'“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.