Humours pursued us during our brief sojourn in the hotel. We are very
fond of that hotel. It is associated with the repeated charm of its
hospitable reception on each of our visits. We were glad to see we were
given the same set of rooms as on a previous occasion; and when we found
the same broken lock on the door, we felt indeed that we were among old
friends.
When our tea was brought—we were lying down to rest—we had however to
ring and protest.
“Look at this spoon!” we exclaimed dramatically.
The soft-voiced maid looked at it quizzically.
“What is it?” Then she smiled. “It’s apt to have been in the honey, by
the look of it,” she observed dispassionately.
“Please take it away,” we said, “and bring another.”
She thought us strange and dull of wit. There was a clean napkin on
every plate. But—no doubt with a mental “Ah, God help us. Travellers is
queer folk!”—she departed, we feel sure, no farther than the passage,
there to wipe the honey off on the inside of her apron.
[Sidenote: A GARDEN IN MEATH]
The next day saw us landed at a small wayside station in the rich flat
land of Meath, where we were met by a charming old-fashioned “turn out,”
a handsome waggonette and a sturdy pair of carriage horses. At least we
thought the waggonette old-fashioned and delightful, in these motor
times; but it seems it was on the contrary new and wonderful.
The coachman surveyed us tentatively two or three times while our divers
small goods were being collected, magisterially directing the footman
with the butt end of his whip. Presently he broke into speech:
“Will you be noticing the carriage, sir?” he remarked, addressing the
head of the party. “Her Ladyship’s just bought it. I chose it for her
meself, so I did. It’s a grand contrivance. You can have it the way it
is now, and it’s real comfortable, isn’t it, sir? But sure, you can turn
it into an omnibus. And you’d never believe now, how many it would hold.
I drove six ladies to a ball in it the other night, and not one of them
crushed on me—And fine large ladies they were,” he observed admiringly.
“We do wish he would not tell every one that,” observed one of the
“large ladies” a little later. “Every time he’s gone to the station in
the new waggonette this summer he’s told that story.”
But she was quite good-humoured and amused. Indeed, her largeness was of
the beautiful order. It was no wonder the coachman was proud of
conveying it uncrushed.
The gardens where these hostesses dwelt were pleasantly green and
flowery. There was the usual high-walled garden. Villino Loki, with its
absurd terraces, can never dream of attaining to such an enclosure of
antique charm. For if we walled in the Kitchen and Reserve Garden at the
foot of our hill we should wall out the moor from below, and obstruct
our sweeping vision from above. But my heart yearns to an old walled
garden. A place quite apart, with its mingled odours of herb and flower
and ripening fruit; with its perpetual murmur of bees, its tangled
walks, its old bushes of Rosemary and Lavender, its mossy Apple-trees,
its crisp Parsley beds, its tumble-down greenhouses.
[Illustration: garden view - two pages wide]
[Sidenote: CURBED AMBITIONS]
This particular walled garden was a very good specimen of its kind. It
was here that our ignorance first made acquaintance with the invaluable
Cosmia; that treasure of the herbaceous border that keeps on blooming in
the face of adversity from June till November. There was also a huge bed
of Salvias, one sheet of gentian blue. ‹Why cannot we grow Salvias like
that?› It ran at the foot of an overgrown, very old rose plot, the trees
of which had developed into fairy-tale luxuriance. And opposite, across
the gravelled path, which from old associations we prefer to any other
species of walk, was a field of Snap-dragon against the high wall where
the leaves of the plum branches were reddening as they clung. Duly
mossed was this old wall, and richly lichened; overtopped by the great
trees without. These swayed to the mild Irish wind, with long, pleasant,
choiring sounds, the rooks cawing as they circled in them. It was small
wonder that I should have felt content and at peace as I stood there—if
only my heart had not swelled with envy over those Salvias! But one
can’t be the owner of an Italian Villino on a Surrey Highland and
encompass the antique peace of a centuries-old Irish home. One must be
reasonable—as a French governess of our youth used to say to us when she
began her most lengthy harangues. “_Voyons—de deux choses l’une ..._”
The park was typically Irish, and possessed some wonderful trees.
Amongst others a chestnut, four or five immense branches of which,
sweeping to the ground, had taken root again and started fresh trees,
forming a singular tropical-looking grove. How children would have
delighted in such a leafy palace, roofed in and pillared of its own
stateliness!
* * * * *
Memories of laughter pursue us at every stage of those weeks. There was
the visit to a neighbouring castle; a genuine old castle this, but
irretrievably “restored” in that bygone period of history when Pugin
reigned supreme.
[Sidenote: AN IRISH CHATELAINE]
It was Sunday, and we found the Châtelaine—a little lady renowned for
her vivacity and charm—out in the field with her children and her lord,
energetically teaching hockey to the young men and women of the village.
Her little boy was running up and down after her, wringing his hands and
ejaculating, “Mamma, ye’ll be kilt! Mamma, ye’ll be kilt!” to perfectly
regardless ears.
In a whirl of energy we were rushed into tea; and, while drawing off her
loose gloves and flinging them at random into a corner, our hostess’s
tongue, which was as nimble as her little feet, never ceased wagging:
“I hope you don’t mind the smell! Oh, it’s a terrible smell. But it’s
only the dogs, ye know. We’ve been washing them. They’re sick, poor
things. Not infectious, ye needn’t be a bit afraid. Only mange, or
something. It’s the sulphur in the soap, ye know. Come in, come in!—Oh,
I do hope we have got something fit to eat! Katie, Katie! ‹Katie’s me
eldest daughter› Katie, what have we got? Ah, it’s horrid!—Ah, I don’t
know what’s the matter with them.—Yes, it’s a fine big room. We were
dancing here last week. You wouldn’t think it to look at it now, would
you? ’Pon my word! I was thinking to meself that night, ‘It’s a queer
world we live in, with all those saints looking down at us with their
bare legs, and we with our bare backs!’ Oh, yes, they’re very grand old
paintings, I dare say! But there is a deal of bare legs about them.—Will
you have any more? Ah, no, ye can’t eat it!—I don’t wonder, I can’t
meself.—Will you come into the garden? I’d like to be showing you the
garden. Where’s me gloves?—Where’s me yellow gloves? Katie, did ye see
me yellow gloves? Ah, never mind! This way.—I’ve been making a new
herbaceous border. Ah, ’pon me word, if they’ve not gone and locked the
garden door! Sunday’s the mischief! Never mind, I’ll ring the bell.
Green! Green, Johnny Green, are ye there? Is Mrs. Green there? Is Patsy
there? Where’s young Condren? Ah, they’re all out! But I’ll not be
beaten.—Maybe I’ll get it open. Will ye push, now? I’ll turn the handle.
Give a good shove. It’s an old lock. Ah, devil a bit of it! Will ye give
me your stick.—No, thank ye. I’d rather hit it meself.”
Even to her it was impossible to continue talking, while she was, as she
herself would have expressed it, “laying on to the garden door.”
Scarlet, panting, dishevelled, but still completely fascinating, she
desisted at last and handed back the stick with a smile and gasp, and a
resigned: “Ah, I clean forgot, I see how it is now. They’re all off to
the funeral of the priest’s brother’s sister.”
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[Illustration: THE HOLLY TREE]
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