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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1391 ***
+
+PENELOPE'S IRISH EXPERIENCES
+
+by Kate Douglas Wiggin.
+
+Published 1901.
+
+
+
+             To my first Irish friend, Jane Barlow.
+
+
+
+
+Contents.
+
+     Part First--Leinster.
+
+     I.      We emulate the Rollo books.
+     II.     Irish itineraries.
+     III.    We sight a derelict.
+     IV.     Enter Benella Dusenberry.
+     V.      The Wearing of the Green.
+     VI.     Dublin, then and now.
+
+
+     Part Second--Munster.
+
+     VII.    A tour and a detour.
+     VIII.   Romance and reality.
+     IX.     The light of other days.
+     X.      The belles of Shandon.
+     XI.     'The rale thing.'
+     XII.    Life at Knockarney House.
+     XIII.   'O! the sound of the Kerry dancin'.'
+     XIV.    'Mrs. Mullarkey's iligant locks.'
+     XV.     Penelope weaves a web.
+     XVI.    Salemina has her chance.
+
+
+     Part Third--Ulster.
+
+     XVII.   The glens of Antrim.
+     XVIII.  Limavady love-letters.
+     XIX.    'In ould Donegal.'
+     XX.     We evict a tenant.
+     XXI.    Lachrymae Hibernicae.
+
+
+     Part Fourth--Connaught.
+
+     XXII.   The weeping west.
+     XXIII.  Beams and motes.
+     XXIV.   Humours of the road.
+     XXV.    The wee folk.
+
+
+     Part Fifth--Royal Meath.
+
+     XXVI.   Ireland's gold.
+     XXVII.  The three chatelaines of Devorgilla.
+     XXVIII. Round towers and reflections.
+     XXIX.   Aunt David's garden.
+     XXX.    The quest of the fair strangers.
+     XXXI.   Good-bye, dark Rosaleen!
+     XXXII.  'As the sunflower turns.'
+
+
+
+
+Part First--Leinster.
+
+
+
+Chapter I. We emulate the Rollo books.
+
+     'Sure a terrible time I was out o' the way,
+        Over the sea, over the sea,
+      Till I come to Ireland one sunny day,--
+        Betther for me, betther for me:
+      The first time me fut got the feel o' the ground
+        I was strollin' along in an Irish city
+      That hasn't its aquil the world around
+        For the air that is sweet an' the girls that are pretty.'
+
+                                              --Moira O'Neill.
+
+
+
+                           Dublin, O'Carolan's Private Hotel.
+
+It is the most absurd thing in the world that Salemina, Francesca, and I
+should be in Ireland together.
+
+That any three spinsters should be fellow-travellers is not in itself
+extraordinary, and so our former journeyings in England and Scotland
+could hardly be described as eccentric in any way; but now that I am
+a matron and Francesca is shortly to be married, it is odd, to say the
+least, to see us cosily ensconced in a private sitting-room of a Dublin
+hotel, the table laid for three, and not a vestige of a man anywhere to
+be seen. Where, one might ask, if he knew the antecedent circumstances,
+are Miss Hamilton's American spouse and Miss Monroe's Scottish lover?
+
+Francesca had passed most of the winter in Scotland. Her indulgent
+parent had given his consent to her marriage with a Scotsman, but
+insisted that she take a year to make up her mind as to which particular
+one. Memories of her past flirtations, divagations, plans for a life of
+single blessedness, all conspired to make him incredulous, and the loyal
+Salemina, feeling some responsibility in the matter, had elected to
+remain by Francesca's side during the time when her affections were
+supposed to be crystallising into some permanent form.
+
+It was natural enough that my husband and I should spend the first
+summer of our married life abroad, for we had been accustomed to do this
+before we met, a period that we always allude to as the Dark Ages; but
+no sooner had we arrived in Edinburgh, and no sooner had my husband
+persuaded our two friends to join us in a long, delicious Irish holiday,
+than he was compelled to return to America for a month or so.
+
+I think you must number among your acquaintances such a man as Mr.
+William Beresford, whose wife I have the honour to be. Physically the
+type is vigorous, or has the appearance and gives the impression of
+being vigorous, because it has never the time to be otherwise, since
+it is always engaged in nursing its ailing or decrepit relatives.
+Intellectually it is full of vitality; any mind grows when it is
+exercised, and the brain that has to settle all its own affairs and all
+the affairs of its friends and acquaintances could never lack energy.
+Spiritually it is almost too good for earth, and any woman who lives in
+the house with it has moments of despondency and self-chastisement,
+in which she fears that heaven may prove all too small to contain the
+perfect being and its unregenerate family as well.
+
+Financially it has at least a moderate bank account; that is, it
+is never penniless, indeed it can never afford to be, because it is
+peremptory that it should possess funds in order to disburse them to
+needier brothers. There is never an hour when Mr. William Beresford is
+not signing notes and bonds and drafts for less fortunate men; giving
+small loans just to 'help a fellow over a hard place'; educating
+friends' children, starting them in business, or securing appointments
+for them. The widow and the fatherless have worn such an obvious path to
+his office and residence that no bereaved person could possibly lose
+his way, and as a matter of fact no one of them ever does. This special
+journey of his to America has been made necessary because, first, his
+cousin's widow has been defrauded of a large sum by her man of business;
+and second, his college chum and dearest friend has just died in Chicago
+after appointing him executor of his estate and guardian of his only
+child. The wording of the will is, 'as a sacred charge and with full
+power.' Incidentally, as it were, one of his junior partners has been
+ordered a long sea voyage, and another has to go somewhere for mud
+baths. The junior partners were my idea, and were suggested solely that
+their senior might be left more or less free from business care, but
+it was impossible that Willie should have selected sound, robust
+partners--his tastes do not incline him in the direction of selfish
+ease; accordingly he chose two delightful, estimable, frail gentlemen
+who needed comfortable incomes in conjunction with light duties.
+
+I am railing at my husband for all this, but I love him for it just the
+same, and it shows why the table is laid for three.
+
+“Salemina,” I said, extending my slipper toe to the glowing peat, which
+by extraordinary effort had been brought up from the hotel kitchen, as a
+bit of local colour, “it is ridiculous that we three women should be in
+Ireland together; it's the sort of thing that happens in a book, and of
+which we say that it could never occur in real life. Three persons do
+not spend successive seasons in England, Scotland and Ireland unless
+they are writing an Itinerary of the British Isles. The situation is
+possible, certainly, but it isn't simple, or natural, or probable. We
+are behaving precisely like characters in fiction, who, having been
+popular in the first volume, are exploited again and again until their
+popularity wanes. We are like the Trotty books or the Elsie Dinmore
+series. England was our first volume, Scotland our second, and here we
+are, if you please, about to live a third volume in Ireland. We fall in
+love, we marry and are given in marriage, we promote and take part
+in international alliances, but when the curtain goes up again, our
+accumulations, acquisitions--whatever you choose to call
+them--have disappeared. We are not to the superficial eye the
+spinster-philanthropist, the bride to be, the wife of a year; we are
+the same old Salemina, Francesca and Penelope. It is so dramatic that my
+husband should be called to America; as a woman I miss him and need him;
+as a character I am much better single. I don't suppose publishers like
+married heroines any more than managers like married leading ladies.
+Then how entirely proper it is that Ronald Macdonald cannot leave his
+new parish in the Highlands. The one, my husband, belongs to the first
+volume; Francesca's lover to the second; and good gracious, Salemina,
+don't you see the inference?”
+
+“I may be dull,” she replied, “but I confess I do not.”
+
+“We are three?”
+
+“Who is three?”
+
+“That is not good English, but I repeat with different emphasis WE are
+three. I fell in love in England, Francesca fell in love in Scotland-”
+ And here I paused, watching the blush mount rosily to Salemina's grey
+hair; pink is very becoming to grey, and that, we always say, accounts
+more satisfactorily for Salemina's frequent blushes than her modesty,
+which is about of the usual sort.
+
+“Your argument is interesting, and even ingenious,” she replied, “but
+I fail to see my responsibility. If you persist in thinking of me as
+a character in fiction, I shall rebel. I am not the stuff of which
+heroines are made; besides, I would never appear in anything so cheap
+and obvious as a series, and the three-volume novel is as much out of
+fashion as the Rollo books.”
+
+“But we are unconscious heroines, you understand,” I explained. “While
+we were experiencing our experiences we did not notice them, but they
+have attained by degrees a sufficient bulk so that they are visible
+to the naked eye. We can look back now and perceive the path we have
+travelled.”
+
+“It isn't retrospect I object to, but anticipation,” she retorted; “not
+history, but prophecy. It is one thing to gaze sentimentally at the road
+you have travelled, quite another to conjure up impossible pictures of
+the future.”
+
+Salemina calls herself a trifle over forty, but I am not certain of
+her age, and think perhaps that she is uncertain herself. She has good
+reason to forget it, and so have we. Of course she could consult the
+Bible family record daily, but if she consulted her looking-glass
+afterward the one impression would always nullify the other. Her hair is
+silvered, it is true, but that is so clearly a trick of Nature that it
+makes her look younger rather than older.
+
+Francesca came into the room just here. I said a moment ago that she was
+the same old Francesca, but I was wrong; she is softening, sweetening,
+expanding; in a word, blooming. Not only this, but Ronald Macdonald's
+likeness has been stamped upon her in some magical way, so that,
+although she has not lost her own personality, she seems to have added
+a reflection of his. In the glimpses of herself, her views, feelings,
+opinions, convictions, which she gives us in a kind of solution, as
+it were, there are always traces of Ronald Macdonald; or, to be more
+poetical, he seems to have bent over the crystal pool, and his image is
+reflected there.
+
+You remember in New England they allude to a bride as 'she that was'
+a so-and-so. In my private interviews with Salemina I now habitually
+allude to Francesca as 'she that was a Monroe'; it is so significant
+of her present state of absorption. Several times this week I have been
+obliged to inquire, “Was I, by any chance, as absent-minded and dull in
+Pettybaw as Francesca is under the same circumstances in Dublin?”
+
+“Quite.”
+
+“Duller if anything.”
+
+These candid replies being uttered in cheerful unison I change the
+subject, but cannot resist telling them both casually that the building
+of the Royal Dublin Society is in Kildare Street, just three minutes'
+from O'Carolan's, and that I have noticed it is for the promotion of
+Husbandry and other useful arts and sciences.
+
+
+
+Chapter II. Irish itineraries.
+
+    'And I will make my journey, if life and health but stand,
+     Unto that pleasant country, that fresh and fragrant strand,
+     And leave your boasted braveries, your wealth and high command,
+     For the fair hills of holy Ireland.'
+
+                                      --Sir Samuel Ferguson.
+
+Our mutual relations have changed little, notwithstanding that
+betrothals and marriages have intervened, and in spite of the fact
+that Salemina has grown a year younger; a mysterious feat that she has
+accomplished on each anniversary of her birth since the forming of our
+alliance.
+
+It is many months since we travelled together in Scotland, but on
+entering this very room in Dublin, the other day, we proceeded to show
+our several individualities as usual: I going to the window to see the
+view, Francesca consulting the placard on the door for hours of table
+d'hote, and Salemina walking to the grate and lifting the ugly little
+paper screen to say, “There is a fire laid; how nice!” As the matron I
+have been promoted to a nominal charge of the travelling arrangements.
+Therefore, while the others drive or sail, read or write, I am buried
+in Murray's Handbook, or immersed in maps. When I sleep, my dreams
+are spotted, starred, notched, and lined with hieroglyphics, circles,
+horizontal dashes, long lines, and black dots, signifying hotels, coach
+and rail routes, and tramways.
+
+All this would have been done by Himself with the greatest ease in the
+world. In the humbler walks of Irish life the head of the house, if he
+is of the proper sort, is called Himself, and it is in the shadow of
+this stately title that my Ulysses will appear in this chronicle.
+
+I am quite sure I do not believe in the inferiority of woman, but I have
+a feeling that a man is a trifle superior in practical affairs. If I am
+in doubt, and there is no husband, brother, or cousin near, from whom to
+seek advice, I instinctively ask the butler or the coachman rather than
+a female friend; also, when a female friend has consulted the Bradshaw
+in my behalf, I slip out and seek confirmation from the butcher's boy or
+the milkman. Himself would have laid out all our journeyings for us, and
+we should have gone placidly along in well-ordered paths. As it is,
+we are already pledged to do the most absurd and unusual things, and
+Ireland bids fair to be seen in the most topsy-turvy, helter-skelter
+fashion imaginable.
+
+Francesca's propositions are especially nonsensical, being provocative
+of fruitless discussion, and adding absolutely nothing to the sum of
+human intelligence.
+
+“Why not start without any special route in view, and visit the towns
+with which we already have familiar associations?” she asked. “We should
+have all sorts of experiences by the way, and be free from the blighting
+influences of a definite purpose. Who that has ever travelled fails to
+call to mind certain images when the names of cities come up in general
+conversation? If Bologna, Brussels, or Lima is mentioned, I think at
+once of sausages, sprouts, and beans, and it gives me a feeling of
+friendly intimacy. I remember Neufchatel and Cheddar by their cheeses,
+Dorking and Cochin China by their hens, Whitby by its jet, or York by
+its hams, so that I am never wholly ignorant of places and their subtle
+associations.”
+
+“That method appeals strongly to the fancy,” said Salemina drily. “What
+subtle associations have you already established in Ireland?”
+
+“Let me see,” she responded thoughtfully; “the list is not a long one.
+Limerick and Carrickmacross for lace, Shandon for the bells, Blarney
+and Donnybrook for the stone and the fair, Kilkenny for the cats, and
+Balbriggan for the stockings.”
+
+“You are sordid this morning,” reproved Salemina; “it would be better if
+you remembered Limerick by the famous siege, and Balbriggan as the
+place where King William encamped with his army after the battle of the
+Boyne.”
+
+“I've studied the song-writers more than the histories and geographies,”
+ I said, “so I should like to go to Bray and look up the Vicar, then to
+Coleraine to see where Kitty broke the famous pitcher; or to Tara, where
+the harp that once, or to Athlone, where dwelt Widow Malone, ochone, and
+so on; just start with an armful of Tom Moore's poems and Lover's and
+Ferguson's, and, yes,” I added generously, “some of the nice moderns,
+and visit the scenes they've written about.”
+
+“And be disappointed,” quoth Francesca cynically. “Poets see everything
+by the light that never was on sea or land; still I won't deny that they
+help the blind, and I should rather like to know if there are still any
+Nora Creinas and Sweet Peggies and Pretty Girls Milking their Cows.”
+
+“I am very anxious to visit as many of the Round Towers as possible,”
+ said Salemina. “When I was a girl of seventeen I had a very dear friend,
+a young Irishman, who has since become a well-known antiquary and
+archaeologist. He was a student, and afterwards, I think, a professor
+here in Trinity College, but I have not heard from him for many years.”
+
+“Don't look him up, darling,” pleaded Francesca. “You are so much our
+superior now that we positively must protect you from all elevating
+influences.”
+
+“I won't insist on the Round Towers,” smiled Salemina, “and I think
+Penelope's idea a delightful one; we might add to it a sort of literary
+pilgrimage to the homes and haunts of Ireland's famous writers.”
+
+“I didn't know that she had any,” interrupted Francesca.
+
+This is a favourite method of conversation with that spoiled young
+person; it seems to appeal to her in three different ways: she likes
+to belittle herself, she likes to shock Salemina, and she likes to have
+information given her on the spot in some succinct, portable, convenient
+form.
+
+“Oh,” she continued apologetically, “of course there are Dean Swift and
+Thomas Moore and Charles Lever.”
+
+“And,” I added “certain minor authors named Goldsmith, Sterne, Steele,
+and Samuel Lover.”
+
+“And Bishop Berkeley, and Brinsley Sheridan, and Maria Edgeworth, and
+Father Prout,” continued Salemina, “and certain great speech-makers like
+Burke and Grattan and Curran; and how delightful to visit all the places
+connected with Stella and Vanessa, and the spot where Spenser wrote the
+Faerie Queene.”
+
+     “'Nor own a land on earth but one,
+       We're Paddies, and no more,'”
+
+sang Francesca. “You will be telling me in a moment that Thomas Carlyle
+was born in Skereenarinka, and that Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet
+in Coolagarranoe,” for she had drawn the guidebook toward her and made
+good use of it. “Let us do the literary pilgrimage, certainly, before
+we leave Ireland, but suppose we begin with something less intellectual.
+This is the most pugnacious map I ever gazed upon. All the names seem
+to begin or end with kill, bally, whack, shock, or knock; no wonder the
+Irish make good soldiers! Suppose we start with a sanguinary trip to the
+Kill places, so that I can tell any timid Americans I meet in travelling
+that I have been to Kilmacow and to Kilmacthomas, and am going to-morrow
+to Kilmore, and the next day to Kilumaule.”
+
+“I think that must have been said before,” I objected.
+
+“It is so obvious that it's not unlikely,” she rejoined; “then let
+us simply agree to go afterwards to see all the Bally places from
+Ballydehob on the south to Ballycastle or Ballymoney on the north,
+and from Ballynahinch or Ballywilliam on the east to Ballyvaughan or
+Ballybunnion on the west, and passing through, in transit,
+
+     Ballyragget,
+     Ballysadare,
+     Ballybrophy,
+     Ballinasloe,
+     Ballyhooley,
+     Ballycumber,
+     Ballyduff,
+     Ballynashee,
+     Ballywhack.
+
+Don't they all sound jolly and grotesque?”
+
+“They do indeed,” we agreed, “and the plan is quite worthy of you; we
+can say no more.”
+
+We had now developed so many more ideas than we could possibly use that
+the labour of deciding among them was the next thing to be done. Each of
+us stood out boldly for her own project,--even Francesca clinging, from
+sheer wilfulness, to her worthless and absurd itineraries,--until, in
+order to bring the matter to any sort of decision, somebody suggested
+that we consult Benella; which reminds me that you have not yet the
+pleasure of Benella's acquaintance.
+
+
+
+Chapter III. We sight a derelict.
+
+     'O Bay of Dublin, my heart you're troublin',
+      Your beauty haunts me like a fever dream.'
+                                         Lady Dufferin.
+
+To perform the introduction properly I must go back a day or two. We
+had elected to cross to Dublin directly from Scotland, an easy night
+journey. Accordingly we embarked in a steamer called the Prince or the
+King of something or other, the name being many degrees more princely or
+kingly than the craft itself.
+
+We had intended, too, to make our own comparison of the Bay of Dublin
+and the Bay of Naples, because every traveller, from Charles Lever's
+Jack Hinton down to Thackeray and Mr. Alfred Austin has always made it a
+point of honour to do so. We were balked in our conscientious endeavour,
+because we arrived at the North Wall forty minutes earlier than the hour
+set by the steamship company. It is quite impossible for anything in
+Ireland to be done strictly on the minute, and in struggling not to be
+hopelessly behind time, a 'disthressful counthry' will occasionally be
+ahead of it. We had been told that we should arrive in a drizzling rain,
+and that no one but Lady Dufferin had ever on approaching Ireland seen
+the 'sweet faces of the Wicklow mountains reflected in a smooth and
+silver sea.' The grumblers were right on this special occasion, although
+we have proved them false more than once since.
+
+I was in a fever of fear that Ireland would not be as Irish as we wished
+it to be. It seemed probable that processions of prosperous aldermen,
+school directors, contractors, mayors, and ward politicians, returning
+to their native land to see how Herself was getting on, the crathur,
+might have deposited on the soil successive layers of Irish-American
+virtues, such as punctuality, thrift, and cleanliness, until they had
+quite obscured fair Erin's peculiar and pathetic charm. We longed for
+the new Ireland as fervently as any of her own patriots, but we wished
+to see the old Ireland before it passed. There is plenty of it left
+(alas! the patriots would say), and Dublin was as dear and as dirty as
+when Lady Morgan first called it so, long years ago. The boat was met
+by a crowd of ragged gossoons, most of them barefooted, some of them
+stockingless, and in men's shoes, and several of them with flowers in
+their unspeakable hats and caps. There were no cabs or jaunting cars
+because we had not been expected so early, and the jarveys were in
+attendance on the Holyhead steamer. It was while I was searching for a
+piece of lost luggage that I saw the stewardess assisting a young woman
+off the gang plank, and leading her toward a pile of wool bags on
+the dock. She sank helplessly on one of them, and leaned her head on
+another. As the night had been one calculated to disturb the physical
+equilibrium of a poor sailor, and the breakfast of a character to
+discourage the stoutest stomach, I gave her a careless thought of pity
+and speedily forgot her. Two trunks, a holdall, a hatbox--in which
+reposed, in solitary grandeur, Francesca's picture hat, intended for
+the further undoing of the Irish gentry--a guitar case, two bags, three
+umbrellas; all were safe but Salemina's large Vuitton trunk and my
+valise, which had been last seen at Edinburgh station. Salemina returned
+to the boat, while Francesca and I wended our way among the heaps of
+luggage, followed by crowds of ragamuffins, who offered to run for a
+car, run for a cab, run for a porter, carry our luggage up the street
+to the cab-stand, carry our wraps, carry us, 'do any mortial thing for a
+penny, melady, an' there is no cars here, melady, God bless me sowl, and
+that He be good to us all if I'm tellin' you a word of a lie!'
+
+Entirely unused to this flow of conversation, we were obliged to stop
+every few seconds to recount our luggage and try to remember what we
+were looking for. We all met finally, and I rescued Salemina from the
+voluble thanks of an old woman to whom she had thoughtlessly given a
+three-penny bit. This mother of a 'long wake family' was wishing that
+Salemina might live to 'ate the hin' that scratched over her grave,
+and invoking many other uncommon and picturesque blessings, but we were
+obliged to ask her to desist and let us attend to our own business.
+
+“Will I clane the whole of thim off for you for a penny, your ladyship's
+honour, ma'am?” asked the oldest of the ragamuffins, and I gladly
+assented to the novel proposition. He did it, too, and there seemed to
+be no hurt feelings in the company.
+
+Just then there was a rattle of cabs and side-cars, and our
+self-constituted major-domo engaged two of them to await our pleasure.
+At the same moment our eyes lighted upon Salemina's huge Vuitton, which
+had been dragged behind the pile of wool sacks. It was no wonder it
+had escaped our notice, for it was mostly covered by the person of the
+sea-sick maiden whom I had seen on the arm of the stewardess. She was
+seated on it, exhaustion in every line of her figure, her head upon my
+travelling bag, her feet dangling over the edge until they just touched
+the 'S. P., Salem, Mass., U.S.A.' painted in large red letters on the
+end. She was too ill to respond to our questions, but there was no
+mistaking her nationality. Her dress, hat, shoes, gloves, face, figure
+were American. We sent for the stewardess, who told us that she had
+arrived in Glasgow on the day previous, and had been very ill all the
+way coming from Boston.
+
+“Boston!” exclaimed Salemina. “Do you say she is from Boston, poor
+thing?”
+
+(“I didn't know that a person living in Boston could ever, under any
+circumstances, be a 'poor thing,'” whispered Francesca to me.)
+
+“She was not fit to be crossing last night, and the doctor on the
+American ship told her so, and advised her to stay in bed for three days
+before coming to Ireland; but it seems as if she were determined to get
+to her journey's end.”
+
+“We must have our trunk,” I interposed. “Can't we move her carefully
+over to the wool sacks, and won't you stay with her until her friends
+come?”
+
+“She has no friends in this country, ma'am. She's just travelling for
+pleasure like.”
+
+“Good gracious! what a position for her to be in,” said Salemina. “Can't
+you take her back to the steamer and put her to bed?”
+
+“I could ask the captain, certainly, miss, though of course it's
+something we never do, and besides we have to set the ship to rights and
+go across again this evening.”
+
+“Ask her what hotel she is going to, Salemina,” we suggested, “and let
+us drop her there, and put her in charge of the housekeeper; of course
+if it is only sea-sickness she will be all right in the morning.”
+
+The girl's eyes were closed, but she opened them languidly as Salemina
+chafed her cold hands, and asked gently if we could not drive her to an
+hotel.
+
+“Is--this--your--baggage?” she whispered.
+
+“It is,” Salemina answered, somewhat puzzled.
+
+“Then don't--leave me here, I am from Salem--myself,” whereupon without
+any more warning she promptly fainted away on the trunk.
+
+The situation was becoming embarrassing. The assemblage grew larger,
+and a more interesting and sympathetic audience I never saw. To an Irish
+crowd, always warm-hearted and kindly, willing to take any trouble
+for friend or stranger, and with a positive terror of loneliness, or
+separation from kith and kin, the helpless creature appealed in every
+way. One and another joined the group with a “Holy Biddy! what's this at
+all?”
+
+“The saints presarve us, is it dyin' she is?”
+
+“Look at the iligant duds she do be wearin'.”
+
+“Call the docthor, is it? God give you sinse! Sure the docthors is only
+a flock of omadhauns.”
+
+“Is it your daughter she is, ma'am?” (This to Salemina.)
+
+“She's from Ameriky, the poor mischancy crathur.”
+
+“Give her a toothful of whisky, your ladyship. Sure it's nayther bite
+nor sup she's had the morn, and belike she's as impty as a quarry-hole.”
+
+When this last expression from the mother of the long weak family fell
+upon Salemina's cultured ears she looked desperate.
+
+We could not leave a fellow-countrywoman, least of all could Salemina
+forsake a fellow-citizen, in such a hapless plight.
+
+“Take one cab with Francesca and the luggage, Penelope,” she whispered.
+“I will bring the girl with me, put her to bed, find her friends,
+and see that she starts on her journey safely; it's very awkward, but
+there's nothing else to be done.”
+
+So we departed in a chorus of popular approval.
+
+“Sure it's you that have the good hearts!”
+
+“May the heavens be your bed!”
+
+“May the journey thrive wid her, the crathur!”
+
+Francesca and I arrived first at the hotel where our rooms were already
+engaged, and there proved to be a comfortable little dressing, or
+maid's, room just off Salemina's.
+
+Here the Derelict was presently ensconced, and there she lay, in a sort
+of profound exhaustion, all day, without once absolutely regaining
+her consciousness. Instead of visiting the National Gallery as I had
+intended, I returned to the dock to see if I could find the girl's
+luggage, or get any further information from the stewardess before she
+left Dublin.
+
+“I'll send the doctor at once, but we must learn all possible
+particulars now,” I said maliciously to poor Salemina. “It would be so
+awkward, you know, if you should be arrested for abduction.”
+
+The doctor thought it was probably nothing more than the complete
+prostration that might follow eight days of sea-sickness, but the
+patient's heart was certainly a little weak, and she needed the utmost
+quiet. His fee was a guinea for the first visit, and he would drop in
+again in the course of the afternoon to relieve our anxiety. We took
+turns in watching by her bedside, but the two unemployed ones lingered
+forlornly near, and had no heart for sightseeing. Francesca did,
+however, purchase opera tickets for the evening, and secretly engaged
+the housemaid to act as head nurse in our absence.
+
+As we were dining at seven, we heard a faint voice in the little room
+beyond. Salemina left her dinner and went in to find her charge slightly
+better. We had been able thus far only to take off her dress, shoes, and
+such garments as made her uncomfortable; Salemina now managed to slip on
+a nightdress and put her under the bedcovers, returning then to her cold
+mutton cutlet.
+
+“She's an extraordinary person,” she said, absently playing with her
+knife and fork. “She didn't ask me where she was, or show any interest
+in her surroundings; perhaps she is still too weak. She said she was
+better, and when I had made her ready for bed, she whispered, 'I've got
+to say my prayers'.
+
+“'Say them by all means,' I replied.
+
+“'But I must get up and kneel down, she said.
+
+“I told her she must do nothing of the sort; that she was far too ill.
+
+“'But I must,' she urged. 'I never go to bed without saying my prayers
+on my knees.'
+
+“I forbade her doing it; she closed her eyes, and I came away. Isn't she
+quaint?”
+
+At this juncture we heard the thud of a soft falling body, and rushing
+in we found that the Derelict had crept from her bed to her knees, and
+had probably not prayed more than two minutes before she fainted for the
+fifth or sixth time in twenty-four hours. Salemina was vexed, angel
+and philanthropist though she is. Francesca and I were so helpless with
+laughter that we could hardly lift the too conscientious maiden into
+bed. The situation may have been pathetic; to the truly pious mind it
+would indeed have been indescribably touching, but for the moment the
+humorous side of it was too much for our self-control. Salemina, in
+rushing for stimulants and smelling salts, broke her only comfortable
+eyeglasses, and this accident, coupled with her other anxieties
+and responsibilities, caused her to shed tears, an occurrence so
+unprecedented that Francesca and I kissed and comforted her and tucked
+her up on the sofa. Then we sent for the doctor, gave our opera tickets
+to the head waiter and chambermaid, and settled down to a cheerful home
+evening, our first in Ireland.
+
+“If Himself were here, we should not be in this plight,” I sighed.
+
+“I don't know how you can say that,” responded Salemina, with
+considerable spirit. “You know perfectly well that if your husband had
+found a mother and seven children helpless and deserted on that dock,
+he would have brought them all to this hotel, and then tried to find the
+father and grandfather.”
+
+“And it's not Salemina's fault,” argued Francesca. “She couldn't help
+the girl being born in Salem; not that I believe that she ever heard of
+the place before she saw it printed on Salemina's trunk. I told you it
+was too big and red, dear, but you wouldn't listen! I am the strongest
+American of the party, but I confess that U.S.A. in letters five inches
+long is too much for my patriotism.”
+
+“It would not be if you ever had charge of the luggage,” retorted
+Salemina.
+
+“And whatever you do, Francesca,” I added beseechingly, “don't impugn
+the veracity of our Derelict. While we think of ourselves as ministering
+angels I can endure anything, but if we are the dupes of an adventuress,
+there is nothing pretty about it. By the way, I have consulted the
+English manageress of this hotel, who was not particularly sympathetic.
+'Perhaps you shouldn't have assumed charge of her, madam,' she said,
+'but having done so, hadn't you better see if you can get her into a
+hospital?' It isn't a bad suggestion, and after a day or two we will
+consider it, or I will get a trained nurse to take full charge of her.
+I would be at any reasonable expense rather than have our pleasure
+interfered with any further.”
+
+It still seems odd to make a proposition of this kind. In former times,
+Francesca was the Croesus of the party, Salemina came second, and I
+last, with a most precarious income. Now I am the wealthy one, Francesca
+is reduced to the second place, and Salemina to the third, but it makes
+no difference whatever, either in our relations, our arrangements, or,
+for that matter, in our expenditures.
+
+
+
+Chapter IV. Enter Benella Dusenberry.
+
+     'A fair maiden wander'd
+        All wearied and lone,
+      Sighing, “I'm a poor stranger,
+        And far from my own.”
+       We invited her in,
+      We offered her share
+      Of our humble cottage
+      And our humble fare;
+      We bade her take comfort,
+      No longer to moan,
+      And made the poor stranger
+      Be one of our own.'
+                      Old Irish Song.
+
+The next morning dawned as lovely as if it had slipped out of Paradise,
+and as for freshness, and emerald sheen, the world from our windows was
+like a lettuce leaf just washed in dew. The windows of my bedroom looked
+out pleasantly on St. Stephen's Green, commonly called Stephen's Green,
+or by citizens of the baser sort, Stephens's Green. It is a good English
+mile in circumference, and many are the changes in it from the time it
+was first laid out, in 1670, to the present day, when it was made into a
+public park by Lord Ardilaun.
+
+When the celebrated Mrs. Delany, then Mrs. Pendarves, first saw it, the
+centre was a swamp, where in winter a quantity of snipe congregated,
+and Harris in his History of Dublin alludes to the presence of snipe
+and swamp as an agreeable and uncommon circumstance not to be met with
+perhaps in any other great city in the world.
+
+A double row of spreading lime-trees bordered its four sides, one of
+which, known as Beaux' Walk, was a favourite lounge for fashionable
+idlers. Here stood Bishop Clayton's residence, a large building with a
+front like Devonshire House in Piccadilly: so writes Mrs. Delany. It was
+splendidly furnished, and the bishop lived in a style which proves that
+Irish prelates of the day were not all given to self-abnegation and
+mortification of the flesh.
+
+A long line of vehicles, outside-cars and cabs, some of them battered
+and shaky, others sufficiently well-looking, was gathering on two sides
+of the Green, for Dublin, you know, is 'the car-drivingest city in
+the world.' Francesca and I had our first experience yesterday in the
+intervals of nursing, driving to Dublin Castle, Trinity College, the
+Four Courts, and Grafton Street (the Regent Street of Dublin). It is
+easy to tell the stranger, stiff, decorous, terrified, clutching the
+rail with one or both hands, but we took for our model a pretty Irish
+girl, who looked like nothing so much as a bird on a swaying bough. It
+is no longer called the 'jaunting,' but the outside car and there
+is another charming word lost to the world. There was formerly an
+inside-car too, but it is almost unknown in Dublin, though still found
+in some of the smaller towns. An outside-car has its wheels practically
+inside the body of the vehicle, but an inside car carries its wheels
+outside. This definition was given us by an Irish driver, but lucid
+definition is not perhaps an Irishman's strong point. It is clearer to
+say that the passenger sits outside of the wheels on the one, inside on
+the other. There are seats for two persons over each of the two
+wheels, and a dickey for the driver in front, should he need to use it.
+Ordinarily he sits on one side, driving, while you perch on the other,
+and thus you jog along, each seeing your own side of the road, and
+discussing the topics of the day across the 'well,' as the covered-in
+centre of the car is called. There are those who do not agree with its
+champions, who call it 'Cupid's own conveyance'; they find the seat too
+small for two, yet feel it a bit unsociable when the companion occupies
+the opposite side. To me a modern Dublin car with rubber tires and a
+good Irish horse is the jolliest vehicle in the universe; there is a
+liveliness, an irresponsible gaiety, in the spring and sway of it; an
+ease in the half-lounging position against the cushions, a unique charm
+in 'travelling edgeways' with your feet planted on the step. You must
+not be afraid of a car if you want to enjoy it. Hold the rail if you
+must, at first, though it's just as bad form as clinging to your horse's
+mane while riding in the Row. Your driver will take all the chances that
+a crowded thoroughfare gives him; he would scorn to leave more than an
+inch between your feet and a Guinness' beer dray; he will shake your
+flounces and furbelows in the very windows of the passing trams, but he
+is beloved by the gods, and nothing ever happens to him.
+
+The morning was enchanting, as I said, and, above all, the Derelict was
+better.
+
+“It's a grand night's slape I had wid her intirely,” said the housemaid;
+“an' sure it's not to-day she'll be dyin' on you at all, at all; she's
+had the white drink in the bowl twyst, and a grand cup o' tay on the top
+o' that.”
+
+Salemina fortified herself with breakfast before she went in to an
+interview, which we all felt to be important and decisive. The time
+seemed endless to us, and endless were our suppositions.
+
+“Perhaps she has had morning prayers and fainted again.”
+
+“Perhaps she has turned out to be Salemina's long-lost cousin.”
+
+“Perhaps she is upbraiding Salemina for kidnapping her when she was
+insensible.”
+
+“Perhaps she is relating her life history; if it is a sad one, Salemina
+is adopting her legally at this moment.”
+
+“Perhaps she is one of Mr. Beresford's wards, and has come over to
+complain of somebody's ill treatment.”
+
+Here Salemina entered, looking flushed and embarrassed. We thought it a
+bad sign that she could not meet our eyes without confusion, but I made
+room for her on the sofa, and Francesca drew her chair closer.
+
+“She is from Salem,” began the poor dear; “she has never been out of
+Massachusetts in her life.”
+
+“Unfortunate girl!” exclaimed Francesca, adding prudently, as she saw
+Salemina's rising colour, “though of course if one has to reside in a
+single state, Massachusetts offers more compensations than any other.”
+
+“She knows every nook and corner in the place,” continued Salemina;
+“she has even seen the house where I was born, and her name is Benella
+Dusenberry.”
+
+“Impossible!” cried Francesca. “Dusenberry is unlikely enough, but
+who ever heard of such a name as Benella! It sounds like a flavouring
+extract.”
+
+“She came over to see the world, she says.”
+
+“Oh! then she has money?”
+
+“No--or at least, yes; or at least she had enough when she left America
+to last for two or three months, or until she could earn something.”
+
+“Of course she left her little all in a chamois-skin bag under her
+pillow on the steamer,” suggested Francesca.
+
+“That is precisely what she did,” Salemina replied, with a pale smile.
+“However, she was so ill in the steerage that she had to pay twenty-five
+or thirty dollars extra to go into the second cabin, and this naturally
+reduced the amount of her savings, though it makes no difference since
+she left them all behind her, save a few dollars in her purse. She says
+she is usually perfectly well, but that she was very tired when she
+started, that it was her first sea-voyage, and the passage was unusually
+rough.”
+
+“Where is she going?”
+
+“I don't know; I mean she doesn't know. Her maternal grandmother was
+born in Trim, near Tara, in Meath, but she does not think she has any
+relations over here. She is entirely alone in the world, and that gives
+her a certain sentiment in regard to Ireland, which she heard a great
+deal about when she was a child. The maternal grandmother must have gone
+to Salem at a very early age, as Benella herself savours only of New
+England soil.”
+
+“Has she any trade, or is she trained to do anything whatsoever?” asked
+Francesca.
+
+“No, she hoped to take some position of 'trust.' She does not care at
+all what it is, so long as the occupation is 'interestin' work,' she
+says. That is rather vague, of course, but she speaks and appears like a
+nice, conscientious person.”
+
+“Tell us the rest; conceal nothing,” I said sternly.
+
+“She--she thinks that we have saved her life, and she feels that she
+belongs to us,” faltered Salemina.
+
+“Belongs to us!” we cried in a duet. “Was there ever such a base reward
+given to virtue; ever such an unwelcome expression of gratitude! Belong
+to us, indeed! We can't have her; we won't have her. Were you perfectly
+frank with her?”
+
+“I tried to be, but she almost insisted; she has set her heart upon
+being our maid.”
+
+“Does she know how to be a maid?”
+
+“No, but she is extremely teachable, she says.”
+
+“I have my doubts,” remarked Francesca; “a liking for personal service
+is not a distinguishing characteristic of New Englanders; they are
+not the stuff of which maids are made. If she were French or German or
+Senegambian, in fact anything but a Saleminian, we might use her; we
+have always said we needed some one.”
+
+Salemina brightened. “I thought myself it might be rather nice--that is,
+I thought it might be a way out of the difficulty. Penelope had thought
+at one time of bringing a maid, and it would save us a great deal of
+trouble. The doctor thinks she could travel a short distance in a few
+days; perhaps it is a Providence in disguise.”
+
+“The disguise is perfect,” murmured Francesca.
+
+“You see,” Salemina continued, “when the poor thing tottered along the
+wharf the stewardess laid her on the pile of wool sacks-”
+
+“Like a dying Chancellor,” again interpolated the irrepressible.
+
+“And ran off to help another passenger. When she opened her eyes, she
+saw straight in front of her, in huge letters, 'Salem, Mass., U.S.A.'
+It loomed before her despairing vision, I suppose, like a great ark
+of refuge, and seemed to her in her half-dazed condition not only a
+reminder, but almost a message from home. She had then no thought of
+ever seeing the owner; she says she felt only that she should like
+to die quietly on anything marked 'Salem, Mass.' Go in to see her
+presently, Penelope, and make up your own mind about her. See if you
+can persuade her to--to--well, to give us up. Try to get her out of the
+notion of being our maid. She is so firm; I never saw so feeble a person
+who could be so firm; and what in the world shall we do with her if she
+keeps on insisting, in her nervous state?”
+
+“My idea would be,” I suggested, “to engage her provisionally, if we
+must, not because we want her, but because her heart is weak. I shall
+tell her that we do not feel like leaving her behind, and yet we
+ourselves cannot be detained in Dublin indefinitely; that we will try
+the arrangement for a month, and that she can consider herself free to
+leave us at any time on a week's notice.”
+
+“I approve of that,” agreed Francesca, “because it makes it easier to
+dismiss her in case she turns out to be a Massachusetts Borgia. You
+remember, however, that we bore with the vapours and vagaries, the sighs
+and moans of Jane Grieve in Pettybaw, all those weeks, and not one of us
+had the courage to throw off her yoke. Never shall I forget her at your
+wedding, Penelope; the teardrop glistened in her eye as usual; I think
+it is glued there! Ronald was sympathetic, because he fancied she was
+weeping for the loss of you, but on inquiry it transpired that she was
+thinking of a marriage in that 'won'erfu' fine family in Glasgy,'
+with whose charms she had made us all too familiar. She asked to be
+remembered when I began my own housekeeping, and I told her truthfully
+that she was not a person who could be forgotten; I repressed my feeling
+that she is too tearful for a Highland village where it rains most
+of the year, also my conviction that Ronald's parish would chasten me
+sufficiently without her aid.”
+
+I did as Salemina wished, and had a conference with Miss Dusenberry. I
+hope I was quite clear in my stipulations as to the perfect freedom
+of the four contracting parties. I know I intended to be, and I was
+embarrassed to see Francesca and Salemina exchange glances next day when
+Benella said she would show us what a good sailor she could be, on the
+return voyage to America, adding that she thought a person would be much
+less liable to sea-sickness when travelling in the first cabin.
+
+
+
+Chapter V. The Wearing of the Green.
+
+     'Sir Knight, I feel not the least alarm,
+      No son of Erin will offer me harm--
+      For tho' they love woman and golden store,
+      Sir Knight, they love honour and virtue more!'
+                                   Thomas Moore.
+
+“This is an anniversary,” said Salemina, coming into the sitting-room at
+breakfast-time with a book under her arm. “Having given up all hope of
+any one's waking in this hotel, which, before nine in the morning, is
+precisely like the Sleeping Beauty's castle, I dressed and determined to
+look up Brian Boru.”
+
+“From all that I can recall of him he was not a person to meet before
+breakfast,” yawned Francesca; “still I shall be glad of a little
+fresh light, for my mind is in a most chaotic state, induced by the
+intellectual preparation that you have made me undergo during the past
+month. I dreamed last night that I was conducting a mothers' meeting
+in Ronald's new parish, and the subject for discussion was the Small
+Livings Scheme, the object of which is to augment the stipends of the
+ministers of the Church of Scotland to a minimum of 200 pounds per
+annum. I tried to keep the members to the point, but was distracted
+by the sudden appearance, in all corners of the church, of people who
+hadn't been 'asked to the party.' There was Brian Boru, Tony Lumpkin,
+Finn McCool, Felicia Hemans, Ossian, Mrs. Delany, Sitric of the Silken
+Beard, St. Columba, Mickey Free, Strongbow, Maria Edgeworth, and the
+Venerable Bede. Imagine leading a mothers' meeting with those people
+in the pews,--it was impossible! St. Columbkille and the Venerable Bede
+seemed to know about parochial charges and livings and stipends and
+glebes, and Maria Edgeworth was rather helpful; but Brian and Sitric
+glared at each other and brandished their hymn-books threateningly,
+while Ossian refused to sit in the same pew with Mickey Free, who
+behaved in an odious manner, and interrupted each of the speakers in
+turn. Incidentally a group of persons huddled together in a far corner
+rose out of the dim light, and flapping huge wings, flew over my head
+and out of the window above the altar. This I took to be the Flight of
+the Earls, and the terror of it awoke me. Whatever my parish duties
+may be in the future, at least they cannot be any more dreadful and
+disorderly than the dream.”
+
+“I don't know which is more to blame, the seed that I sowed, or the
+soil on which it fell,” said Salemina, laughing heartily at Francesca's
+whimsical nightmares; “but as I said, this is an anniversary. The famous
+battle of Clontarf was fought here in Dublin on this very day eight
+hundred years ago, and Brian Boru routed the Danes in what was the last
+struggle between Christianity and heathenism. The greatest slaughter
+took place on the streets along which we drove yesterday from Ballybough
+Bridge to the Four Courts. Brian Boru was king of Munster, you remember”
+ (Salemina always says this for courtesy's sake), “or at least you have
+read of that time in Ireland's history when a fair lady dressed in fine
+silk and gold and jewels could walk unmolested the length of the land,
+because of the love the people bore King Brian and the respect they
+cherished for his wise laws. Well, Mailmora, the king of Leinster, had
+quarrelled with him, and joined forces with the Danish leaders against
+him. Broder and Amlaff, two Vikings from the Isle of Man, brought with
+them a 'fleet of two thousand Denmarkians and a thousand men covered
+with mail from head to foot,' to meet the Irish, who always fought in
+tunics. Joyce says that Broder wore a coat of mail that no steel would
+bite, that he was both tall and strong, and that his black locks were
+so long that he tucked them under his belt,--there's a portrait for your
+gallery, Penelope. Brian's army was encamped on the Green of Aha-Clee,
+which is now Phoenix Park, and when he set fire to the Danish districts,
+the fierce Norsemen within the city could see a blazing, smoking pathway
+that reached from Dublin to Howth. The quarrel must have been all the
+more virulent in that Mailmora was Brian's brother-in-law, and Brian's
+daughter was the wife of Sitric of the Silken Beard, Danish king of
+Dublin.”
+
+“I refuse to remember their relationships or alliances,” said Francesca.
+“They were always intermarrying with their foes in order to gain
+strength, but it generally seems to have made things worse rather
+than better; still I don't mind hearing what became of Brian after his
+victory; let us quite finish with him before the eggs come up. I suppose
+it will be eggs?”
+
+“Broder the Viking rushed upon him in his tent where he was praying,
+cleft his head from his body, and he is buried in Armagh Cathedral,”
+ said Salemina, closing the book. “Penelope, do ring again for breakfast,
+and just to keep us from realising our hunger read 'Remember the Glories
+of Brian the Brave.'”
+
+We had brought letters of introduction to a dean, a bishop, and a Rt.
+Hon. Lord Justice, so there were a few delightful invitations when the
+morning post came up; not so many as there might have been, perhaps,
+had not the Irish capital been in a state of complete dementia over the
+presence of the greatest Queen in the world. [*] Privately, I think that
+those nations in the habit of having kings and queens at all should have
+four, like those in a pack of cards; then they could manage to give all
+their colonies and dependencies a frequent sight of royalty, and prevent
+much excitement and heart-burning.
+
+
+     * Penelope's experiences in Scotland, given in a former
+     volume, ended, the meticulous proof-reader will remember,
+     with her marriage in the year of the Queen's Jubilee. It is
+     apparent in the opening chapters of this story that Penelope
+     came to Ireland the following spring, which, though the
+     matter is hardly important, was not that of the Queen's
+     memorable visit. The Irish experiences are probably the
+     fruit of several expeditions, and Penelope has chosen to
+     include this vivid impression of Her Majesty's welcome to
+     Ireland, even though it might convict her of an anachronism.
+     Perhaps as this is not an historical novel, but a 'chronicle
+     of small beer,' the trifling inaccuracy may be pardoned.--K.
+     D. W.
+
+
+It was worth something to be one of the lunatic populace when the little
+lady in black, with her parasol bordered in silver shamrocks, drove
+along the gaily decorated streets, for the Irish, it seems to me, desire
+nothing better than to be loyal, if any persons to whom they can be
+loyal are presented to them.
+
+“Irish disaffection is, after all, but skin-deep,” said our friend the
+dean; “it is a cutaneous malady, produced by external irritants. Below
+the surface there is a deep spring of personal loyalty, which needs only
+a touch like that of the prophet's wand to enable it to gush forth in
+healing floods. Her Majesty might drive through these crowded streets
+in her donkey chaise unguarded, as secure as the lady in that poem of
+Moore's which portrayed the safety of women in Brian Boru's time. The
+old song has taken on a new meaning. It begins, you know,--
+
+     'Lady, dost thou not fear to stray
+      So lone and lonely through this dark way?'
+
+and the Queen might answer as did the heroine,
+
+     'Sir Knight, I feel not the least alarm,
+      No son of Erin will offer me harm.'”
+
+It was small use for the parliamentary misrepresentatives to advise
+treating Victoria of the Good Deeds with the courtesy due to a foreign
+sovereign visiting the country. Under the miles of flags she drove, red,
+white, and blue, tossing themselves in the sweet spring air, and up from
+the warm hearts of the surging masses of people, men and women alike,
+Crimean soldiers and old crones in rags, gentry and peasants, went a
+greeting I never before heard given to any sovereign, for it was a sigh
+of infinite content that trembled on the lips and then broke into a deep
+sob, as a knot of Trinity College students in a spontaneous burst of
+song flung out the last verse of 'The New Wearing of the Green.' [**]
+
+  'And so upon St. Patrick's Day, Victoria, she has said
+   Each Irish regiment shall wear the Green beside the Red;
+   And she's coming to ould Ireland, who away so long has been,
+   And dear knows but into Dublin she'll ride Wearing of the Green.'
+
+
+   ** Alfred Perceval Graves.
+
+The first cheers were faint and broken, and the emotion that quivered
+on every face and the tears that gleamed in a thousand eyes made it the
+most touching spectacle in the world. 'Foreign Sovereign, indeed!'
+She was the Queen of Ireland, and the nation of courtiers and hero
+worshippers was at her feet. There was the history of five hundred years
+in that greeting, and to me it spoke volumes.
+
+Plenty of people there were in the crowd, too, who were heartily 'agin
+the Government'; but Daniel O'Connell is not the only Irishman who
+could combine a detestation of the Imperial Parliament with a passionate
+loyalty to the sovereign.
+
+There was a woman near us who 'remimbered the last time Her Noble
+Highness come, thirty-nine years back,--glory be to God, thim was the
+times!'--and who kept ejaculating, “She's the best woman in the wurrld,
+bar none, and the most varchous faymale!” As her husband made no reply,
+she was obliged in her excitement to thump him with her umbrella and
+repeat, “The most varchous faymale, do you hear?” At which he retorted,
+“Have conduct, woman; sure I've nothin' agin it.”
+
+“Look at the size of her now,” she went on, “sittin' in that grand
+carriage, no bigger than me own Kitty, and always in the black, the
+darlin'. Look at her, a widdy woman, raring that large and heavy family
+of children; and how well she's married off her daughters (more luck to
+her!), though to be sure they must have been well fortuned! They do
+be sayin' she's come over because she's plazed with seein' estated
+gintlemen lave iverything and go out and be shot by thim bloody Boers,
+bad scran to thim! Sure if I had the sons, sorra a wan but I'd lave
+go! Who's the iligant sojers in the silver stays, Thady? Is it the Life
+Guards you're callin' thim?”
+
+There were two soldiers' wives standing on the pavement near us, and
+one of them showed a half-sovereign to the other, saying, “'Tis the last
+day's airnin' iver I seen by him, Mrs. Muldoon, ma'am! Ah, there's thim
+says for this war, an' there's thim says agin this war, but Heaven lave
+Himself where he is, I says, for of all the ragin' Turcomaniacs iver a
+misfortunate woman was curst with, Pat Brady, my full private, he bates
+'em all!”
+
+Here the band played 'Come back to Erin,' and the scene was
+indescribable. Nothing could have induced me to witness it had I
+realised what it was to be, for I wept at Holyrood when I heard the
+plaintive strains of 'Bonnie Charlie's noo Awa' floating up to the
+Gallery of Kings from the palace courtyard, and I did not wish Francesca
+to see me shedding national, political, and historical tears so soon
+again. Francesca herself is so ardent a republican that she weeps
+only for presidents and cabinet officers. For my part, although I am
+thoroughly loyal, I cannot become sufficiently attached to a president
+in four years to shed tears when I see him driving at the head of a
+procession.
+
+
+
+Chapter VI. Dublin, then and now.
+
+     'I found in Innisfail the fair,
+      In Ireland, while in exile there,
+      Women of worth, both grave and gay men,
+      Many clerics, and many laymen.'
+                        James Clarence Mangan.
+
+Mrs. Delany, writing from Dublin in 1731, says: 'As for the generality
+of people that I meet with here, they are much the same as in England--a
+mixture of good and bad. All that I have met with behave themselves very
+decently according to their rank; now and then an oddity breaks out, but
+never so extraordinary but that I can match it in England. There is a
+heartiness among them that is more like Cornwall than any I have known,
+and great sociableness.' This picturesque figure in the life of her day
+gives charming pictures in her memoirs of the Irish society of the time,
+descriptions which are confirmed by contemporary writers. She was the
+wife of Dr. Delany, Dean of Down, the companion of duchesses and queens,
+and the friend of Swift. Hannah More, in a poem called 'Sensibility,'
+published in 1778, gives this quaint and stilted picture of her:--
+
+     'Delany shines, in worth serenely bright,
+      Wisdom's strong ray, and virtue's milder light.
+      And she who blessed the friend and graced the page of Swift,
+              still lends her lustre to our age.
+      Long, long protract thy light, O star benign,
+      Whose setting beams with added brightness shine!'
+
+The Irish ladies of Delany's day, who scarcely ever appeared on foot in
+the streets, were famous for their grace in dancing, it seems, as the
+men were for their skill in swimming. The hospitality of the upper
+classes was profuse, and by no means lacking in brilliancy or in grace.
+The humorous and satirical poetry found in the fugitive literature of
+the period shows conclusively that there were plenty of bright
+spirits and keen wits at the banquets, routs, and balls. The curse of
+absenteeism was little felt in Dublin, where the Parliament secured the
+presence of most of the aristocracy and of much of the talent of the
+country, and during the residence of the viceroy there was the influence
+of the court to contribute to the sparkling character of Dublin society.
+
+How they managed to sparkle when discussing some of the heavy dinner
+menus of the time I cannot think. Here is one of the Dean of Down's
+bills of fare:--
+
+     Turkeys endove
+     Boyled leg of mutton
+     Greens, etc.
+     Soup
+     Plum Pudding
+     Roast loin of veal
+     Venison pasty
+     Partridge
+     Sweetbreads
+     Collared Pig
+     Creamed apple tart
+     Crabs
+     Fricassee of eggs
+     Pigeons
+           No dessert to be had.
+
+Although there is no mention of beverages we may be sure that this
+array of viands was not eaten dry, but was washed down with a plentiful
+variety of wines and liquors.
+
+The hosts, either in Dublin or London, who numbered among their dinner
+guests such Irishmen as Sheridan or Lysaght, Mangan or Lever, Curran
+or Lover, Father Prout or Dean Swift, had as great a feast of wit and
+repartee as one will be apt soon to hear again; although it must have
+been Lever or Lover who furnished the cream of Irish humour, and Father
+Prout and Swift the curds.
+
+If you are fortunate enough to be bidden to the right houses in Ireland
+to-day, you will have as much good talk as you are likely to listen to
+anywhere else in this degenerate age, which has mostly forgotten how to
+converse in learning to chat; and any one who goes to the Spring Show
+at Ball's Bridge, or to the Punchestown or Leopardstown races, or to the
+Dublin horse show, will have to confess that the Irishwomen can dispute
+the palm with any nation.
+
+     'Light on their feet now they passed me and sped,
+        Give you me word, give you me word,
+      Every girl wid a turn o' the head
+        Just like a bird, just like a bird;
+      And the lashes so thick round their beautiful eyes
+      Shinin' to tell you it's fair time o' day wid them,
+      Back in me heart wid a kind of surprise,
+      I think how the Irish girls has the way wid them!'
+
+Their charm is made up of beautiful eyes and lashes, lustre of hair,
+poise of head, shapeliness of form, vivacity and coquetry; and there
+is a matchless grace in the way they wear the 'whatever,' be it the
+chiffons of the fashionable dame, or the shawl of the country colleen,
+who can draw the two corners of that faded article of apparel shyly over
+her lips and look out from under it with a pair of luminous grey eyes in
+a manner that is fairly 'disthractin'.'
+
+Yesterday was a red-letter day, for I dined in the evening at Dublin
+Castle, and Francesca was bidden to the concert in the Throne Room
+afterwards. It was a brilliant scene when the assembled guests awaited
+their host and hostess, the shaded lights bringing out the satins and
+velvets, pearls and diamonds, uniforms, orders, and medals. Suddenly
+the hum of voices ceased as one of the aides-de-camp who preceded the
+vice-regal party announced 'their Excellencies.' We made a sort of
+passage as these dignitaries advanced to shake hands with a few of those
+they knew best. The Lord Lieutenant then gave his arm to the lady of
+highest rank (alas, it was not I!); her Excellency chose her proper
+squire, and we passed through the beautifully decorated rooms to St.
+Patrick's Hall in a nicely graded procession, magnificence at the head,
+humility at the tail. A string band was discoursing sweet music the
+while, and I fitted to its measures certain well-known lines descriptive
+of the entrance of the beasts into the ark.
+
+     'The animals went in two by two,
+      The elephant and the kangaroo.'
+
+As my escort was a certain brilliant lord justice, and as the wittiest
+dean in Leinster was my other neighbour, I almost forgot to eat in my
+pleasure and excitement. I told the dean that we had chosen Scottish
+ancestors before going to our first great dinner in Edinburgh, feeling
+that we should be more in sympathy with the festivities and more
+acceptable to our hostess, but that I had forgotten to provide myself
+for this occasion, my first function in Dublin; whereupon the good dean
+promptly remembered that there was a Penelope O'Connor, daughter of the
+King of Connaught. I could not quite give up Tam o' the Cowgate (Thomas
+Hamilton) or Jenny Geddes of fauld-stule fame, also a Hamilton, but I
+added the King of Connaught to the list of my chosen forebears with much
+delight, in spite of the polite protests of the Rev. Father O'Hogan, who
+sat opposite, and who remarked that
+
+     'Man for his glory
+        To ancestry flies,
+      But woman's bright story
+        Is told in her eyes.
+      While the monarch but traces
+        Through mortal his line,
+      Beauty born of the Graces
+        Ranks next to divine.'
+
+I asked the Reverend Father if he were descended from Galloping O'Hogan,
+who helped Patrick Sarsfield to spike the guns of the Williamites at
+Limerick.
+
+“By me sowl, ma'am, it's not discinded at all I am; I am one o' the
+common sort, just,” he answered, broadening his brogue to make me smile.
+A delightful man he was, exactly such an one as might have sprung full
+grown from a Lever novel; one who could talk equally well with his flock
+about pigs or penances, purgatory or potatoes, and quote Tom Moore and
+Lover when occasion demanded.
+
+Story after story fell from his genial lips, and at last he said
+apologetically, “One more, and I have done,” when a pretty woman,
+sitting near him, interpolated slyly, “We might say to you, your
+reverence, what the old woman said to the eloquent priest who finished
+his sermon with 'One word, and I have done'”.
+
+“An' what is that, ma'am?” asked Father O'Hogan.
+
+“'Och! me darlin' pracher, may ye niver be done!'”
+
+We all agreed that we should like to reconstruct the scene for a moment
+and look at a drawing-room of two hundred years ago, when the Lady
+Lieutenant after the minuets at eleven o'clock went to her basset table,
+while her pages attended behind her chair, and when on ball nights
+the ladies scrambled for sweetmeats on the dancing-floor. As to their
+probable toilets, one could not give purer pleasure than by quoting Mrs.
+Delany's description of one of them:--
+
+'The Duchess's dress was of white satin embroidered, the bottom of the
+petticoat brown hills covered with all sorts of weeds, and every
+breadth had an old stump of a tree, that ran up almost to the top of
+the petticoat, broken and ragged, and worked with brown chenille, round
+which twined nasturtiums, ivy, honeysuckles, periwinkles, and all sorts
+of running flowers, which spread and covered the petticoat.... The
+robings and facings were little green banks covered with all sorts of
+weeds, and the sleeves and the rest of the gown loose twining branches
+of the same sort as those on the petticoat. Many of the leaves were
+finished with gold, and part of the stumps of the trees looked like the
+gilding of the sun. I never saw a piece of work so prettily fancied.'
+
+She adds a few other details for the instruction of her sister Anne:--
+
+'Heads are variously adorned; pompons with some accompaniment of
+feathers, ribbons, or flowers; lappets in all sorts of curli-murlis;
+long hoods are worn close under the chin; the ear-rings go round the
+neck(!), and tie with bows and ends behind. Night-gowns are worn without
+hoops.'
+
+
+
+
+Part Second--Munster.
+
+
+
+Chapter VII. A tour and a detour.
+
+     '“An' there,” sez I to meself, “we're goin' wherever we go,
+       But where we'll be whin we git there it's never a know
+                 I'll know.”'
+                                              Jane Barlow.
+
+We had planned to go direct from Dublin to Valencia Island, where there
+is not, I am told, 'one dhry step 'twixt your fut an' the States';
+but we thought it too tiring a journey for Benella, and arranged for a
+little visit to Cork first. We nearly missed the train owing to the
+late arrival of Salemina at the Kingsbridge station. She had been buying
+malted milk, Mellin's Food, an alcohol lamp, a tin cup, and getting all
+the doctor's prescriptions renewed.
+
+We intended, too, to go second or third class now an then, in order to
+study the humours of the natives, but of course we went 'first' on this
+occasion on account of Benella. I told her that we could not follow
+British usage and call her by her surname. Dusenberry was too long and
+too--well, too extraordinary for daily use abroad.
+
+“P'r'aps it is,” she assented meekly; “and still, Mis' Beresford, when
+a man's name is Dusenberry, you can't hardly blame him for wanting his
+child to be called by it, can you?”
+
+This was incontrovertible, and I asked her middle name. It was Frances,
+and that was too like Francesca.
+
+“You don't like the sound o' Benella?” she inquired. “I've always set
+great store by my name, it is so unlikely. My father's name was Benjamin
+and my mother's Ella, and mine is made from both of 'em; but you can
+call me any kind of a name you please, after what you've done for me,”
+ and she closed her eyes patiently.
+
+     'Call me Daphne, call me Chloris,
+      Call me Lalage or Doris,
+      Only, only call me thine,'
+
+which is exactly what we are not ready to do, I thought, in a poetic
+parenthesis.
+
+Benella looks frail and yet hardy. She has an unusual and perhaps
+unnecessary amount of imagination for her station, some native
+common-sense, but limited experience; she is somewhat vague and
+inconsistent in her theories of life, but I am sure there is vitality,
+and energy too, in her composition, although it has been temporarily
+drowned in the Atlantic Ocean. If she were a clock, I should think that
+some experimenter had taken out her original works, and substituted
+others to see how they would run. The clock has a New England case
+and strikes with a New England tone, but the works do not match it
+altogether. Of course I know that one does not ordinarily engage a
+lady's-maid because of these piquant peculiarities; but in our case the
+circumstances were extraordinary. I have explained them fully to Himself
+in my letters, and Francesca too has written pages of illuminating
+detail to Ronald Macdonald.
+
+The similarity in the minds of men must sometimes come across them with
+a shock, unless indeed it appeals to their sense of humour. Himself
+in America, and the Rev. Mr. Macdonald in the north of Scotland, both
+answered, in course of time, that a lady's-maid should be engaged
+because is a lady's-maid and for no other reason.
+
+Was ever anything duller than this, more conventional, more commonplace
+or didactic, less imaginative? Himself added, “You are a romantic idiot,
+and I love you more than tongue can tell.” Francesca did not say what
+Ronald added; probably a part of this same sentence (owing to the
+aforesaid similarity of men's minds), reserving the rest for the frank
+intimacy of the connubial state.
+
+Everything looked beautiful in the uncertain glory of the April day.
+The thistle-down clouds opened now and then to shake out a delicate,
+brilliant little shower that ceased in a trice, and the sun smiled
+through the light veil of rain, turning every falling drop to a jewel.
+It was as if the fairies were busy at aerial watering-pots, without
+any more serious purpose than to amuse themselves and make the earth
+beautiful; and we realised that Irish rain is as warm as an Irish
+welcome, and soft as an Irish smile.
+
+Everything was bursting into new life, everything but the primroses, and
+their glory was departing. The yellow carpet seemed as bright as ever
+on the sunny hedgerow banks and on the fringe of the woods, but when we
+plucked some at a wayside station we saw that they were just past their
+golden prime. There was a grey-green hint of verdure in the sallows
+that stood against a dark background of firs, and the branches of
+the fruit-trees were tipped with pink, rosy-hued promises of May just
+threatening to break through their silvery April sheaths. Raindrops
+were still glistening on the fronds of the tender young ferns and on the
+great clumps of pale, delicately scented bog violets that we found in
+a marshy spot and brought in to Salemina, who was not in her usual
+spirits; who indeed seemed distinctly anxious.
+
+She was enchanted with the changeful charm of the landscape, and found
+Mrs. Delany's Memoirs a book after her own heart, but ever and anon
+her eyes rested on Benella's pale face. Nothing could have been
+more doggedly conscientious and assiduous than our attentions to the
+Derelict. She had beef juice at Kildare, malted milk at Ballybrophy,
+tea at Dundrum; nevertheless, as we approached Limerick Junction we were
+obliged to hold a consultation. Salemina wished to alight from the
+train at the next station, take a three hours' rest, then jog on to any
+comfortable place for the night, and to Cork in the morning.
+
+“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 Buttevant?
+(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, Mass., U.S.A'”
+
+I thought most favourably of Buttevant, 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, pronounced 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.
+
+Nobody 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 pushing on to pass 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 appetite for adventure, it might die there in the
+principal 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? Nobody 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 passed 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 competition 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
+tassels 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 fashions, 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 sunshine
+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,
+redbreasts, 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 noble 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, fishing-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 passed 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 appetite. Ronald Macdonald
+will be a lucky fellow, I think, to begin his day by sitting opposite
+her, for her eyes shine 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 advertisement), 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 God 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 championship 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 shores 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 shores.
+
+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 God,' 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,
+classes, 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
+ambassador at Paris, about 1640:--
+
+'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 petition 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 passengers on the little craft, as it was still far too early for
+tourists; down past Villierstown, Cooneen 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 Mardyke Walk, Cork.
+
+     We are under Yew Tree at Myrtle Grove where Raleigh and Spenser
+smoked, read manuscript 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 noblemen
+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 publishing 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 manuscript, 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 Washington 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 ship that she
+crossed in, to see if I can recover the sixty or seventy dollars she
+left behind her.) Her principal 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 shilling, twenty
+shillings make one pound'; but when I give her a handful of money and
+ask her for six shillings 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 classes, 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 assimilate, 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 assert our heirship. 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 passed 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 Passage,
+which you may remember in Father Prout's verses:--
+
+     'The town of Passage is both large and spacious,
+        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 shippin' 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 shining
+stream.
+
+It was Saturday 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 succumbed 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 shining bright;
+      Her forehead, ivory white;
+      Her lips like cherries, charming men to byte.'
+
+Now we turned into the old Mardyke Walk, a rus in urbe, an avenue a mile
+long lined with noble elm-trees; forsaken now as a fashionable 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 classes 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
+pronounced 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, God kape her! They could stand anny hardship 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 Corkshire
+      To bate ten more from Yorkshire:
+        Kerrymen
+        Agin Derrymen,
+      And Munster agin creation,
+      Wirrasthrue! 'tis a pity we aren't a nation!'
+
+Here he slackened his pace as we passed 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 pass 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 class 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 circumstances. '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 attitude 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
+embarrassing 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.
+
+     'Wid her brows of silky black
+      Arched above for the attack,
+  Her eyes they dart such azure death on poor admiring man;
+      Masther Cupid, point your arrows,
+      From this out, agin the sparrows,
+  For you're bested at Love's archery by young Miss Fan.'
+
+Of course Himself never fell a prey to Francesca's fascinations, but
+then he is not susceptible; you could send him off for a ten-mile drive
+in the moonlight with Venus herself, and not be in the least anxious.
+
+Dr. La Touche is grey for his years, tall and spare in frame, and there
+are many lines of anxiety or thought in his forehead; but a wonderful
+smile occasionally smooths them all out, and gives his face a rare
+though transient radiance. He looks to me as if he had loved too many
+books and too few people; as if he had tried vainly to fill his heart
+and life with antiquities, which of all things, perhaps, are the most
+bloodless, the least warming and nourishing when taken in excess or as
+a steady diet. Himself (God bless him!) shall never have that patient
+look, if I can help it; but how it will appeal to Salemina! There are
+women who are born to be petted and served, and there are those who seem
+born to serve others. Salemina's first idea is always to make tangled
+things smooth (like little Broona's curly hair); to bring sweet and
+discreet order out of chaos; to prune and graft and water and weed and
+tend things, until they blossom for very shame under her healing touch.
+Her mind is catholic, well ordered, and broad,--for ever full of other
+people's interests, never of her own: and her heart always seems to
+me like some dim, sweet-scented guest-chamber in an old New England
+mansion, cool and clean and quiet, and fragrant of lavender. It has been
+a lovely, generous life, lived for the most part in the shadow of other
+people's wishes and plans and desires. I am an impatient person,
+I confess, and heaven seems so far away when certain things are in
+question: the righting of a child's wrong, or the demolition of a
+barrier between two hearts; above all, for certain surgical operations,
+more or less spiritual, such as removing scales from eyes that refuse
+to see, and stops from ears too dull to hear. Nobody shall have our
+Salemina unless he is worthy, but how I should like to see her life
+enriched and crowned! How I should enjoy having her dear little overworn
+second fiddle taken from her by main force, and a beautiful first
+violin, or even the baton for leading an orchestra, put into her
+unselfish hands!
+
+And so good-bye and 'good luck to ye, Cork, and your pepper-box
+steeple,' for we leave you to-morrow!
+
+
+
+Chapter XI. 'The rale thing.'
+
+     'Her ancestors were kings before Moses was born,
+      Her mother descended from great Grana Uaile.'
+                                Charles Lever.
+
+                                     Knockarney House, Lough Lein.
+
+We are in the province of Munster, the kingdom of Kerry, the town of
+Ballyfuchsia, and the house of Mrs. Mullarkey. Knockarney House is
+not her name for it; I made it myself. Killarney is church of the
+sloe-trees; and as kill is church, the 'onderhanded manin'' of 'arney'
+must be something about sloes; then, since knock means hill, Knockarney
+should be hill of the sloe-trees.
+
+I have not lost the memory of Jenny Geddes and Tam o' the Cowgate, but
+Penelope O'Connor, daughter of the king of Connaught, is more frequently
+present in my dreams. I have by no means forgotten that there was a
+time when I was not Irish, but for the moment I am of the turf, turfy.
+Francesca is really as much in love with Ireland as I, only, since she
+has in her heart a certain tender string pulling her all the while to
+the land of the heather, she naturally avoids comparisons. Salemina,
+too, endeavours to appear neutral, lest she should betray an
+inexplicable interest in Dr. La Touche's country. Benella and I alone
+are really free to speak the brogue, and carry our wild harps slung
+behind us, like Moore's minstrel boy. Nothing but the ignorance of her
+national dishes keeps Benella from entire allegiance to this island; but
+she thinks a people who have grown up without a knowledge of doughnuts,
+baked beans, and blueberry-pie must be lacking in moral foundations.
+There is nothing extraordinary in all this; for the Irish, like the
+Celtic tribes everywhere, have always had a sort of fascinating power
+over people of other races settling among them, so that they become
+completely fused with the native population, and grow to be more Irish
+than the Irish themselves.
+
+We stayed for a few days in the best hotel; it really was quite good,
+and not a bit Irish. There was a Swiss manager, an English housekeeper,
+a French head waiter, and a German office clerk. Even Salemina, who
+loves comforts, saw that we should not be getting what is known as the
+real thing, under these circumstances, and we came here to this--what
+shall I call Knockarney House? It was built originally for a fishing
+lodge by a sporting gentleman, who brought parties of friends to stop
+for a week. On his death is passed somehow into Mrs. Mullarkey's fair
+hands, and in a fatal moment she determined to open it occasionally to
+'paying guests,' who might wish a quiet home far from the madding crowd
+of the summer tourist. This was exactly what we did want, and here we
+encamped, on the half-hearted advice of some Irish friends in the town,
+who knew nothing else more comfortable to recommend.
+
+“With us, small, quiet, or out-of-the-way places are never clean; or
+if they are, then they are not Irish,” they said. “You had better see
+Ireland from the tourist's point of view for a few years yet, until we
+have learned the art of living; but if you are determined to know the
+humours of the people, cast all thought of comfort behind you.”
+
+So we did, and we afterward thought that this would be a good motto for
+Mrs. Mullarkey to carve over the door of Knockarney House. (My name for
+it is adopted more or less by the family, though Francesca persists in
+dating her letters to Ronald from 'The Rale Thing,' which it undoubtedly
+is.) We take almost all the rooms in the house, but there are a
+few other guests. Mrs. Waterford, an old lady of ninety-three, from
+Mullinavat, is here primarily for her health, and secondarily to dispose
+of threepenny shares in an antique necklace, which is to be raffled for
+the benefit of a Roman Catholic chapel. Then we have a fishing gentleman
+and his bride from Glasgow, and occasional bicyclers who come in for
+a dinner, a tea, or a lodging. These three comforts of a home are
+sometimes quite indistinguishable with us: the tea is frequently made up
+of fragments of dinner, and the beds are always sprinkled with crumbs.
+Their source is a mystery, unless they fall from the clothing of the
+chambermaids, who frequently drop hairpins and brooches and buttons
+between the sheets, and strew whisk brooms and scissors under the
+blankets.
+
+We have two general servants, who are supposed to do all the work of the
+house, and who are as amiable and obliging and incapable as they well
+can be. Oonah generally waits upon the table, and Molly cooks; at
+least she cooks now and then when she is not engaged with Peter in the
+vegetable garden or the stable. But whatever happens, Mrs. Mullarkey, as
+a descendant of one of the Irish kings, is to be looked upon only as an
+inspiring ideal, inciting one to high and ever higher flights of happy
+incapacity. Benella ostensibly oversees the care of our rooms, but she
+is comparatively helpless in such a kingdom of misrule. Why demand clean
+linen when there is none; why seek for a towel at midday when it is
+never ironed until evening; how sweep when a broom is all inadequate
+to the task? Salemina's usual remark, on entering a humble hostelry
+anywhere, is: “If the hall is as dirty as this, what must the kitchen
+be! Order me two hard-boiled eggs, please!”
+
+“Use your 'science,' Benella,” I say to that discouraged New England
+maiden, who has never looked at her philosophy from its practical or
+humorous side. “If the universe is pure mind and there is no matter,
+then this dirt is not a real thing, after all. It seems, of course,
+as if it were thicker under the beds and bureaus than elsewhere, but
+I suppose our evil thoughts focus themselves there rather than in the
+centre of the room. Similarly, if the broom handle is broken, deny
+the dirt away--denial is much less laborious than sweeping; bring 'the
+science' down to these simple details of everyday life, and you will
+make converts by dozens, only pray don't remove, either by suggestion or
+any cruder method, the large key that lies near the table leg, for it
+is a landmark; and there is another, a crochet needle, by the washstand,
+devoted to the same purpose. I wish to show them to the Mullarkey when
+we leave.”
+
+Under our educational regime, the 'metaphysical' veneer, badly applied
+in the first place, and wholly unsuited to the foundation material,
+is slowly disappearing, and our Benella is gradually returning to her
+normal self. Perhaps nothing has been more useful to her development
+than the confusion of Knockarney House.
+
+Our windows are supported on decrepit tennis rackets and worn-out hearth
+brushes; the blinds refuse to go up or down; the chairs have weak backs
+or legs; the door knobs are disassociated from their handles. As for our
+food, we have bacon and eggs, with coffee made, I should think, of brown
+beans and liquorice, for breakfast; a bit of sloppy chicken, or fish and
+potato, with custard pudding or stewed rhubarb, for dinner; and a cold
+supper of--oh! anything that occurs to Molly at the last moment. Nothing
+ever occurs either to Molly or Oonah at any previous moment, and in that
+they are merely conforming to the universal habit. Last week, when we
+were starting for Valencia Island, the Ballyfuchsia stationmaster
+was absent at a funeral; meantime the engine had 'gone cold on the
+engineer,' and the train could not leave till twelve minutes after the
+usual time. We thought we must have consulted a wrong time-table, and
+asked confirmation of a man who seemed to have some connection with the
+railway. Goaded by his ignorance, I exclaimed, “Is it possible you don't
+know the time the trains are going?”
+
+“Begorra, how should I?” he answered. “Faix, the thrains don't always be
+knowin' thimselves!”
+
+The starting of the daily 'Mail Express' from Ballyfuchsia is a time
+of great excitement and confusion, which on some occasions increases
+to positive panic. The stationmaster, armed with a large dinner-bell,
+stands on the platform, wearing an expression of anxiety ludicrously
+unsuited to the situation. The supreme moment had really arrived some
+time before, but he is waiting for Farmer Brodigan with his daughter
+Kathleen, and the Widdy Sullivan, and a few other local worthies who are
+a 'thrifle late on him.' Finally they come down the hill, and he paces
+up and down the station ringing the bell and uttering the warning cry,
+“This thrain never shtops! This thrain never shtops! This thrain never
+shtops!”--giving one the idea that eternity, instead of Killarney,
+must be the final destination of the passengers. The clock in the
+Ballyfuchsia telegraph and post office ceases to go for twenty-four
+hours at a time, and nobody heeds it, while the postman always has a few
+moments' leisure to lay down his knapsack of letters and pitch quoits
+with the Royal Irish Constabulary. However, punctuality is perhaps an
+individual virtue more than an exclusively national one. I am not sure
+that we Americans would not be more agreeable if we spent a month in
+Ireland every year, and perhaps Ireland would profit from a month in
+America.
+
+At the Brodigans' (Mr. Brodigan is a large farmer, and our nearest
+neighbour) all the clocks are from ten to twenty minutes fast or slow;
+and what a peaceful place it is! The family doesn't care when it has its
+dinner, and, mirabile dictu, the cook doesn't care either!
+
+“If you have no exact time to depend upon, how do you catch trains?” I
+asked Mr. Brodigan.
+
+“Sure that's not an everyday matter, and why be foostherin' over it? But
+we do, four times out o' five, ma'am!”
+
+“How do you like it that fifth time when you miss it?”
+
+“Sure it's no more throuble to you to miss it the wan time than to hurry
+five times! A clock is an overrated piece of furniture, to my mind, Mrs.
+Beresford, ma'am. A man can ate whin he's hungry, go to bed whin he's
+sleepy, and get up whin he's slept long enough; for faith and it's thim
+clocks he has inside of himself that don't need anny winding!”
+
+“What if you had a business appointment with a man in the town, and
+missed the train?” I persevered.
+
+“Trains is like misfortunes; they never come singly, ma'am. Wherever
+there's a station the trains do be dhroppin' in now and again, and
+what's the differ which of thim you take?”
+
+“The man who is waiting for you at the other end of the line may not
+agree with you,” I suggested.
+
+“Sure, a man can always amuse himself in a town, ma'am. If it's your
+own business you're coming on, he knows you'll find him; and if it's
+his business, then begorra let him find you!” Which quite reminded me
+of what the Irish elf says to the English elf in Moira O'Neill's fairy
+story: “A waste of time? Why, you've come to a country where there's no
+such thing as a waste of time. We have no value for time here. There is
+lashings of it, more than anybody knows what to do with.”
+
+I suppose there is somewhere a golden mean between this complete
+oblivion of time and our feverish American hurry. There is a 'tedious
+haste' in all people who make wheels and pistons and engines, and live
+within sound of their everlasting buzz and whir and revolution; and
+there is ever a disposition to pause, rest, and consider on the part of
+that man whose daily tasks are done in serene collaboration with dew and
+rain and sun. One cannot hurry Mother Nature very much, after all, and
+one who has much to do with her falls into a peaceful habit of mind. The
+mottoes of the two nations are as well rendered in the vernacular as by
+any formal or stilted phrases. In Ireland the spoken or unspoken slogan
+is, 'Take it aisy'; in America, 'Keep up with the procession'; and
+between them lie all the thousand differences of race, climate,
+temperament, religion, and government.
+
+I don't suppose there is a nation on the earth better developed on what
+might be called the train-catching side than we of the Big Country,
+and it is well for us that there is born every now and again among us a
+dreamer who is (blessedly) oblivious of time-tables and market reports;
+who has been thinking of the rustling of the corn, not of its price. It
+is he, if we do not hurry him out of his dream, who will sound the ideal
+note in our hurly-burly and bustle of affairs. He may never discover a
+town site, but he will create new worlds for us to live in, and in the
+course of a century the coming Matthew Arnold will not be minded to call
+us an unimaginative and uninteresting people.
+
+
+
+Chapter XII. Life at Knockarney House.
+
+     'See where Mononia's heroes lie, proud Owen More's
+          descendants,--
+      'Tis they that won the glorious name and had the grand
+          attendants!'
+                                       James Clarence Mangan.
+
+It was a charming thing for us when Dr. La Touche gave us introductions
+to the Colquhouns of Ardnagreena; and when they, in turn, took us to tea
+with Lord and Lady Killbally at Balkilly Castle. I don't know what there
+is about us: we try to live a sequestered life, but there are certain
+kind forces in the universe that are always bringing us in contact with
+the good, the great, and the powerful. Francesca enjoys it, but secretly
+fears to have her democracy undermined. Salemina wonders modestly at her
+good fortune. I accept it as the graceful tribute of an old civilisation
+to a younger one; the older men grow the better they like girls of
+sixteen, and why shouldn't the same thing be true of countries?
+
+As long ago as 1589, one of the English 'undertakers' who obtained some
+of the confiscated Desmond lands in Munster wrote of the 'better sorte'
+of Irish: 'Although they did never see you before, they will make you
+the best cheare their country yieldeth for two or three days, and take
+not anything therefor.... They have a common saying which I am persuaded
+they speake unfeinedly, which is, 'Defend me and spend me.' Yet many doe
+utterly mislike this or any good thing that the poor Irishman dothe.'
+
+This certificate of character from an 'undertaker' of the sixteenth
+century certainly speaks volumes for Irish amiability and hospitality,
+since it was given at a time when grievances were as real as plenty;
+when unutterable resentment must have been rankling in many minds; and
+when those traditions were growing which have coloured the whole texture
+of Irish thought, until, with the poor and unlettered, to be 'agin the
+government' is an inherited instinct, to be obliterated only by time.
+
+We supplement Mrs. Mullarkey's helter-skelter meals with frequent
+luncheons and dinners with our new friends, who send us home on our
+jaunting-car laden with flowers, fruit, even with jellies and jams. Lady
+Killbally forces us to take three cups of tea and a half-dozen marmalade
+sandwiches whenever we go to the Castle; for I apologised for our
+appetites, one day, by confessing that we had lunched somewhat frugally,
+the meal being sweetened, however, by Molly's explanation that there was
+a fresh sole in the house, but she thought she would not inthrude on it
+before dinner!
+
+We asked, on our arrival at Knockarney House, if we might breakfast at
+a regular hour,--say eight thirty. Mrs. Mullarkey agreed, with
+that suavity which is, after her untidiness, her distinguishing
+characteristic; but notwithstanding this arrangement we break our fast
+sometimes at nine forty, sometimes at nine twenty, sometimes at nine,
+but never earlier. In order to achieve this much, we are obliged to
+rise early and make a combined attack on the executive and culinary
+departments. One morning I opened the door leading from the hall into
+the back part of the establishment, but closed it hastily, having
+interrupted the toilets of three young children, whose existence I had
+never suspected, and of Mr. Mullarkey, whom I had thought dead for many
+years. Each child had donned one article of clothing, and was apparently
+searching for the mate to it, whatever it chanced to be. Mrs. Mullarkey
+was fully clothed, and was about to administer correction to one of the
+children who, unhappily for him, was not. I retired to my apartment to
+report progress, but did not describe the scene minutely, nor mention
+the fact that I had seen Salemina's ivory-backed hairbrush put to
+excellent if somewhat unusual and unaccustomed service.
+
+Each party in the house eats in solitary splendour, like the MacDermott,
+Prince of Coolavin. That royal personage of County Sligo did not,
+I believe, allow his wife or his children (who must have had the
+MacDermott blood in their veins, even if somewhat diluted) to sit at
+table with him. This method introduces the last element of confusion
+into the household arrangements, and on two occasions we have had our
+custard pudding or stewed fruit served in our bedrooms a full hour after
+we had finished dinner. We have reasons for wishing to be first to enter
+the dining-room, and we walk in with eyes fixed on the ceiling, by
+far the cleanest part of the place. Having wended our way through an
+underbrush of corks with an empty bottle here and there, and stumbled
+over the holes in the carpet, we arrive at our table in the window.
+It is as beautiful as heaven outside, and the table-cloth is at least
+cleaner than it will be later, for Mrs. Waterford of Mullinavat has an
+unsteady hand.
+
+When Oonah brings in the toast rack now she balances it carefully,
+remembering the morning when she dropped it on the floor, but picked up
+the slices and offered them to Salemina. Never shall I forget that
+dear martyr's expression, which was as if she had made up her mind to
+renounce Ireland and leave her to her fate. I know she often must wonder
+if Dr. La Touche's servants, like Mrs. Mullarkey's, feel of the potatoes
+to see whether they are warm or cold!
+
+At ten thirty there is great confusion and laughter and excitement, for
+the sportsmen are setting out for the day and the car has been waiting
+at the door for an hour. Oonah is carolling up and down the long
+passage, laden with dishes, her cheerfulness not in the least impaired
+by having served seven or eight separate breakfasts. Molly has spilled
+a jug of milk, and is wiping it up with a child's undershirt. The Glasgy
+man is telling them that yesterday they forgot the corkscrew, the salt,
+the cup, and the jam from the luncheon basket,--facts so mirth-provoking
+that Molly wipes tears of pleasure from her eyes with the milky
+undershirt, and Oonah sets the hot-water jug and the coffee-pot on the
+stairs to have her laugh out comfortably. When once the car departs,
+comparative quiet reigns in and about the house until the passing
+bicyclers appear for luncheon or tea, when Oonah picks up the napkins
+that we have rolled into wads and flung under the dining-table,
+and spreads them on tea-trays, as appetising details for the weary
+traveller. There would naturally be more time for housework if so large
+a portion of the day were not spent in pleasant interchange of thought
+and speech. I can well understand Mrs. Colquhoun's objections to the
+housing of the Dublin poor in tenements,--even in those of a better
+kind than the present horrible examples; for wherever they are
+huddled together in any numbers they will devote most of their time to
+conversation. To them talking is more attractive than eating; it even
+adds a new joy to drinking; and if I may judge from the groups I have
+seen gossiping over a turf fire till midnight, it is preferable to
+sleeping. But do not suppose they will bubble over with joke and
+repartee, with racy anecdote, to every casual newcomer. The tourist
+who looks upon the Irishman as the merry-andrew of the English-speaking
+world, and who expects every jarvey he meets to be as whimsical as
+Mickey Free, will be disappointed. I have strong suspicions that ragged,
+jovial Mickey Free himself, delicious as he is, was created by Lever to
+satisfy the Anglo-Saxon idea of the low-comedy Irishman. You will live
+in the Emerald Isle for many a month, and not meet the clown or the
+villain so familiar to you in modern Irish plays. Dramatists have made
+a stage Irishman to suit themselves, and the public and the gallery are
+disappointed if anything more reasonable is substituted for him. You
+will find, too, that you do not easily gain Paddy's confidence. Misled
+by his careless, reckless impetuosity of demeanour, you might expect to
+be the confidant of his joys and sorrows, his hopes and expectations,
+his faiths and beliefs, his aspirations, fears, longings, at the first
+interview. Not at all; you will sooner be admitted to a glimpse of the
+travelling Scotsman's or the Englishman's inner life, family history,
+personal ambition. Glacial enough at first and far less voluble, he
+melts soon enough, if he likes you. Meantime, your impulsive Irish
+friend gives himself as freely at the first interview as at the
+twentieth; and you know him as well at the end of a week as you are
+likely to at the end of a year. He is a product of the past, be
+he gentleman or peasant. A few hundred years of necessary reserve
+concerning articles of political and religious belief have bred caution
+and prudence in stronger natures, cunning and hypocrisy in weaker ones.
+
+Our days are very varied. We have been several times into the town and
+spent an hour in the Petty Sessions Court with Mr. Colquhoun, who sits
+on the bench. Each time we have come home laden with stories 'as good as
+any in the books,' so says Francesca. Have we not with our own eyes seen
+the settlement of an assault and battery case between two of the most
+notorious brawlers in that alley of the town which we have dubbed 'The
+Pass of the Plumes.' [*] Each barrister in the case had a handful of hair
+which he introduced on behalf of his client, both ladies apparently
+having pulled with equal energy. These most unattractive exhibits
+were shown to the women themselves, each recognising her own hair,
+but denying the validity of the other exhibit firmly and vehemently.
+Prisoner number one kneeled at the rail and insisted on exposing the
+place in her head from which the hair had been plucked; upon which
+prisoner number two promptly tore off her hat, scattered hairpins to
+the four winds, and exposed her own wounds to the judicial eye.
+Both prisoners 'had a dhrop taken' just before the affair; that soft
+impeachment they could not deny. One of them explained, however, that
+she had taken it to help her over a hard job of work, and through a
+little miscalculation of quantity it had 'overaided her.' The other
+termagant was asked flatly by the magistrate if she had ever seen
+the inside of a jail before, but evaded the point with much grace and
+ingenuity by telling his Honour that he couldn't expect to meet a woman
+anywhere who had not suffered a misforchin somewhere betwixt the cradle
+and the grave.
+
+     *The original Pass of the Plumes is near Maryborough, and
+     was so called from the number of English helmet plumes that
+     were strewn about after O'Moore's fight with five hundred of
+     the Earl of Essex's men.
+
+Even the all too common drunk-and-disorderly cases had a flavour
+of their own, for one man, being dismissed with a small fine under
+condition that he would sign the pledge, assented willingly; but on
+being asked for how long he would take it, replied, 'I mostly take it
+for life, your worship.'
+
+We also heard the testimony of a girl who had run away from her employer
+before the completion of her six months' contract, her plea being that
+the fairies pulled her great toe at night so that she could not sleep,
+whereupon she finally became so lame that she was unable to work. She
+left her employer's house one evening, therefore, and went home, and
+curiously enough the fairies 'shtopped pulling the toe on her as soon as
+iver she got there!'
+
+Not the least enlivening of the prisoners was a decently educated person
+who had been arrested for disturbing the peace. The constable asserted
+that he was intoxicated, but the gentleman himself insisted that he was
+merely a poet in a more than usually inspired state.
+
+“I am in the poetical advertising line, your worship. It is true I was
+surrounded by a crowd, but I was merely practising my trade. I don't
+mind telling your worship that this holiday-time makes things a little
+lively, and the tradesmen drink my health a trifle oftener than usual;
+poetry is dry work, your worship, and a poet needs a good deal of liquid
+refreshment. I do not disturb the peace, your worship, at least not more
+than any other poet. I go to a grocer's, and, standing outside, I make
+up some rhymes about his nice sweet sugar or his ale. If I want to
+please a butcher--well, I'll give you a specimen:--
+
+     'Here's to the butcher who sells good meat--
+      In this world it's hard to beat;
+      It's the very best that's to be had,
+      And makes the human heart feel glad.
+      There's no necessity to purloin,
+      So step in and buy a good sirloin.'
+
+I can go on in this style, like Tennyson's brook, for ever, your
+worship.” His worship was afraid that he might make the offer good, and
+the poet was released, after promising to imbibe less frequently when he
+felt the divine afflatus about to descend upon him.
+
+These disagreements between light-hearted and bibulous persons who haunt
+the courts week after week have nothing especially pathetic about them,
+but there are many that make one's heart ache; many that seem absolutely
+beyond any solution, and beyond reach of any justice.
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII. 'O! the sound of the Kerry dancing.'
+
+     'The light-hearted daughters of Erin,
+      Like the wild mountain deer they can bound;
+      Their feet never touch the green island,
+      But music is struck from the ground.
+      And oft in the glens and green meadows,
+      The ould jig they dance with such grace,
+      That even the daisies they tread on,
+      Look up with delight in their face.'
+                               James M'Kowen.
+
+One of our favourite diversions is an occasional glimpse of a
+'crossroads dance' on a pleasant Sunday afternoon, when all the young
+people of the district are gathered together. Their religious duties are
+over with their confessions and their masses, and the priests encourage
+these decorous Sabbath gaieties. A place is generally chosen where two
+or four roads meet, and the dancers come from the scattered farmhouses
+in every direction. In Ballyfuchsia, they dance on a flat piece of road
+under some fir-trees and larches, with stretches of mountain covered
+with yellow gorse or purple heather, and the quiet lakes lying in the
+distance. A message comes down to us at Ardnagreena--where we commonly
+spend our Sunday afternoons--that they expect a good dance, and the
+blind boy is coming to fiddle; and 'so if you will be coming up, it's
+welcome you'll be.' We join them about five o'clock--passing, on our
+way, groups of 'boys' of all ages from sixteen upwards, walking in twos
+and threes, and parties of three or four girls by themselves; for it
+would not be etiquette for the boys and girls to walk together, such
+strictness is observed in these matters about here.
+
+When we reach the rendezvous we find quite a crowd of young men and
+maidens assembled; the girls all at one side of the road, neatly dressed
+in dark skirts and light blouses, with the national woollen shawl over
+their heads. Two wide stone walls, or dykes, with turf on top, make
+capital seats, and the boys are at the opposite side, as custom demands.
+When a young man wants a partner, he steps across the road and asks
+a colleen, who lays aside her shawl, generally giving it to a younger
+sister to keep until the dance is over, when the girls go back to their
+own side of the road and put on their shawls again. Upon our arrival we
+find the 'sets' are already in progress; a 'set' being a dance like
+a very intricate and very long quadrille. We are greeted with many
+friendly words, and the young boatmen and farmers' sons ask the ladies,
+“Will you be pleased to dance, miss?” Some of them are shy, and say
+they are not familiar with the steps; but their would-be partners remark
+encouragingly: “Sure, and what matter? I'll see you through.” Soon all
+are dancing, and the state of the road is being discussed with as much
+interest as the floor of a ballroom. Eager directions are given to the
+more ignorant newcomers, such as, “Twirl your girl, captain!” or “Turn
+your back to your face!”--rather a difficult direction to carry out, but
+one which conveys its meaning. Salemina confided to her partner that she
+feared she was getting a bit old to dance. He looked at her grey hair
+carefully for a moment, and then said chivalrously: “I'd not say that
+that was old age, ma'am. I'd say it was eddication.”
+
+When the sets, which are very long and very decorous, are finished,
+sometimes a jig is danced for our benefit. The spectators make a ring,
+and the chosen dancers go into the middle, where their steps are watched
+by a most critical and discriminating audience with the most minute and
+intense interest. Our Molly is one of the best jig dancers among the
+girls here (would that she were half as clever at cooking!); but if you
+want to see an artist of the first rank, you must watch Kitty O'Rourke,
+from the neighbouring village of Dooclone. The half door of the barn is
+carried into the ring by one or two of her admirers, whom she numbers
+by the score, and on this she dances her famous jig polthogue, sometimes
+alone and sometimes with Art Rooney, the only worthy partner for her in
+the kingdom of Kerry. Art's mother, 'Bid' Rooney, is a keen matchmaker,
+and we heard her the other day advising her son, who was going to
+Dooclone, to have a 'weeny court' with his colleen, to put a clane
+shirt on him in the middle of the week, and disthract Kitty intirely by
+showin' her he had three of thim, annyway!
+
+Kitty is a beauty, and doesn't need to be made 'purty wid cows'--a feat
+that the old Irishman proposed to do when he was consummating a match
+for his plain daughter. But the gifts of the gods seldom come singly,
+and Kitty is well fortuned as well as beautiful; fifty pounds, her own
+bedstead and its fittings, a cow, a pig, and a web of linen are supposed
+to be the dazzling total, so that it is small wonder her deluderin' ways
+are maddening half the boys in Ballyfuchsia and Dooclone. She has the
+prettiest pair of feet in the County Kerry, and when they are encased in
+a smart pair of shoes, bought for her by Art's rival, the big constable
+from Ballyfuchsia barracks, how they do twinkle and caper over that half
+barn door, to be sure! Even Murty, the blind fiddler, seems intoxicated
+by the plaudits of the bystanders, and he certainly never plays so well
+for anybody as for Kitty of the Meadow. Blindness is still common in
+Ireland, owing to the smoke in these wretched cabins, where sometimes a
+hole in the roof is the only chimney; and although the scores of
+blind fiddlers no longer traverse the land, finding a welcome at all
+firesides, they are still to be found in every community. Blind Murty
+is a favourite guest at the Rooney's cabin, which is never so full that
+there is not room for one more. There is a small wooden bed in the
+main room, a settle that opens out at night, with hens in the straw
+underneath, where a board keeps them safely within until they have
+finished laying. There are six children besides Art, and my ambition is
+to photograph, or, still better, to sketch the family circle together;
+the hens cackling under the settle, the pig ['him as pays the rint')
+snoring in the doorway, as a proprietor should, while the children are
+picturesquely grouped about. I never succeed, because Mrs. Rooney sees
+us as we turn into the lane, and calls to the family to make itself
+ready, as quality's comin' in sight. The older children can scramble
+under the bed, slip shoes over their bare feet, and be out in front of
+the cabin without the loss of a single minute. 'Mickey jew'l,' the baby,
+who is only four, but 'who can handle a stick as bould as a man,' is
+generally clad in a ragged skirt, slit every few inches from waist to
+hem, so that it resembles a cotton fringe. The little coateen that tops
+this costume is sometimes, by way of diversion, transferred to the dog,
+who runs off with it; but if we appear at this unlucky moment, there
+is a stylish yoke of pink ribbon and soiled lace which one of the girls
+pins over Mickey jew'l's naked shoulders.
+
+Moya, who has this eye for picturesque propriety, is a great friend
+of mine, and has many questions about the Big Country when we take our
+walks. She longs to emigrate, but the time is not ripe yet. “The girls
+that come back has a lovely style to thim,” she says wistfully, “but
+they're so polite they can't live in the cabins anny more and be
+contint.” The 'boys' are not always so improved, she thinks. “You'd
+niver find a boy in Ballyfuchsia that would say annything rude to a
+girl; but when they come back from Ameriky, it's too free they've grown
+intirely.” It is a dull life for them, she says, when they have once
+been away; though to be sure Ballyfuchsia is a pleasanter place than
+Dooclone, where the priest does not approve of dancing, and, however
+secretly you may do it, the curate hears of it, and will speak your name
+in church.
+
+It was Moya who told me of Kitty's fortune. “She's not the match that
+Farmer Brodigan's daughter Kathleen is, to be sure; for he's a rich man,
+and has given her an iligant eddication in Cork, so that she can look
+high for a husband. She won't be takin' up wid anny of our boys, wid
+her two hundred pounds and her twenty cows and her pianya. Och, it's a
+thriminjus player she is, ma'am. She's that quick and that strong that
+you'd say she wouldn't lave a string on it.”
+
+Some of the young men and girls never see each other before the
+marriage, Moya says. “But sure,” she adds shyly, “I'd niver be contint
+with that, though some love matches doesn't turn out anny better than
+the others.”
+
+“I hope it will be a love match with you, and that I shall dance at your
+wedding, Moya,” I say to her smilingly.
+
+“Faith, I'm thinkin' my husband's intinded mother died an old maid in
+Dublin,” she answers merrily. “It's a small fortune I'll be havin' and
+few lovers; but you'll be soon dancing at Kathleen Brodigan's wedding,
+or Kitty O'Rourke's, maybe.”
+
+I do not pretend to understand these humble romances, with their
+foundations of cows and linen, which are after all no more sordid than
+bank stock and trousseaux from Paris. The sentiment of the Irish peasant
+lover seems to be frankly and truly expressed in the verses:--
+
+     'Oh! Moya's wise and beautiful, has wealth in plenteous store,
+      And fortune fine in calves and kine, and lovers half a score;
+      Her faintest smile would saints beguile, or sinners captivate,
+      Oh! I think a dale of Moya, but I'll surely marry Kate.
+
+           .         .         .         .         .
+
+     'Now to let you know the raison why I cannot have my way,
+      Nor bid my heart decide the part the lover must obey--
+      The calves and kine of Kate are nine, while Moya owns but
+          eight,
+      So with all my love for Moya I'm compelled to marry Kate!'
+
+I gave Moya a lace neckerchief the other day, and she was rarely
+pleased, running into the cabin with it and showing it to her mother
+with great pride. After we had walked a bit down the boreen she excused
+herself for an instant, and, returning to my side, explained that she
+had gone back to ask her mother to mind the kerchief, and not let the
+'cow knock it'!
+
+Lady Kilbally tells us that some of the girls who work in the mills deny
+themselves proper food, and live on bread and tea for a month, to
+save the price of a gay ribbon. This is trying, no doubt, to a
+philanthropist, but is it not partly a starved sense of beauty asserting
+itself? If it has none of the usual outlets, where can imagination
+express itself if not in some paltry thing like a ribbon?
+
+
+
+Chapter XIV. Mrs. Mullarkey's iligant locks.
+
+     'Where spreads the beautiful water to gay or cloudy skies,
+      And the purple peaks of Killarney from ancient woods arise.'
+                                        William Allingham.
+
+Mrs. Mullarkey cannot spoil this paradise for us. When I wake in the
+morning, the fuchsia-tree outside my window is such a glorious mass of
+colour that it distracts my eyes from the unwashed glass. The air is
+still; the mountains in the far distance are clear purple; everything
+is fresh washed and purified for the new day. Francesca and I leave the
+house sleeping, and make our way to the bogs. We love to sit under a
+blossoming sloe-bush and see the silver pools glistening here and there
+in the turf cuttings, and watch the transparent vapour rising from the
+red-brown of the purple-shadowed bog fields. Dinnis Rooney, half awake,
+leisurely, silent, is moving among the stacks with his creel. How the
+missel thrushes sing in the woods, and the plaintive note of the curlew
+gives the last touch of mysterious tenderness to the scene. There is a
+moist, rich fragrance of meadowsweet and bog myrtle in the air; and how
+fresh and wild and verdant it is!
+
+     'For there's plenty to mind, sure, if on'y ye look to the grass
+                    at your feet,
+      For 'tis thick wid the tussocks of heather, an' blossoms and
+                    herbs that smell sweet
+      If ye tread thim; an' maybe the white o' the bog-cotton waves
+                    in the win',
+      Like the wool ye might shear off a night-moth, an' set an ould
+                    fairy to spin;
+      Or wee frauns, each wan stuck 'twixt two leaves on a grand
+                    little stem of its own,
+      Lettin' on 'twas a plum on a tree.' [*]
+
+
+     * Jane Barlow.
+
+As for Lough Lein itself, who could speak its loveliness, lying like a
+crystal mirror beneath the black Reeks of the McGillicuddy, where, in
+the mountain fastnesses, lie spell-bound the sleeping warriors who, with
+their bridles and broadswords in hand, await but the word to give Erin
+her own! When we glide along the surface of the lakes, on some bright
+day after a heavy rain; when we look down through the clear water on
+tiny submerged islets, with their grasses and drowned daisies glancing
+up at us from the blue; when we moor the boat and climb the hillsides,
+we are dazzled by the luxuriant beauty of it all. It hardly seems
+real--it is too green, too perfect, to be believed; and one thinks of
+some fairy drop-scene, painted by cunning-fingered elves and sprites,
+who might have a wee folk's way of mixing roses and rainbows,
+dew-drenched greens and sun-warmed yellows; showing the picture to you
+first all burnished, glittering and radiant, then 'veiled in mist and
+diamonded with showers.' We climb, climb, up, up, into the heart of the
+leafy loveliness; peering down into dewy dingles, stopping now and again
+to watch one of the countless streams as it tinkles and gurgles down
+an emerald ravine to join the lakes. The way is strewn with lichens and
+mosses; rich green hollies and arbutus surround us on every side;
+the ivy hangs in sweet disorder from the rocks; and when we reach the
+innermost recess of the glen we can find moist green jungles of ferns
+and bracken, a very bending, curling forest of fronds:--
+
+     'The fairy's tall palm-tree, the heath bird's fresh nest,
+      And the couch the red deer deems the sweetest and best.'
+
+Carrantual rears its crested head high above the other mountains, and on
+its summit Shon the Outlaw, footsore, weary, slept; sighing, “For once,
+thank God, I am above all my enemies.”
+
+You must go to sweet Innisfallen, too, and you must not be prosaic or
+incredulous at the boatman's stories, or turn the 'bodthered ear to
+them.' These are no ordinary hillsides: not only do the wee folk troop
+through the frond forests nightly, but great heroic figures of romance
+have stalked majestically along these mountain summits. Every waterfall
+foaming and dashing from its rocky bed in the glen has a legend in the
+toss and swirl of the water.
+
+Can't you see the O'Sullivan, famous for fleetness of foot and prowess
+in the chase, starting forth in the cool o' the morn to hunt the red
+deer? His dogs sniff the heather; a splendid stag bounds across the
+path; swift as lightning the dogs follow the scent across moors and
+glens. Throughout the long day the chieftain chases the stag, until at
+nightfall, weary and thirsty, he loses the scent, and blows a blast on
+his horn to call the dogs homeward.
+
+And then he hears a voice: “O'Sullivan, turn back!”
+
+He looks over his shoulder to behold the great Finn McCool, central
+figure in centuries of romance.
+
+“Why do you dare chase my stag?” he asks.
+
+“Because it is the finest man ever saw,” answers the chieftain
+composedly.
+
+“You are a valiant man,” says the hero, pleased with the reply; “and
+as you thirst from the long chase, I will give you to drink.” So he
+crunches his giant heel into the rock, and forth burst the waters,
+seething and roaring as they do to this day; “and may the divil fly away
+wid me if I've spoke an unthrue word, ma'am!”
+
+Come to Lough Lein as did we, too early for the crowd of sightseers; but
+when the 'long light shakes across the lakes,' the blackest arts of the
+tourist (and they are as black as they are many) cannot break the spell.
+Sitting on one of these hillsides, we heard a bugle-call taken up and
+repeated in delicate, ethereal echoes,--sweet enough, indeed, to be
+worthy of the fairy buglers who are supposed to pass the sound along
+their lines from crag to crag, until it faints and dies in silence. And
+then came the 'Lament for Owen Roe O'Neil.' We were thrilled to the
+very heart with the sorrowful strains; and when we issued from our leafy
+covert, and rounded the point of rocks from which the sound came,
+we found a fat man in uniform playing the bugle. 'Blank's Tours' was
+embroidered on his cap, and I have no doubt that he is a good husband
+and father, even a good citizen, but he is a blight upon the landscape,
+and fancy cannot breathe in his presence. The typical tourist should be
+encouraged within bounds, both because he is of some benefit to Ireland,
+and because Ireland is of inestimable benefit to him; but he should
+not be allowed to jeer and laugh at the legends (the gentle smile of
+sophisticated unbelief, with its twinkle of amusement, is unknown to and
+for ever beyond him); and above all, he should never be allowed to carry
+or to play on a concertina, for this is the unpardonable sin.
+
+We had an adventure yesterday. We were to dine at eight o'clock at
+Balkilly Castle, where Dr. La Touche is staying the week-end with Lord
+and Lady Killbally. We had been spending an hour or two after tea in
+writing an Irish letter, and were a bit late in dressing. These letters,
+written in the vernacular, are a favourite diversion of ours when
+visiting in foreign lands; and they are very easily done when once you
+have caught the idioms, for you can always supplement your slender store
+of words and expressions with choice selections from native authors.
+
+What Francesca and I wore to the Castle dinner is, alas! no longer of
+any consequence to the community at large. In the mysterious purposes
+of that third volume which we seem to be living in Ireland, Francesca's
+beauty and mine, her hats and frocks as well as mine, are all reduced to
+the background; but Salemina's toilet had cost us some thought. When she
+first issued from the discreet and decorous fastnesses of Salem society,
+she had never donned any dinner dress that was not as high at the throat
+and as long in the sleeves as the Puritan mothers ever wore to meeting.
+In England she lapsed sufficiently from the rigid Salem standard to
+adopt a timid compromise; in Scotland we coaxed her into still further
+modernities, until now she is completely enfranchised. We achieved this
+at considerable trouble, but do not grudge the time spent in persuasion
+when we see her en grande toilette. In day dress she has always
+been inclined ever so little to a primness and severity that suggest
+old-maidishness. In her low gown of pale grey, with all her silver
+hair waved softly, she is unexpectedly lovely,--her face softened,
+transformed, and magically 'brought out' by the whiteness of her
+shoulders and slender throat. Not an ornament, not a jewel, will she
+wear; and she is right to keep the nunlike simplicity of style which
+suits her so well, and which holds its own even in the vicinity of
+Francesca's proud and glowing young beauty.
+
+On this particular evening, Francesca, who wished her to look her best,
+had prudently hidden her eyeglasses, for which we are now trying to
+substitute a silver-handled lorgnette. Two years ago we deliberately
+smashed her spectacles, which she had adopted at five-and-twenty.
+
+“But they are more convenient than eye-glasses,” she urged obtusely.
+
+“That argument is beneath you, dear,” we replied. “If your hair were not
+prematurely grey, we might permit the spectacles, hideous as they are,
+but a combination of the two is impossible; the world shall not convict
+you of failing sight when you are guilty only of petty astigmatism!”
+
+The grey satin had been chosen for this dinner, and Salemina was
+dressed, with the exception of the pretty pearl-embroidered waist that
+has to be laced at the last moment, and had slipped on a dressing jacket
+to come down from her room in the second story, to be advised in some
+trifling detail. She looked unusually well, I thought: her eyes were
+bright and her cheeks flushed, as she rustled in, holding her satin
+skirts daintily away from the dusty carpets.
+
+Now, from the morning of our arrival we have had trouble with the
+Mullarkey door-knobs, which come off continually, and lie on the floors
+at one side of the door or the other. Benella followed Salemina from
+her room, and, being in haste, closed the door with unwonted energy. She
+heard the well-known rattle and clang, but little suspected that, as one
+knob dropped outside in the hall, the other fell inside, carrying the
+rod of connection with it. It was not long before we heard a cry of
+despair from above, and we responded to it promptly.
+
+“It's fell in on the inside, knob and all, as I always knew it would
+some day; and now we can't get back into the room!” said Benella.
+
+“Oh, nonsense! We can open it with something or other,” I answered
+encouragingly, as I drew on my gloves; “only you must hasten, for the
+car is at the door.”
+
+The curling iron was too large, the shoe hook too short, a lead pencil
+too smooth, a crochet needle too slender: we tried them all, and the
+door resisted all our insinuations. “Must you necessarily get in before
+we go?” I asked Salemina thoughtlessly.
+
+She gave me a glance that almost froze my blood, as she replied, “The
+waist of my dress is in the room.”
+
+Francesca and I spent a moment in irrepressible mirth, and then summoned
+Mrs. Mullarkey. Whether the Irish kings could be relied upon in an
+emergency I do not know, but their descendants cannot. Mrs. Mullarkey
+had gone to the convent to see the Mother Superior about something; Mr.
+Mullarkey was at the Dooclone market; Peter was not to be found; but
+Oonah and Molly came, and also the old lady from Mullinavat, with a
+package of raffle tickets in her hand.
+
+We left this small army under Benella's charge, and went down to my room
+for a hasty consultation.
+
+“Could you wear any evening bodice of Francesca's?” I asked.
+
+“Of course not. Francesca's waist measure is three inches smaller than
+mine.”
+
+“Could you manage my black lace dress?”
+
+“Penelope, you know it would only reach to my ankles! No, you must go
+without me, and go at once. We are too new acquaintances to keep Lady
+Killbally's dinner waiting. Why did I come to this place like a pauper,
+with only one evening gown, when I should have known that if there is
+a castle anywhere within forty miles you always spend half your time in
+it!”
+
+This slur was totally unjustified, but I pardoned it, because Salemina's
+temper is ordinarily perfect, and the circumstances were somewhat
+tragic. “If you had brought a dozen costumes, they would all be in your
+room at this moment,” I replied; “but we must think of something. It
+is impossible for you to remain behind; we were invited more on your
+account than our own, for you are Dr. La Touche's friend, and the dinner
+is especially in his honour. Molly, have you a ladder?”
+
+“Sorra a wan, ma'am.”
+
+“Could we borrow one?”
+
+“We could not, Mrs. Beresford, ma'am.”
+
+“Then see if you can break down the door; try hard, and if you succeed I
+will buy you a nice new one! Part of Miss Peabody's dress is inside the
+room, and we shall be late to the Castle dinner.”
+
+The entire corps, with Mrs. Waterford of Mullinavat on top, cast itself
+on the door, which withstood the shock to perfection. Then in a moment
+we heard: “Weary's on it, it will not come down for us, ma'am. It's the
+iligant locks we do be havin' in the house; they're mortial shtrong,
+ma'am!”
+
+“Strong, indeed!” exclaimed the incensed Benella, in a burst of New
+England wrath. “There's nothing strong about the place but the impidence
+of the people in it! If you had told Peter to get a carpenter or a
+locksmith, as I've been asking you these two weeks, it would have been
+all right; but you never do anything till a month after it's too late.
+I've no patience with such a set of doshies, dawdling around and leaving
+everything to go to rack and ruin!”
+
+“Sure it was yourself that ruinated the thing,” responded Molly, with
+spirit, for the unaccustomed word 'doshy' had kindled her quick Irish
+temper. “It's aisy handlin' the knob is used to, and faith it would 'a'
+stuck there for you a twelvemonth!”
+
+“They will be quarrelling soon,” said Salemina nervously. “Do not wait
+another instant; you are late enough now, and I insist on your going.
+Make any excuse you see fit: say I am ill, say I am dead, if you like,
+but don't tell the real excuse--it is too shiftless and wretched and
+embarrassing. Don't cry, Benella. Molly, Oonah, go downstairs to your
+work. Mrs. Waterford, I think perhaps you have forgotten that we have
+already purchased raffle tickets, and we'll not take any more for fear
+that we may draw the necklace. Good-bye, dears; tell Lady Killbally I
+shall see her to-morrow.”
+
+
+
+Chapter XV. Penelope weaves a web.
+
+     'Why the shovel and tongs
+      To each other belongs,
+      And the kettle sings songs
+      Full of family glee,
+      While alone with your cup,
+      Like a hermit you sup,
+      Och hone, Widow Machree.'
+                        Samuel Lover.
+
+Francesca and I were gloomy enough, as we drove along facing each other
+in Ballyfuchsia's one 'inside-car'--a strange and fearsome vehicle,
+partaking of the nature of a broken-down omnibus, a hearse, and an
+overgrown black beetle. It holds four, or at a squeeze six, the seats
+being placed from stem to stern lengthwise, and the balance being so
+delicate that the passengers, when going uphill, are shaken into a heap
+at the door, which is represented by a ragged leather flap. I have often
+seen it strew the hard highroad with passengers, as it jolts up the
+steep incline that leads to Ardnagreena, and the 'fares' who succeed in
+staying in always sit in one another's laps a good part of the way--a
+method pleasing only to relatives or intimate friends. Francesca and I
+agreed to tell the real reason of Salemina's absence. “It is Ireland's
+fault, and I will not have America blamed for it,” she insisted; “but
+it is so embarrassing to be going to the dinner ourselves, and
+leaving behind the most important personage. Think of Dr. La Touche's
+disappointment, think of Salemina's; and they'll never understand why
+she couldn't have come in a dressing jacket. I shall advise her to
+discharge Benella after this episode, for no one can tell the effect it
+may have upon all our future lives, even those of the doctor's two poor
+motherless children.”
+
+It is a four-mile drive to Balkilly Castle, and when we arrived there
+we were so shaken that we had to retire to a dressing-room for repairs.
+Then came the dreaded moment when we entered the great hall and advanced
+to meet Lady Killbally, who looked over our heads to greet the missing
+Salemina. Francesca's beauty, my supposed genius, both fell flat; it
+was Salemina whose presence was especially desired. The company was
+assembled, save for one guest still more tardy than ourselves, and we
+had a moment or two to tell our story as sympathetically as possible. It
+had an uncommonly good reception, and, coupled with the Irish letter I
+read at dessert, carried the dinner along on a basis of such laughter
+and good-fellowship that finally there was no place for regret save in
+the hearts of those who knew and loved Salemina--poor Salemina,
+spending her dull, lonely evening in our rooms, and later on in her own
+uneventful bed, if indeed she had been lucky enough to gain access to
+that bed. I had hoped Lady Killbally would put one of us beside Dr.
+La Touche, so that we might at least keep Salemina's memory green by
+tactful conversation; but it was too large a company to rearrange, and
+he had to sit by an empty chair, which perhaps was just as salutary,
+after all. The dinner was very smart, and the company interesting and
+clever, but my thoughts were elsewhere. As there were fewer squires than
+dames at the feast, Lady Killbally kindly took me on her left, with
+a view to better acquaintance, and I was heartily glad of a possible
+chance to hear something of Dr. La Touche's earlier life. In our
+previous interviews, Salemina's presence had always precluded the
+possibility of leading the conversation in the wished-for direction.
+
+When I first saw Gerald La Touche I felt that he required explanation.
+Usually speaking, a human being ought to be able, in an evening's
+conversation, to explain himself, without any adventitious aid. If he is
+a man, alive, vigorous, well poised, conscious of his own individuality,
+he shows you, without any effort, as much of his past as you need to
+form your impression, and as much of his future as you have intuition to
+read. As opposed to the vigorous personality, there is the colourless,
+flavourless, insubstantial sort, forgotten as soon as learned, and for
+ever confused with that of the previous or the next comer. When I was a
+beginner in portrait-painting, I remember that, after I had succeeded
+in making my background stay back where it belonged, my figure sometimes
+had a way of clinging to it in a kind of smudgy weakness, as if it were
+afraid to come out like a man and stand the inspection of my eye. How
+often have I squandered paint upon the ungrateful object without adding
+a cubit to its stature! It refused to look like flesh and blood, but
+resembled rather some half-made creature flung on the passive canvas in
+a liquid state, with its edges running over into the background. There
+are a good many of these people in literature, too,--heroes who, like
+home-made paper dolls, do not stand up well; or if they manage to
+perform that feat, one unexpectedly discovers, when they are placed in
+a strong light, that they have no vital organs whatever, and can be seen
+through without the slightest difficulty. Dr. La Touche does not belong
+to either of these two classes: he is not warm, magnetic, powerful,
+impressive: neither is he by any means destitute of vital organs;
+but his personality is blurred in some way. He seems a bit remote,
+absentminded, and a trifle, just a trifle, over-resigned. Privately, I
+think a man can afford to be resigned only to one thing, and that is the
+will of God; against all other odds I prefer to see him fight till
+the last armed foe expires. Dr. La Touche is devotedly attached to his
+children, but quite helpless in their hands; so that he never looks at
+them with pleasure or comfort or pride, but always with an anxiety as
+to what they may do next. I understand him better now that I know the
+circumstances of which he has been the product. (Of course one is always
+a product of circumstances, unless one can manage to be superior to
+them.) His wife, the daughter of an American consul in Ireland, was a
+charming but somewhat feather-brained person, rather given to whims and
+caprices; very pretty, very young, very much spoiled, very attractive,
+very undisciplined. All went well enough with them until her father was
+recalled to America, because of some change in political administration.
+The young Mrs. La Touche seemed to have no resources apart from her
+family, and even her baby 'Jackeen' failed to absorb her as might have
+been expected.
+
+“We thought her a most trying woman at this time,” said Lady Killbally.
+“She seemed to have no thought of her husband's interests, and none of
+the responsibilities that she had assumed in marrying him; her only idea
+of life appeared to be amusement and variety and gaiety. Gerald was
+a student, and always very grave and serious; the kind of man who
+invariably marries a butterfly, if he can find one to make him
+miserable. He was exceedingly patient; but after the birth of little
+Broona, Adeline became so homesick and depressed and discontented that,
+although the journey was almost an impossibility at the time, Gerald
+took her back to her people, and left her with them, while he returned
+to his duties at Trinity College. Their life, I suppose, had been very
+unhappy for a year or two before this, and when he came home to Dublin
+without his children, he looked a sad and broken man. He was absolutely
+faithful to his ideals, I am glad to say, and never wavered in his
+allegiance to his wife, however disappointed he may have been in her;
+going over regularly to spend his long vacations in America, although
+she never seemed to wish to see him. At last she fell into a state of
+hopeless melancholia; and it was rather a relief to us all to feel that
+we had judged her too severely, and that her unreasonableness and her
+extraordinary caprices had been born of mental disorder more than of
+moral obliquity. Gerald gave up everything to nurse her and rouse her
+from her apathy; but she faded away without ever once coming back to a
+more normal self, and that was the end of it all. Gerald's father had
+died meanwhile, and he had fallen heir to the property and the estates.
+They were very much encumbered, but he is gradually getting affairs into
+a less chaotic state; and while his fortune would seem a small one to
+you extravagant Americans, he is what we Irish paupers would call well
+to do.”
+
+Lady Killbally was suspiciously willing to give me all this
+information,--so much so that I ventured to ask about the children.
+
+“They are captivating, neglected little things,” she said. “Madame La
+Touche, an aged aunt, has the ostensible charge of them, and she is a
+most easy-going person. The servants are of the 'old family' sort,
+the reckless, improvident, untidy, devoted, quarrelsome creatures that
+always stand by the ruined Irish gentry in all their misfortunes, and
+generally make their life a burden to them at the same time. Gerald is a
+saint, and therefore never complains.”
+
+“It never seems to me that saints are altogether adapted to positions
+like these,” I sighed; “sinners would do ever so much better. I should
+like to see Dr. La Touche take off his halo, lay it carefully on the
+bureau, and wield a battle-axe. The world will never acknowledge his
+merit; it will even forget him presently, and his life will have been
+given up to the evolution of the passive virtues. Do you suppose he will
+recognise the tender passion if it ever does bud in his breast, or will
+he think it a weed, instead of a flower, and let it wither for want of
+attention?”
+
+“I think his friends will have to enhance his self-respect, or he
+will for ever be too modest to declare himself,” said Lady Killbally.
+“Perhaps you can help us: he is probably going to America this winter to
+lecture at some of your universities, and he may stay there for a year
+or two, so he says. At any rate, if the right woman ever appears on
+the scene, I hope she will have the instinct to admire and love and
+reverence him as we do,” and here she smiled directly into my eyes, and
+slipping her pretty hand under the tablecloth squeezed mine in a manner
+that spoke volumes.
+
+It is not easy to explain one's desire to marry off all the unmarried
+persons in one's vicinity. When I look steadfastly at any group of
+people, large or small, they usually segregate themselves into twos
+under my prophetic eye. It they are nice and attractive, I am pleased to
+see them mated; if they are horrid and disagreeable, I like to think of
+them as improving under the discipline of matrimony. It is joy to see
+beauty meet a kindling eye, but I am more delighted still to watch a man
+fall under the glamour of a plain, dull girl, and it is ecstasy for me
+to see a perfectly unattractive, stupid woman snapped up at last, when I
+have given up hopes of settling her in life. Sometimes there are men
+so uninspiring that I cannot converse with them a single moment without
+yawning; but though failures in all other relations, one can conceive
+of their being tolerably useful as husbands and fathers; not for one's
+self, you understand, but for one's neighbours.
+
+Dr. La Touche's life now, to any understanding eye, is as incomplete
+as the unfinished window in Aladdin's tower. He is too wrinkled, too
+studious, too quiet, too patient for his years. His children need a
+mother, his old family servants need discipline, his baronial halls need
+sweeping and cleaning (I haven't seen them, but I know they do!), and
+his aged aunt needs advice and guidance. On the other hand, there are
+those (I speak guardedly) who have walked in shady, sequestered paths
+all their lives, looking at hundreds of happy lovers on the sunny
+highroad, but never joining them; those who adore erudition, who love
+children, who have a genius for unselfish devotion, who are sweet and
+refined and clever, and who look perfectly lovely when they put on
+grey satin and leave off eyeglasses. They say they are over forty, and
+although this probably is exaggeration, they may be thirty-nine and
+three-quarters; and if so, the time is limited in which to find for them
+a worthy mate, since half of the masculine population is looking for
+itself, and always in the wrong quarter, needing no assistance to
+discover rose-cheeked idiots of nineteen, whose obvious charms draw
+thousands to a dull and uneventful fate.
+
+These thoughts were running idly through my mind while the Honourable
+Michael McGillicuddy was discoursing to me of Mr. Gladstone's
+misunderstanding of Irish questions,--a misunderstanding, he said, so
+colossal, so temperamental, and so all-embracing, that it amounted
+to genius. I was so anxious to return to Salemina that I wished I had
+ordered the car at ten thirty instead of eleven; but I made up my mind,
+as we ladies went to the drawing-room for coffee, that I would seize the
+first favourable opportunity to explore the secret chambers of Dr. La
+Touche's being. I love to rummage in out-of-the-way corners of people's
+brains and hearts if they will let me. I like to follow a courteous host
+through the public corridors of his house and come upon a little chamber
+closed to the casual visitor. If I have known him long enough I put
+my hand on the latch and smile inquiringly. He looks confused and
+conscious, but unlocks the door. Then I peep in, and often I see
+something that pleases and charms and touches me so much that it shows
+in my eyes when I lift them to his to say “Thank you.” Sometimes, after
+that, my host gives me the key and says gravely “Pray come in whenever
+you like.”
+
+When Dr. La Touche offers me this hospitality I shall find out whether
+he knows anything of that lavender-scented guest-room in Salemina's
+heart. First, has he ever seen it? Second, has he ever stopped in it for
+any length of time? Third, was he sufficiently enamoured of it to occupy
+it on a long lease?
+
+
+
+Chapter XVI. Salemina has her chance.
+
+     'And what use is one's life widout chances?
+        Ye've always a chance wid the tide.'
+                                  Jane Barlow.
+
+I was walking with Lady Fincoss, and Francesca with Miss Clondalkin,
+a very learned personage who has deciphered more undecipherable
+inscriptions than any lady in Ireland, when our eyes fell upon an
+unexpected tableau.
+
+Seated on a divan in the centre of the drawing-room, in a most
+distinguished attitude, in unexceptionable attire, and with the
+rose-coloured lights making all her soft greys opalescent, was Miss
+Salemina Peabody. Our exclamations of astonishment were so audible that
+they must have reached the dining-room, for Lord Killbally did not keep
+the gentlemen long at their wine.
+
+Salemina cannot tell a story quite as it ought to be told to produce an
+effect. She is too reserved, too concise, too rigidly conscientious. She
+does not like to be the centre of interest, even in a modest contretemps
+like being locked out of a room which contains part of her dress; but
+from her brief explanation to Lady Killbally, her more complete and
+confidential account on the way home, and Benella's graphic story when
+we arrived there, we were able to get all the details.
+
+When the inside-car passed out of view with us, it appears that Benella
+wept tears of rage, at the sight of which Oonah and Molly trembled. In
+that moment of despair and remorse, her mind worked as it must always
+have done before the Salem priestess befogged it with hazy philosophies,
+understood neither by teacher nor by pupil. Peter had come back, but
+could suggest nothing. Benella forgot her 'science,' which prohibits
+rage and recrimination, and called him a great, hulking, lazy vagabone,
+and told him she'd like to have him in Salem for five minutes, just to
+show him a man with head on his shoulders.
+
+“You call this a Christian country,” she said, “and you haven't got a
+screwdriver, nor a bradawl, nor a monkey-wrench, nor a rat-tail file,
+nor no kind of a useful tool to bless yourselves with; and my Miss
+Peabody, that's worth ten dozen of you put together, has got to stay
+home from the Castle and eat warmed-up scraps served in courses,
+with twenty minutes' wait between 'em. Now you do as I say: take the
+dining-table and set it out under the window, and the carving-table on
+top o' that, and see how fur up it'll reach. I guess you can't stump a
+Salem woman by telling her there ain't no ladder.”
+
+The two tables were finally in position; but there still remained nine
+feet of distance to that key of the situation, Salemina's window, and
+Mrs. Waterford's dressing-table went on top of this pile. “Now, Peter,”
+ were the next orders, “if you've got sprawl enough, and want to rest
+yourself by doin' something useful for once in your life, you just
+hold down the dining-table; and you and Oonah, Molly, keep the next two
+tables stiddy, while I climb up.”
+
+The intrepid Benella could barely reach the sill, even from this
+ingeniously dizzy elevation, and Mrs. Waterford and Salemina were called
+on to 'stiddy' the tables, while Molly was bidden to help by giving an
+heroic 'boost' when the word of command came. The device was completely
+successful, and in a trice the conqueror disappeared, to reappear at the
+window holding the precious pearl-embroidered bodice wrapped in a towel.
+“I wouldn't stop to fool with the door-knob till I dropped you this,”
+ she said. “Oonah, you go and wash your hands clean, and help Miss
+Peabody into it,--and mind you start the lacing right at the top; and
+you, Peter, run down to Rooney's and get the donkey and the cart, and
+bring 'em back with you,--and don't you let the grass grow under your
+feet neither!”
+
+There was literally no other mode of conveyance within miles, and time
+was precious. Salemina wrapped herself in Francesca's long black cloak,
+and climbed into the cart. Dinnis hauls turf in it, takes a sack of
+potatoes or a pig to market in it, and the stubborn little ass, blind of
+one eye, has never in his wholly elective course of existence taken up
+the subject of speed.
+
+It was eight o'clock when Benella mounted the seat beside Salemina, and
+gave the donkey a preliminary touch of the stick.
+
+“Be aisy wid him,” cautioned Peter. “He's a very arch donkey for a lady
+to be dhrivin', and mebbe he'd lay down and not get up for you.”
+
+“Arrah! shut yer mouth, Pether. Give him a couple of belts anondher the
+hind leg, melady, and that'll put the fear o' God in him!” said Dinnis.
+
+“I'd rather not go at all,” urged Salemina timidly; “it's too late, and
+too extraordinary.”
+
+“I'm not going to have it on my conscience to make you lose this
+dinner-party,--not if I have to carry you on my back the whole way,”
+ said Benella doggedly; “and this donkey won't lay down with me more'n
+once,--I can tell him that right at the start.”
+
+“Sure, melady, he'll go to Galway for you, when oncet he's started wid
+himself; and it's only a couple o' fingers to the Castle, annyways.”
+
+The four-mile drive, especially through the village of Ballyfuchsia, was
+an eventful one, but by dint of prodding, poking, and belting, Benella
+had accomplished half the distance in three-quarters of an hour, when
+the donkey suddenly lay down 'on her,' according to Peter's prediction.
+This was luckily at the town cross, where a group of idlers rendered
+hearty assistance. Willing as they were to succour a lady in disthress,
+they did not know of any car which could be secured in time to be of
+service, but one of them offered to walk and run by the side of the
+donkey, so as to kape him on his legs. It was in this wise that
+Miss Peabody approached Balkilly Castle; and when a gilded
+gentleman-in-waiting lifted her from Rooney's 'plain cart,' she was just
+on the verge of hysterics. Fortunately his Magnificence was English, and
+betrayed no surprise at the arrival in this humble fashion of a dinner
+guest, but simply summoned the Irish housekeeper, who revived her with
+wine, and called on all the saints to witness that she'd never heard of
+such a shameful thing, and such a disgrace to Ballyfuchsia. The idea of
+not keeping a ladder in a house where the door-knobs were apt to come
+off struck her as being the worst feature of the accident, though this
+unexpected and truly Milesian view of the matter had never occurred to
+us.
+
+“Well, I got Miss Peabody to the dinner-party,” said Benella
+triumphantly, when she was laboriously unlacing my frock, later on, “or
+at least I got her there before it broke up. I had to walk every step o'
+the way home, and the donkey laid down four times, but I was so nerved
+up I didn't care a mite. I was bound Miss Peabody shouldn't lose her
+chance, after all she's done for me!”
+
+“Her chance?” I asked, somewhat puzzled, for dinners, even Castle
+dinners, are not rare in Salemina's experience.
+
+“Yes, her chance,” repeated Benella mysteriously; “you'd know well
+enough what I mean, if you'd ben born and brought up in Salem,
+Massachusetts!”
+
+                               * * * * *
+
+Copy of a letter read by Penelope O'Connor, descendant of the King of
+Connaught, at the dinner of Lord and Lady Killbally at Balkilly Castle.
+It needed no apology then, but in sending it to our American friends, we
+were obliged to explain that though the Irish peasants interlard their
+conversation with saints, angels, and devils, and use the name of the
+Virgin Mary, and even the Almighty, with, to our ears, undue familiarity
+and frequency, there is no profane or irreverent intent. They are
+instinctively religious, and it is only because they feel on terms of
+such friendly intimacy with the powers above that they speak of them so
+often.
+
+                                        At the Widdy Mullarkey's,
+                                  Knockarney House, Ballyfuchsia,
+                                                    County Kerry.
+
+Och! musha bedad, man alive, but it's a fine counthry over here, and it
+bangs all the jewel of a view we do be havin' from the windys, begorra!
+Knockarney House is in a wild, remoted place at the back of beyant, and
+faix we're as much alone as Robinson Crusoe on a dissolute island; but
+when we do be wishful to go to the town, sure there's ivery convaniency.
+There's ayther a bit of a jauntin' car wid a skewbald pony for drivin',
+or we can borry the loan of Dinnis Rooney's blind ass wid the plain
+cart, or we can just take a fut in a hand and leg it over the bog. Sure
+it's no great thing to go do, but only a taste of divarsion like, though
+it's three good Irish miles an' powerful hot weather, with niver a dhrop
+of wet these manny days. It's a great old spring we're havin' intirely;
+it has raison to be proud of itself, begob!
+
+Paddy, the gossoon that drives the car (it's a gossoon we call him,
+but faix he stands five fut nine in his stockin's, when he wears
+anny)--Paddy, as I'm afther tellin' you, lives in a cabin down below
+the knockaun, a thrifle back of the road. There's a nate stack of turf
+fornint it, and a pitaty pot sets beside the doore, wid the hins and
+chuckens rachin' over into it like aigles tryin' to swally the smell.
+
+Across the way there does be a bit of sthrame that's fairly shtiff wid
+troutses in the saison, and a growth of rooshes under the edge lookin'
+that smooth and greeny it must be a pleasure intirely to the grand young
+pig and the goat that spinds their time by the side of it when out of
+doores, which is seldom. Paddy himself is raggetty like, and a sight to
+behould wid the daylight shinin' through the ould coat on him; but he's
+a dacint spalpeen, and sure we'd be lost widout him. His mother's a
+widdy woman with nine moidtherin' childer, not countin' the pig an' the
+goat, which has aquil advantages. It's nine she has livin', she says,
+and four slapin' in the beds o' glory; and faix I hope thim that's in
+glory is quieter than the wans that's here, for the divil is busy wid
+thim the whole of the day. Here's wan o' thim now makin' me as onaisy as
+an ould hin on a hot griddle, slappin' big sods of turf over the
+dike, and ruinatin' the timpers of our poulthry. We've a right to be
+lambastin' thim this blessed minute, the crathurs; as sure as eggs is
+mate, if they was mine they'd sup sorrow wid a spoon of grief, before
+they wint to bed this night!
+
+Mistress Colquhoun, that lives at Ardnagreena on the road to the town,
+is an iligant lady intirely, an' she's uncommon frindly, may the peace
+of heaven be her sowl's rist! She's rale charitable-like an' liberal
+with the whativer, an' as for Himself, sure he's the darlin' fine man!
+He taches the dead-and-gone languages in the grand sates of larnin',
+and has more eddication and comperhinson than the whole of County Kerry
+rowled together.
+
+Then there's Lord and Lady Killbally; faix there's no iliganter family
+on this counthryside, and they has the beautiful quality stoppin' wid
+thim, begob! They have a pew o' their own in the church, an' their
+coachman wears top-boots wid yaller chimbleys to thim. They do be very
+openhanded wid the eatin' and the drinkin', and it bangs Banagher the
+figurandyin' we do have wid thim! So you see Ould Ireland is not too
+disthressful a counthry to be divartin' ourselves in, an' we have our
+healths finely, glory be to God!
+
+Well, we must be shankin' off wid ourselves now to the Colquhouns',
+where they're wettin' a dhrop o' tay for us this mortial instant.
+
+It's no good for yous to write to us here, for we'll be quittin' out o'
+this before the letther has a chanst to come; though sure it can folly
+us as we're jiggin' along to the north.
+
+Don't be thinkin' that you've shlipped hould of our ricollections,
+though the breadth of the ocean say's betune us. More power to your
+elbow! May your life be aisy, and may the heavens be your bed!
+
+                                   Penelope O'Connor Beresford.
+
+
+
+
+Part Third--Ulster.
+
+
+
+Chapter XVII. The Glens of Antrim.
+
+     'Silent, O Moyle, [*] be the roar of thy water;
+        Break not, ye breezes, your chain of repose;
+      While murmuring mournfully, Lir's lovely daughter
+        Tells to the night-star her tale of woes.'
+                                    Thomas Moore.
+
+     * The sea between Erin and Alban (Ireland and Scotland) was
+     called in the olden time the Sea of Moyle, from the Moyle,
+     or Mull, of Cantire.
+
+                                    Sorley Boy Hotel,
+
+                                     Glens of Antrim.
+
+We are here for a week, in the neighbourhood of Cushendun, just to see
+a bit of the north-eastern corner of Erin, where, at the end of
+the nineteenth century, as at the beginning of the seventeenth, the
+population is almost exclusively Catholic and Celtic. The Gaelic
+Sorley Boy is, in Irish state papers, Carolus Flavus--yellow-haired
+Charles--the most famous of the Macdonnell fighters; the one who, when
+recognised by Elizabeth as Lord of the Route, and given a patent for his
+estates, burned the document before his retainers, swearing that
+what had been won by the sword should never be held by the sheepskin.
+Cushendun was one of the places in our literary pilgrimage, because of
+its association with that charming Irish poetess and good glenswoman who
+calls herself 'Moira O'Neill.'
+
+This country of the Glens, east of the river Bann, escaped 'plantation,'
+and that accounts for its Celtic character. When the grand Ulster
+chieftains, the O'Donnells and the O'Neills of Donegal, went under, the
+third great house of Ulster, the 'Macdonnells of the Isles,' was more
+fortunate, and, thanks to its Scots blood, found favour with James I.
+It was a Macdonnell who was created first Earl of Antrim, and given a
+'grant of the Glens and the Route, from the Curran of Larne to the Cutts
+of Coleraine.' Ballycastle is our nearest large town, and its great days
+were all under the Macdonnells, where, in the Franciscan abbey across
+the bay, it is said the ground 'literally heaves with Clandonnell dust.'
+Here are buried those of the clan who perished at the hands of Shane
+O'Neill--Shane the Proud, who signed himself 'Myself O'Neill,' and who
+has been called 'the shaker of Ulster'; here, too, are those who fell in
+the great fight at Slieve-an-Aura up in Glen Shesk, when the Macdonnells
+finally routed the older lords, the M'Quillans. A clansman once went to
+the Countess of Antrim to ask the lease of a farm.
+
+“Another Macdonnell?” asked the countess. “Why, you must all be
+Macdonnells in the Low Glens!”
+
+“Ay,” said the man. “Too many Macdonnells now, but not one too many on
+the day of Aura.”
+
+From the cliffs of Antrim we can see on any clear day the Sea of Moyle
+and the bonnie blue hills of Scotland, divided from Ulster at this point
+by only twenty miles of sea path. The Irish or Gaels or Scots of 'Uladh'
+often crossed in their curraghs to this lovely coast of Alba, then
+inhabited by the Picts. Here, 'when the tide drains out wid itself
+beyant the rocks,' we sit for many an hour, perhaps on the very spot
+from which they pushed off their boats. The Mull of Cantire runs out
+sharply toward you; south of it are Ailsa Craig and the soft Ayrshire
+coast; north of the Mull are blue, blue mountains in a semicircle,
+and just beyond them somewhere, Francesca knows, are the Argyleshire
+Highlands. And oh! the pearl and opal tints that the Irish atmosphere
+flings over the scene, shifting them ever at will, in misty sun or
+radiant shower; and how lovely are the too rare bits of woodland!
+The ground is sometimes white with wild garlic, sometimes blue with
+hyacinths; the primroses still linger in moist, hidden places, and there
+are violets and marsh marigolds. Everything wears the colour of Hope. If
+there are buds that will never bloom and birds that will never fly, the
+great mother-heart does not know it yet. “I wonder,” said Salemina, “if
+that is why we think of autumn as sad--because the story of the year is
+known and told?”
+
+Long, long before the Clandonnell ruled these hills and glens and cliffs
+they were the home of Celtic legend. Over the waters of the wee river
+Margy, with its half-mile course, often sailed the four white swans,
+those enchanted children of Lir, king of the Isle of Man, who had been
+transformed into this guise by their cruel stepmother, with a stroke of
+her druidical fairy wand. After turning them into four beautiful white
+swans she pronounced their doom, which was to sail three hundred years
+on smooth Lough Derryvara, three hundred on the Sea of Erris--sail, and
+sail, until the union of Largnen, the prince from the north, with Decca,
+the princess from the south; until the Taillkenn [**] should come to Erinn,
+bringing the light of a pure faith, and until they should hear the voice
+of a Christian bell. They were allowed to keep their own Gaelic speech,
+and to sing sweet, plaintive, fairy music, which should excel all the
+music of the world, and which should lull to sleep all who listened to
+it. We could hear it, we three, for we loved the story; and love opens
+the ear as well as the heart to all sorts of sounds not heard by the
+dull and incredulous. You may hear it, too, any fine soft day if you
+will sit there looking out on Fair Head and Rathlin Island, and read the
+old fairy tale. When you put down the book you will see Finola, Lir's
+lovely daughter, in any white-breasted bird; and while she covers her
+brothers with her wings, she will chant to you her old song in the
+Gaelic tongue.
+
+     ** A name given by the Druids to St. Patrick.
+
+
+     'Ah, happy is Lir's bright home today
+      With mirth and music and poet's lay;
+      But gloomy and cold his children's home,
+      For ever tossed on the briny foam.
+
+      Our wreath-ed feathers are thin and light
+      When the wind blows keen through the wintry night;
+      Yet oft we were robed, long, long ago,
+      In purple mantles and robes of snow.
+
+      On Moyle's bleak current our food and wine
+      Are sandy seaweed and bitter brine;
+      Yet oft we feasted in days of old,
+      And hazel-mead drank from cups of gold.
+
+      Our beds are rocks in the dripping caves;
+      Our lullaby song the roar of the waves;
+      But soft, rich couches once we pressed,
+      And harpers lulled us each night to rest.
+
+      Lonely we swim on the billowy main,
+      Through frost and snow, through storm and rain;
+      Alas for the days when round us moved
+      The chiefs and princes and friends we loved!'
+
+Joyce's translation.
+
+The Fate of the Children of Lir is the second of Erin's Three Sorrows
+of Story, and the third and greatest is the Fate of the Sons of Usnach,
+which has to do with a sloping rock on the north side of Fair Head, five
+miles from us. Here the three sons of Usnach landed when they returned
+from Alba to Erin with Deirdre--Deirdre, who was 'beautiful as Helen,
+and gifted like Cassandra with unavailing prophecy'; and by reason of
+her beauty many sorrows fell upon the Ultonians.
+
+Naisi, son of Conor, king of Uladh, had fled with Deirdre, daughter of
+Phelim, the king's story-teller, to a sea-girt islet on Lough Etive,
+where they lived happily by the chase. Naisi's two brothers went with
+them, and thus the three sons of Usnach were all in Alba. Then the story
+goes on to say that Fergus, one of Conor's nobles, goes to seek the
+exiles, and Naisi and Deirdre, while playing at the chess, hear from the
+shore 'the cry of a man of Erin.' It is against Deirdre's will that they
+finally leave Alba with Fergus, who says, “Birthright is first, for ill
+it goes with a man, although he be great and prosperous, if he does not
+see daily his native earth.”
+
+So they sailed away over the sea, and Deirdre sang this lay as the
+shores of Alba faded from her sight:--
+
+“My love to thee, O Land in the East, and 'tis ill for me to leave thee,
+for delightful are thy coves and havens, thy kind, soft, flowery fields,
+thy pleasant, green-sided hills; and little was our need of departing.”
+
+Then in her song she went over the glens of their lordship, naming
+them all, and calling to mind how here they hunted the stag, here they
+fished, here they slept, with the swaying fern for pillows, and here the
+cuckoo called to them. And “Never,” she sang, “would I quit Alba were it
+not that Naisi sailed thence in his ship.”
+
+They landed first under Fair Head, and then later at Rathlin Island,
+where their fate met them at last, as Deirdre had prophesied. It is a
+sad story, and we can easily weep at the thrilling moment when, there
+being no man among the Ultonians to do the king's bidding, a Norse
+captive takes Naisi's magic sword and strikes off the heads of the three
+sons of Usnach with one swift blow, and Deirdre, falling prone upon the
+dead bodies, chants a lament; and when she has finished singing, she
+puts her pale cheek against Naisi's, and dies; and a great cairn is
+piled over them, and an inscription in Ogam set upon it.
+
+We were full of legendary lore, these days, for we were fresh from a
+sight of Glen Ariff. Who that has ever chanced to be there in a pelting
+rain but will remember its innumerable little waterfalls, and the great
+falls of Ess-na-Crubh and Ess-na-Craoibhe? And who can ever forget the
+atmosphere of romance that broods over these Irish glens?
+
+We have had many advantages here as elsewhere; for kind Dr. La Touche,
+Lady Killbally, and Mrs. Colquhoun follow us with letters, and wherever
+there is an unusual personage in a district we are commended to his or
+her care. Sometimes it is one of the 'grand quality,' and often it is
+an Ossianic sort of person like Shaun O'Grady, who lives in a little
+whitewashed cabin, and who has, like Mr. Yeats's Gleeman, 'the whole
+Middle Ages under his frieze coat.' The longer and more intimately we
+know these peasants, the more we realise how much in imagination, or in
+the clouds, if you will, they live. The ragged man of leisure you meet
+on the road may be a philosopher, and is still more likely to be a poet;
+but unless you have something of each in yourself, you may mistake him
+for a mere beggar.
+
+“The practical ones have all emigrated,” a Dublin novelist told us,
+“and the dreamers are left. The heads of the older ones are filled with
+poetry and legends; they see nothing as it is, but always through some
+iridescent-tinted medium. Their waking moments, when not tormented by
+hunger, are spent in heaven, and they all live in a dream, whether it
+be of the next world or of a revolution. Effort is to them useless,
+submission to everybody and everything the only safe course; in a word,
+fatalism expresses their attitude to life.”
+
+Much of this submission to the inevitable is a product of past poverty,
+misfortune, and famine, and the rest is undoubtedly a trace of the same
+spirit that we find in the lives and writings of the saints, and which
+is an integral part of the mystery and the traditions of Romanism. We
+who live in the bright (and sometimes staring) sunlight of common-sense
+can hardly hope to penetrate the dim, mysterious world of the Catholic
+peasant, with his unworldliness and sense of failure.
+
+Dr. Douglas Hyde, an Irish scholar and staunch Protestant, says: “A
+pious race is the Gaelic race. The Irish Gael is pious by nature. There
+is not an Irishman in a hundred in whom is the making of an unbeliever.
+The spirit, and the things of the spirit, affect him more powerfully
+than the body, and the things of the body... What is invisible for other
+people is visible for him... He feels invisible powers before him, and
+by his side, and at his back, throughout the day and throughout the
+night... His mind on the subject may be summed up in the two sayings:
+that of the early Church, 'Let ancient things prevail,' and that of St.
+Augustine, 'Credo quia impossibile.' Nature did not form him to be an
+unbeliever; unbelief is alien to his mind and contrary to his feelings.”
+
+Here, only a few miles away, is the Slemish mountain where St. Patrick,
+then a captive of the rich cattle-owner Milcho, herded his sheep and
+swine. Here, when his flocks were sleeping, he poured out his prayers,
+a Christian voice in Pagan darkness. It was the memory of that darkness,
+you remember, that brought him back, years after, to convert Milcho.
+Here, too, they say, lies the great bard Ossian; for they love to think
+that Finn's son Oisin, [++] the hero poet, survived to the time of St.
+Patrick, three hundred years after the other 'Fianna' had vanished from
+the earth,--the three centuries being passed in Tir-nan-og, the Land of
+Youth, where the great Oisin married the king's daughter, Niam of the
+Golden Hair. 'Ossian after the Fianna' is a phrase which has become the
+synonym of all survivors' sorrow. Blinded by tears, broken by age, the
+hero bard when he returns to earth has no fellowship but with grief, and
+thus he sings:--
+
+
+       'No hero now where heroes hurled,--
+      Long this night the clouds delay--
+      No man like me, in all the world,
+        Alone with grief, and grey.
+
+        Long this night the clouds delay--
+      I raise their grave carn, stone on stone,
+      For Finn and Fianna passed away--
+        I, Ossian left alone.'
+
+
+     ++ Pronounced Isheen' in Munster, Osh'in in Ulster.
+
+In more senses than one Irish folk-lore is Irish history. At least the
+traditions that have been handed down from one generation to another
+contain not only the sometimes authentic record of events, but
+a revelation of the Milesian temperament, with its mirth and its
+melancholy, its exuberant fancy and its passion. So in these weird tales
+there is plenty of history, and plenty of poetry, to one who will listen
+to it; but the high and tragic story of Ireland has been cherished
+mainly in the sorrowful traditions of a defeated race, and the legends
+have not yet been wrought into undying verse. Erin's songs of battle
+could only recount weary successions of Flodden Fields, with never
+a Bannockburn and its nimbus of victory; for, as Ossian says of his
+countrymen, “they went forth to the war, but they always fell”; but
+somewhere in the green isle is an unborn poet who will put all this
+mystery, beauty, passion, romance, and sadness, these tragic memories,
+these beliefs, these visions of unfulfilled desire, into verse that will
+glow on the page and live for ever. Somewhere is a mother who has kept
+all these things in her heart, and who will bear a son to write
+them. Meantime, who shall say that they have not been imbedded in the
+language, as flower petals might be in amber?--that language which,
+as an English scholar says, “has been blossoming there unseen, like a
+hidden garland of roses; and whenever the wind has blown from the west,
+English poetry has felt the vague perfume of it.”
+
+
+
+Chapter XVIII. Limavady love-letters.
+
+     'As beautiful Kitty one morning was tripping
+      With a pitcher of milk from the fair of Coleraine,
+      When she saw me she stumbled, the pitcher it tumbled,
+      And all the sweet buttermilk watered the plain.'
+                                           Anonymous.
+
+We wanted to cross to Rathlin Island, which is 'like an Irish stockinge,
+the toe of which pointeth to the main lande.' That would bring Francesca
+six miles nearer to Scotland and her Scottish lover; and we wished to
+see the castle of Robert the Bruce, where, according to the legend, he
+learned his lesson from the 'six times baffled spider.' We delayed too
+long, however, and the Sea of Moyle looked as bleak and stormy as it did
+to the children of Lir. We had no mind to be swallowed up in Brecain's
+Caldron, where the grandson of Niall and the Nine Hostages sank with
+his fifty curraghs, so we took a day of golf at the Ballycastle links.
+Salemina, who is a neophyte, found a forlorn lady driving and putting
+about by herself, and they made a match just to increase the interest of
+the game. There was but one boy in evidence, and the versatile Benella
+offered to caddie for them, leaving the more experienced gossoon to
+Francesca and me. The Irish caddie does not, on the whole, perhaps
+manifest so keen an interest in the fine points of the game as his
+Scottish brother. He is somewhat languid in his search for a ball, and
+will occasionally, when serving amiable ladies, sit under a tree in the
+sun and speculate as to its whereabouts. As for staying by you while
+you 'hole out' on your last green, he has no possible interest in that
+proceeding, and is off and away, giving his perfunctory and half-hearted
+polish to your clubs while you are passing through this thrilling
+crisis. Salemina, wishing to know what was considered a good score by
+local players on these links, asked our young friend 'what they got
+round in, here,' and was answered, 'They tries to go round in as few as
+possible, ma'am, but they mostly takes more!' We all came together again
+at luncheon, and Salemina returned flushed with victory. She had made
+the nine hole course in one hundred and sixty, and had beaten her
+adversary five up and four to play.
+
+The next morning, bright and early, we left for Coleraine, a great
+Presbyterian stronghold in what is called by the Roman Catholics the
+'black north.' If we liked it, and saw anything of Kitty's descendants,
+or any nice pitchers to break, or any reason for breaking them, we
+intended to stop; if not, then to push on to the walled town of Derry,--
+
+     'Where Foyle his swelling waters
+      Rolls northward to the main.'
+
+We thought it Francesca's duty, as she was to be the wife of a Scottish
+minister of the Established Church, to look up Presbyterianism in
+Ireland whenever and wherever possible, with a view to discoursing
+learnedly about it in her letters,--though, as she confesses
+ingenuously, Ronald, in his, never so much as mentions Presbyterianism.
+As for ourselves, we determined to observe all theological differences
+between Protestants and Roman Catholics, but leave Presbyterianism to
+gang its ain gait. We had devoted hours--yes, days--in Edinburgh to the
+understanding of the subtle and technical barriers which separated the
+Free Kirkers and the United Presbyterians; and the first thing they did,
+after we had completely mastered the subject, was to unite. It is all
+very well for Salemina, who condenses her information and stows it
+away neatly; but we who have small storage room and inferior methods of
+packing must be as economical as possible in amassing facts.
+
+If we had been touring properly, of course we should have been going
+to the Giant's Causeway and the swinging Bridge at Carrick-a-rede; but
+propriety is the last thing we aim at in our itineraries. We were within
+worshipping distance of two rather important shrines in our literary
+pilgrimage; for we had met a very knowledgeable traveller at the Sorley
+Boy, and after a little chat with him had planned a day of surprises for
+the academic Miss Peabody. We proposed to halt at Port Stewart, lunch at
+Coleraine, sleep at Limavady; and meantime Salemina was to read all the
+books at her command, and guess, we hoped vainly, the why and wherefore
+of these stops.
+
+On the appointed day, the lady in question drove in state on a car with
+Benella, but Francesca and I hired a couple of very wheezy bicycles for
+the journey. We had a thrilling start; for it chanced to be a fair day
+in Ballycastle, and we wheeled through a sea of squealing, bolting
+pigs, stupid sheep, and unruly cows, all pursued on every side by their
+drivers. To alight from a bicycle in such a whirl of beasts always seems
+certain death; to remain seated diminishes, I believe, the number of
+one's days of life to an appreciable extent. Francesca chose the first
+course, and, standing still in the middle of the street, called upon
+everybody within hearing to save her, and that right speedily. A crowd
+of 'jibbing' heifers encircled her on all sides, while a fat porker,
+'who (his driver said) might be a prize pig by his impidence,' and a
+donkey that was feelin' blue-mouldy for want of a batin', tried to
+poke their noses into the group. Salemina's only weapon was her scarlet
+parasol, and, standing on the step of her side-car, she brandished this
+with such terrible effect that the only bull in the cavalcade put up
+his head and roared. “Have conduct, woman dear!” cried his owner to
+Salemina. “Sure if you kape on moidherin' him wid that ombrelly, you'll
+have him ugly on me immajently, and the divil a bit o' me can stop him.”
+ “Don't be cryin' that way, asthore,” he went on, going to Francesca's
+side, and piloting her tenderly to the hedge. “Sure I'll nourish him wid
+the whip whin I get him to a more remoted place.”
+
+We had no more adventures, but Francesca was so unhinged by her
+unfortunate exit from Ballycastle that, after a few miles, she announced
+her intention of putting her machine and herself on the car; whereupon
+Benella proclaimed herself a competent cyclist, and climbed down
+blithely to mount the discarded wheel. Her ideas of propriety were by
+this time so developed that she rode ten or twelve feet behind me, where
+she looked quaint enough, in her black dress and little black bonnet
+with its white lawn strings.
+
+“Sure it's a quare footman ye have, me lady,” said a genial and friendly
+person who was sitting by the roadside smoking his old dudeen. An
+Irishman, somehow, is always going to his work 'jist,' or coming from
+it, or thinking how it shall presently be done, or meditating on the
+next step in the process, or resting a bit before taking it up again, or
+reflecting whether the weather is on the whole favourable to its proper
+performance; but however poor and needy he may be, it is somewhat
+difficult to catch him at the precise working moment. Mr. Alfred Austin
+says of the Irish peasants that idleness and poverty seem natural to
+them. “Life to the Scotsman or Englishman is a business to conduct, to
+extend, to render profitable. To the Irishman it is a dream, a little
+bit of passing consciousness on a rather hard pillow; the hard part of
+it being the occasional necessity for work, which spoils the tenderness
+and continuity of the dream.”
+
+Presently we passed the Castle, rode along a neat quay with a row of
+houses advertising lodgings to let; and here is Lever Cottage, where
+Harry Lorrequer was written; for Lever was dispensary doctor in Port
+Stewart when his first book was appearing in the Dublin University
+Magazine.
+
+We did not fancy Coleraine; it looked like anything but Cuil-rathain, a
+ferny corner. Kitty's sweet buttermilk may have watered, but it had
+not fertilised the plain, though the town itself seemed painfully
+prosperous. Neither the Clothworkers' Inn nor the Corporation Arms
+looked a pleasant stopping-place, and the humble inn we finally selected
+for a brief rest proved to be about as gay as a family vault, with
+a landlady who had all the characteristics of a poker except its
+occasional warmth, as the Liberator said of another stiff and formal
+person. Whether she was Scot or Saxon I know not; she was certainly not
+Celt, and certainly no Barney McCrea of her day would have kissed her
+if she had spilled ever so many pitchers of sweet buttermilk over the
+plain; so we took the railway, and departed with delight for Limavady,
+where Thackeray, fresh from his visit to Charles Lever, laid his
+poetical tribute at the stockingless feet of Miss Margaret of that town.
+
+O'Cahan, whose chief seat was at Limavady, was the principal urraght of
+O'Neill, and when one of the great clan was 'proclaimed' at Tullaghogue
+it was the magnificent privilege of the O'Cahan to toss a shoe over
+his head. We slept at O'Cahan's Hotel, and--well, one must sleep; and
+wherever we attend to that necessary function without due preparation,
+we generally make a mistake in the selection of the particular spot.
+Protestantism does not necessarily mean cleanliness, although it may
+have natural tendencies in that direction; and we find, to our surprise
+( a surprise rooted, probably, in bigotry), that Catholicism can be
+as clean as a penny whistle, now and again. There were no special
+privileges at O'Cahan's for maids, and Benella, therefore, had a
+delightful evening in the coffee-room with a storm-bound commercial
+traveller. As for Francesca and me, there was plenty to occupy us in our
+regular letters to Ronald and Himself; and Salemina wrote several sheets
+of thin paper to somebody,--no one in America, either, for we saw her
+put on a penny stamp.
+
+Our pleasant duties over, we looked into the cheerful glow of the turf
+sods while I read aloud Thackeray's Peg of Limavady. He spells the town
+with two d's, by the way, to insure its being rhymed properly with Paddy
+and daddy.
+
+     'Riding from Coleraine
+        (Famed for lovely Kitty),
+      Came a Cockney bound
+        Unto Derry city;
+      Weary was his soul,
+        Shivering and sad he
+      Bumped along the road
+        Leads to Limavaddy.
+
+          .  .  .  .
+
+      Limavaddy inn's
+        But a humble baithouse,
+      Where you may procure
+        Whisky and potatoes;
+      Landlord at the door
+        Gives a smiling welcome
+      To the shivering wights
+        Who to his hotel come.
+      Landlady within
+        Sits and knits a stocking,
+      With a wary foot
+        Baby's cradle rocking.
+
+          .  .  .  .
+
+      Presently a maid
+        Enters with the liquor
+      (Half a pint of ale
+        Frothing in a beaker).
+      Gads! I didn't know
+        What my beating heart meant:
+      Hebe's self I thought
+        Entered the apartment.
+      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
+Fifeshire. 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 passed 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 Bass 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 ashore, some were assisted, 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 Butter' 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
+passion of love; you know that it can exist through years of separation,
+can live and grow where a coarser 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 friendship, 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. Sturdy, 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 principal 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 circumstances. The table linen is a trifle ragged,
+though clean; but the circle of red and green wineglasses 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 glass 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 god 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 nobility 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, finishing 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, shifted 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 button shoes, and she can mend
+and patch and darn to perfection; she has a frenzy for small laundry
+operations, and, after washing the windows of her room, she adorns every
+pane of glass with a fine cambric handkerchief, and, stretching a
+line between the bedpost and the bureau knob, 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 passion beside those of
+washing and mending, it is for making bags. She buys scraps 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, pincushions,
+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-class 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
+backstitch the seam. “There's nothin' like a Massachusetts 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-worshippers 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 passed 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 institutions. 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.
+
+Salemina says that Rhododendron Cottage (pronounced by Bridget Thunder
+'Roothythanthrum') being the property of one landlord and the residence
+of four tenants at the same time makes us in a sense participators in
+the old system of rundale tenure, long since abolished. The good-will
+or tenant-right was infinitely subdivided, and the tiniest holdings
+sometimes existed in thirty-two pieces. The result of this joint tenure
+was an extraordinary tangle, particularly when it went so far as the
+subdivision of 'one cow's grass,' or even of a horse, which, being owned
+jointly by three men, ultimately went lame, because none of them would
+pay for shoeing the fourth foot.
+
+We have been here five days, and instead of reproving Benella, as we
+intended, for gross assumption of authority in the matter, we are more
+than ever her bond-slaves. The place is altogether charming, and here it
+is for you.
+
+Knockcool Street is Knockcool village itself, as with almost all Irish
+towns; but the line of little thatched cabins is brightened at the far
+end by the neat house of Mrs. Wogan Odevaine, set a trifle back in its
+own garden, by the pillared porch of a modest hotel, and by the barracks
+of the Royal Irish Constabulary. The sign of the Provincial Bank of
+Ireland almost faces our windows; and although it is used as a meal-shop
+the rest of the week, they tell us that two thousand pounds in money is
+needed there on fair-days. Next to it is a little house, the upper part
+of which is used as a Methodist chapel; and old Nancy, the caretaker, is
+already a good friend of ours. It is a humble house of prayer, but Nancy
+takes much pride in it, and showed us the melodeon, 'worked by a young
+lady from Rossantach,' the Sunday-school rooms, and even the cupboard
+where she keeps the jugs for the love-feast and the linen and wine for
+the sacrament, which is administered once in three years. Next comes the
+Hoeys' cabin, where we have always a cordial welcome, but where we never
+go all together, for fear of embarrassing the family, which is a large
+one--three generations under one roof, and plenty of children in the
+last. Old Mrs. Hoey does not rightly know her age, she says; but her
+daughter Ellen was born the year of the Big Wind, and she herself was
+twenty-two when she was married, and you might allow a year between that
+and when Ellen was born, and make your own calculation.
+
+She tells many stories of the Big Wind, which we learn was in 1839,
+making Ellen's age about sixty-one and her mother's eighty-four. The
+fury of the storm was such that it forced the water of the Lough far
+ashore, stranding the fish among the rocks, where they were found dead
+by hundreds. When next morning dawned there was confusion and ruin on
+every side: the cross had tumbled from the chapel, the tombstones were
+overturned in the graveyard, trees and branches blocked the roadways,
+cabins were stripped of their thatches, and cattle found dead in the
+fields; so it is small wonder old Mrs. Hoey remembers the day of Ellen's
+birth, weak as she is on all other dates.
+
+Ellen's husband, Miles M'Gillan, is the carpenter on an estate in the
+neighbourhood. His shop opens out of the cabin, and I love to sit by the
+Hoey fireside, where the fan bellows, turned by a crank, brings in an
+instant a fresh flame to the sods of smouldering turf, and watch a wee
+Colleen Bawn playing among her daddy's shavings, tying them about her
+waist and fat wrists, hanging them on her ears and in among her brown
+curls. Mother Hoey says that I do not speak like an American--that I
+have not so many 'caperin's' in my language, whatever they may be; and
+so we have long delightful chats together when I go in for a taste of
+Ellen's griddle bread, cooked over the peat coals. Francesca, meantime,
+is calling on Mrs. O'Rourke, whose son has taken more than fifty bicycle
+prizes; and no stranger can come to Knockcool without inspecting the
+brave show of silver, medals, and china that adorn the bedroom, and
+make the O'Rourkes the proudest couple in ould Donegal. Phelim O'Rourke
+smokes his dudeen on a bench by the door, and invites the passer-by to
+enter and examine the trophies. His trousers are held up with bits of
+rope arranged as suspenders; indeed, his toilet is so much a matter of
+strings that it must be a work of time to tie on his clothing in the
+morning, in case he takes it off at night, which is open to doubt;
+nevertheless it is he that's the satisfied man, and the luck would be
+on him as well as on e'er a man alive, were he not kilt wid the cough
+intirely! Mrs. Phelim's skirt shows a triangle of red flannel behind,
+where the two ends of the waistband fail to meet by about six inches,
+but are held together by a piece of white ball fringe. Any informality
+in this part of her costume is, however, more than atoned for by the
+presence of a dingy bonnet of magenta velvet, which she always dons for
+visitors.
+
+The O'Rourke family is the essence of hospitality, so their kitchen
+is generally full of children and visitors; and on the occasion when
+Salemina issued from the prize bedroom, the guests were so busy with
+conversation that, to use their own language, divil a wan of thim clapt
+eyes on the O'Rourke puppy, and they did not notice that the baste was
+floundering in a tub of soft, newly made butter standing on the floor.
+He was indeed desperately involved, being so completely wound up in the
+waxy mass that he could not climb over the tub's edge. He looked comical
+and miserable enough in his plight: the children and the visitors
+thought so, and so did Francesca and I; but Salemina went directly home,
+and kept her room for an hour. She is so sensitive! Och, thin, it's
+herself that's the marthyr intirely! We cannot see that the incident
+affects us so long as we avoid the O'Rourkes' butter; but she says,
+covering her eyes with her handkerchief and shuddering: “Suppose there
+are other tubs and other pup--Oh, I cannot bear the thought of it,
+dears! Please change the subject, and order me two hard-boiled eggs for
+dinner.”
+
+Leaving Knockcool behind us, we walk along the country road between
+high, thick hedges: here a clump of weather-beaten trees, there a
+stretch of bog with silver pools and piles of black turf, then a sudden
+view of hazy hills, a grove of beeches, a great house with a splendid
+gateway, and sometimes, riding through it, a figure new to our eyes, a
+Lady Master of the Hounds, handsome in her habit with red facings. We
+pass many an 'evicted farm,' the ruined house with the rushes growing
+all about it, and a lonely goat browsing near; and on we walk, until
+we can see the roofs of Lisdara's solitary cabin row, huddled under
+the shadow of a gloomy hill topped by the ruins of an old fort. All is
+silent, and the blue haze of the peat smoke curls up from the thatch.
+Lisdara's young people have mostly gone to the Big Country; and how
+many tears have dropped on the path we are treading, as Peggy and Mary,
+Cormac and Miles, with a wooden box in the donkey cart behind them, or
+perhaps with only a bundle hanging from a blackthorn stick, have come
+down the hill to seek their fortune! Perhaps Peggy is barefooted;
+perhaps Mary has little luggage beyond a pot of shamrock or a mountain
+thrush in a wicker cage; but what matter for that? They are used to
+poverty and hardship and hunger, and although they are going quite
+penniless to a new country, sure it can be no worse than the old. This
+is the happy-go-lucky Irish philosophy, and there is mixed with it a
+deal of simple trust in God.
+
+How many exiles and wanderers, both those who have no fortune and
+those who have failed to win it, dream of these cabin rows, these
+sweet-scented boreens with their 'banks of furze unprofitably gay,'
+these leaking thatches with the purple loosestrife growing in their
+ragged seams, and, looking backward across the distance of time and
+space, give the humble spot a tender thought, because after all it was
+in their dear native isle!
+
+     'Pearly are the skies in the country of my fathers,
+        Purple are thy mountains, home of my heart;
+      Mother of my yearning, love of all my longings,
+        Keep me in remembrance long leagues apart.'
+
+I have been thinking in this strain because of an old dame in the first
+cabin in Lisdara row, whose daughter is in America, and who can talk of
+nothing else. She shows us the last letter, with its postal order for
+sixteen shillings, that Mida sent from New York, with little presents
+for blind Timsy, 'dark since he were three years old,' and for lame
+Dan, or the 'Bocca,' as he is called in Lisdara. Mida was named for the
+virgin saint of Killeedy in Limerick. [*] “And it's she that's good enough
+to bear a saint's name, glory be to God!” exclaims the old mother
+returning Mida's photograph to a hole in the wall where the pig cannot
+possibly molest it.
+
+         * Saint Mide, the Brigit of Munster.
+
+At the far end of the row lives 'Omadhaun Pat.' He is a 'little
+sthrange,' you understand; not because he was born with too small a
+share of wit, but because he fell asleep one evening when he was lying
+on the grass up by the old fort, and--'well, he was niver the same thing
+since.' There are places in Ireland, you must know, where if you lie
+down upon the green earth and sink into untimely slumber, you will 'wake
+silly'; or, for that matter, although it is doubtless a risk, you may
+escape the fate of waking silly, and wake a poet! Carolan fell asleep
+upon a faery rath, and it was the faeries who filled his ears with
+music, so that he was haunted by the tunes ever afterward; and perhaps
+all poets, whether they are conscious of it or not, fall asleep on faery
+raths before they write sweet songs.
+
+Little Omadhaun Pat is pale, hollow-eyed, and thin; but that, his mother
+says, is 'because he is over-studyin' for his confirmation.' The
+great day is many weeks away, but to me it seems likely that, when the
+examination comes, Pat will be where he will know more than the priests!
+
+Next door lives old Biddy Tuke. She is too aged to work, and she sits
+in her doorway, always a pleasant figure in her short woollen petticoat,
+her little shawl, and her neat white cap. She has pitaties for food,
+with stirabout of Indian meal once a day (oatmeal is too dear), tea
+occasionally when there is sixpence left from the rent, and she has more
+than once tasted bacon in her eighty years of life; more than once, she
+tells me proudly, for it's she that's had the good sons to help her a
+bit now and then,--four to carry her and one to walk after, which is the
+Irish notion of an ideal family.
+
+“It's no chuckens I do be havin' now, ma'am,” she says, “but it's
+a darlin' flock I had ten year ago, whin Dinnis was harvestin' in
+Scotland! Sure it was two-and-twinty chuckens I had on the floore wid
+meself that year, ma'am.”
+
+“Oh, it's a conthrary world, that's a mortial fact!” as Phelim O'Rourke
+is wont to say when his cough is bad; and for my life I can frame no
+better wish for ould Biddy Tuke and Omadhaun Pat, dark Timsy and the
+Bocca, than that they might wake, one of these summer mornings, in the
+harvest-field of the seventh heaven. That place is reserved for the
+saints, and surely these unfortunates, acquainted with grief like
+Another, might without difficulty find entrance there.
+
+I am not wise enough to say how much of all this squalor and
+wretchedness and hunger is the fault of the people themselves, how much
+of it belongs to circumstances and environment, how much is the result
+of past errors of government, how much is race, how much is religion. I
+only know that children should never be hungry, that there are ignorant
+human creatures to be taught how to live; and if it is a hard task,
+the sooner it is begun the better, both for teachers and pupils. It is
+comparatively easy to form opinions and devise remedies, when one knows
+the absolute truth of things; but it is so difficult to find the truth
+here, or at least there are so many and such different truths to weigh
+in the balance,--the Protestant and the Roman Catholic truth, the
+landlord's and the tenant's, the Nationalist's and the Unionist's truth!
+I am sadly befogged, and so, pushing the vexing questions all aside, I
+take dark Timsy, Bocca Lynch, and Omadhaun Pat up on the green hillside
+near the ruined fort, to tell them stories, and teach them some of the
+thousand things that happier, luckier children know.
+
+This is an island of anomalies: the Irish peasants will puzzle you,
+perplex you, disappoint you with their inconsistencies, but keep from
+liking them if you can! There are a few cleaner and more comfortable
+homes in Lisdara and Knockcool than when we came, and Benella has
+been invaluable, although her reforms, as might be expected, are of
+an unusual character, and with her the wheels of progress never move
+silently, as they should, but always squeak. With the two golden
+sovereigns given her to spend, she has bought scissors, knives, hammers,
+boards, sewing materials, knitting needles, and yarn,--everything to
+work with, and nothing to eat, drink, or wear, though Heaven knows there
+is little enough of such things in Lisdara.
+
+“The quicker you wear 'em out, the better you'll suit me,” she says to
+the awestricken Lisdarians. “I'm a workin' woman myself, an' it's my
+ladies' money I've spent this time; but I'll make out to keep you in
+brooms and scrubbin' brushes, if only you'll use 'em! You mustn't take
+offence at anything I say to you, for I'm part Irish--my grandmother was
+Mary Boyce of Trim; and if she hadn't come away and settled in Salem,
+Massachusetts, mebbe I wouldn't have known a scrubbin' brush by sight
+myself!”
+
+
+
+Chapter XXI. Lachrymae Hibernicae.
+
+     'What ails you, Sister Erin, that your face
+      Is, like your mountains, still bedewed with tears?
+            .   .   .   .   .   .   .
+      Forgive! forget! lest harsher lips should say,
+      Like your turf fire, your rancour smoulders long,
+      And let Oblivion strew Time's ashes o'er your wrong.'
+                                          Alfred Austin.
+
+At tea-time, and again after our simple dinner--for Bridget Thunder's
+repertory is not large, and Benella's is quite unsuited to the Knockcool
+markets--we wend our way to a certain house that stands by itself on
+the road to Lisdara. It is only a whitewashed cabin with green window
+trimmings, but it is a larger and more comfortable one than we commonly
+see, and it is the perfection of neatness within and without. The stone
+wall that encloses it is whitewashed too, and the iron picket railing at
+the top is painted bright green; the stones on the posts are green also,
+and there is the prettiest possible garden, with nicely cut borders of
+box. In fine, if ever there was a cheery place to look at, Sarsfield
+Cottage is that one; and if ever there was a cheerless gentleman, it is
+Mr. Jordan, who dwells there. Mrs. Wogan Odevaine commended him to us
+as the man of all others with whom to discuss Irish questions, if we
+wanted, for once in a way, to hear a thoroughly disaffected, outraged,
+wrong-headed, and rancorous view of things.
+
+“He is an encyclopaedia, and he is perfectly delightful on any topic in
+the universe but the wrongs of Ireland,” said she; “not entirely sane
+and yet a good father, and a good neighbour, and a good talker. Faith,
+he can abuse the English government with any man alive! He has a smaller
+grudge against you Americans, perhaps, than against most of the other
+nations, so possibly he may elect to discuss something more cheerful
+than our national grievances; if he does, and you want a livelier topic,
+just mention--let me see--you might speak of Wentworth, who destroyed
+Ireland's woollen industry, though it is true he laid the foundation
+of the linen trade, so he wouldn't do, though Mr. Jordan is likely to
+remember the former point and forget the latter. Well, just breathe the
+words 'Catholic Disqualification' or 'Ulster Confiscation,' and you will
+have as pretty a burst of oratory as you'd care to hear. You remember
+that exasperated Englishman who asked in the House why Irishmen were
+always laying bare their grievances. And Major O'Gorman bawled across
+the floor, 'Because they want them redressed!'”
+
+Salemina and I went to call on Mr. Jordan the very next day after our
+arrival at Knockcool. Over the sitting-room or library door at Sarsfield
+Cottage is a coat of arms with the motto of the Jordans, 'Percussus
+surgam'; and as our friend is descended from Richard Jordan of Knock,
+who died on the scaffold at Claremorris in the memorable year 1798, I
+find that he is related to me, for one of the De Exeter Jordans married
+Penelope O'Connor, daughter of the king of Connaught. He took her
+to wife, too, when the espousal of anything Irish, names, language,
+apparel, customs, or daughters, was high treason, and meant instant
+confiscation of estates. I never thought of mentioning the relationship,
+for obviously a family cannot hold grievances for hundreds of years and
+bequeath a sense of humour at the same time.
+
+The name Jordan is derived, it appears, from a noble ancestor who was
+banner-bearer in the Crusades and who distinguished himself in many
+battles, but particularly in one fought against the infidels on the
+banks of the River Jordan in the Holy Land. In this conflict he was
+felled to the ground three times during the day, but owing to his
+gigantic strength, his great valour, and the number of the Saracens
+prostrated by his sword, he succeeded in escaping death and keeping
+the banner of the Cross hoisted; hence by way of eminence he was called
+Jordan; and the motto of this illustrious family ever since has been,
+'Though I fall I rise.'
+
+Mr. Jordan's wife has been long dead, but he has four sons, only one of
+them, Napper Tandy, living at home. Theobald Wolfe Tone is practising
+law in Dublin; Hamilton Rowan is a physician in Cork; and Daniel
+O'Connell, commonly called 'Lib' (a delicate reference to the
+Liberator), is still a lad at Trinity. It is a great pity that Mr.
+Jordan could not have had a larger family, that he might have kept fresh
+in the national heart the names of a few more patriots; for his library
+walls, 'where Memory sits by the altar she has raised to Woe,' are hung
+with engravings and prints of celebrated insurgents, rebels, agitators,
+demagogues, denunciators, conspirators,--pictures of anybody, in a word,
+who ever struck a blow, right or wrong, well or ill judged, for the
+green isle. That gallant Jacobite, Patrick Sarsfield, Burke, Grattan,
+Flood, and Robert Emmet stand shoulder to shoulder with three Fenian
+gentlemen, names Allan, Larkin, and O'Brien, known in ultra-Nationalist
+circles as the 'Manchester martyrs.' For some years after this trio was
+hanged in Salford jail, it appears that the infant mind was sadly mixed
+in its attempt to separate knowledge in the concrete from the more or
+less abstract information contained in the Catechism; and many a bishop
+was shocked, when asking in the confirmation service, “Who are the
+martyrs?” to be told, “Allan, Larkin, and O'Brien, me lord!”
+
+Francesca says she longs to smuggle into Mr. Jordan's library a picture
+of Tom Steele, one of Daniel O'Connell's henchmen, to whom he gave the
+title of Head Pacificator of Ireland. Many amusing stories are told
+of this official, of his gaudy uniform, his strut and swagger, and his
+pompous language. At a political meeting on one occasion, he attacked,
+it seems, one Peter Purcell, a Dublin tradesman who had fallen out with
+the Liberator on some minor question. “Say no more on the subject, Tom,”
+ cried O'Connell, who was in the chair, “I forgive Peter from the bottom
+of my heart.”
+
+“You may forgive him, liberator and saviour of my country,” rejoined
+Steele, in a characteristic burst of his amazingly fervent rhetoric.
+“Yes, you, in the discharge of your ethereal functions as the moral
+regenerator of Ireland, may forgive him; but, revered leader, I also
+have functions of my own to perform; and I tell you that, as Head
+Pacificator of Ireland, I can never forgive the diabolical villain that
+dared to dispute your august will.”
+
+The doughty Steele, who appears to have been but poorly fitted by nature
+for his office, was considered at the time to be half a madman, but as
+Sir James O'Connell, Daniel's candid brother, said, “And who the divil
+else would take such a job?” At any rate, when we gaze at Mr. Jordan's
+gallery, imagining the scene that would ensue were the breath of life
+breathed into the patriots' quivering nostrils, we feel sure that the
+Head Pacificator would be kept busy.
+
+Dear old white-haired Mr. Jordan, known in select circles as 'Grievance
+Jordan,' sitting in his library surrounded by his denunciators,
+conspirators, and martyrs, with incendiary documents piled mountains
+high on his desk--what a pathetic anachronism he is after all!
+
+The shillelagh is hung on the wall now, for the most part, and faction
+fighting is at an end; but in the very last moments of it there were
+still 'ructions' between the Fitzgeralds and the Moriartys, and the
+age-old reason of the quarrel was, according to the Fitzgeralds, the
+betrayal of the 'Cause of Ireland.' The particular instance occurred in
+the sixteenth century, but no Fitzgerald could ever afterward meet any
+Moriarty at a fair without crying, “Who dare tread on the tail of me
+coat?” and inviting him to join in the dishcussion with shticks. This
+practically is Mr. Jordan's position; and if an Irishman desires to
+live entirely in the past, he can be as unhappy as any man alive. He is
+writing a book, which Mrs. Wogan Odevaine insists is to be called The
+Groans of Ireland; but after a glance at a page of memoranda pencilled
+in a collection of Swift's Irish Tracts that he lent to me (the
+volume containing that ghastly piece of irony, The Modest Proposal for
+Preventing the Poor of Ireland from being a Burden to their Parents
+and Country), I have concluded that he is editing a Catalogue of Irish
+Wrongs, Alphabetically Arranged. This idea pleased Mrs. Wogan Odevaine
+extremely; and when she drove over to tea, bringing several cheerful
+young people to call upon us, she proposed, in the most light-hearted
+way in the world, to play what she termed the Grievance Game, an
+intellectual diversion which she had invented on the instant. She
+proposed it, apparently, with a view of showing us how small a knowledge
+of Ireland's ancient wrongs is the property of the modern Irish girl,
+and how slight a hold on her memory and imagination have the unspeakably
+bitter days of the long ago.
+
+We were each given pencil and paper, and two or three letters of the
+alphabet, and bidden to arrange the wrongs of Ireland neatly under
+them, as we supposed Mr. Jordan to be doing for the instruction and the
+depression of posterity. The result proved that Mrs. Odevaine was a true
+prophet, for the youngest members of the coterie came off badly enough,
+and read their brief list of grievances with much chagrin at their lack
+of knowledge; the only piece of information they possessed in common
+being the inherited idea that England never had understood Ireland,
+never would, never could, never should, never might understand her.
+
+Rosetta Odevaine succeeded in remembering, for A, F, and H, Absenteeism,
+Flight of the Earls, Famine, and Hunger; her elder sister, Eileen, fresh
+from college, was rather triumphant with O and P, giving us Oppression
+of the Irish Tenantry, Penal Laws, Protestant Supremacy, Poynings' Law,
+Potato Rot, and Plantations. Their friend, Rhona Burke, had V, W, X, Y,
+Z, and succeeded only in finding Wentworth and Woollen Trade Destroyed,
+until Miss Odevaine helped her with Wood's Halfpence, about which
+everybody else had to be enlightened; and there was plenty of laughter
+when Francesca suggested for V, Vipers Expelled by St. Patrick. Salemina
+carried off the first prize; but we insisted C and D were the easiest
+letters; at any rate, her list showed great erudition, and would
+certainly have pleased Mr. Jordan. C, Church Cess, Catholic
+Disqualification, Crimes Act of 1887, Confiscations, Cromwell, Carrying
+Away of Lia Fail (Stone of Destiny) from Tara. D, Destruction of Trees
+on Confiscated Lands, Discoverers (of flaws in Irish titles), Debasing
+of the Coinage by James I.
+
+Mrs. Odevaine came next with R and S. R, Recall of Lord Fitzwilliams
+by Pitt, Rundale Land Tenure, Rack-Rents, Ribbonism. S, Schism Act,
+Supremacy Act, Sixth Act of George I.
+
+I followed with T and U, having unearthed Tithes and the Test Act for
+the first, and Undertakers, the Acts of Union and Uniformity, for the
+second; while Francesca, who had been given I, J, K, L, and M, disgraced
+herself by failing on all the letters but the last, under which she
+finally catalogued one particularly obnoxious wrong in Middlemen.
+
+This ignorance of the past may have its bright side, after all, though
+to speak truthfully, it did show a too scanty knowledge of national
+history. But if one must forget, it is as well to begin with the wrongs
+of far-off years, those 'done to your ancient name or wreaked upon your
+race.'
+
+
+
+Part Fourth--Connaught.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXII. The Weeping West.
+
+     'Veiled in your mist, and diamonded with showers.'
+                                     Alfred Austin.
+
+
+                              Shan Van Vocht Hotel,
+                                Heart of Connemara.
+
+
+Shan Van Vocht means in English the 'Poor Little Old Woman,' one of the
+many endearing names given to Ireland in the Gaelic. There is, too,
+a well-known rebel song called by this title--one which was not only
+written in Irish and English, but which was translated into French for
+the soldiers at Brest who were to invade Ireland under Hoche.
+
+We had come from Knockcool, Donegal, to Westport, in County Mayo, and
+the day was enlivened by two purely Irish touches, one at the beginning
+and one at the end. We alighted at a certain railway junction to
+await our train, and were interested in a large detachment of
+soldiers--leaving for a long journey, we judged, by the number of
+railway carriages and the amount of luggage and stores. In every crowded
+compartment there were two or three men leaning out over the locked
+doors; for the guard was making ready to start. All were chatting gaily
+with their sweethearts, wives, and daughters, save one gloomy fellow
+sitting alone in a corner, searching the crowd with sad eyes for a
+wished-for face or a last greeting. The bell rang, the engine stirred;
+suddenly a pretty, rosy girl flew breathlessly down the platform,
+pushing her way through the groups of onlookers. The man's eyes lighted;
+he rose to his feet, but the other fellows blocked the way; the door was
+locked, and he had but one precious moment. Still he was equal to
+the emergency, for he raised his fist and with one blow shattered the
+window, got his kiss, and the train rumbled away, with his victorious
+smile set in a frame of broken glass! I liked that man better than any
+one I've seen since Himself deserted me for his Duty! How I hope the
+pretty girl will be faithful, and how I hope that an ideal lover will
+not be shot in South Africa!
+
+And if he was truly Irish, so was the porter at a little way station
+where we stopped in the dark, after being delayed interminably at
+Claremorris by some trifling accident. We were eight persons packed into
+a second-class carriage, and totally ignorant of our whereabouts; but
+the porter, opening the door hastily, shouted, “Is there anny one there
+for here?”--a question so vague and illogical that none of us said
+anything in reply, but simply gazed at one another, and then laughed as
+the train went on.
+
+We are on a here-to-day-and-gone-to-morrow journey, determined to avoid
+the railways, and travel by private conveyance and the public 'long
+cars,' just for a glimpse of the Weeping West before we settle down
+quietly in County Meath for our last few weeks of Irish life.
+
+Thus far it has been a pursuit of the picturesque under umbrellas;
+in fact, we're desthroyed wid the dint of the damp! 'Moist and
+agreeable--that's the Irish notion both for climate and company.' If
+the barometer bore any relation to the weather, we could plan our drives
+with more discretion; but it sometimes remains as steady as a rock
+during two days of sea mist, and Francesca, finding it wholly regardless
+of gentle tapping, lost her temper on one occasion and rapped it
+so severely as to crack the glass. That this peculiarity of Irish
+barometers has been noted before we are sure, because of this verse
+written by a native bard:--
+
+     'When the glass is up to thirty,
+      Be sure the weather will be dirty.
+      When the glass is high, O very!
+      There'll be rain in Cork and Kerry.
+      When the glass is low, O Lork!
+      There'll be rain in Kerry and Cork!'
+
+I might add:--
+
+      And when the glass has climbed its best,
+      The sky is weeping in the West.
+
+The national rainbow is as deceitful as the barometer, and it is no
+uncommon thing for us to have half a dozen of them in a day, between
+heavy showers, like the smiles and tears of Irish character; though, to
+be sure, one does not need to be an Irish patriot to declare that a fine
+day in this country is worth three fine days anywhere else. The present
+weather is accounted for partially by the fact that, as Horace Walpole
+said, summer has set in with its usual severity, and the tourist is
+abroad in the land.
+
+I am not sure but that we belong to the hated class for the moment,
+though at least we try to emulate tourist virtues, if there are any, and
+avoid tourist vices, which is next to impossible, as they are the fruit
+of the tour itself. It is the circular tour which, in its effect upon
+the great middle class, is the most virulent and contagious, and which
+breeds the most offensive habits of thought and speech. The circular
+tour is a magnificent idea, a praiseworthy business scheme; it has
+educated the minds of millions and why it should have ruined their
+manners is a mystery, unless indeed they had none when they were at
+home. Some of our fellow-travellers with whom we originally started
+disappear every day or two, to join us again. We lose them temporarily
+when we take a private conveyance or when they stop at a cheap hotel,
+but we come altogether again on coach or long car; and although they
+have torn off many coupons in the interval, their remaining stock seems
+to assure us of their society for days to come.
+
+We have a Protestant clergyman who is travelling for his health,
+but beguiling his time by observations for a volume to be called The
+Relation between Priests and Pauperism. It seems, at first thought,
+as if the circular coupon system were ill fitted to furnish him with
+corroborative detail; but inasmuch as every traveller finds in a country
+only, so to speak, what he brings to it, he will gather statistics
+enough. Those persons who start with a certain bias of mind in one
+direction seldom notice any facts that would throw out of joint those
+previously amassed; they instinctively collect the ones that 'match,'
+all others having a tendency to disturb the harmony of the original
+scheme. The clergyman's travelling companion is a person who possesses
+not a single opinion, conviction, or trait in common with him; so we
+conclude that they joined forces for economy's sake. This comrade we
+call 'the man with the evergreen heart,' for we can hardly tell by his
+appearance whether he is an old young man or a young old one. With his
+hat on he is juvenile; when he removes it, he is so distinctly
+elderly that we do not know whether to regard him as damaged youth or
+well-preserved old age; but he transfers his solicitous attentions to
+lady after lady, rebuffs not having the slightest effect upon his warm,
+susceptible, ardent nature. We suppose that he is single, but we know
+that he can be married at a moment's notice by anybody who is willing to
+accept the risks of the situation. Then we have a nice schoolmaster, so
+agreeable that Salemina, Francesca, and I draw lots every evening as
+to who shall sit beside him next day. He has just had seventy boys down
+with measles at the same time, giving prizes to those who could show the
+best rash! Salemina is no friend to the competitive system in education,
+but this appealed to her as being as wise as it was whimsical.
+
+We have also in our company an indiscreet and inflammable Irishman from
+Wexford and a cutler from Birmingham, who lose no opportunity to have
+a conversational scrimmage. When the car stops to change or water the
+horses (and as for this last operation, our steeds might always manage
+it without loss of time by keeping their mouths open), we generally
+hear something like this; for although the two gentlemen have never met
+before, they fight as if they had known each other all their lives.
+
+Mr. Shamrock. “Faith, then, if you don't like the hotels and the
+railroads, go to Paris or London; we've done widout you up to now,
+and we can kape on doing widout you! We'd have more money to spind in
+entertainin' you if the government hadn't taken three million of pounds
+out of us to build fortifications in China.”
+
+Mr. Rose. “That's all bosh and nonsense; you wouldn't know how to manage
+an hotel if you had the money.”
+
+Mr. Shamrock. “If we can't make hotel-kapers, it's soldiers we can make;
+and be the same token you can't manage India or Canada widout our help!
+Faith, England owes Ireland more than she can pay, and it's not her
+business to be thravelin' round criticisin' the throubles she's helped
+to projuce.”
+
+Mr. Rose. “William Ewart Gladstone did enough for your island to make up
+for all the harm that the other statesmen may or may not have done.”
+
+Mr. Shamrock, touched in his most vulnerable point, shrieks above the
+rattle of the wheels: “The wurrst statesman that iver put his name to
+paper was William Ewart Gladstone!”
+
+Mr. Rose. “The best, I say!”
+
+Mr. Shamrock. “I say the wurrst!”
+
+Mr. Rose. “The best!!”
+
+Mr. Shamrock. “The wurrst!!”
+
+Mr. Rose (after a pause). “It's your absentee landlords that have done
+the mischief. I'd hang every one of them, if I had my way.”
+
+Mr. Shamrock. “Faith, they'd be absent thin, sure enough!”
+
+And at this everybody laughs, and the trouble is over for a brief space,
+much to the relief of Mrs. Shamrock, until her husband finds himself,
+after a little, sufficiently calm to repeat a Cockney anecdote, which is
+received by Mr. Rose in resentful silence, it being merely a description
+of the common bat, an unfortunate animal that, according to Mr.
+Shamrock, “'as no 'ole to 'ide in, no 'ands to 'old by, no 'orns to 'urt
+with, though Nature 'as given 'im 'ooks be'ind to 'itch 'imself up by.”
+
+The last two noteworthy personages in our party are a dapper Frenchman,
+who is in business at Manchester, and a portly Londoner, both of whom
+are seeing Ireland for the first time. The Frenchman does not grumble at
+the weather, for he says that in Manchester it rains twice a day all the
+year round, save during the winter, when it commonly rains all day.
+
+Sir James Paget, in an address on recreation, defined its chief element
+to be surprise. If that is true, the portly Londoner must be exhilarated
+beyond words. But with him the sensation does not stop with surprise:
+it speedily becomes amazement, and then horror; for he is of the
+comparative type, and therefore sees things done and hears things said,
+on every hand, that are not said and done at all in the same way in
+London. He sees people--ay, and policemen--bicycling on footpaths and
+riding without lamps, and is horrified to learn that they are seldom,
+if ever, prosecuted. He is shocked at the cabins, and the rocks, and the
+beggar children, and the lack of trees; at the lack of logic, also, and
+the lack of shoes; at the prevalence of the brogue; above all, at the
+presence of the pig in the parlour. He is outraged at the weather, and
+he minds getting wet the more because he hates Irish whisky. He keeps a
+little notebook, and he can hardly wait for dinner to be over, he is
+so anxious to send a communication (probably signed 'Veritas') to the
+London Times.
+
+The multiplicity of rocks and the absence of trees are indeed the two
+most striking features of the landscape; and yet Boate says, 'In
+ancient times as long as the land was in full possession of the Irish
+themselves, all Ireland was very full of woods on every side, as
+evidently appeareth by the writings of Giraldus Cambrensis.' But this
+was long ago,--
+
+     'Ere the emerald gem of the western world
+      Was set in the brow of a stranger.'
+
+In the long wars with the English these forests were the favourite
+refuge of the natives, and it was a common saying that the Irish could
+never be tamed while the leaves were upon the trees. Then passages were
+cut through the woods, and the policy of felling them, as a military
+measure, was begun and carried forward on a gigantic scale in
+Elizabeth's reign.
+
+At one of the cabins along the road they were making great preparations,
+which we understood from having seen the same thing in Lisdara. There
+are wee villages and solitary cabins so far from chapel that the priests
+establish 'stations' for confession. A certain house is selected, and
+all the old, infirm, and feeble ones come there to confess and hear
+Mass. The priest afterwards eats breakfast with the family; and there
+is great pride in this function, and great rivalry in the humble
+arrangements. Mrs. Odevaine often lends a linen cloth and flowers to
+one of her neighbours, she tells us; to another a knife and fork, or a
+silver teapot; and so on. This cabin was at the foot of a long hill, and
+the driver gave me permission to walk; so Francesca and I slipped down,
+I with a parcel which chanced to have in it some small purchases made
+at the last hotel. We asked if we might help a bit, and give a little
+teapot of Belleek ware and a linen doily trimmed with Irish lace. Both
+the articles were trumpery bits of souvenirs, but the old dame was
+inclined to think that the angels and saints had taken her in charge,
+and nothing could exceed her gratitude. She offered us a potato from
+the pot, a cup of tea or goat's milk, and a bunch of wildflowers from
+a cracked cup; and this last we accepted as we departed in a shower of
+blessings, the most interesting of them being, “May the Blessed Virgin
+twine your brow with roses when ye sit in the sates of glory!” and “The
+Lord be good to ye, and sind ye a duke for a husband!” We felt more than
+repaid for our impulsive interest, and as we disappeared from sight a
+last 'Bannact dea leat!' ['God's blessing be on your way!') was wafted
+to our ears.
+
+I seem to have known all these people before, and indeed I have met them
+between the covers of a book; for Connemara has one prophet, and her
+name is Jane Barlow. In how many of these wild bog-lands of Connaught
+have we seen a huddle of desolate cabins on a rocky hillside, turf
+stacks looking darkly at the doors, and empty black pots sitting on the
+thresholds, and fancied we have found Lisconnel! I should recognise
+Ody Rafferty, the widow M'Gurk, Mad Bell, old Mrs. Kilfoyle, or Stacey
+Doyne, if I met them face to face, just as I should know other real
+human creatures of a higher type,--Beatrix Esmond, Becky Sharp, Meg
+Merrilies, or Di Vernon.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIII. Beams and motes.
+
+     'Mud cabins swarm in
+      This place so charming,
+      With sailor garments
+        Hung out to dry;
+      And each abode is
+      Snug and commodious,
+      With pigs melodious
+        In their straw-built sty.'
+                       Father Prout.
+
+'“Did the Irish elves ever explain themselves to you, Red Rose?”
+
+'“I can't say that they did,” said the English Elf. “You can't call it
+an explanation to say that a thing has always been that way, just: or
+that a thing would be a heap more bother any other way.”'
+
+The west of Ireland is depressing, but it is very beautiful; at least
+if your taste includes an appreciation of what is wild, magnificent,
+and sombre. Oppressed you must be, even if you are an artist, by its
+bleakness and its dreariness, its lonely lakes reflecting a dull, grey
+sky, its desolate boglands, its solitary chapels, its wretched cabins
+perched on hillsides that are very wildernesses of rocks. But for cloud
+effects, for wonderful shadows, for fantastic and unbelievable sunsets,
+when the mountains are violet, the lakes silver with red flashes, the
+islets gold and crimson and purple, and the whole cloudy west in a
+flame, it is unsurpassed; only your standard of beauty must not be a
+velvet lawn studded with copper beeches, or a primary-hued landscape
+bathed in American sunshine. Connemara is austere and gloomy under a
+dull sky, but it has the poetic charm that belongs to all mystery,
+and its bare cliffs and ridges are delicately pencilled on a violet
+background, in a way peculiar to itself and enchantingly lovely.
+
+The waste of all God's gifts; the incredible poverty; the miserable
+huts, often without window or chimney; the sad-eyed women, sometimes
+nothing but 'skins, bones, and grief'; the wild, beautiful children,
+springing up like startled deer from behind piles of rocks or growths of
+underbrush; the stony little bits of earth which the peasants cling to
+with such passion, while good grasslands lie unused, yet seem for ever
+out of reach,--all this makes one dream, and wonder, and speculate, and
+hope against hope that the worst is over and a better day dawning. We
+passed within sight of a hill village without a single road to
+connect it with the outer world. The only supply of turf was on the
+mountain-top, and from thence it had to be brought, basket by basket,
+even in the snow. The only manure for such land is seaweed, and that
+must be carried from the shore to the tiny plats of sterile earth on the
+hillside. I remember it all, for I refused to buy a pair of stockings of
+a woman along the road. We had taken so many that my courage failed; but
+I saw her climbing the slopes patiently, wearily, a shawl over her white
+hair,--knitting, knitting, knitting, as she walked in the rain to her
+cabin somewhere behind the high hills. We never give to beggars in any
+case, but we buy whatever we can as we are able; and why did I draw the
+line at that particular pair of stockings, only to be haunted by that
+pathetic figure for the rest of my life? Beggars there are by the score,
+chiefly in the tourist districts; but it is only fair to add that there
+are hundreds of huts where it would be a dire insult to offer a penny
+for a glass of water, a sup of milk, or the shelter of a turf fire.
+
+As we drive along the road, we see, if the umbrellas can be closed for a
+half-hour, flocks of sheep grazing on the tops of the hills, where it is
+sunnier, where food is better and flies less numerous. Crystal streams
+and waterfalls are pouring down the hillsides to lose themselves in one
+of Connemara's many bays, and we have a glimpse of osmunda fern, golden
+green and beautiful. It was under a branch of this Osmunda regalis
+that the Irish princess lay hidden, they say, till she had evaded her
+pursuers. The blue turf smoke rises here and there,--now from a cabin
+with house-leek growing on the crumbling thatch, now from one whose roof
+is held on by ropes and stones,--and there is always a turf bog, stacks
+and stacks of the cut blocks, a woman in a gown of dark-red flannel
+resting for a moment, with the empty creel beside her, and a man cutting
+in the distance. After climbing the long hill beyond the 'station' we
+are rewarded by a glimpse of more fertile fields; the clumps of ragwort
+and purple loosestrife are reinforced with kingcups and lilies growing
+near the wayside, and the rare sight, first of a pot of geraniums in the
+window, and then of a garden all aglow with red fuchsias, torch plants,
+and huge dahlias, so cheers Veritas that he takes heart again. “This
+is something like home!” he exclaims breezily; whereupon Mr. Shamrock
+murmurs that if people find nothing to admire in a foreign country save
+what resembles their own, he wonders that they take the trouble to be
+travelling.
+
+“It is a darlin' year for the pitaties,” the drivers says; and there
+are plenty of them planted hereabouts, even in stony spots not worth
+a keenogue for anything else, for “pitaties doesn't require anny
+inTHRICKet farmin', you see, ma'am.”
+
+The clergyman remarks that only three things are required to make
+Ireland the most attractive country in the world: “Protestantism,
+cleanliness, and gardens”; and Mr. Shamrock, who is of course a Roman
+Catholic, answers this tactful speech in a way that surprises the
+speaker and keeps him silent for hours.
+
+The Birmingham cutler, who has a copy of Ismay's Children in his pocket,
+triumphantly reads aloud, at this moment, a remark put into the mouth of
+an Irish character: “The low Irish are quite destitute of all notion of
+beauty,--have not the remotest particle of artistic sentiment or taste;
+their cabins are exactly as they were six hundred years ago, for they
+never want to improve themselves.”
+
+Then Mr. Shamrock asserts that any show of prosperity on a tenant's
+part would only mean an advance of rent on the landlord's; and Mr. Rose
+retorts that while that might have been true in former times, it is
+utterly false to-day.
+
+Mrs. Shamrock, who is a natural apologist, pleads that the Irish gentry
+have the most beautiful gardens in the world and the greatest natural
+taste in gardening, and there must be some reason why the lower classes
+are so different in this respect. May it not be due partly to lack of
+ground, lack of money to spend on seeds and fertilisers, lack of all
+refining, civilising and educating influences? Mr. Shamrock adds that
+the dwellers in cabins cannot successfully train creepers against the
+walls or flowers in the dooryard, because of the goat, pig, donkey,
+ducks, hens, and chickens; and Veritas asks triumphantly, “Why don't you
+keep the pig in a sty, then?”
+
+The man with the evergreen heart (who has already been told this morning
+that I am happily married, Francesca engaged, Salemina a determined
+celibate, but Benella quite at liberty) peeps under Salemina's umbrella
+at this juncture, and says tenderly, “And what do you think about these
+vexed questions, dear madam?” Which gives her a chance to reply with
+some distinctness, “I shall not know what I think for several months to
+come; and at any rate there are various things more needed on this coach
+than opinions.”
+
+At this the Frenchman murmurs, “Ah, she has right!” and the Birmingham
+cutler says, “'Ear! 'ear!”
+
+On another day the parson began to tell the man with the evergreen heart
+some interesting things about America. He had never been there himself,
+but he had a cousin who had travelled extensively in that country,
+and had brought back much unusual information. “The Americans are an
+extraordinary people on the practical side,” he remarked; “but having
+said that, you have said all, for they are sordid, and absolutely devoid
+of ideality. Take an American at his roller-top desk, a telephone at one
+side and a typewriter at the other, talk to him of pork and dollars,
+and you have him at his very best. He always keeps on his Panama hat at
+business, and sits in a rocking-chair smoking a long cigar. The American
+woman wears a blue dress with a red lining, or a black dress with orange
+trimmings, showing a survival of African taste; while another exhibits
+the American-Indian type,--sallow, with high cheekbones. The manners of
+the servant classes are extraordinary. I believe they are called 'the
+help,' and they commonly sit in the drawing-room after the work is
+finished.”
+
+“You surprise me!” said Mrs. Shamrock.
+
+“It is indeed amazing,” he continued; “and there are other extraordinary
+customs, among them the habit of mixing ices with all beverages. They
+plunge ices into mugs of ale, beer, porter, lemonade, or Apollinaris,
+and sip the mixture with a long ladle at the chemist's counter, where it
+is usually served.”
+
+“You surprise me!” exclaimed the cutler.
+
+“You surprise me too!” I echoed in my inmost heart. Francesca would not
+have confined herself to that blameless mode of expression, you may be
+sure, and I was glad that she was on the back seat of the car. I did
+not know it at the time, but Veritas, who is a man of intelligence,
+had identified her as an American, and wishing to inform himself on all
+possible points, had asked her frankly why it was that the people of
+her nation gave him the impression of never being restful or quiet,
+but always so excessively and abnormally quick in motion and speech and
+thought.
+
+“Casual impressions are not worth anything,” she replied nonchalantly.
+“As a nation, you might sometimes give us the impression of being
+phlegmatic and slow-witted. Both ideas may have some basis of fact, yet
+not be absolutely true. We are not all abnormally quick in America. Look
+at our messenger boys, for example.”
+
+“We! Phlegmatic and slow-witted!” exclaimed Veritas. “You surprise me!
+And why do you not reward these government messengers for speed, and
+stimulate them in that way?”
+
+“We do,” Francesca answered; “that is the only way in which we ever get
+them to arrive anywhere--by rewarding and stimulating them at both ends
+of the journey, and sometimes, in extreme cases, at a halfway station.”
+
+“This is most interesting,” said Veritas, as he took out his damp
+notebook; “and perhaps you can tell me why your newspapers are so poorly
+edited, so cheap, so sensational?”
+
+“I confess I can't explain it,” she sighed, as if sorely puzzled. “Can
+it be that we have expended our strength on magazines, where you are so
+lamentably weak?”
+
+At this moment the rain began as if there had been a long drought
+and the sky had just determined to make up the deficiency. It fell in
+sheets, and the wind blew I know not how many Irish miles an hour.
+The Frenchman put on a silk macintosh with a cape, and was berated by
+everybody in the same seat because he stood up a moment and let the
+water in under the lap covers. His umbrella was a dainty en-tout-cas
+with a mother-of-pearl handle, that had answered well enough in heavy
+mist or soft drizzle. His hat of fine straw was tied with a neat cord
+to his buttonhole; but although that precaution insured its ultimate
+safety, it did not prevent its soaring from his head and descending on
+Mrs. Shamrock's bonnet. He conscientiously tried holding it on with one
+hand, but was then reproved by both neighbours because his macintosh
+dripped over them.
+
+“How are your spirits, Frenchy?” asked the cutler jocosely.
+
+“I am not too greatly sad,” said the poor gentleman, “but I will be
+glad it should be finished; far more joyfully would I be at Manchester,
+triste as it may be.”
+
+Just then a gust of wind blew his cape over his head and snapped his
+parasol.
+
+“It is evidently it has been made in Ireland,” he sighed, with a
+desperate attempt at gaiety. “It should have had a grosser stem,
+and helas! it must not be easy to have it mended in these barbarous
+veelages.”
+
+We stopped at four o'clock at a wayside hostelry, and I had quietly
+made up my mind to descend from the car, and take rooms for the night,
+whatever the place might be. Unfortunately, the same idea occurred to
+three or four of the soaked travellers; and as men could leap down,
+while ladies must wait for the steps, the chivalrous sex, their manners
+obscured by the circular tour system, secured the rooms, and I was
+obliged to ascend again, wetter than ever, to my perch beside the
+driver.
+
+“Can I get the box seat, do you think, if I pay extra for it?” I had
+asked one of the stablemen before breakfast.
+
+“You don't need to be payin', miss! Just confront the driver, and you'll
+get it aisy!” If, by the way, I had confronted him at the end instead of
+at the beginning of the journey, my charms certainly would not have
+been all-powerful, for my coat had been leaked upon by red and green
+umbrellas, my hat was a shapeless jelly, and my face imprinted with the
+spots from a drenched blue veil.
+
+After two hours more of this we reached the Shan Van Vocht Hotel, where
+we had engaged apartments; but we found to our consternation that it was
+full, and that we had been put in lodgings a half-mile away.
+
+Salemina, whose patience was quite exhausted by the discomforts of the
+day, groaned aloud when we were deposited at the door of a village shop,
+and ushered upstairs to our tiny quarters; but she ceased abruptly when
+she really took note of our surroundings. Everything was humble, but
+clean and shining--glass, crockery, bedding, floor, on the which we were
+dripping pools of water, while our landlady's daughter tried to make us
+more comfortable.
+
+“It's a soft night we're havin',” she said, in a dove's voice, “but
+we'll do right enough if the win' doesn't rise up on us.”
+
+Left to ourselves, we walked about the wee rooms on ever new and more
+joyful voyages of discovery. The curtains rolled up and down easily; the
+windows were propped upon nice clean sticks instead of tennis rackets
+and hearth brushes; there was a well-washed stone to keep the curtain
+down on the sill; and just outside were tiny window gardens, in each of
+which grew three marigolds and three asters, in a box fenced about with
+little green pickets. There were well-dusted books on the tables, and
+Francesca wanted to sit down immediately to The Charming Cora, reprinted
+from The Girl's Own Paper. Salemina meantime had tempted fate by looking
+under the bed, where she found the floor so exquisitely neat that she
+patted it affectionately with her hand.
+
+We had scarcely donned our dry clothing when the hotel proprietor sent a
+jaunting-car for our drive to the seven-o'clock table d'hote dinner. We
+carefully avoided our travelling companions that night, but learned the
+next morning that the Frenchman had slept on four chairs, and rejected
+the hotel coffee with the remark that it was not 'veritable'--a
+criticism in which he was quite justified. Our comparative Englishman
+had occupied a cot in a room where the tin bathtubs were kept. He was
+writing to The Times at the moment of telling me his woes, and, without
+seeing the letter, I could divine his impassioned advice never to travel
+in the west of Ireland in rainy weather. He remarked (as if quoting from
+his own communication) that the scenery was magnificent, but that there
+was an entirely insufficient supply of hot water; that the waiters had
+the appearance of being low comedians, and their service was of the
+character one might expect from that description; that he had been
+talking before breakfast with a German gentleman, who had sat on a
+wall opposite the village of Dugort, in the island of Achill, from six
+o'clock in the morning until nine, and in that time he had seen coming
+out of an Irish hut three geese, eight goslings, six hens, fifteen
+chickens, two pigs, two cows, two barefooted girls, the master of the
+house leading a horse, three small children carrying cloth bags filled
+with school-books, and finally a strapping mother leading a donkey
+loaded with peat-baskets; that all this poverty and ignorance and
+indolence and filth was spoiling his holiday; and finally, that if he
+should be as greatly disappointed in the fishing as he had been in the
+hotel accommodations--here we almost fainted from suspense--he should be
+obliged to go home! And not only that, but he should feel it his duty to
+warn others of what they might expect.
+
+“Perhaps you are justified,” said Francesca sympathetically. “People who
+are used to the dry, sunny climate and the clear atmosphere of London
+ought not to expose themselves to Irish rain without due consideration.”
+
+He agreed with her, glancing over his spectacles to see if she by any
+possibility could be amusing herself at his expense--good, old, fussy,
+fault-finding Veritas; but indeed Francesca's eyes were so soft and
+lovely and honest that the more he looked at her, the less he could do
+her the injustice of suspecting her sincerity.
+
+But mind you, although I would never confess it to Veritas, because he
+sees nothing but flaws on every side, the Irish pig is, to my taste, a
+trifle too much in the foreground. He pays the rent, no doubt; but
+this magnificent achievement could be managed from a sty in the rear,
+ungrateful as it might seem to immure so useful a personage behind a
+door or conceal his virtues from the public at large.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIV. Humours of the road.
+
+     'Cheerful at morn, he wakes from short repose,
+      Breasts the keen air, and carols as he goes.'
+                                       Oliver Goldsmith.
+
+If you drive from Clifden to Oughterard by way of Maam Cross, and then
+on to Galway, you will pass through the O'Flahertys' country, one of
+whom, Murrough O'Flaherty, was governor of this country of Iar (western)
+Connaught. You will like to see the last of the O'Flaherty yews,
+a thousand years old at least, and the ruins of the castle and
+banqueting-hall. The family glories are enumerated in ancient Irish
+manuscript, and instead of the butler, footman, chef, coachman, and
+gardener of to-day we read of the O'Flaherty physician, standard-bearer,
+brehon or judge, master of the revels, and keeper of the bees; and the
+moment Himself is rich enough, I intend to add some of these picturesque
+personages to our staff.
+
+We afterwards learned that there was formerly an inscription over the
+west gate of Galway:--
+
+     'From the fury of the O'Flaherties,
+        Good Lord, deliver us.'
+
+After Richard de Burgo took the town, in 1226, it became a flourishing
+English colony, and the citizens must have guarded themselves from
+any intercourse with the native Irish; at least, an old by-law of 1518
+enacts that 'neither O' nor Mac shalle strutte ne swaggere thro' the
+streetes of Galway.'
+
+We did not go to Galway straight, because we never do anything straight.
+We seldom get any reliable information, and never any inspiring
+suggestions, from the natives themselves. They are all patriotically
+sure that Ireland is the finest counthry in the world, God bless her!
+but in the matter of seeing that finest counthry in the easiest or best
+fashion they are all very vague. Indirectly, our own lack of geography,
+coupled with the ignorance of the people themselves, has been of the
+greatest service in enlivening our journeys. Francesca says that, in
+looking back, she finds that our errors of judgment have always resulted
+in our most charming and unforgettable experiences; but let no one who
+is travelling with a well-balanced and logical-minded man attempt to
+follow in our footsteps.
+
+Being as free as air on this occasion (if I except the dread of
+Benella's scorn, which descends upon us now and then, and moves us to
+repentance, sometimes even to better behaviour), we passed Porridgetown
+and Cloomore, and ferried across to the opposite side of Lough Corrib.
+Salemina, of course, had fixed upon Cong as our objective point, because
+of its caverns and archaeological remains, which Dr. La Touche tells her
+not on any account to miss. Francesca and I said nothing, but we had
+a very definite idea of avoiding Cong, and going nearer Tuam, to climb
+Knockma, the hill of the fairies, and explore their ancient haunts and
+archaeological remains, which are more in our line than the caverns of
+Cong.
+
+Speaking of Dr. La Touche reminds me that we have not the smallest
+notion as to how our middle-aged romance is progressing. Absence may,
+at this juncture, be just as helpful a force in its development as daily
+intercourse would be; for when one is past thirty, I fancy there is a
+deal of 'thinking-it-over' to do. Precious little there is when we are
+younger; heart does it all then, and never asks head's advice! But in
+too much delay there lies no plenty, and there's the danger. Actually,
+Francesca and I could be no more anxious to settle Salemina in life if
+she were lame, halt, blind, and homeless, instead of being attractive,
+charming, absurdly young for her age, and not without means. The
+difficulty is that she is one of those 'continent, persisting, immovable
+persons' whom Emerson describes as marked out for the blessing of the
+world. That quality always makes a man anxious. He fears that he may
+only get his rightful share of blessing, and he craves the whole output,
+so to speak.
+
+We naturally mention Dr. La Touche very often, since he is always
+writing to Salemina or to me, offering counsel and suggestion. Madame La
+Touche, the venerable aunt, has written also, asking us to visit them
+in Meath; but this invitation we have declined, principally because the
+Colquhouns will be with them, and they would surely be burdened by the
+addition of three ladies and a maid to their family; partly because we
+shall be freer in our own house, which will be as near the La Touche
+mansion as possible, you may be sure, if Francesca and I have anything
+to do with choosing it.
+
+The La Touche name, then, is often on our lips, but Salemina offers no
+intimation that it is indelibly imprinted on her heart of hearts. It
+is a good name to be written anywhere, and we fancied there was the
+slightest possible hint of pride and possession in Salemina's voice when
+she read to us to-night, from her third volume of Lecky's History of
+Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, a paragraph concerning one David La
+Touche, from whom Dr. Gerald is descended:--
+
+'In the last of the Irish Parliaments no less than five members of the
+name sat together in the House of Commons, and his family may claim what
+is in truth the highest honour of which an Irish family can boast,--that
+during many successive governments, and in a period of most lavish
+corruption, it possessed great parliamentary influence, and yet passed
+through political life untitled and unstained.'
+
+There is just the faintest gleam of hope, by the way, that Himself may
+join us at the very end of June, and he is sure to be helpful on this
+sentimental journey; he aided Ronald and Francesca more than once
+in their tempestuous love-affair, and if his wits are not dulled by
+marriage, as so often happens, he will be invaluable. It will not be
+long then, probably, before I assume my natural, my secondary position
+in the landscape of events. The junior partners are now, so to speak, on
+their legs, although it is idle to suppose that such brittle appendages
+will support them for any length of time. As soon as we return in the
+autumn I should like to advertise (if Himself will permit me) for a
+perfectly sound and kind junior partner,--one who has been well broken
+to harness, and who will neither shy nor balk, no matter what the
+provocation; the next step being to urge Himself to relinquish
+altogether the bondage of business care. There is no need of his
+continuing in it, since other people's business will always give him
+ample scope for his energies. He has, since his return to America,
+dispensed justice and mercy, chiefly mercy, to one embezzler, one honest
+fellow tempted beyond his strength, one widow, one unfortunate friend
+of his youth, and two orphans, and it was in no sense an extraordinary
+season.
+
+To return to notes of travel, our method of progression, since we
+deserted the high-road and the public car, has been strangely varied. I
+think there is no manner of steed or vehicle which has not been used by
+us, at one time or another, even to the arch donkey and the low-backed
+car with its truss of hay, like that of the immortal Peggy. I thought at
+first that 'arch' was an unusual adjective to apply to a donkey, but
+I find after all that it is abundantly expressive. Benella, who
+disapproves entirely of this casual sort of travelling, far from
+'answerable roads' and in 'backwards places' (Irish for 'behind the
+times'), is yet wonderfully successful in discovering equipages of some
+sort in unlikely spots.
+
+In towns of any size or pretensions, we find by the town cross or near
+the inn a motley collection of things on wheels, with drivers sometimes
+as sober as Father Mathew, sometimes not. Yesterday we had a mare which
+the driver confessed he bought without 'overcircumspectin' it,' and
+although you couldn't, as he said, 'extinguish her at first sight from a
+grand throtter, she hadn't rightly the speed you could wish.'
+
+“It's not so powerful young she is, melady!” he confessed. “You'd be
+afther lookin' at a chicken a long time and niver be reminded of her;
+but sure ye might thry her, for belike ye wouldn't fancy a horse that
+would be leppin' stone walls wid ye, like Dan Ryan's there! My little
+baste'll get ye to Rossan before night, and she won't hurt man nor
+mortial in doin' it.”
+
+“Begorra, you're right, nor herself nayther,” said Dan Ryan; “and if
+it's leppin' ye mane, sure she couldn't lep a sod o' turf, that
+mare couldn't! God pardon ye, melady, for thrustin' yerself to that
+paiceable, brindly-coloured ould hin, whin ye might be gettin' a dacint,
+high-steppin' horse for a shillin' or two more; an' belike I might
+contint meself to take less, for I wouldn't be extortin' ye like Barney
+O'Mara there!”
+
+Our chosen driver replied to this by saying that he wouldn't be caught
+dead at a pig fair with Dan Ryan's horse, but in the midst of all the
+distracting discussions and arguments that followed we held to
+our original bargain; for we did not like the look of Dan Ryan's
+high-stepper, who was a 'thrifle mounTAIny,' as they say in these parts,
+and had a wild eye to boot. We started, and in a half-hour we could
+still see the chapel spire of the little village we had just left. It
+was for once a beautiful day, but we felt that we must reach a railway
+station some time or other, in order to find a place to sleep.
+
+“Can't you make her go a bit faster? Do you want to keep us on the road
+all night?” inquired Francesca.
+
+“I do not, your ladyship's honour, ma'am.”
+
+“Is she tired, or doesn't she ever go any better?” urged Salemina.
+
+“She does; it's God's truth I'm tellin' ye, melady, she's that flippant
+sometimes that I scarcely can hould her, and the car jumps undher her
+like a spring bed.”
+
+“Then what on earth IS the matter with her?” I inquired, with some fire
+in my eye.
+
+“Sure I believe she's takin' time to think of the iligant load she's
+carryin', melady, and small blame to her!” said Mr. Barney O'Mara; and
+after that we let him drive as best he could, although it did take us
+four hours to do nine Irish miles. He came, did Mr. Barney, from County
+Armagh, and he beguiled the way with interesting tales from that
+section of Ireland, one of which, 'the Old Crow and the Young Crow,'
+particularly took our fancies.
+
+“An old crow was teaching a young crow one day, and says to him, 'Now,
+my son,' says he, 'listen to the advice I'm going to give you,' says he.
+'If you see a person coming near you and stooping, mind yourself, and be
+on your keeping; he's stooping for a stone to throw at you,' says he.
+
+“'But tell me,' says the young crow, 'what should I do if he had a stone
+already down in his pocket?' says he.
+
+“'Musha, go 'long out of that,' says the old crow, 'you've learned
+enough; the divil another learning I'm able to give you.'”
+
+He was a perfect honey-pot of useless and unreliable information, was
+Barney O'Mara, and most learned in fairy lore; but for that matter, all
+the people walking along the road, the drivers, the boatman and guides,
+the men and women in the cottages where we stop in a shower or to
+inquire the way, relate stories of phookas, leprehauns, and sprites,
+banshees and all the various classes of elves and fays, as simply and
+seriously as they would speak of any other occurrences. Barney told
+us gravely of the old woman who was in the habit of laying pishogues
+(charms) to break the legs of his neighbour's cattle, because of an
+ancient grudge she bore him; and also how necessary it is to put a bit
+of burning turf under the churn to prevent the phookas, or mischievous
+fairies, from abstracting the butter or spoiling the churning in any
+way. Irish fays seem to be much interested in dairy matters, for,
+besides the sprites who delight in distracting the cream and keeping
+back the butter (I wonder if a lazy up-and-down movement of the dasher
+invites them at all, at all?), it is well known that many a milkmaid
+on a May morning has seen fairy cows browsing along the banks of
+lakes,--cows that vanish into thin mist at the sound of human footfall.
+
+When we were quite cross at missing the noon train from Rossan, quite
+tired of the car's jolting, somewhat vexed even at the mare's continued
+enjoyment of her 'iligant load,' Barney appeased us all by singing, in
+a delightful, mellow voice, a fairy song called the 'Leprehaun,' [*] This
+personage, you must know, if you haven't a large acquaintance among
+Irish fairies, is a tricksy fellow in a green coat and scarlet cap, with
+brave shoe buckles on his wee brogues. You will catch him sometimes, if
+the 'glamour' is on you, under a burdock leaf or a thorn bush, and he
+is always making or mending a shoe. He commonly has a little purse about
+him, which, if you are quick enough, you can snatch; and a wonderful
+purse it is, for whatever you spend, there is always money to be found
+in it. Truth to tell, nobody has yet succeeded in being quicker than
+Master Leprehaun, though many have offered to fill his cruiskeen with
+'mountain dew,' of which Irish fairies are passionately fond.
+
+            * By Patrick W. Joyce.
+
+     'In a shady nook, one moonlight night,
+        A leprehaun I spied;
+      With scarlet cap and coat of green,
+        A cruiskeen by his side.
+      'Twas tick, tack, tick, his hammer went,
+        Upon a weeny shoe;
+      And I laughed to think of his purse of gold;
+        But the fairy was laughing too!
+
+      With tip-toe step and beating heart,
+        Quite softly I drew nigh:
+      There was mischief in his merry face,
+        A twinkle in his eye.
+      He hammered, and sang with tiny voice,
+        And drank his mountain dew;
+      And I laughed to think he was caught at last;
+        But the fairy was laughing too!
+
+      As quick as thought I seized the elf.
+        “Your fairy purse!” I cried.
+      “The purse!” he said--“'tis in her hand--
+        That lady at your side.”
+       I turned to look:  the elf was off.
+        Then what was I to do?
+      O, I laughed to think what a fool I'd been;
+        And the fairy was laughing too!'
+
+I cannot communicate any idea of the rollicking gaiety and quaint charm
+Barney gave to the tune, nor the light-hearted, irresistible chuckle
+with which he rendered the last two lines, giving a snap of his whip as
+accent to the long 'O':--
+
+     'O, I laughed to think what a fool I'd been;
+        And the fairy was laughing too!'
+
+After he had sung it twice through, Benella took my guitar from its case
+for me, and we sang it after him, again and again; so it was in happy
+fashion that we at least approached Ballyrossan, where we bade Barney
+O'Mara a cordial farewell, paying him four shillings over his fare,
+which was cheap indeed for the song.
+
+As we saw him vanish slowly up the road, ragged himself, the car and
+harness almost ready to drop to pieces, the mare, I am sure, in the
+last week of her existence, we were glad that he had his Celtic fancy to
+enliven his life a bit,--that fancy which seems a providential reaction
+against the cruel despotisms of fact.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXV. The wee folk.
+
+     'There sings a bonnie linnet
+        Up the heather glen;
+      The voice has magic in it
+        Too sweet for mortal men!
+      Sing O, the blooming heather,
+        O, the heather glen!
+      Where fairest fairies gather
+        To lure in mortal men.'
+
+                                Carrig-a-fooka Inn, near Knockma,
+                                   On the shores of Lough Corrib.
+
+A modern Irish poet [*] says something that Francesca has quoted to Ronald
+in her letter to-day, and we await from Scotland his confirmation or
+denial. He accuses the Scots of having discovered the fairies to be
+pagan and wicked, and of denouncing them from the pulpits, whereas Irish
+priests discuss with them the state of their souls; or at least they
+did, until it was decided that they had none, but would dry up like so
+much bright vapour at the last day. It was more in sadness than in anger
+that the priests announced this fiat; for Irish sprites and goblins do
+gay, graceful, and humorous things, for the most part, tricksy sins,
+not deserving annihilation, whereas Scottish fays are sometimes
+malevolent,--or so says the Irish poet.
+
+     * W. B. Yeats.
+
+This is very sad, no doubt, but it does not begin to be as sad as
+having no fairies at all. There must have been a few in England in
+Shakespeare's time, or he could never have written The Tempest or the
+Midsummer Night's Dream; but where have they vanished?
+
+As for us in America, I fear that we never have had any 'wee folk.' The
+Indians had their woodland spirits, spirits of rocks, trees, mountains,
+star and moon maidens; the negroes had their enchanted animals and
+conjure men; but as for real wee folk, either they were not indigenous
+to the soil or else we unconsciously drove them away. Yet we had
+facilities to offer! The columbines, harebells, and fringed gentians
+would have been just as cosy and secluded places to live in as the Irish
+foxgloves, which are simply running over with fairies. Perhaps they
+wouldn't have liked our cold winters; still it must have been something
+more than climate, and I am afraid I know the reason well--we are too
+sensible; and if there is anything a fairy detests, it is common-sense.
+We are too rich, also; and a second thing that a fairy abhors is the
+chink of dollars. Perhaps, when I am again enjoying the advantages
+brought about by sound money, commercial prosperity, and a magnificent
+system of public education, I shall feel differently about it; but for
+the moment I am just a bit embarrassed and crestfallen to belong to a
+nation absolutely shunned by the fairies. If they had only settled among
+us like other colonists, shaped us to their ends as far as they could,
+and, when they couldn't, conformed themselves to ours, there might have
+been, by this time, fairy trusts stretching out benign arms all over the
+continent.
+
+Of course it is an age of incredulity, but Salemina, Francesca, and I
+have not come to Ireland to scoff, and whatever we do we shall not go
+to the length of doubting the fairies; for, as Barney O'Mara says, 'they
+stand to raison.'
+
+Glen Ailna is a 'gentle' place near Carrig-a-fooka Inn--that is,
+one beloved by the sheehogues; and though you may be never so much
+interested, I may not tell you its exact whereabouts, since no one can
+ever find it unless he is himself under the glamour. Perhaps you might
+be a doubter, with no eyes for the 'dim kingdom'; perhaps you might gaze
+for ever, and never be able to see a red-capped fiddler, fiddling
+under a blossoming sloe bush. You might even see him, and then indulge
+yourself in a fit of common-sense or doubt of your own eyes, in which
+case the wee dancers would never flock to the sound of the fiddle or
+gather on the fairy ring. This is the reason that I shall never take you
+to Knockma, to Glen Ailna, or especially to the hyacinth wood, which is
+a little plantation near the ruin of a fort. Just why the fairies are so
+fond of an old rath or lis I cannot imagine, for you would never suppose
+that antiquaries, archaeologists, and wee folk would care for the same
+places.
+
+I have no intention of interviewing the grander personages among the
+Irish fairies, for they are known to be haughty, unapproachable, and
+severe, as befits the descendants of the great Nature Gods and the
+under-deities of flood and fell and angry sea. It is the lesser folk,
+the gay, gracious, little men that I wish to meet; those who pipe and
+dance on the fairy ring. The 'ring' is made, you know, by the tiny feet
+that have tripped for ages and ages, flying, dancing, circling, over the
+tender young grass. Rain cannot wash it away; you may walk over it; you
+may even plough up the soil, and replant it ever so many times; the
+next season the fairy ring shines in the grass just the same. It seems
+strange that I am blind to it, when an ignorant, dirty spalpeen who
+lives near the foot of Knockma has seen it and heard the fairy music
+again and again. He took me to the very place where, last Lammas Eve,
+he saw plainly--for there was a beautiful, white moon overhead--the
+arch king and queen of the fairies, who appear only on state occasions,
+together with a crowd of dancers, and more than a dozen pipers piping
+melodious music. Not only that, but (lucky little beggar!) he heard
+distinctly the fulparnee and the folpornee, the rap-lay-hoota and the
+roolya-boolya--noises indicative of the very jolliest and wildest and
+most uncommon form of fairy conviviality. Failing a glimpse of these
+midsummer revels, my next choice would be to see the Elf Horseman
+galloping round the shores of the Fairy Lough in the cool of the morn.
+
+     'Loughareema, Loughareema,
+        Stars come out and stars are hidin';
+      The wather whispers on the stones,
+        The flittherin' moths are free.
+      Onest before the mornin' light
+        The Horseman will come ridin'
+      Roun' an' roun' the Fairy Lough,
+        An' no one there to see.'
+
+But there will be some one there, and that is the aforesaid Jamesy
+Flanigan! Sometimes I think he is fibbing, but a glance at his soft,
+dark, far-seeing eyes under their fringe of thick lashes convinces me to
+the contrary. His field of vision is different from mine, that is all,
+and he fears that if I accompany him to the shores of the Fairy Lough
+the Horseman will not ride for him; so I am even taunted with undue
+common-sense by a little Irish gossoon.
+
+I tried to coax Benella to go with me to the hyacinth wood by moonlight.
+Fairies detest a crowd, and I ought to have gone alone; but, to tell
+the truth, I hardly dared, for they have a way of kidnapping attractive
+ladies and keeping them for years in the dim kingdom. I would not trust
+Himself at Glen Ailna for worlds, for gentlemen are not exempt from
+danger. Connla of the Golden Hair was lured away by a fairy maiden, and
+taken, in a 'gleaming, straight-gliding, strong, crystal canoe,' to her
+domain in the hills; and Oisin, you remember, was transported to the
+Land of the Ever Youthful by the beautiful Niam. If one could only be
+sure of coming back! but Oisin, for instance, was detained three hundred
+years, so one might not be allowed to return, and still worse, one
+might not wish to; three hundred years of youth would tempt--a woman!
+My opinion, after reading the Elf Errant, is that one of us has been
+there--Moira O'Neill. I should suspect her of being able to wear a fairy
+cap herself, were it not for the human heart-throb in her verses; but I
+am sure she has the glamour whenever she desires it, and hears the fairy
+pipes at will.
+
+Benella is of different stuff; she not only distrusts fairies, but, like
+the Scotch Presbyterians, she fears that they are wicked. “Still, you
+say they haven't got immortal souls to save, and I don't suppose they're
+responsible for their actions,” she allows; “but as for traipsing up to
+those heathenish, haunted woods when all Christian folks are in bed, I
+don't believe in it, and neither would Mr. Beresford; but if you're set
+on it, I shall go with you!”
+
+“You wouldn't be of the slightest use,” I answered severely; “indeed,
+you'd be worse than nobody. The fairies cannot endure doubters; it
+makes them fold their wings over their heads and shrink away into their
+flowercups. I should be mortified beyond words if a fairy should meet me
+in your company.”
+
+Benella seemed hurt and a trifle resentful as she replied: “That about
+doubters is just what Mrs. Kimberly used to say.” (Mrs. Kimberly is the
+Salem priestess, the originator of the 'science.') “She couldn't talk a
+mite if there was doubters in the hall; and it's so with spiritualists
+and clairvoyants, too--they're all of 'em scare-cats. I guess likely
+that those that's so afraid of being doubted has some good reason for
+it!”
+
+Well, I never went to the hyacinth wood by moonlight, since so many
+objections were raised, but I did go once at noonday, the very most
+unlikely hour of all the twenty-four, and yet--As I sat there beneath a
+gnarled thorn, weary and warm with my climb, I looked into the heart of
+a bluebell forest growing under a circle of gleaming silver birches,
+and suddenly I heard fairy music--at least it was not mortal--and many
+sounds were mingled in it: the sighing of birches, the carol of a lark,
+the leap and laugh of a silvery runnel tumbling down the hillside, the
+soft whir of butterflies' wings, and a sweet little over or under tone,
+from the over or under world, that I took to be the opening of a million
+hyacinth buds in the sunshine. Then I heard the delicious sound of
+a fairy laugh, and, looking under a swaying branch of meadowsweet, I
+saw--yes, I really saw--You must know that first a wee green door swung
+open in the stem of the meadowsweet, and out of that land where you can
+buy joy for a penny came a fairy in the usual red and green. I had the
+Elf Errant in my lap, and I think that in itself made him feel more at
+home with me, as well as the fact, perhaps, that for the moment I wasn't
+a bit sensible and had no money about me. I was all ready with an
+Irish salutation, for the purposes of further disarming his aversion. I
+intended to say, as prettily as possible, though, alas! I cannot manage
+the brogue, “And what way do I see you now?” or “Good-mornin' to yer
+honour's honour!” But I was struck dumb by my good fortune at seeing him
+at all. He looked at me once, and then, flinging up his arms, he gave a
+weeny, weeny yawn! This was disconcerting, for people almost never yawn
+in my company; and to make it worse, he kept on yawning, until, for very
+sympathy, and not at all in the way of revenge, I yawned too. Then the
+green door swung open again, and a gay rabble of wide-awake fairies came
+trooping out: and some of them kissed the hyacinth bells to open them,
+and some of them flew to the thorn-tree, until every little brancheen
+was white with flowers, where but a moment ago had been tightly-closed
+buds. The yawning fairy slept meanwhile under the swaying meadowsweet,
+and the butterflies fanned him with their soft wings; but, alas! it
+could not have been the hour for dancing on the fairy ring, nor the
+proper time for the fairy pipers, and long, long as I looked I saw and
+heard nothing more than what I have told you. Indeed, I presently lost
+even that, for a bee buzzed, a white petal dropped from the thorn-tree
+on my face, there was a scraping of tiny claws and the sound of two
+squirrels barking love to each other in the high branches, and in that
+moment the glamour that was upon me vanished in a twinkling.
+
+“But I really did see the fairies!” I exclaimed triumphantly to Benella
+the doubter, when I returned Carrig-a-fooka Inn, much too late for
+luncheon.
+
+“I want to know!” she exclaimed, in her New England vernacular. “I
+guess by the looks o' your eyes they didn't turn out to be very lively
+comp'ny!”
+
+
+
+Part Fifth--Royal Meath.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVI. Ireland's gold.
+
+     'I sat upon the rustic seat--
+        The seat an aged bay-tree crowns--
+      And saw outspreading from our feet
+        The golden glory of the Downs.
+      The furze-crowned heights, the glorious glen,
+        The white-walled chapel glistening near,
+      The house of God, the homes of men,
+        The fragrant hay, the ripening ear.'
+                              Denis Florence M'Carthy.
+
+                                    The Old Hall, Devorgilla,
+                                           Vale of the Boyne.
+
+We have now lived in each of Ireland's four provinces, Leinster,
+Munster, Ulster, and Connaught, but the confines of these provinces, and
+their number, have changed several times since the beginning of history.
+In A.D. 130 the Milesian monarchy was restored in the person of Tuathal
+(Too'hal) the Legitimate. Over each of the Irish provinces was a ri or
+king, and there was also over all Ireland an Ard-ri or supreme monarch
+who lived at Tara up to the time of its abandonment in the sixth
+century. Before Tuathal's day, the Ard-ri had for his land allowance
+only a small tract around Tara, but Tuathal cut off a portion from each
+of the four older provinces, at the Great Stone of Divisions in the
+centre of Ireland, making the fifth province of Royal Meath, which
+has since disappeared, but which was much larger than the present two
+counties of Meath and Westmeath. In this once famous, and now most
+lovely and fertile spot, with the good republican's love of royalty and
+royal institutions, we have settled ourselves; in the midst of verdant
+plains watered by the Boyne and the Blackwater, here rippling over
+shallows, there meandering in slow deep reaches between reedy banks.
+
+The Old Hall, from which I write, is somewhere in the vale of the Boyne,
+somewhere near Yellow Steeple, not so far from Treadagh, only a few
+miles from Ballybilly (I hope to be forgiven this irreverence to the
+glorious memory of his Majesty, William, Prince of Orange!), and within
+driving distance of Killkienan, Croagh-Patrick, Domteagh, and Tara Hill
+itself. If you know your Royal Meath, these geographical suggestions
+will give you some idea of our location; if not, take your map of
+Ireland, please (a thing nobody has near him), and find the town of
+Tuam, where you left us a little time ago. You will see a railway
+line from Tuam to Athenry, Athlone, and Mullingar. Anybody can
+visit Mullingar--it is for the million; but only the elect may go to
+Devorgilla. It is the captive of our bow and spear; or, to change the
+figure, it is a violet by a mossy stone, which we refuse to have plucked
+from its poetic solitude and worn in the bosom or in the buttonhole of
+the tourist.
+
+At Mullingar, then, we slip on enchanted garments which conceal us from
+the casual eye, and disappear into what is, in midsummer, a bower of
+beauty. There you will find, when you find us, Devorgilla, lovely enough
+to be Tir-nan-og, that Land of the Ever Youthful well know to the Celts
+of long ago. Here we have rested our weary bodies and purified our
+travel-stained minds. Fresh from the poverty-ridden hillsides of
+Connaught, these rich grazing-lands, comfortable houses, magnificent
+demesnes and castles, are unspeakably grateful to the eye and healing
+to the spirit. We have not forgotten, shall never forget, our Connemara
+folk, nor yet Omadhaun Pat and dark Timsy of Lisdara in the north; but
+it is good, for a change, to breathe in this sense of general comfort,
+good cheer, and abundance.
+
+Benella is radiant, for she is near enough to Trim to go there
+occasionally to seek for traces of her ancestress, Mary Boyce; and
+as for Salemina, this bit of country is a Mecca for antiquaries and
+scholars, and we are fairly surrounded by towers, tumuli, and cairns.
+“It's mostly ruins they do be wantin', these days,” said a wayside
+acquaintance. “I built a stone house for my donkey on the knockaun
+beyant my cabin just, and bedad, there's a crowd round it every Saturday
+callin' it the risidence of wan of the Danish kings! An' they are
+diggin' at Tara now, ma'am, looking for the Ark of the Covenant! They do
+be sayin' the prophet Jeremiah come over from England and brought it wid
+him. Begorra, it's a lucky man he was to get away wid it!”
+
+Added to these advantages of position, we are within a few miles of
+Rosnaree, Dr. La Touche's demesne, to which he comes home from Dublin
+to-morrow, bringing with him our dear Mr. and Mrs. Colquhoun of
+Ardnagreena. We have been here ourselves for ten days, and are flattered
+to think that we have used the time as unconventionally as we could
+well have done. We made a literary pilgrimage first, but that is another
+story, and I will only say that we had a day in Edgeworthstown and a
+drive through Goldsmith's country, where we saw the Deserted Village,
+with its mill and brook, the 'church that tops the neighbouring hill';
+and even rested under
+
+     'The hawthorn bush with seats beneath the shade
+      For talking age and whispering lovers made.'
+
+There are many parts of Ireland where one could not find a habitable
+house to rent, but in this locality they are numerous enough to make it
+possible to choose. We had driven over perhaps twenty square miles of
+country, with the view of selecting the most delectable spot that could
+be found, without going too far from Rosnaree. The chief trouble was
+that we always desired every dwelling that we saw. I tell you this with
+a view of lessening the shock when I confess that, before we came to the
+Old Hall where we are now settled for a month, and which was Salemina's
+choice, Francesca and I took two different houses, and lived in them for
+seven days, each in solitary splendour, like the Prince of Coolavin. It
+was not difficult to agree upon the district, we were of one mind there:
+the moment that we passed the town and drove along the flowery way that
+leads to Devorgilla, we knew that it was the road of destiny.
+
+The whitethorn is very late this year, and we found ourselves in the
+full glory of it. It is beautiful in all its stages, from the time when
+it first opens its buds, to the season when 'every spray is white with
+may, and blooms the eglantine.' There is no hint of green leaf visible
+then, and every tree is 'as white as snow of one night.' This is
+the Gaelic comparison, and the first snow seems especially white and
+dazzling, I suppose, when one sees it in the morning where were green
+fields the night before. The sloe, which is the blackthorn, comes
+still earlier and has fewer leaves. That is the tree of the old English
+song:--
+
+     'From the white-blossomed sloe
+      My dear Chloe requested
+        A sprig her fair breast to adorn.
+      “No, by Heav'ns!” I exclaimed, “may I perish,
+        If ever I plant in that bosom a thorn!”'
+
+And it is not only trees, but hedges and bushes and groves of hawthorn,
+for a white thorn bush is seldom if ever cut down here, lest a grieved
+and displeased fairy look up from the cloven trunk, and no Irishman
+could bear to meet the reproach of her eyes. Do not imagine, however,
+that we are all in white, like a bride: there is the pink hawthorn,
+and there are pink and white horse-chestnuts laden with flowers, yellow
+laburnums hanging over whitewashed farm-buildings, lilacs, and, most
+wonderful of all, the blaze of the yellow gorse. There will be a thorn
+hedge struggling with and conquering a grey stone wall; then a golden
+gorse bush struggling with and conquering the thorn; seeking the sun,
+it knows no restraints, and creeping through the barriers of green and
+white and grey, it fairly hurls its yellow splendours in great blazing
+patches along the wayside. In dazzling glory, in richness of colour,
+there is nothing in nature that we can compare with this loveliest and
+commonest of all wayside weeds. The gleaming wealth of the Klondike
+would make a poor showing beside a single Irish hedgerow; one would
+think that Mother Earth had stored in her bosom all the sunniest gleams
+of bygone summers, and was now giving them back to the sun king from
+whom she borrowed them.
+
+It was at twilight when we first swam this fragrant, golden
+sea--twilight, and the birds were singing in every bush; the thrushes
+and blackbirds in the blossoming cherry and chestnut-trees were so many
+and so tuneful that the chorus was sweet and strong beyond anything
+I ever heard. There had been a shower or two, of course; showers that
+looked like shimmering curtains of silver gauze, and whether they lifted
+or fell the birds went on singing.
+
+“I did not believe such a thing possible but it is lovelier than
+Pettybaw,” said Francesca; and just here we came in sight of a pink
+cottage cuddling on the breast of a hill. Pink the cottage was, as if
+it had been hewed out of a coral branch or the heart of a salmon;
+pink-washed were the stone walls and posts; pink even were the chimneys;
+a green lattice over the front was the only leaf in the bouquet.
+Wallflowers grew against the pink stone walls, and there is no beautiful
+word in any beautiful language that can describe the effect of
+that modest, rose-hued dwelling blushing against a background of
+heather-brown hills covered solidly with golden gorse bushes in full
+bloom. Himself and I have always agreed to spend our anniversaries with
+Mrs. Bobby at Comfort Cottage, in England, or at Bide-a-Wee, the 'wee,
+theekit hoosie' in the loaning at Pettybaw, for our little love-story
+was begun in the one and carried on in the other; but this, this, I
+thought instantly, must somehow be crowded into the scheme of red-letter
+days. And now we suddenly discovered something at once interesting and
+disconcerting--an American flag floating from a tree in the background.
+
+“The place is rented, then,” said Francesca, “to some enterprising
+American or some star-spangled Irishman who has succeeded in discovering
+Devorgilla before us. I well understand how the shade of Columbus must
+feel whenever Amerigo Vespucci's name is mentioned!”
+
+We sent the driver off to await our pleasure, and held a consultation by
+the wayside.
+
+“I shall call at any rate,” I announced; “any excuse will serve which
+brings me nearer to that adorable dwelling. I intend to be standing in
+that pink doorway, with that green lattice over my head, when Himself
+arrives in Devorgilla. I intend to end my days within those rosy walls,
+and to begin the process at the earliest possible moment.”
+
+Salemina disapproved, of course. Her method is always to stand well
+in the rear, trembling beforehand lest I should do something
+unconventional; then, later on, when things romantic begin to transpire,
+she says delightedly, “Wasn't that clever of us?”
+
+“An American flag,” I urged, “is a proclamation; indeed, it is, in a
+sense, an invitation; besides it is my duty to salute it in a foreign
+land!”
+
+“Patriotism, how many sins are practised in thy name!” said Salemina
+satirically. “Can't you salute your flag from the high-road?”
+
+“Not properly, Sally dear, nor satisfactorily. So you and Francesca sit
+down, timidly and respectably, under the safe shadow of the hedge, while
+I call upon the blooming family in the darling, blooming house. I am an
+American artist, lured to their door alike by devotion to my country's
+flag and love of the picturesque.” And so saying I ascended the path
+with some dignity and a false show of assurance.
+
+The circumstances did not chance to be precisely what I had expected.
+There was a nice girl tidying the kitchen, and I found no difficulty
+in making friends with her. Her mother owned the cottage, and rented
+it every season to a Belfast lady, who was coming in a week to take
+possession, as usual. The American flag had been floating in honour of
+her mother's brother, who had come over from Milwaukee to make them a
+little visit, and had just left that afternoon to sail from Liverpool.
+The rest of the family lived, during the three summer months, in a
+smaller house down the road; but she herself always stayed at the
+cottage, to 'mind' the Belfast lady's children.
+
+When I looked at the pink floor of the kitchen and the view from the
+windows, I would have given anything in the world to outbid, yes, even
+to obliterate the Belfast lady; but this, unfortunately, was not only
+illegal and immoral, but it was impossible. So, calling the mother in
+from the stables, I succeeded, after fifteen minutes' persuasion, in
+getting permission to occupy the house for one week, beginning with
+the next morning, and returned in triumph to my weary constituents, who
+thought it an insane idea.
+
+“Of course it is,” I responded cheerfully; “that is why it is going to
+be so altogether charming. Don't be envious; I will find something mad
+for you to do, too. One of us is always submitting to the will of the
+majority; now let us be as individually silly as we like for a week,
+and then take a long farewell of freakishness and freedom. Let the third
+volume die in lurid splendour, since there is never to be a fourth.”
+
+“There is still Wales,” suggested Francesca.
+
+“Too small, Fanny dear, and we could never pronounce the names. Besides,
+what sort of adventures would be possible to three--I mean, of course,
+two--persons tied down by marital responsibilities and family cares?
+Is it the sunset or the reflection of the pink house that is shining on
+your pink face, Salemina?”
+
+“I am extremely warm,” she replied haughtily.
+
+“I don't wonder; sitting on the damp grass under a hedge is so
+stimulating to the circulation!” observed 'young Miss Fan.'
+
+
+
+Chapter XXVII. The three chatelaines of Devorgilla.
+
+     'Have you been at Devorgilla,
+        Have you seen, at Devorgilla,
+      Beauty's train trip o'er the plain,--
+        The lovely maids of Devorgilla?'
+                         Adapted from Edward Lysaght.
+
+The next morning the Old Hall dropped like a ripe rowan berry into our
+very laps. The landlord of the Shamrock Inn directed us thither, and
+within the hour it belonged to us for the rest of the summer. Miss
+Peabody, inclined to be severe with me for my desertion, took up
+her residence at once. It had never been rented before; but Miss
+Llewellyn-Joyce, the owner, had suddenly determined to visit her sister
+in London, and was glad to find appreciative and careful tenants. She
+was taking her own maid with her, and thus only one servant remained, to
+be rented with the premises, as is frequently the Irish fashion. The Old
+Hall has not always been managed thus economically, it is easy to see,
+and Miss Llewellyn-Joyce speaks with the utmost candour of her poverty,
+as indeed the ruined Irish gentry always do. I well remember taking tea
+with a family in West Clare where in default of a spoon the old squire
+stirred his cup with the poker, a proceeding apparently so usual that he
+never thought of apologising for it as an oddity.
+
+The Hall has a lodge, which is a sort of miniature Round Tower, at the
+entrance gate, and we see nothing for it but to import a brass-buttoned
+boy from the nearest metropolis, where we must also send for a second
+maid.
+
+“That'll do when you get him,” objected Benella, “though boys need a lot
+of overseeing; but as nobody can get in or come out o' that gate without
+help, I shall have to go to the lodge every day now, and set down
+there with my sewin' from four to six in the afternoon, or whenever the
+callin' hours is. When I engaged with you, it wasn't for any particular
+kind of work; it was to make myself useful. I've been errand-boy and
+courier, golf-caddie and footman, beau, cook, land agent, and mother to
+you all, and I guess I can be a lodge-keeper as well as not.”
+
+Francesca had her choice of residing either with Salemina or with me,
+during our week of separation, and drove in my company to Rosaleen
+Cottage, to make up her mind. While she was standing at my gate, engaged
+in reflection, she espied a small cabin not far away, and walked toward
+it on a tour of investigation. It proved to have three tiny rooms--a
+bedroom, sitting-room, and kitchen. The rent was only two pounds a
+month, it is true, but it was in all respects the most unattractive,
+poverty-stricken, undesirable dwelling I ever saw. It was the small
+stove in the kitchen that kindled Francesca's imagination, and she made
+up her mind instantly to become a householder on her own account. I
+tried to dissuade her; but she is as firm as the Rock of Cashel when
+once she has set her heart upon anything.
+
+“I shall be almost your next-door neighbour, Penelope,” she coaxed, “and
+of course you will give me Benella. She will sleep in the sitting-room,
+and I will do the cooking. The landlady says there is no trouble
+about food. 'What to ate?' she inquired, leaning out sociably over the
+half-door. 'Sure it'll drive up to your very doore just.' And here is
+the 'wee grass,' as she calls it, where 'yous can take your tay' under
+the Japanese umbrella left by the last tenant. Think how unusual it will
+be for us to live in three different houses for a week; and 'there's
+luck in odd numbers, says Rory O'More.' We shall have the advantages of
+good society, too, when we are living apart, for I foresee entertainment
+after entertainment. We will give breakfasts, luncheons, teas, and
+dinners to one another; and meanwhile I shall have learned all the
+housewifely arts. Think, too, how much better you can paint with me out
+of your way!”
+
+“Does no thought of your eccentricity blight your young spirit, dear?”
+
+“Why should it when I have simply shaped my course by yours?”
+
+“But I am married, my child.”
+
+“And I'm 'going to be married, aha, Mamma!' as the song says; and what
+about Salemina, you haven't scolded her?”
+
+“She is living her very last days of single blessedness,” I rejoined;
+“she does not know it, but she is; and I want to give her all the
+freedom possible. Very well, dear innocent, live in your wee hut, then,
+if you can persuade Benella to stay with you; but I think there would
+best be no public visiting between you and those who live in Rosaleen
+Cottage and the Old Hall, as it might ruin their social position.”
+
+Benella confessed that she had not the heart to refuse Francesca
+anything. “She's too handsome,” she said, “and too winnin'. I s'pose
+she'll cook up some dreadful messes, but I'm willin' to eat 'em, to
+oblige her, and perhaps it'll save her husband a few spells of dyspepsy
+at the start; though, as far as my experience goes, ministers'll always
+eat anything that's set before 'em, and look over their shoulders for
+more.”
+
+We had a heavenly week of silliness, and by dint of concealing our real
+relations from the general public, I fancy we escaped harsh criticism.
+There is a very large percentage of lunacy anyway in Ireland, as well
+as great leniency of public opinion, and I fancy there is scarcely a
+country on the map in which one could be more foolish without being
+found out. Visit each other we did constantly, and candour obliges me to
+state that, though each of us secretly prided herself on the perfection
+of her cuisine, Miss Monroe gave the most successful afternoon tea of
+all, on the 'wee grass,' under the Japanese umbrella. How unexpectedly
+good were her scones, her tea-cakes, and her cress sandwiches, and how
+pretty and graceful and womanly she was, all flushed with pride at our
+envy and approbation! I did a water-colour sketch of her and sent it to
+Ronald, receiving in return a letter bubbling over with fond admiration
+and gratitude. She seems always in tone with the season and the
+landscape, does Francesca, and she arrives at it unconsciously, too.
+She glances out of her window at the yellow laburnum-tree when she
+is putting on her white frock, and it suggests to her all her amber
+trinkets and her drooping hat with the wreath of buttercups. When she
+came to my hawthorn luncheon at Rosaleen Cottage she did not make the
+mistake of heaping pink on pink, but wore a cotton gown of palest green,
+with a bunch of rosy blossoms at her belt. I painted her just as she
+stood under the hawthorn, with its fluttering petals and singing birds,
+calling the picture Grainne Mael [*]: A Vision of Erinn, writing under
+it the verse:--
+
+
+     'The thrushes seen in bushes green are singing loud--
+      Bid sadness go and gladness glow,--give welcome proud!
+      The Rover comes, the Lover, whom you long bewail,
+      O'er sunny seas, with honey breeze, to Grainne Mael.'
+
+     * Pronounced 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 gratitude.
+
+“I cannot understand, Penelope, why she was so disproportionately
+grateful, for I only gave her five shillings 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 shillings for the week.”
+
+All the rest of that day Francesca was angelic. She brought footstools
+for Salemina, wound wool for her, insisted upon washing 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 buttons 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 Button 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 Button 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 Peacock 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 Button 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 shining.'
+                           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 passes, 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 sunshine,
+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
+principal 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 assistance of the Button 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 cushions, 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 butter 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 circumstances 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 shining 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 shining.
+         .   .   .   .   .   .
+      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 space
+        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 pass 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 aptitudes. 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.
+Francesca's mind and mine are poorly furnished with facts of any sort;
+but when the kind scholars in our immediate neighbourhood furnish
+necessary information and inspiration, we promptly turn it into dramatic
+form, and serve it up before their wondering and admiring gaze. It
+is ever our habit to 'make believe' with the children; and just as
+we played ballads in Scotland and plotted revels in the Glen at
+Rowardennan, so we instinctively fall into the habit of thought and
+speech that surrounds us here.
+
+This delights our grave and reverend signiors, and they give themselves
+up to our whimsicalities with the most whole-hearted zeal. It is days
+since we have spoken of one another by those names which were given to
+us in baptism. Francesca is Finola the Festive. Eveleen Colquhoun is
+Ethnea. I am the harper, Pearla the Melodious. Miss Peabody is Sheela
+the Skilful Scribe, who keeps for posterity a record of all our antics,
+in the Speckled Book of Salemina. Dr. Gerald is Borba the Proud, the
+Ard-ri or overking. Mr. Colquhoun is really called Dermod, but he would
+have been far too modest to choose Dermot O'Dyna for his Celtic
+name, had we not insisted; for this historic personage was not only
+noble-minded, generous, of untarnished honour, and the bravest of the
+brave, but he was as handsome as he was gallant, and so much the idol of
+the ladies that he was sometimes called Dermat-na-man, or Dermot of the
+women.
+
+Of course we have a corps of shanachies, or story-tellers, gleemen,
+gossipreds, leeches, druids, gallowglasses, bards, ollaves, urraghts,
+and brehons; but the children can always be shifted from one role to
+another, and Benella and the Button Boy, although they are quite unaware
+of the honours conferred upon them, are often alluded to in our romances
+and theatrical productions.
+
+Aunt David's garden is not a half bad substitute for the old Moy-Mell,
+the plain of pleasure of the ancient Irish, when once you have the key
+to its treasures. We have made a new and authoritative survey of its
+geographical features and compiled a list of its legendary landmarks,
+which, strangely enough, seem to have been absolutely unknown to Miss
+Llewellyn-Joyce.
+
+In the very centre is the Forradh, or Place of Meeting, and on it is our
+own Lia Fail, Stone of Destiny. The one in Westminster Abbey, carried
+away from Scotland by Edward I., is thought by many scholars to be
+unauthentic, and we hope that ours may prove to have some historical
+value. The only test of a Stone of Destiny, as I understand it, is that
+it shall 'roar' when an Irish monarch is inaugurated; and that our Lia
+Fail was silent when we celebrated this impressive ceremony reflects
+less upon its own powers, perhaps, than upon the pedigree of our chosen
+Ard-ri.
+
+The arbour under the mountain ash is the Fairy Palace of the Quicken
+Tree, and on its walls is suspended the Horn of Foreknowledge, which if
+any one looks on it in the morning, fasting, he will know in a moment
+all things that are to happen during that day.
+
+The clump of willows is the Wood of the Many Sallows (a willow-tree is
+familiarly known as a 'sally' in Ireland). Do you know Yeats's song, put
+to a quaint old Irish air?
+
+     'Down by the sally gardens my love and I did meet,
+      She passed the sally gardens with little snow-white feet.
+      She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree,
+      But I, being young and foolish, with her did not agree.'
+
+The summer-house is the Greenan; that is, grianan, a bright, sunny
+place. On the arm of a tree in the Greenan hangs something you might (if
+you are dull) mistake for a plaited garland of rushes hung with pierced
+pennies; but it really is our Chain of Silence, a useful article
+of bygone ages, which the lord of a mansion shook when he wished
+an attentive hearing, and which deserved a better fate and a longer
+survival than it has met. Jackeen's Irish terrier is Bran,--though
+he does not closely resemble the great Finn's sweet-voiced,
+gracefully-shaped, long-snouted hound; the coracle lying on the shore of
+the little lough--the coracle made of skin, like the old Irish boats--is
+the Wave-Sweeper; and the faithful mare that we hire by the day is, by
+your leave, Enbarr of the Flowing Mane. No warrior was ever killed on
+the back of this famous steed, for she was as swift as the clear, cold
+wind of spring, travelling with equal ease and speed on land and sea,
+an' may the divil fly away wid me if that same's not true.
+
+We no longer find any difficulty in remembering all this nomenclature,
+for we are 'under gesa' to use no other. When you are put under gesa to
+reveal or to conceal, to defend or to avenge, it is a sort of charm or
+spell; also an obligation of honour. Finola is under gesa not to write
+to Alba more than six times a week and twice on Sundays; Sheela is bound
+by the same charm to give us muffins for afternoon tea; I am vowed to
+forget my husband when I am relating romances, and allude to myself, for
+dramatic purposes, as a maiden princess, or a maiden of enchanting and
+all-conquering beauty. And if we fail to abide by all these laws of the
+modern Dedannans of Devorgilla, which are written in the Speckled Book
+of Salemina, we are to pay eric-fine. These fines are collected with all
+possible solemnity, and the children delight in them to such an extent
+that occasionally they break the law for the joy of the penalty. If you
+have ever read the Fate of the Children of Turenn, you remember that
+they were to pay to Luga the following eric-fine for the slaying of
+their father, Kian: two steeds and a chariot, seven pigs, a hound whelp,
+a cooking-spit, and three shouts on a hill. This does not at first seem
+excessive, if Kian were a good father, and sincerely mourned; but when
+Luga began to explain the hidden snares that lay in the pathway, it is
+small wonder that the sons of Turenn felt doubt of ever being able to
+pay it, and that when, after surmounting all the previous obstacles,
+they at last raised three feeble shouts on Midkena's Hill, they
+immediately gave up the ghost.
+
+The story told yesterday by Sheela the Scribe was the Magic Thread-Clue,
+or the Pursuit of the Gilla Dacker, Benella and the Button Boy being the
+chief characters; Finola's was the Voyage of the Children of Corr the
+Swift-Footed (the Ard-ri's pseudonym for American travellers); while
+mine, to be told to-morrow, is called the Quest of the Fair Strangers,
+or the Fairy Quicken Tree of Devorgilla.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXX. The Quest of the Fair Strangers,
+or The Fairy Quicken-Tree of Devorgilla. [*]
+
+           'Before the King
+            The bards will sing.
+      And there recall the stories all
+        That give renown to Ireland.'
+                      Eighteenth Century Song.
+                        Englished by George Sigerson.
+
+     * It seems probable that this tale records a real incident
+     which took place in Aunt David's garden. Penelope has
+     apparently listened with such attention to the old Celtic
+     romances as told by the Ard-ri and Dermot O'Dyna that she
+     has, consciously or unconsciously, reproduced something of
+     their atmosphere and phraseology. The delightful surprise at
+     the end must have been contrived by Salemina, when she, in
+     her character of Sheela the Scribe, gazed into the Horn of
+     Foreknowledge and learned the events that were to happen
+     that day.--K.D.W.
+
+                  PEARLA'S STORY.
+
+Three maidens once dwelt in a castle in that part of the Isle of Weeping
+known as the cantred of Devorgilla, Devorgilla of the Green Hill Slopes;
+and they were baptized according to druidical rites as Sheela the
+Scribe, Finola the Festive, and Pearla the Melodious, though by the
+dwellers in that land they were called the Fair Strangers, or the
+Children of Corr the Swift-Footed.
+
+This cantred of Devorgilla they acquired by paying rent and tribute to
+the Wise Woman of Wales, who granted them to fish in its crystal streams
+and to hunt over the green-sided hills, to roam through the woods of
+yew-trees and to pluck the flowers of every hue that were laughing all
+over the plains.
+
+Thus were they circumstanced: Their palace of abode was never without
+three shouts in it,--the shout of the maidens brewing tea, the shout of
+the guests drinking it, and the shout of the assembled multitude playing
+at their games. The same house was never without three measures,--a
+measure of magic malt for raising the spirits, a measure of Attic salt
+for the seasoning of tales, and a measure of poppy leaves to induce
+sleep when the tales were dull.
+
+And the manner of their lives was this: In the cool of the morning they
+gathered nuts and arbutus apples and scarlet quicken berries to take
+back with them to Tir-thar-toinn, the Country beyond the Wave; for this
+was the land of their birth. When the sun was high in the east they went
+forth to the chase; sometimes it was to hunt the Ard-ri, and at others
+it was in pursuit of Dermot of the Bright Face. Then, after resting
+awhile on their couches of soft rushes, they would perform champion
+feats, or play on their harps, or fish in their clear-flowing streams
+that were swimming with salmon.
+
+The manner of their fishing was this: to cut a long, straight
+sallow-tree rod, and having fastened a hook and one of Finola's hairs
+upon it, to put a quicken-tree berry upon the hook, and stand on
+the brink of the swift-flowing river, whence they drew out the
+shining-skinned, silver-sided salmon. These they would straightway broil
+over a little fire of birch boughs; and they needed with them no other
+food but the magical loaf made by Toma, one of their house-servants. The
+witch hag that dwelt on that hillside of Rosnaree called Fan-na-carpat,
+or the Slope of the Chariots, had cast a druidical spell over Toma,
+by which she was able to knead a loaf that would last twenty days and
+twenty nights, and one mouthful of which would satisfy hunger for that
+length of time. [**]
+
+     ** Fact.
+
+Not far from the mayden castle was a certain royal palace, with a
+glittering roof, and the name of the palace was Rosnaree. And upon the
+level green in front of the regal abode, or in the banqueting-halls,
+might always be seen noble companies of knights and ladies bright,--some
+feasting, some playing at the chess, some giving ear to the music of
+their own harps, some continually shaking the Chain of Silence, and some
+listening to the poems and tales of heroes of the olden time that were
+told by the king's bards and shanachies.
+
+Now all went happily with the Fair Strangers until the crimson berries
+were ripening on the quicken-tree near the Fairy Palace. For the berries
+possessed secret virtues known only to a man of the Dedannans, and
+learned from him by Sheela the Scribe, who put him under gesa not to
+reveal the charm to any one else. Whosoever ate of the honey-sweet,
+scarlet-glowing fruit felt a cheerful flow of spirits, as if he had
+tasted wine or mead, and whosoever ate a sufficient number of them
+was almost certain to grow younger. These things were written in the
+Speckled Book of Salemina, but in druidical ink, undecipherable to all
+eyes but those of the Scribe herself.
+
+So, wishing that none should possess the secret but themselves, the Fair
+Strangers set the Gilla Dacker+ to watch the fruit (putting him first
+under gesa to eat none of the berries himself, since he was already
+too cheerful and too young to be of much service); and thus, in their
+absence, the magical tree was never left alone.
+
+     +Could be freely translated as the Slothful Button Boy.
+
+Nevertheless, when Finola the Festive went forth to the chase one day,
+she found a quicken berry glowing like a ruby in the highroad, and
+Sheela plucked a second from under a gnarled thorn on the Slope of the
+Chariots, and Pearla discovered a third in the curiously-compounded,
+swiftly-satisfying loaf of Toma. Then the Fair Strangers became very
+angry, and sent out their trusty fleet-footed couriers to scour the land
+for the invaders; for they knew that none of the Dedannans would take
+the berries, being under gesa not to do so. But the couriers returned,
+and though they were men able to trace the trail of a fox through nine
+glens and nine rivers, they could discover no proof of the presence of a
+foreign foe in the mayden cantred of Devorgilla.
+
+Then the hearts of the Fair Strangers were filled with grief and gall,
+for they distrusted the couriers, and having consulted the Ard-ri, they
+set forth themselves to find and conquer the invader; for the king told
+them that there was one other quicken-tree, more beautiful and more
+magical than that growing by the Fairy Palace, and that it was set in
+another part of the bright-blooming, sweet-scented old garden,--namely,
+in the heart of the labyrinthine maze of the Wise Woman of Wales; but as
+no one of them, neither the Gilla Dacker nor those who pursued him, had
+ever, even with the aid of the Magic Thread-Clue, reached the heart of
+the maze, there was no knowledge among them of the second quicken-tree.
+The king also told Sheela the Scribe, secretly, that one of his knights
+had found a money-piece and a breviary in the forest of Rosnaree; and
+the silver was unlike any ever used in the country of the Dedannans, and
+the breviary could belong only to a pious Gael known as Loskenn of the
+Bare Knees.
+
+Now Sheela the Scribe, having fasted from midnight until dawn, gazed
+upon the Horn of Foreknowledge, and read there that it was wiser for her
+to remain on guard at the Fairy Palace, while her sisters explored the
+secret fastnesses of the labyrinth.
+
+When Finola was apparelled to set forth upon her quest, Pearla thought
+her the loveliest maiden upon the ridge of the world, and wondered
+whether she meant to conquer the invader by force of arms or by the
+power of beauty.
+
+The rose and the lily were fighting together in her face, and one could
+not tell which of them got the victory. Her arms and hands were like the
+lime, her mouth was as red as a ripe strawberry, her foot as small and
+as light as another one's hand, her form smooth and slender, and her
+hair falling down from her head under combs of gold.++ One could not
+look at her without being 'all over in love with her,' as Oisin said at
+his first meeting with Niam of the Golden Hair. And as for Pearla, the
+rose on her cheeks was heightened by her rage against the invader,
+the delicate blossom of the sloe was not whiter than her neck, and her
+glossy chestnut ringlets fell to her waist.
+
+     ++ Description of the Princess in Guleesh na Guss Dhu.
+
+Then the Gilla Dacker unleashed Bran, the keen-scented terrier hound,
+and put a pearl-embroidered pillion on Enbarr of the Flowing Mane, and
+the two dauntless maidens leaped upon her back, each bearing a broad
+shield and a long polished, death-dealing spear. When Enbarr had been
+given a free rein she set out for the labyrinth, trailing the Magic
+Thread-Clue behind her, cleaving the air with long, active strides;
+and if you know what the speed of a swallow is, flying across a
+mountain-side, or the dry wind of a March day sweeping over the plains,
+then you can understand nothing of the swiftness of this steed of the
+flowing mane, acquired by the day by the maydens of Devorgilla.
+
+Many were the dangers that beset the path of these two noble champions
+on their quest for the Fairy Quicken Tree. Here they met an enormous
+white stoat, but this was slain by the intrepid Bran, and they buried
+its bleeding corse and raised a cairn over it, with the name 'Stoat'
+graven on it in Ogam; there a druidical fairy mist sprang up in
+their path to hide the way, but they pierced it with a note of their
+far-reaching, clarion-toned voices,--an art learned in their native land
+beyond the wave.
+
+Now the dog Bran, being unhungered, and refusing to eat of Toma's loaf,
+as all did who were ignorant of its druidical purpose, fell upon the
+Magic Thread-Clue and tore it in twain. This so greatly affrighted the
+champions that they sounded the Dord-Fian slowly and plaintively, hoping
+that the war-cry might bring Sheela to their rescue. This availing
+nothing, Finola was forced to slay Bran with her straight-sided,
+silver-shining spear; but this she felt he would not mind if he could
+know that he would share the splendid fate of the stoat, and speedily
+have a cairn raised over him, with the word 'Bran' graven upon it in
+Ogam,--since this is the consolation offered by the victorious living to
+all dead Celtic heroes; and if it be a poor substitute for life, it is
+at least better than nothing.
+
+It was now many hours after noon, and though to the Fair Strangers it
+seemed they had travelled more than forty or a hundred miles, they were
+apparently no nearer than ever to the heart of the labyrinth: and this
+from the first had been the pestiferous peculiarity of that malignantly
+meandering maze. So they dismounted, and tied Enbarr to the branch of
+a tree, while they refreshed themselves with a mouthful of Toma's loaf;
+and Finola now put her thumb under her 'tooth of knowledge,' for she
+wished new guidance and inspiration, and, being more than common modest,
+she said: “Inasmuch as we are fairer than all the other maydens in this
+labyrinth, why, since we cannot find the heart of the maze, do we not
+entice the invaders from their hiding-place by the quicken-tree; and
+when we see from what direction they advance, fall upon and slay them;
+and after raising the usual cairn to their memory, and carving their
+names over it in the customary Ogam, run to the enchanted tree and
+gather all the berries that are left? For this is the hour when Sheela
+brews the tea, and the knights and the ladies quaff it from our golden
+cups; and truly I am weary of this quest, and far rather would I be
+there than here.”
+
+So Pearla the Melodious took her timpan, and chanted a Gaelic song
+that she had learned in the country of the Dedannans; and presently a
+round-polished, red-gleaming quicken berry dropped into her lap, and
+another into Finola's, and, looking up, they saw nought save only a
+cloud of quicken berries falling through the air one after the other.
+And this caused them to wonder, for it seemed like unto a snare set for
+them; but Pearla said, “There is nought remaining for us but to meet the
+danger.”
+
+“It is well,” replied Finola, shaking down the mantle of her ebon locks,
+and setting the golden combs more firmly in them; “only, if I perish,
+I prithee let there be no cairns or Ogams. Let me fall, as a beauty
+should, face upward; and if it be but a swoon, and the invader be a
+handsome prince, see that he wakens me in his own good way.”
+
+“To arms, then!” cried Pearla, and, taking up their spears and shields,
+the Fair Strangers dashed blindly in the direction whence the berries
+fell.
+
+“To arms indeed, but to yours or ours?” called two voices from the heart
+of the labyrinth; and there, in an instant, the two brave champions,
+Finola and Pearla, found the Fairy Tree hanging thick with scarlet
+berries, and under its branches, fit fruit indeed to raise the spirits
+or bring eternal youth, were, in the language of the Dedannans, Loskenn
+of the Bare Knees and the Bishop of Ossory,--known to the Children of
+Corr the Swift-Footed as Ronald Macdonald and Himself!
+
+And the hours ran on; and Sheela the Scribe brewed and brewed and brewed
+and brewed the tea at her table in the Peacock Walk, and the knights and
+ladies quaffed it from the golden cups belonging to the Wise Woman of
+Wales; but Finola the Festive and Pearla the Melodious lingered in the
+labyrinth with Loskenn of the Bare Knees and the Bishop of Ossory. And
+they said to one another, “Surely, if it were so great a task to find
+the heart of this maze, we should be mad to stir from the spot, lest we
+lose it again.”
+
+And Pearla murmured, “That plan were wise indeed, save that the place
+seemeth all too small for so many.”
+
+Then Finola drew herself up proudly, and replied, “It is no smaller for
+one than for another; but come, Loskenn, let us see if haply we can lose
+ourselves in some path of our own finding.”
+
+And this they did; and the content of them that departed was no greater
+than the content of them that were left behind, and the sun hid himself
+for very shame because the brightness of their joy was so much more
+dazzling than the glory of his own face. And nothing more is told of
+what befell them till they reached the threshold of the Old Hall; and it
+was not the sun, but the moon, that shone upon their meeting with Sheela
+the Scribe.
+
+
+
+Chapter XXXI. Good-bye, dark Rosaleen.
+
+     'When the poor exiles, every pleasure past,
+      Hung round the bowers, and fondly looked their last,
+      And took a long farewell, and wished in vain
+      For seats like these beyond the western main,
+      And shuddering still to face the distant deep,
+      Returned and wept, and still returned to weep.'
+                                   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 hardships 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 ambassador, 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 shell 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
+assistance 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 brimming 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 companionship
+and oneness with Nature, a fresh joy in all her bounteous resource
+and plenitude of life, a renewed sense of kinship 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 ennobling glimpses of the unattainable, my
+companionship 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, transmuted, 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
+balustrades 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 sunshine 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 grasses.
+
+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 compassion, 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 shores; 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
+shore! 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 XXXII. '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 god, 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 lustrous 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 passengers 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 embarrassments. 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 wishing 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 brass
+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 polishing brasses, and behind a high screen or
+temporary partition 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?”
+
+It takes more than one year of marriage for even the cleverest Benedict
+to uproot those weeds of stupidity, denseness, and non-comprehension
+that seem to grow so riotously in the mental garden of the bachelor;
+so, said Himself, “We came all together; why shouldn't we go home all
+together?” (So like a man! Always reasoning from analogy; always, so to
+speak, 'lugging in' logic!)
+
+“Desperate situations demand desperate remedies,” I replied
+mysteriously, though I hope patiently. “If you go home at once without
+any questions, you will be virtuous, and it is more than likely that you
+will also be happy; and if you are not, somebody else will be.”
+
+Having seen the backs of our two cavaliers disappearing meekly into the
+rain, I stationed Francesca at a point of vantage, and went out to my
+victims in the front pew.
+
+“The others went on ahead,” I explained, with elaborate
+carelessness--“they wanted to drive by Dublin Castle; and we are going
+to follow as we like. For my part, I am tired, and you are looking pale,
+Salemina; I am sure your ankle is painful. Help her, Dr. Gerald, please;
+she is so proud and self-reliant that she won't even lean on any one's
+arm, if she can avoid it. Take her down the middle aisle, for I've sent
+your car to that door” (this was the last of a series of happy thoughts
+on my part). “I'll go and tell Francesca, who is flirting with the
+organist. She has an appointment at the tailor's; so I will drop her
+there, and join you at the hotel in a few minutes.”
+
+The refractory pair of innocent, middle-aged lovers started, arm in
+arm, on what I ardently hoped would be an eventful walk together. It
+was from, instead of toward the altar, to be sure, but I was certain
+it would finally lead them to it, notwithstanding the unusual method of
+approach. I gave Francesca the signal, and then, disappearing behind the
+screen, I held her hand in a palpitation of nervous apprehension that I
+had scarcely felt when Himself first asked me to be his.
+
+The young organist, blushing to the roots of his hair, trembling with
+responsibility, smiling at the humour of the thing, pulled out all the
+stops, and the Wedding March pealed through the cathedral, the splendid
+joy and swing and triumph of it echoing through the vaulted aisles in a
+way that positively incited one to bigamy.
+
+“We may regard the matter as settled now,” whispered Francesca
+comfortably. “Anybody would ask anybody else to marry him, whether he
+was in love with her or not. If it weren't so beautiful and so touching,
+wouldn't it be amusing? Isn't the organist a darling, and doesn't he
+enter into the spirit of it? See him shaking with sympathetic
+laughter, and yet he never lets a smile creep into the music; it is all
+earnestness and majesty. May I peep now and see how they are getting
+on?”
+
+“Certainly not! What are you thinking of, Francesca? Our only
+justification in this whole matter is that we are absolutely serious
+about it. We shall say good-bye to the organist, wring his hand
+gratefully, and steal with him through the little door. Then in a
+half-hour we shall know the worst or the best; and we must remember
+to send him cards and a marked copy of the newspaper containing the
+marriage notice.”
+
+Salemina told me all about it that night, but she never suspected the
+interference of any deus ex machina save that of the traditional God of
+Love, who, it seems to me, has not kept up with the requirements of the
+age in all respects, and leaves a good deal for us women to do nowadays.
+
+“Would that you had come up this aisle to meet me, Salemina, and that
+you were walking down again as my wife!” This was what Dr. Gerald had
+surprised her by saying, when the wedding music had finally entered
+into his soul, driving away for the moment his doubt and fear and
+self-distrust; and I can well believe that the hopelessness of his tone
+stirred her tender heart to its very depths.
+
+“What did you answer?” I asked breathlessly, on the impulse of the
+moment.
+
+We were talking by the light of a single candle. Salemina turned her
+head a little aside, but there was a look on her face that repaid me for
+all my labour and anxiety, a look in which her forty years melted away
+and became as twenty, a look that was the outward and visible expression
+of the inward and spiritual youth that has always been hers; then she
+replied simply--“I told him what is true: that my life had been one long
+coming to meet him, and that I was quite ready to walk with him to the
+end of the world.”
+
+                   .    .    .    .    .    .
+
+I left her to her thoughts, which I well knew were more precious than my
+words, and went across the hall, where Benella was packing Francesca's
+last purchases. Ordinarily one of us manages to superintend such
+operations, as the Derelict's principal aim is to make two garments go
+where only one went before. Nature in her wildest moments never abhorred
+a vacuum in her dominion as Miss Dusenberry resents it in a trunk.
+
+“Benella,” I said, in that mysterious whisper which one uses for such
+communications, “Dr. La Touche has asked Miss Peabody to marry him, and
+she has consented.”
+
+“It was full time!” the Derelict responded, with a deep sigh of relief,
+“but better late than never! Men folks are so queer, I don't hardly know
+how a merciful Providence ever came to invent 'em! Either they're so
+bold they'd propose to the Queen o' Sheba without mindin' it a mite,
+or else they're such scare-cats you 'bout have to ask 'em yourself, and
+then lug 'em to the minister's afterwards--there don't seem to be no
+halfway with 'em. Well, I'm glad you're all settled; it must be nice to
+have folks!”
+
+It was a pathetic little phrase, and I fancied I detected a tear in
+her usually cheerful and decided voice. Acting on the suspicion, I said
+hurriedly, “You have already had a share of Miss Monroe's 'folks' and
+mine offered you, and now Miss Peabody will be sure to add hers to the
+number. Your only difficulty will be to attend to them all impartially,
+and keep them from quarrelling as to which shall have you next.”
+
+She brightened visibly. “Yes,” she assented, without any superfluous
+modesty,--squeezing as she spoke a pair of bronze slippers into the
+crown of Francesca's favourite hat--“yes, that part'll be hard on all
+of us; but I want you to know that I belong to you this winter, any way;
+Miss Peabody can get along without me better'n you can.”
+
+Her glance was freighted with a kind of evasive, half-embarrassed
+affection; shy, unobtrusive, respectful it was, but altogether friendly
+and helpful.
+
+That the relations between us have ever quite been those of mistress
+and maid, I cannot affirm. We have tried to persuade ourselves that they
+were at least an imitation of the proper thing, just to maintain our
+self-respect while travelling in a country of monarchical institutions,
+but we have always tacitly understood the real situation and accepted
+its piquant incongruities.
+
+So when I met Benella Dusenberry's wistful, sympathetic eye, my
+republican head, reckless of British conventions, found the maternal
+hollow in her spinster shoulder as I said, “Dear old Derelict! it was a
+good day for us when you drifted into our harbour!”
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Penelope's Irish Experiences, by
+Kate Douglas Wiggin
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1391 ***