Penelope's Irish Experiences Part 6

'The old Countess of Desmond was a marryed woman in Edward IV. time in England, and lived till towards the end of Queen Elizabeth, so she must needes be neare one hundred and forty yeares old. She had a new sett of teeth not long afore her death, and might have lived much longer had she not mett with a kinde of violent death; for she would needes climbe a nut-tree to gather nuts; so falling down she hurt her thigh, which brought a fever, and that fever brought death. This my cousin Walter Fitzwilliam told me.'

It is true that the aforesaid cousin Walter may have been a better raconteur than historian; still, local tradition vigorously opposes any lessening of the number of the countess's years, pinning its faith rather on one Hayman, who says that she presented herself at the English court at the age of one hundred and forty years, to pet.i.tion for her jointure, which she lost by the attainder of the last earl; and it also prefers to have her fall from the historic cherry-tree that Sir Walter planted, rather than from a casual nut-tree.

Down the lovely river we went, lazily lying back in the sun, almost the only pa.s.sengers on the little craft, as it was still far too early for tourists; down past Villierstown, c.o.o.neen Ferry, Strancally Castle, with its 'Murdering Hole' made famous by the Lords of Desmond, through the Broads of Clashmore; then past Temple Michael, an old castle of the Geraldines, which Cromwell battered down for 'dire insolence,' until we steamed slowly into the harbour of Youghal--and, to use our driver's expression, there is no more 'onderhanded manin'' in Youghal than the town of the Yew Wood, which is much prettier to the eye and sweeter to the ear.

Here we found a letter from Salemina, and expended another eighteenpence in telegraphing to her:--

PEABODY, Coolkilla House, near Mard.y.k.e Walk, Cork.

We are under Yew Tree at Myrtle Grove where Raleigh and Spenser smoked, read ma.n.u.script Faerie Queene, and planted first potato.

Delighted Benella better. Join you to-morrow. Don't encourage archaeologist.

PENESCA.

We had a charming hour at Myrtle Grove House, an unpretentious, gabled dwelling, for a time the residence of the ill-fated soldier captain, Sir Walter Raleigh. You remember, perhaps, that he was mayor of Youghal in 1588. After the suppression of the Geraldine rebellion, the vast estates of the Earl of Desmond and those of one hundred and forty of the leading gentlemen of Munster, his adherents, were confiscated, and proclamation was made all through England inviting gentlemen to 'undertake' the plantation of this rich territory. Estates were offered at two or three pence an acre, and no rent was to be paid for the first five years. Many of these great 'undertakers,' as they were called, were English n.o.blemen who never saw Ireland; but among them were Raleigh and Spenser, who received forty-two thousand and twelve thousand acres respectively, and in consideration of certain patronage 'undertook' to carry the business of the Crown through Parliament.

Francesca was greatly pleased with this information, culled mostly from Joyce's Child's History of Ireland. The volume had been bought in Dublin by Salemina and presented to us as a piece of genial humour, but it became our daily companion.

I made a rhyme for her, which she sent Miss Peabody, to show her that we were growing in wisdom, notwithstanding our separation from her.

'You have thought of Sir Walter as soldier and knight, Edmund Spenser, you've heard, was well able to write; But Raleigh the planter, and Spenser verse-maker, Each, oddly enough, was by trade 'Undertaker.''

It was in 1589 that the Shepherd of the Ocean, as Spenser calls him, sailed to England to superintend the publis.h.i.+ng of the Faerie Queene: so from what I know of authors' habits, it is probable that Spenser did read him the poem under the Yew Tree in Myrtle Grove garden. It seems long ago, does it not, when the Faerie Queene was a ma.n.u.script, tobacco just discovered, the potato a novelty, and the first Irish cherry-tree just a wee thing newly transplanted from the Canary Islands? Were our own cherry-trees already in America when Columbus discovered us, or did the Pilgrim Fathers bring over 'slips' or 'grafts,' knowing that they would be needed for George Was.h.i.+ngton later on, so that he might furnish an untruthful world with a sublime sentiment? We re-read Salemina's letter under the Yew Tree:--

Coolkilla House, Cork.

MY DEAREST GIRLS,--It seems years instead of days since we parted, and I miss the two madcaps more than I can say. In your absence my life is always so quiet, discreet, dignified,--and, yes, I confess it, so monotonous! I go to none but the best hotels, meet none but the best people, and my timidity and conservatism for ever keep me in conventional paths. Dazzled and terrified as I still am when you precipitate adventures upon me, I always find afterwards that I have enjoyed them in spite of my fears. Life without you is like a stenographic report of a dull sermon; with you it is by turns a dramatic story, a poem, and a romance. Sometimes it is a penny-dreadful, as when you deliberately leave your luggage on an express train going south, enter another standing upon a side track, and embark for an unknown destination. I watched you from an upper window of the Junction Hotel, but could not leave Benella to argue with you. When your respected husband and lover have charge of you, you will not be allowed such pranks, I warrant you.

Benella has improved wonderfully in the last twenty-four hours, and I am trying to give her some training for her future duties. We can never forget our native land so long as we have her with us, for she is a perfect specimen of the Puritan spinster, though too young in years, perhaps, for determined celibacy. Do you know, we none of us mentioned wages in our conversations with her? Fortunately she seems more alive to the advantages of foreign travel than to the filling of her empty coffers. (By the way, I have written to the purser of the s.h.i.+p that she crossed in, to see if I can recover the sixty or seventy dollars she left behind her.) Her princ.i.p.al idea in life seems to be that of finding some kind of work that will be 'interestin'' whether it is lucrative or not.

I don't think she will be able to dress hair, or anything of that sort--save in the way of plain sewing, she is very unskilful with her hands; and she will be of no use as courier, she is so provincial and inexperienced. She has no head for business whatever, and cannot help Francesca with the accounts. She recites to herself again and again, 'Four farthings make one penny, twelvepence make one s.h.i.+lling, twenty s.h.i.+llings make one pound'; but when I give her a handful of money and ask her for six s.h.i.+llings and sixpence, five and three, one pound two, or two pound ten, she cannot manage the operation. She is docile, well mannered, grateful, and really likable, but her present philosophy of life is a thing of shreds and patches. She calls it 'the science,' as if there were but one; and she became a convert to its teachings this past winter, while living in the house of a woman lecturer in Salem, a lecturer, not a 'curist,' she explains. She attended to the door, ushered in the members of cla.s.ses, kept the lecture-room in order, and so forth, imbibing by the way various doctrines, or parts of doctrines, which she is not the sort of person to a.s.similate, but with which she is experimenting: holding, meantime, a grim intuition of their foolishness, or so it seems to me. 'The science' made it easier for her to seek her ancestors in a foreign country with only a hundred dollars in her purse; for the Salem priestess proclaims the glad tidings that all the wealth of the world is ours, if we will but a.s.sert our heirs.h.i.+p. Benella believed this more or less until a week's sea-sickness undermined all her new convictions of every sort. When she woke in the little bedroom at O'Carolan's, she says, her heart was quite at rest, for she knew that we were the kind of people one could rely on! I mustered courage to say, "I hope so, and I hope also that we shall be able to rely upon you, Benella!"

This idea evidently had not occurred to her, but she accepted it, and I could see that she turned it over in her mind. You can imagine that this vague philosophy of a Salem woman scientist superimposed on a foundation of orthodoxy makes a curious combination, and one which will only be temporary.

We shall expect you to-morrow evening, and we shall be quite ready to go on to the Lakes of Killarney or wherever you wish. By the way, I met an old acquaintance the morning I arrived here. I went to see Queen's College; and as I was walking under the archway which has carved upon it, 'Where Finbarr taught let Munster learn,' I saw two gentlemen. They looked like professors, and I asked if I might see the college. They said certainly, and offered to take my card into some one who would do the honours properly. I pa.s.sed it to one of them: we looked at each other, and recognition was mutual. He (Dr. La Touche) is giving a course of lectures here on Irish Antiquities. It has been a great privilege to see this city and its environs with so learned a man; I wish you could have shared it. Yesterday he made up a party and we went to Pa.s.sage, which you may remember in Father Prout's verses:--

'The town of Pa.s.sage is both large and s.p.a.cious, And situated upon the say; 'Tis nate and dacent, and quite adjacent To come from Cork on a summer's day.

There you may slip in and take a dippin'

Fornent the s.h.i.+ppin' that at anchor ride; Or in a wherry cross o'er the ferry To Carrigaloe, on the other side.'

Dr. La Touche calls Father Prout an Irish potato seasoned with Attic salt. Is not that a good characterisation?

Good-bye for the moment, as I must see about Benella's luncheon.

Yours affectionately S.P.

Chapter X. The belles of Shandon.

'The spreading Lee that, like an Island fayre, Encloseth Corke with his divided floode.'

Edmund Spenser.

We had seen all that Youghal could offer to the tourist; we were yearning for Salemina; we wanted to hear Benella talk about 'the science'; we were eager to inspect the archaeologist, to see if he 'would do' for Salemina instead of the canon, or even the minor canon, of the English Church, for whom we had always privately destined her.

Accordingly we decided to go by an earlier train, and give our family a pleasant surprise. It was five o'clock in the afternoon when our car trundled across St. Patrick's Bridge, past Father Mathew's statue, and within view of the church and bells of Shandon, that sound so grand on the pleasant waters of the river Lee. Away to the west is the two-armed river. Along its banks rise hills, green and well wooded, with beautiful gardens and verdant pastures reaching to the very brink of the s.h.i.+ning stream.

It was Sat.u.r.day afternoon, and I never drove through a livelier, quainter, more easy-going town. The streets were full of people selling various things and plying various trades, and among them we saw many a girl pretty enough to recall Thackeray's admiration of the Corkagian beauties of his day. There was one in particular, driving a donkey in a straw-coloured governess cart, to whose graceful charm we succ.u.mbed on the instant. There was an exquisite deluderin' wildness about her, a vivacity, a length of eyelash with a gleam of Irish grey eye, 'the greyest of all things blue, the bluest of all things grey,' that might well have inspired the English poet to write of her as he did of his own Irish wife; for Spenser, when he was not writing the Faerie Queene, or smoking Raleigh's fragrant weed, wooed and wedded a fair colleen of County Cork.

'Tell me, ye merchant daughters, did ye see So fayre a creature in your town before?

Her goodlie eyes, like sapphyres s.h.i.+ning bright; Her forehead, ivory white; Her lips like cherries, charming men to byte.'

Now we turned into the old Mard.y.k.e Walk, a rus in urbe, an avenue a mile long lined with n.o.ble elm-trees; forsaken now as a fas.h.i.+onable promenade for the Marina, but still beautiful and still beloved, though frequented chiefly by nurse-maids and children. Such babies and such children, of all cla.s.ses and conditions--so jolly, smiling, dimpled, curly-headed; such joyous disregard of rags and dirt; such kindness one to the other in the little groups, where a child of ten would be giving an anxious eye to four or five brothers and sisters, and mothering a contented baby in arms as well.

Our driver, though very loquacious, was not quite intelligible. He p.r.o.nounced the simple phrase 'St. Patrick's Street' in a way to astonish the traveller; it would seem impossible to crowd as many h's into three words, and to wrap each in flannel, as he succeeded in doing. He seemed pleased with our admiration of the babies, and said that Irish children did be very fat and strong and hearty; that they were the very best soldiers the Queen had, G.o.d kape her! They could stand anny hards.h.i.+p and anny climate, for they were not brought up soft, like the English.

He also said that, fine as all Irish children undoubtedly were, Cork produced the flower of them all, and the finest women and the finest men; backing his opinion with an Homeric vaunt which Francesca took down on the spot:--

'I'd back one man from Corks.h.i.+re To bate ten more from Yorks.h.i.+re: Kerrymen Agin Derrymen, And Munster agin creation, Wirrasthrue! 'tis a pity we aren't a nation!'

Here he slackened his pace as we pa.s.sed a small bosthoon driving a donkey, to call out facetiously, "Be good to your little brother, achree!"

"We must be very near Coolkilla House by this time," said Francesca.

"That isn't Salemina sitting on the bench under the trees, is it? There is a gentleman with her, and she never wears a wide hat, but it looks like her red umbrella. No, of course it isn't, for whoever it is belongs to that maid with the two children. Penelope, it is borne in upon me that we shouldn't have come here unannounced, three hours ahead of the time arranged. Perhaps, whenever we had chosen to come, it would have been too soon. Wouldn't it be exciting to have to keep out of Salemina's way, as she has always done for us? I couldn't endure it; it would make me homesick for Ronald. Go slowly, driver, please."

Nevertheless, as we drew nearer we saw that it was Salemina; or at least it was seven-eighths of her, and one-eighth of a new person with whom we were not acquainted. She rose to meet us with an exclamation of astonishment, and after a hasty and affectionate greeting, presented Dr. La Touche. He said a few courteous words, and to our relief made no allusions to round towers, duns, raths, or other antiquities, and bade us adieu, saying that he should have the honour of waiting upon us that evening with our permission.

A person in a neat black dress and little black bonnet with white lawn strings now brought up the two children to say good-bye to Salemina.

It was the Derelict, Benella Dusenberry, clothed in maid's apparel, and looking, notwithstanding that disguise, like a New England schoolma'am.

She was delighted to see us, scanned every detail of Francesca's travelling costume with the frankest admiration, and would have allowed us to carry our wraps and umbrellas upstairs if she had not been reminded by Salemina. We had a cosy cup of tea together, and told our various adventures, but Salemina was not especially communicative about hers. Oddly enough, she had met the La Touche children at the hotel in Mallow. They were travelling with a very raw Irish nurse, who had no control of them whatever. They shrieked and kicked when taken to their rooms at night, until Salemina was obliged to speak to them, in order that Benella's rest should not be disturbed.

"I felt so sorry for them," she said--"the dear little girl put to bed with tangled hair and unwashed face, the boy in a rumpled, untidy nightgown, the bedclothes in confusion. I didn't know who they were nor where they came from, but while the nurse was getting her supper I made them comfortable, and Broona went to sleep with my strange hand in hers.

Perhaps it was only the warm Irish heart, the easy friendliness of the Irish temperament, but I felt as if the poor little things must be neglected indeed, or they would not have clung to a woman whom they had never seen before." (This is a mistake; anybody who has the opportunity always clings to Salemina.) "The next morning they were up at daylight, romping in the hall, stamping, thumping, clattering, with a tin cart on wheels rattling behind them. I know it was not my affair, and I was guilty of unpardonable rudeness, but I called the nurse into my room and spoke to her severely. No, you needn't smile; I was severe. 'Will you kindly do your duty, and keep the children quiet as they pa.s.s through the halls?' I said. 'It is never too soon to teach them to obey the rules of a public place, and to be considerate of older people.' She seemed awestruck. But when she found her tongue she stammered, 'Sure, ma'am, I've tould thim three times this day already that when their father comes he'll bate thim with a blackthorn stick!'

"Naturally I was horrified. This, I thought, would explain everything: no mother, and an irritable, cruel father.

"'Will he really do such a thing?' I asked, feeling as if I must know the truth.

"'Sure he will not, ma'am!' she answered cheerfully. 'He wouldn't lift a feather to thim, not if they murdthered the whole counthryside, ma'am.'

"Well, they travelled third cla.s.s to Cork, and we came first, so we did not meet, and I did not ask their surnames; but it seems that they were being brought to their father, whom I met many years ago in America."

As she did not volunteer any further information, we did not like to ask her where, how many years ago, or under what circ.u.mstances. 'Teasing' of this sort does not appeal to the sophisticated at any time, but it seems unspeakably vulgar to touch on matters of sentiment with a woman of middle age. If she has memories, they are sure to be sad and sacred ones; if she has not, that perhaps is still sadder. We agreed, however, when the evening was over, that Dr. La Touche was probably the love of her youth--unless, indeed, he was simply an old friend, and the degree of Salemina's attachment had been exaggerated; something that is very likely to happen in the gossip of a New England town, where they always incline to underestimate the feeling of the man, and overrate that of the woman, in any love affair. 'I guess she'd take him if she could get him' is the spoken or unspoken att.i.tude of the public in rural or provincial New England.

The professor is grave, but very genial when he fully recalls the fact that he is in company, and has not, like the Trappist monks, taken vows of silence. Francesca behaved beautifully, on the whole, and made no embarra.s.sing speeches, although she was in her gayest humour. Salemina blushed a little when the young sinner dragged into the conversation the remark that, undoubtedly, from the beginning of the sixth century to the end of the eighth, Ireland was the University of Europe, just as Greece was in the late days of the Roman Republic, and asked our guest when Ireland ceased to be known as 'Insula sanctorum et doctorum,' the island of saints and scholars.

We had seen her go into Salemina's bedroom, and knew perfectly well that she had consulted the Peabody notebook, lying open on the desk; but the professor looked as surprised as if he had heard a pretty paroquet quote Gibbon. I don't like to see grave and reverend scholars stare at pretty paroquets, but I won't belittle Salemina's exquisite and peculiar charm by worrying over the matter.

'Wirra, wirra! Ologone!

Can't ye lave a lad alone, Till he's proved there's no tradition left of any other girl-- Not even Trojan Helen, In beauty all excellin'-- Who's been up to half the divilment of Fan Fitzgerl?'

Of course Francesca's heart is fixed upon Ronald Macdonald, but that fact has not altered the glance of her eyes. They no longer say, 'Wouldn't you like to fall in love with me, if you dared?' but they still have a gleam that means, 'Don't fall in love with me; it is no use!' And of the two, one is about as dangerous as the other, and each has something of 'Fan Fitzgerl's divilment.