Penelope's Irish Experiences Part 5

"I shall feel much more comfortable," she said, "if you go on and amuse yourselves as you like, leaving Benella to me for a day, or even for two or three days. I can't help feeling that the chief fault, or at least the chief responsibility, is mine. If I hadn't been born in Salem, or hadn't had the word painted on my trunk in such red letters she wouldn't have fainted on it, and I needn't have saved her life. It is too late to turn back now; it is saved, or partly saved, and I must persevere in saving it, at least until I find that it's not worth saving."

"Poor darling!" said Francesca sympathisingly. "I'll look in Murray and find a nice interesting place. You can put Benella to bed in the Southern Hotel at Limerick Junction, and perhaps you can then drive within sight of the Round Tower of Cashel. Then you can take up the afternoon train and go to--let me see--how would you like b.u.t.tevant?

(Boutez en avant, you know, the 'Push forward' motto of the Barrymores.) It's delightful, Penelope," she continued; "we'd better get off, too. It is a garrison town, and there is a military hotel. Then in the vicinity is Kilcolman, where Spenser wrote the Faerie Queene: so there is the beginning of your literary pilgrimage the very first day, without any plotting or planning. The little river Aubeg, which flows by Kilcolman Castle, Spenser called the Mulla, and referred to it as 'Mulla mine, whose waves I whilom taught to weep.' That, by the way, is no more than our Jane Grieve could have done for the rivers of Scotland. What do you say? and won't you be a 'prood woman the day' when you sign the hotel register 'Miss Peabody and maid, Salem, Ma.s.s., U.S.A'"

I thought most favourably of b.u.t.tevant, but on prudently inquiring the guard's opinion, he said it was not a comfortable place for an invalid lady, and that Mallow was much more the thing. At Limerick Junction, then, we all alighted, and in the ten minutes' wait saw Benella escorted up the hotel stairway by a sympathetic head waiter.

Detached from Salemina's fostering care and prudent espionage, separated, above all, from the depressing Miss Dusenberry, we planned every conceivable folly in the way of guidebook expeditions. The exhilarating sense of being married, and therefore properly equipped to undertake any sort of excursion with perfect propriety, gave added zest to the affair in my eyes. Sleeping at Cork in an Imperial Hotel was far too usual a proceeding,--we scorned it. As the very apex of boldness and reckless defiance of common-sense, we let our heavy luggage go on to the capital of Munster, and, taking our handbags, entered a railway carriage standing on a side track, and were speedily on our way,--we knew not whither, and cared less. We discovered all too soon that we were going to Waterford, the Star of the Suir,--

'The gentle Shure, that making way By sweet Clonmell, adorns rich Waterford';

and we were charmed at first sight with its quaint bridge spanning the silvery river. It was only five o'clock, and we walked about the fine old ninth-century town, called by the Cavaliers the Urbs Intacta, because it was the one place in Ireland which successfully resisted the all-conquering Cromwell. Francesca sent a telegram at once to

MISS PEABODY AND MAID, Great Southern Hotel, Limerick Junction.

Came to Waterford instead Cork. Strongbow landed here 1771, defeating Danes and Irish. Youghal to-morrow, p.r.o.nounced Yawl. Address, Green Park, Miss Murphy's. How's Derelict?

FRANELOPE.

It was absurd, of course, but an absurdity that can be achieved at the cost of eighteen-pence is well worth the money.

n.o.body but a Baedeker or a Murray could write an account of our doings the next two days. Feeling that we might at any hour be recalled to Benella's bedside, we took a childlike pleasure in crowding as much as possible into the time. This zeal was responsible for our leaving the Urbs Intacta, and pus.h.i.+ng on to pa.s.s the night in something smaller and more idyllic.

I dissuaded Francesca from seeking a lodging in Ballybricken by informing her that it was the heart of the bacon industry, and the home of the best-known body of pig-buyers in Ireland; but her mind was fixed upon Kills and Ballies. On asking our jarvey the meaning of Bally as a prefix, he answered reflectively: "I don't think there's annything onderhanded in the manin', melady; I think it means BALLY jist."

The name of the place where we did go shall never be divulged, lest a curious public follow in our footsteps; and if perchance it have not our youth, vigour, and appet.i.te for adventure, it might die there in the princ.i.p.al hotel, unwept, unhonoured, and unsung. The house is said to be three hundred and seventy-five years old, but we are convinced that this is a wicked understatement of its antiquity. It must have been built since the Deluge, else it would at least have had one general spring cleaning in the course of its existence. Cromwell had been there too, and in the confusion of his departure they must have forgotten to sweep under the beds. We entered our rooms at ten in the evening, having dismissed our car, knowing well that there was no other place to stop the night. We gave the jarvey twice his fare to avoid altercation, 'but divil a penny less would he take,' although it was he who had recommended the place as a cosy hotel. "It looks like a small little house, melady, but 'tis large inside, and it has a power o' beds in it."

We each generously insisted on taking the dirtiest bedroom (they had both been last occupied by the Cromwellian soldiers, we agreed), but relinquished the idea, because the more we compared them the more impossible it was to decide which was the dirtiest. There were no locks on the doors. "And sure what matther for that, Miss? n.o.body has a right (i.e. business) to be comin' in here but meself," said the aged woman who showed us to our rooms.

Chapter VIII. Romance and reality.

'But he lay like a warrior taking his rest, With his martial cloak around him.'

Charles Wolfe.

At midnight I heard a faint tap at my door, and Francesca walked in, her eyes wide and bright, her cheeks flushed, her long, dark braid of hair hanging over her black travelling cloak. I laughed as I saw her, she looked so like Sir Patrick Spens in the ballad play at Pettybaw,--a memorable occasion when Ronald Macdonald caught her acting that tragic role in his ministerial gown, the very day that Himself came from Paris to marry me in Pettybaw, dear little Pettybaw!

"I came in to find out if your bed is as bad as mine, but I see you have not slept in it," she whispered.

"I was just coming in to see if yours could be any worse," I replied.

"Do you mean to say that you have tried it, courageous girl? I blew out my candle, and then, after an interval in which to forget, sat down on the outside as a preliminary; but the moon rose just then, and I could get no further."

I had not unpacked my bag. I had simply slipped on my macintosh, selected a wooden chair, and, putting a Cromwellian towel over it, seated myself shudderingly on it and put my feet on the rounds, quoting Moore meantime--

'And the best of all ways To lengthen our days Is to steal a few hours from the night, my dear!"

Francesca followed my example, and we pa.s.sed the night in reading Celtic romances to each other. We could see the faint outline of sweet Slievenamann from our windows--the mountain of the fair women of Feimheann, celebrated as the hunting-ground of the Finnian Chiefs.

'One day Finn and Oscar Followed the chase in Sliabh-na-mban-Feimheann, With three thousand Finnian chiefs Ere the sun looked out from his circle.'

In the Finnian legend, the great Finn McCool, when much puzzled in the choice of a wife, seated himself on its summit. At last he decided to make himself a prize in a compet.i.tion of all the fair women in Ireland.

They should start at the foot of the mountain, and the one who first reached the summit should be the great Finn's bride. It was Grainne Oge, the Gallic Helen, and daughter of Cormac, the king of Ireland, who won the chieftain, 'being fleetest of foot and longest of wind.'

We almost forgot our discomforts in this enthralling story, and slept on each other's nice clean shoulders a little, just before the dawn. And such a dawn! Such infinite softness of air, such dew-drenched verdure!

It is a backward spring, they say, but to me the woods are even lovelier than in their summer wealth of foliage, when one can hardly distinguish the beauty of the single tree from that of its neighbours, since the colours are blended in one universal green. Now we see the feathery ta.s.sels of the beech bursting out of their brown husks, the russet hues of the young oak leaves, and the countless emerald gleams that 'break from the ruby-budded lime.' The greenest trees are the larch, the horse-chestnut, and the sycamore, three naturalised citizens who apparently still keep to their native fas.h.i.+ons, and put out their foliage as they used to do in their own homes. The young alders and the hawthorn hedges are greening, but it will be a fortnight before we can realise the beauty of that snow-white bloom, with its bitter-sweet fragrance. The cuckoo-flower came this year before instead of after the bird, they tell us, showing that even Nature, in these days of anarchy and misrule, is capable of taking liberties with her own laws. There is a fragrance of freshly turned earth in the air, and the rooks are streaming out from the elms by the little church, and resting for a bit in a group of plume-like yews. The last few days of warmth and suns.h.i.+ne have inspired the birds, and as Francesca and I sit at our windows breathing in the sweetness and freshness of the morning, there is a concert of thrushes and blackbirds in the shrubberies. The little birds furnish the chorus or the undertone of song, the hedge-sparrows, redb.r.e.a.s.t.s, and chaffinches, but the meistersingers 'call the tune,'

and lead the feathered orchestra with clear and certain notes. It is a golden time for the minstrels, for nest-building is finished, and the feeding of the younglings a good time yet in the future. We can see one little brown lady hovering warm eggs under her breast, her bright eyes peeping through a screen of leaves as she glances up at her singing lord, pouring out his thanks for the morning sun. There is only a hint of breeze, it might almost be the whisper of uncurling fern fronds, but soft as it is, it stirs the branches here and there, and I know that it is rocking hundreds of tiny cradles in the forest.

When I was always painting in those other days before I met Himself, one might think my eyes would have been even keener to see beauty than now, when my brushes are more seldom used; but it is not so. There is something, deep hidden in my consciousness, that makes all loveliness lovelier, that helps me to interpret it in a different and in a larger sense. I have a feeling that I have been lifted out of the individual and given my true place in the general scheme of the universe, and, in some subtle way that I can hardly explain, I am more nearly related to all things good, beautiful, and true than I was when I was wholly an artist, and therefore less a woman. The bursting of the leaf-buds brings me a tender thought of the one dear heart that gives me all its spring; and whenever I see the smile of a child, a generous look, the flash of sympathy in an eye, it makes me warm with swift remembrance of the one I love the best of all, just 'as a lamplight will set a linnet singing for the sun.'

Love is doing the same thing for Francesca; for the smaller feelings merge themselves in the larger ones, as little streams lose themselves in oceans. Whenever we talk quietly together of that strange, new, difficult life that she is going so bravely and so joyously to meet, I know by her expression that Ronald's n.o.ble face, a little shy, a little proud, but altogether adoring, serves her for courage and for inspiration, and she feels that his hand is holding hers across the distance, in a clasp that promises strength.

At five o'clock we longed to ring for hot water, but did not dare. Even at six there was no sound of life in the cosy inn which we have named The Cromwell Arms ('Mrs. Duddy, Manageress; Comfort, Cleanliness, Courtesy; Night Porter; Cycling Shed'). From seven to half-past we read pages and pages of delicious history and legend, and decided to go from Cappoquin to Youghal by steamer, if we could possibly reach the place of departure in time. At half-past seven we pulled the bell energetically.

Nothing happened, and we pulled again and again, discovering at last that the connection between the bell-rope and the bell-wire had long since disappeared, though it had been more than once established with bits of twine, fis.h.i.+ng-line, and shoe laces. Francesca then went across the hall to examine her methods of communication, and presently I heard a welcome tinkle, and another, and another, followed in due season by a cheerful voice, saying, "Don't desthroy it intirely, ma'am; I'll be coming direckly." We ordered jugs of hot water, and were told that it would be some time before it could be had, as ladies were not in the habit of calling for it before nine in the morning, and as the damper of the kitchen-range was out of order. Did we wish it in a little canteen with whisky and a bit of lemon-peel, or were we afther wantin' it in a jug? We replied promptly that it was not the hour for toddy, but the hour for baths, with us, and the decrepit and very sleepy night porter departed to wake the cook and build the fire; advising me first, in a friendly way, to take the hearth brush that was 'kapin' the windy up, and rap on the wall if I needed annything more.' At eight o'clock we heard the porter's shuffling step in the hall, followed by a howl and a polite objurgation. A strange dog had pa.s.sed the night under Francesca's bed, and the porter was giving him what he called 'a good hand and fut downstairs.' He had put down the hot water for this operation, and on taking up the burden again we heard him exclaim: "Arrah! look at that now! May the divil fly away with the excommunicated ould jug!" It was past saving, the jug, and leaked so freely that one had to be exceedingly nimble to put to use any of the smoky water in it. "Thim fools o' turf do nothing but smoke on me," apologised the venerable servitor, who then asked, "would we be pleased to order breakquist." We were wise in our generation, and asked for nothing but bacon, eggs, and tea; and after a smoky bath and a change of raiment we seated at our repast in the coffee-room, feeling wonderfully fresh and cheerful. By looking directly at each other most of the time, and making experimental journeys from plate to mouth, thus barring out any intimate knowledge of the tablecloth and the waiter's linen, we managed to make a breakfast.

Francesca is enough to give any one a good appet.i.te. Ronald Macdonald will be a lucky fellow, I think, to begin his day by sitting opposite her, for her eyes s.h.i.+ne like those of a child, and one's gaze lingers fondly on the cool freshness of her cheek. Breakfast over and the bill settled, we speedily shook off as much of the dust of Mrs. Duddy's hotel as could be shaken off, and departed on the most decrepit sidecar that ever rolled on two wheels, being wished a safe journey by a slatternly maid who stood in the doorway, by the wide Mrs. Duddy herself, who realised in her capacious person the picturesque Irish phrase, 'the full-of-the-door of a woman,' and by our friend the head waiter, who leaned against Mrs. Duddy's ancestral pillars in such a way that the morning sun shone full upon his costume and revealed its weaknesses to our reluctant gaze.

The driver said it was eleven miles to Cappoquin, the guide-book fourteen, but this difference of opinion, we find, is only the difference between Irish and English miles, for which our driver had an unspeakable contempt, as of a vastly inferior quality. He had, on the other hand, a great respect for Mrs. Duddy and her comfortable, cleanly, and courteous establishment (as per advertis.e.m.e.nt), and the warmest admiration for the village in which she had appropriately located herself, a village which he alluded to as 'wan of the natest towns in the ring of Ireland, for if ye made a slip in the street of it, be the help of G.o.d ye were always sure to fall into a public-house!'

"We had better not tell the full particulars of this journey to Salemina," said Francesca prudently, as we rumbled along; "though, oddly enough, if you remember, whenever any one speaks disparagingly of Ireland, she always takes up cudgels in its behalf."

"Francesca, now that you are within three or four months of being married, can you manage to keep a secret?"

"Yes," she whispered eagerly, squeezing my hand and inclining her shoulder cosily to mine. "Yes, oh yes, and how it would raise my spirits after a sleepless night!"

"When Salemina was eighteen she had a romance, and the hero of it was the son of an Irish gentleman, an M.P., who was travelling in America, or living there for a few years,--I can't remember which. He was nothing more than a lad, less than twenty-one years old, but he was very much in love with Salemina. How far her feelings were involved I never knew, but she felt that she could not promise to marry him. Her mother was an invalid, and her father a delightful, scholarly, autocratic, selfish old gentleman, who ruled his household with a rod of iron. Salemina coddled and nursed them both during all her young life; indeed, little as she realised it, she never had any separate existence or individuality until they both died, when she was thirty-one or two years old."

"And what became of the young Irishman? Was he faithful to his first love, or did he marry?"

"He married, many years afterward, and that was the time I first heard the story. His marriage took place in Dublin, on the very day, I believe, that Salemina's father was buried; for Fate has the most relentless way of arranging these coincidences. I don't remember his name, and I don't know where he lives or what has become of him. I imagine the romance has been dead and buried in rose-leaves for years; Salemina never has spoken of it to me, but it would account for her sentimental champions.h.i.+p of Ireland."

Chapter IX. The light of other days.

'Oft in the stilly night, Ere slumber's chain has bound me, Fond memory brings the light Of other days around me.'

Thomas Moore.

If you want to fall head over ears in love with Ireland at the very first sight of her charms, take, as we did, the steamer from Cappoquin to Youghal, and float down the vale of the Blackwater--

'Swift Awniduff, which of the Englishman Is cal' de Blackwater.'

The sh.o.r.es of this Irish Rhine are so lovely that the sail on a sunny day is one of unequalled charm. Behind us the mountains ranged themselves in a mysterious melancholy background; ahead the river wended its way southward in and out, in and out, through rocky cliffs and well-wooded sh.o.r.es.

The first tributary stream that we met was the little Finisk, on the higher banks of which is Affane House. The lands of Affane are said to have been given by one of the FitzGeralds to Sir Walter Raleigh for a breakfast, a very high price to pay for bacon and eggs, and it was here that he planted the first cherry-tree in Ireland, bringing it from the Canary Islands to the Isle of Weeping.

Looking back just below here, we saw the tower and cloisters of Mount Melleray, the Trappist monastery. Very beautiful and very lonely looked 'the little town of G.o.d,' in the shadows of the gloomy hills. We wished we had known the day before how near we were to it, for we could have claimed a night's lodging at the ladies' guest-house, where all creeds, cla.s.ses, and nationalities are received with a cead-mile-failte, [*] and where any offering for food or shelter is given only at the visitors pleasure. The Celtic proverb, 'Melodious is the closed mouth,' might be written over the cloisters; for it is a village of silence, and only the monks who teach in the schools or who attend visitors are absolved from the vow.

*A hundred thousand welcomes.

Next came Dromana Castle, where the extraordinary old Countess of Desmond was born,--the wonderful old lady whose supposed one hundred and forty years so astonished posterity. She must have married Thomas, twelfth Earl of Desmond, after 1505, as his first wife is known to have been alive in that year. Raleigh saw her in 1589, and she died in 1604: so it would seem that she must have been at least one hundred and ten or one hundred and twelve when she met her untimely death,--a death brought about entirely by her own youthful impetuosity and her fondness for athletic sports. Robert Sydney, second Earl of Leicester, makes the following reference to her in his Table-Book, written when he was amba.s.sador at Paris, about 1640:--