'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.”