft days of spring and early summer I have harboured a new feeling of companions.h.i.+p and oneness with Nature, a fresh joy in all her bounteous resource and plenitude of life, a renewed sense of kins.h.i.+p with her mysterious awakenings! The heavenly greenness and promise of the outer world seem but a reflection of the hopes and dreams that irradiate my own inner consciousness.

My art, dearly as I loved it, dearly as I love it still, never gave me these strange, unspeakable joys with their delicate margin of pain.

Where are my ambitions, my visions of lonely triumphs, my imperative need of self-expression, my enn.o.bling glimpses of the unattainable, my companions.h.i.+p with the shadows in which an artist's life is so rich? Are they vanished altogether? I think not; only changed in the twinkling of an eye, merged in something higher still, carried over, linked on, transformed, trans.m.u.ted, by Love the alchemist, who, not content with joys already bestowed, whispers secret promises of raptures yet to come.

The green isle looked its fairest for our wanderers. Just as a woman adorns herself with all her jewels when she wishes to startle or enthrall, wishes to make a lover of a friend, so Devorgilla arrayed herself to conquer these two pairs of fresh eyes, and command their instant allegiance.

It was a tender, silvery day, fair, mild, pensive, with light shadows and a capricious sun. There had been a storm of rain the night before, and it was as if Nature had repented of her wildness, and sought forgiveness by all sorts of winsome arts, insinuating invitations, soft caresses, and melting coquetries of demeanour.

Broona and Jackeen had lunched with us at the Old Hall, and, inebriated by broiled chicken, green peas, and a half holiday, flitted like fireflies through Aunt David's garden, showing all its treasures to the two new friends, already in high favour.

Benella, it is unnecessary to say, had confided her entire past life to Himself after a few hours' acquaintance, while both he and Ronald, concealing in the most craven manner their original objections to the part she proposed to play in our triangular alliance, thanked her, with tears in their eyes, for her devotion to their sovereign ladies.

We had tea in the Italian garden at Rosnaree, and Dr. Gerald, arm in arm with Himself, walked between its formal flower borders, along its paths of golden gravel, and among its spirelike cypresses and fountains, where bal.u.s.trades and statues, yellowed and stained with age (stains which Benella longs to scrub away), make the brilliant turf even greener by contrast.

Tea was to have been followed in due course by dinner, but we all agreed that nothing should induce us to go indoors on such a beautiful evening; so baskets were packed, and we went in rowboats to a picnic supper on Illanroe, a wee island in Lough Beg.

I can close my eyes to-day and see the picture--the lonely little lake, as blue in the suns.h.i.+ne as the sky above it, but in the twilight first brown and cool, then flushed with the sunset. The distant hills, the rocks, the heather, wore tints I never saw them wear before. The singing wavelets 'spilled their crowns of white upon the beach' across the lake, and the wild-flowers in the clear shallows near us grew so close to the brink that they threw their delicate reflections in the water, looking up at us again framed in red-brown gra.s.ses.

By and by the moon rose out of the pearl-greys and ambers in the east, bevies of black rooks flew homeward, and stillness settled over the face of the brown lake. Darkness shut us out from Devorgilla; and though we could still see the glimmer of the village lights, it seemed as if we were in a little world of our own.

It was useless for Salemina to deny herself to the children, for was she not going to leave them on the morrow? She sat under the shadow of a thorn bush, and the two mites, tired with play, cuddled themselves by her side, unreproved. She looked tenderly, delectably feminine. The moon shone full upon her face; but there are no ugly lines to hide, for there are no parched and arid places in her nature. Dews of sympathy, sweet spring floods of love and compa.s.sion, have kept all fresh, serene, and young.

We had been gay, but silence fell upon us as it had fallen upon the lake. There would be only a day or two in Dublin, whither Dr. Gerald was going with us, that he might have the last word and hand-clasp before we sailed away from Irish sh.o.r.es; and so near was the parting that we were all, in our hearts, bidding farewell to the Emerald Isle.

Good-bye, Silk of the Kine! I was saying to myself, calling the friendly spot by one of the endearing names given her by her lovers in the sad old days. Good-bye, Little Black Rose, growing on the stern Atlantic sh.o.r.e! Good-bye, Rose of the World, with your jewels of emerald and amethyst, the green of your fields and the misty purple of your hills!

Good-bye, Shan Van Vocht, Poor Little Old Woman! We are going back, Himself and I, to the Oilean Ur, as you used to call our new island--going back to the hurly-burly of affairs, to prosperity and opportunity; but we shall not forget the lovely Lady of Sorrows looking out to the west with the pain of a thousand years in her ever youthful eyes. Good-bye, my Dark Rosaleen, good-bye!

Chapter x.x.xII. 'As the sunflower turns.'

'No, the heart that has truly loved never forgets, But as truly loves on to the close, As the sunflower turns on her G.o.d, when he sets, The same look which she turned when he rose.'

Thomas Moore.

Here we all are at O'Carolan's Hotel in Dublin--all but the Colquhouns, who bade us adieu at the station, and the dear children, whose tears are probably dried by now, although they flowed freely enough at parting.

Broona flung her arms tempestuously around Salemina's neck, exclaiming between her sobs, "Good-bye, my thousand, thousand blessings!"--an expression so Irish that we laughed and cried in one breath at the sound of it.

Here we are in the midst of life once more, though to be sure it is Irish life, which moves less dizzily than our own. We ourselves feel thoroughly at home, nor are we wholly forgotten by the public; for on beckoning to a driver on the cab-stand to approach with his side-car, he responded with alacrity, calling to his neighbour, "Here's me sixpenny darlin' again!" and I recognised him immediately as a man who had once remonstrated with me eloquently on the subject of a fee, making such a fire of Hibernian jokes over my sixpence that I heartily wished it had been a half-sovereign.

Cables and telegrams are arriving every hour, and a rich American lady writes to Salemina, asking her if she can purchase the Book of Kells for her, as she wishes to give it to a favourite nephew who is a bibliomaniac. I am begging the shocked Miss Peabody to explain that the volume in question is not for sale, and to ask at the same time if her correspondent wishes to purchase the Lakes of Killarney or the Giant's Causeway in its stead. Francesca, in a whirl of excitement, is buying cobweb linens, harp brooches, creamy poplins with golden shamrocks woven into their l.u.s.trous surfaces; and as for laces, we spend hours in the shops, when our respective squires wish us to show them the sights of Dublin.

Benella is in her element, nursing Salemina, who sprained her ankle just as we were leaving Devorgilla. At the last moment our side-cars were so crowded with pa.s.sengers and packages that she accepted a seat in Dr.

Gerald's carriage, and drove to the station with him. She had a few last farewells to say in the village, and a few modest remembrances to leave with some of the poor old women; and I afterward learned that the drive was not without its embarra.s.sments. The butcher's wife said fervently, "May you long be spared to each other!" The old weaver exclaimed, "'Twould be an ojus pity to spoil two houses wid ye!" While the woman who sells apples at the station capped all by wis.h.i.+ng the couple "a long life and a happy death together." No wonder poor Salemina slipped and twisted her ankle as she alighted from the carriage! Though walking without help is still an impossibility, twenty-four hours of rubbing and bathing and bandaging have made it possible for her to limp discreetly, and we all went to St. Patrick's Cathedral together this morning.

We had been in the quiet churchyard, where a soft, misty rain was falling on the yellow acacias and the pink hawthorns. We had stood under the willow-tree in the deanery garden--the tree that marks the site of the house from which Dean Swift watched the movements of the torches in the cathedral at the midnight burial of Stella. They are lying side by side at the foot of a column in the south side of the nave, and a bra.s.s plate in the pavement announces:--

'Here lies Mrs. Hester Johnson, better known to the world by the name of Stella, under which she is celebrated in the writings of Dr. Jonathan Swift, Dean of this Cathedral.'

Poor Stella, at rest for a century and a half beside the man who caused her such pangs of love and grief--who does not mourn her?

The nave of the cathedral was dim, and empty of all sightseers save our own group. There was a caretaker who went about in sloppy rubber shoes, scrubbing marbles and polis.h.i.+ng bra.s.ses, and behind a high screen or temporary part.i.tion some one was playing softly on an organ.

We stood in a quiet circle by Stella's resting-place, and Dr. Gerald, who never forgets anything, apparently, was reminding us of Thackeray's gracious and pathetic tribute:--

'Fair and tender creature, pure and affectionate heart! Boots it to you now that the whole world loves you and deplores you? Scarce any man ever thought of your grave that did not cast a flower of pity on it, and write over it a sweet epitaph. Gentle lady! so lovely, so loving, so unhappy. You have had countless champions, millions of manly hearts mourning for you. From generation to generation we take up the fond tradition of your beauty; we watch and follow your story, your bright morning love and purity, your constancy, your grief, your sweet martyrdom. We know your legend by heart. You are one of the saints of English story.'

As Dr. Gerald's voice died away, the strains of 'Love's Young Dream'

floated out from the distant end of the building.

"The organist must be practising for a wedding," said Francesca, very much alive to anything of that sort.

"'Oh, there's nothing half so sweet in life,'"

she hummed. "Isn't it charming?"

"You ought to know," Dr. Gerald answered, looking at her affectionately, though somewhat too sadly for my taste; "but an old fellow like me must take refuge in the days of 'milder, calmer beam,' of which the poet speaks."

Ronald and Himself, guide-books in hand, walked away to talk about the 'Burial of Sir John Moore,' and look for Wolfe's tablet, and I stole behind the great screen which had been thrown up while repairs of some sort were being made or a new organ built. A young man was evidently taking a lesson, for the old organist was sitting on the bench beside him, pulling out the stops, and indicating the time with his hand. There was to be a wedding--that was certain; for 'Love's Young Dream' was taken off the music rack at that moment, while 'Believe me, if all those endearing young charms' was put in its place, and the melody came singing out to us on the vox humana stop.

'Thou wouldst still be adored, as this moment thou art, Let thy loveliness fade as it will, And around the dear ruin each wish of my heart Would entwine itself verdantly still.'

Francesca joined me just then, and a tear was in her eye. "Penny dear, when all is said, 'Believe me' is the dearer song of the two. Anybody can sing, feel, live, the first, which is but a youthful dream, after all; but the other has in it the proved fidelity of the years. The first song belongs to me, I know, and it is all I am fit for now; but I want to grow toward and deserve the second."

"You are right; but while Love's Young Dream is yours and Ronald's, dear, take all the joy that it holds for you. The other song is for Salemina and Dr. Gerald, and I only hope they are realising it at this moment--secretive, provoking creatures that they are!"

The old organist left his pupil just then, and disappeared through a little door in the rear.

"Have you the Wedding March there?" I asked the pupil who had been practising the love-songs.

"Oh yes, madam, though I am afraid I cannot do it justice," he replied modestly. "Are you interested in organ music?"

"I am very much interested in yours, and I am still more interested in a romance that has been dragging its weary length along for twenty years, and is trying to bring itself to a crisis just on the other side of that screen. You can help me precipitate it, if you only will!"

Well, he was young and he was an Irishman, which is equivalent to being a born lover, and he had been brought up on Tommy Moore and music--all of which I had known from the moment I saw him, else I should not have made the proposition. I peeped from behind the screen. Ronald and Himself were walking toward us; Salemina and Dr. Gerald were sitting together in one of the front pews. I beckoned to my husband.

"Will you and Ronald go quietly out one of the side doors," I asked, "take your own car, and go back to the hotel, allowing us to follow you a little later?"