VII.

“Glenfaba, 'the Oilan.'

“Oh, gracious and grateful friend, at length you have remembered the

existence of the 'poor lone crittur' living in dead-alive land! Only

that I lack gall to make oppression bitter, I should of course return

your belated epistle by the Dead Letter Office, marked 'Unknown' across

your 'Dear Glory,' there being no longer anybody in these regions who

has a plausible claim to that dubious title. But, alas! I am not my own

woman now, and with tears of shame I acknowledge that _any_ letter from

London comes like an angel's whisper breathed to me through the air.

“I dare say you have been unreasonable enough to think that I ought to

have written to tell you of my arrival; and knowing that man is born to

vanity as the sparks fly upward, I have more than once intended to take

pen in hand and write; but there is something so sleepy in this island

atmosphere that my good resolution has hitherto been a stillborn babe

that has breathed but never cried!

“Know then that my journey hither was performed with due celerity and

no further disaster than befalls me when, as usual, I have _done_ those

things which I ought not to have done, and left _undone_ those things

which I ought to have done--the former in this instance having

reference to various bouts of crying--which drew forth the sympathy of

a compassionate female sharper in the train--and the latter to the

catch of my sachel, which enabled that obliging person to draw forth my

embroidered pocket-handkerchief in exchange.

“I was in good time for the steamboat at Liverpool, and it was crowded,

according to its wont, with the Lancashire lads and lasses, in whom

affection is as contagious as the mumps. Being in the dumps myself on

sailing out of the river, and thinking of the wild excitement with which

I had sailed into it, I think I should have found that I had not _done_

crying in both senses but for the interest of watching an amiable Bob

Brierley who, with his arm about the waist of the person sitting next to

him, kept looking round at the rest of the world from time to time with

the innocence of one whose left hand didn't know what his right hand was

doing.

“But we had hardly crossed the bar when the prince of the powers of the

air began to envy the happiness of these dear young goodies, and if you

had seen the weather for the next four hours you would have agreed that

the devil must have had a hand in it! Up came a wave over the after

quarter and down went the passengers below decks, staggering and

screaming like brewery rats, and then on we came like the Israelites

out of Egypt on eagles' wings! Having lost my own sea legs a little I

thought it prudent to go down too, with my doggie tucked under my arm,

and finding a berth in the ladies' cabin, I fell asleep and didn't awake

until we were in the cross-current just off the island, when, amid

moans and groans and other noises, I heard the tearful voice of a sick

passenger asking, 'Is there any hope, stewardess?'

“The train got to Peel as the sun was setting behind the grim old castle

walls, and when I saw the dear little town again I dropped half a tear,

and even felt an insane desire to run out to meet it. Grandfather was at

the station with old 'Caesar' and the pony carriage, and when I had done

kissing him and he had done panting and puffing and talking nonsense, as

if I had been Queen Victoria and the Empress of the French rolled into

one, I could have cried to see how small and feeble he had become since

I went away. We could not get off immediately, for in his simple joy at

my return he was hailing everybody and everybody was hailing him,

and the dear old Pharisee was sounding his trumpet so often in the

market-place, that he might have glory of men, that I thought we should

never get up to Glenfaba that night. When we did so at length the old

aunties were waiting at the gate, and then he broke into exclamations

again. 'Hasn't she grown tall? Look at her! Hasn't she, now?' Whereupon

the aunties took up their parable with, 'Well, well! Aw, well! Aw, well

now! Well, ye navar!' So that by the time I got through I had kissed

everybody a dozen times, and was as red over the eyes as a grouse.

“Then we went into the house, and for the first five minutes I couldn't

tell what had come over the old place to make it look so small and

mean. It was just as if the walls of the rooms had been the bellows of

a concertina and somebody had suddenly shut them. But there was the long

clock clucking away on the landing, and there was Sir Thomas Traddles

purring on the hearth-rug, and there were the same plates on the

dresser, and the same map of Africa over the fireplace, with a spot of

red ink where my father died.

“The moon was glistening on the sea when I went to bed that night, and

when I got up in the morning the sun was shining on it, and a crow cut

across my window cawing, and I heard grandfather humming to himself

on the path below. And after my long spell in London, and my railway

journey of the day before, it was the same as if I had fallen asleep in

a gale on the high seas and awakened in a quiet harbour somewhere.

“So here I am, back at Glenfaba, in my old little room with my old

little bed, and everything exactly as it used to be; and I begin to

believe that when you went into that monastery you only just got the

start of me in being dead. There used to be a few people in this place,

but now there doesn't seem to be a dog left. All the youngsters have

'gone foreign,' and all the oldsters have gone to--'goodness knows

which.' Sometimes we hear the bleat of sheep on the mountains, and

sometimes the scream of seagulls overhead, and sometimes we hold a

convocation of all living rooks in the elms on the lawn. We take no

thought for the morrow, what we shall eat or what we shall put on, and

on Sundays when the church bell rings we go out, like the Israelites in

the wilderness, in clothes which wax not old after forty years. During

the rest of the week we watch the blue-bottles knocking their stupid

heads against the ceiling, and listen to the grasshoppers whispering

in the grass, and fall asleep to the hum of the bees, and awake to the

_hee-haw_ of old Neilus's 'canary.' [* Donkey] Such is the dead-alive

life we live at Glenfaba, and the days of our years are threescore years

and ten, and if.... Ohoy! (A yawn.)

“I suppose it is basely ungrateful of me to talk like this, for the dear

place itself is lovely enough to disturb one's hope of paradise, and

this very morning is as fresh as the dew on the grass, with the larks

singing above, and the river singing below, and clouds like little curls

of foam hovering over the sea. And as for my three dear old dunces,

who love me so much more than I deserve, I am ashamed in my soul when I

overhear them planning good things for me to eat, and wild excitements

for me to revel in, that I may not be dull or miss the luxuries I am

accustomed to. 'Do you know I'm afraid Glory doesn't care so much for

pinjane after all,' I heard grandfather whispering to Aunt Anna one

morning, and half an hour afterward he was reproving Aunt Rachel for

pressing me too hard to serve at the soup kitchen.

“They govern me like a child in pinafores, and of course like a child I

revenge myself by governing all the house. But, oh, dear! oh, dear! gone

are the days when I could live on water-gruel and be happy in a go-cart.

Yes, the change is in me, not in them or the old home, and what's the

good of putting back the clock when the sun is so stubbornly keeping

pace? I might be happy enough at Glenfaba still, if I could only bring

back the days when the garden trees were my gymnasium and I used to rock

myself and sing like a bird on a bough in the wind, or when I led a

band of boys to rob our own orchard--a bold deed, for which Bishop Anna

ofttimes launched at me and! all her suffragans her severest censure--it

was her slipper, I remember. But I can't run barefoot all day long on

the wet sand now, with the salt spray blowing in my face, and a young

lady of one-and-twenty seldom or never rushes out to play dumps and

baggy-mug in public with little girls of ten.

“As a result, my former adventures are now limited to careering on

the back of little 'Caesar,' who has grown so ancient and fat that he

waddles like an old duck, and riding him is like working your passage.

So I confine myself to sitting on committees, and being sometimes sat

upon, and rubbing the runes for grandfather, and cleaning the milkpails

for Aunt Anna, and even such holy kill-times as going to church

regularly and watching Neilus when he is passing round the plate after

'Let your light so shine before men'--light to his practical intellect

being clearly a synonym for silver in the shape of threepenny bits!

“But, oh my! oh my! I am a dark character in this place for all that

The dear old goodies have never yet said a syllable about my letter

announcing that I had gone over to the enemy (i. e., Satan and the music

hall), and there is a dead hush in the house as often as the wind of

conversation veers in that direction. This is nothing, though, to the

white awe in the air when visitors call and I am questioned how I

earn my living in London. I hardly know whether to laugh or cry at the

long-drawn breath of relief when I wriggle out of a tight place without

telling a lie. But you can't hide an eel in a sack, and I know the truth

will pop out one of these days. Only yesterday I went district-visiting

with Aunt Rachel, and one of the Balaams of life, who keeps a tavern

for fishermen, lured us into his bar parlour to look at a portrait of

'Gloria' which he had cut out of an illustrated paper and pinned up on

the wall 'because it resembled me so much!' Oh, dear! oh, dear! I could

have found it in my heart to brazen it out on the spot at this sight of

my evil fame; but when I saw poor little auntie watching me with fearful

eyes I talked away like a mill-wheel and went out thanking God that the

rest of the people of Peel were not as other men are, or even as this

publican.

“I have been getting newspapers myself, though, sent by my friend Rosa;

and as long as the mis-reporters concerned themselves with my own

doings and failures to do, and lied as tenderly as an epitaph about my

disappearance from London, I cut them up and burned them. But when they

forgot me, and began to treat of other people's triumphs, I made Neilus

my waste-paper basket, on the understanding that the papers were to go

to the fishermen just home from Kinsale. Then from time to time he

told me they were 'goin' round, miss, goin' round,' and gave me other

assurances of 'the greatest circulation in the world,' which was true

enough certainly, though the old thief omitted to say it was at the

paper-mill, where they were being turned into pulp.

“But, heigho! I don't need newspapers to remind me of London. Like St.

Paul, I have a devil that beats me with fists, and as often as a clear

day comes, and one can see things a long way off, he makes me climb to

the top of Slieu Whallin [* A mountain in Man.] that I may sit on the

beacon by the hour and strain my eyes for a glimpse of England, feeling

like Lot's wife when she looked back on her old home, and then coming

down with a heavy heart and a taste of tears in my mouth as if I had

been turned into a pillar of salt. Dear old London! But I suppose it is

going on its way just as it used to do, with its tides of traffic and

its crowds and carriages, and wandering merchants and hawkers crying

their wares, and everything the same as ever, just the same, although

Glory isn't there!”

* * * * *

“10.30 P. M.--I had to interrupt the writing of my letter this morning

owing to an alarm of illness seizing grandfather. He had been taken

with a sudden faintness. Of course we sent for the doctor, but before he

arrived the faintness had passed, so he looked wise at us, like a

prize riddle which had to be guessed before his next visit, left us

his autograph (a wonderful hieroglyphic), and went away. Since then

grandfather has been in the hands of a less taciturn practitioner,

whom he calls the 'flower of Glenfaba' (that's me), and after talking

nonsense to him all day and playing chess with him all the evening I

have to put him to bed laughing, and come back to my own room to finish

my letter with an easier mind. For the last half-hour the aurora has

been pulsing in the northern sky, and I have been thinking that the

glorious phantasmagoria must be the sign of a gale in heaven, just as

sleet and mist and black wind are the signs of a gale on earth. But

it has tripped off into nothingness and only the dark night is left,

through which the dogs at Knockaloe are keeping up their private

correspondence with the dogs at Ballamoar by the medium of their nightly

howls.

“Oh, dear! Only 10.30! And to know that while we are going to bed by

country hours, with nearly everything still and dead around us, London

is just beginning to bestir itself! When I lie down and try to sleep I

shall see the wide squares, with their statues of somebody inside, and

the blaze of lights over the doors of the theatres, and all the tingling

life of the great and wonderful city. Ugh! It makes one feel like

one's own ghost wandering through the upper rooms and across the dark

landings, and hearing the strains of the music and the sounds of the

dancing from the ballroom below stairs!

“But, my goodness! (I can still swear on that, you see, and not be

forsworn!) 'What's the odds if you're jolly?--and I allus is!' How's

your dog? Mine would write you a letter, only her heart is moribund, and

if things go on as they are going she must set about making her will. In

fact, she is now lying at the foot of my bed thinking matters out, and

bids me tell you that after various attempts to escape Home Rule, not

being (like her mistress) one of those natures made perfect through

suffering, she is only 'kept alive by the force of her own volition,' in

this house that is full of old maids and has nothing better in it than

one old cat, and he isn't worth hunting, being destitute of a tail.

Naturally she is doing her best (like somebody else) to keep herself

unspotted from that world which is a source of so much temptation, but

she's bound to confess that a little 'divilment' now and then would help

her to take a more holy and religious view of life.

“I 'wish you happy' in your new enterprise; but if you are going in for

being the champion of woman in this world--of her wrongs--I warn you not

to be too pointed in your moral, for there is a story here of a handsome

young curate who was so particular in the pulpit with 'Lovest thou me'

that a lady followed him into the vestry and admitted that she did.

Soberly, it is a great and noble effort, and I've half a mind to love

you for it. If men want women to be good they _will_ be good, for women

dance to the tune that men like best, and always have done so since the

days of Adam--not forgetting that gentleman's temptation, nor yet his

excuse about 'the woman _Thou gavest_ me,' which shows he wasn't much of

a husband anyway, though certainly he hadn't much choice of a wife.

“My love to dear old London! Sometimes I have half a mind to skip off

and do my wooing myself. Perhaps I should do so, only that Rosa writes

that she would like to come and spend her summer holiday in Peel.

Haven't I told you about Rosa? She's the lady journalist that Mr. Drake

introduced me to.

“But let's to bed,

Said Sleepyhead.

“Glory.

“P.S.--IMPORTANT. Ever since I left London I have been tormented with

the recollection of poor Polly's baby. She put him out to nurse with the

Mrs. Jupe you heard of, and that person put him out to somebody else.

While the mother lived I had no business to interfere, but I can't help

thinking of the motherless mite now and wondering what has become of

him. I suppose that like Jeshurun he waxeth fat and kicketh by this

time, yet it would be the act of a man and a clergyman if anybody would

take up my neglected duty and make it his business to see that there is

somebody to love the poor child. Mrs. Jupe's address is 5a, The Little

Turnstile, going from Holborn into Lincoln's Inn Fields.”