MY ELDEST SISTER.
My eldest sister was only fourteen, but she was already, had ever been,
a sage and a saint. At the age of eight she had put her hand into a
blazing fire in order to die the death of a Christian martyr. She
shrieked dismally for several hours afterwards. Another time, staying
with relatives in the country, she knelt in the gloaming in a big barn,
praying with fervently closed eyes, in the hopes of being devoured by
lions. She heard the distant growlings of an angry mastiff, and thought
her prayer was granted, and that this was the ravening lion about to
make a meal of her. She fell down in a fit of convulsions, and had to be
nursed by several doctors.
When she came back to consciousness, with her hair shorn and wan little
hands upon the coverlet, she recognised our tender mother seated beside
her bed, and contentedly shortening her last new frock for my second
sister. She offered up the mortification for her sins, and instantly
said a prayer to her patron saint, Agnes. At dinner she never ate
pudding or pie, not even damson-pie, for which I in those gluttonous
days would have sold, not only my own soul, but hers as well; but after
dinner she invariably carried her share of these luxurious edibles to
the nearest poor person.
She visited the poor continually, always provided with tea and sugar and
such things; and Pauline, who accompanied her on these missions of
mercy, assured me that she often saw the pet cases of misery dash under
the bed excellent dishes of bacon and eggs and bottles of Guinness'
stout, while the traditional invalid would jump into bed, gather the
clothes about her, and begin to whine, "Sure, your little ladyship, 'tis
our lonesome selves as hasn't had bit or sup since last we saw your
purty face."
My eldest sister was a bewitching beauty. She had large dusky blue eyes
in constant communion with the heavenly spheres. She had ruddy golden
hair that shown adown her back like pounded guineas, and her complexion
was a thing to gape at. Indeed we had all inherited from our mother
wonderful golden locks and dazzling complexions.
This sentimental and saintly creature wrought the utmost havoc around
her, and went dreamily through life unconscious or sublimely
indifferent, with her gaze of impassioned sadness fixed upon her
heavenly home. Youths went down before her like ninepins, and trembled
when they addressed her. One lad of sixteen rode past the door with a
crimson cravat, which he fondly hoped to be becoming, and the moody
intensity of expression that betokens a broken heart. She minded him
not. She was reading "Fabiola" for the hundredth time in the front
garden. The gate was open. In his amorous distraction the youth forgot
the proprieties, and rode through the gate in lordly style. The door
likewise was open, and the pony gallantly galloped into the hall.
My sister's dismay was nothing to the youth's. He stammered and
stuttered and went so red that the wonder was he ever grew pale again.
But we were used to these commotions aroused by our young Saint Agnes in
the bosom of excitable youth. It did not hurt her, and it did not harm
them. With gracious gravity she escorted the poor lad to the gate; but
we who knew her knew that she was stifling with suppressed laughter. For
my eldest sister had a pretty humour, even an irony of her own, and
gaiety, as will be seen, was not contraband in her religion.
She constituted herself our veritable mother in that old rambling house
of Dalkey. She ruled us like an autocrat, and punished us with a
lamentable severity. To teach us self-control and fearlessness, she
insisted that the smallest baby should be taken in her night-dress, half
asleep, and flung into the wild Irish sea that roared at the foot of the
garden. No mercy was shown a recalcitrant babe. Howl she never so
dolorously, she was plunged in head-foremost, sputtering salt through
her rebellious lips.
At night, when our parents stayed in town, she gathered us together in
the long low drawing-room, and insisted that we should examine our
consciences, meditate, and say the Rosary aloud to keep away robbers and
ghosts. All the boys got to know of this edifying practice, and outside
the window a crowd of arch-villains would gather, and shout the
responses derisively. We could hear Arthur's high-bred tones sing out
"Holy Mary, Mother of God," above the deep bass notes of the red-headed
chief. Arthur's brother, an elegant guardsman, staying with the old lord
for a couple of weeks, often condescended to join the band of
reprobates; and once I peeped out through the big chinks of the shutter,
and saw the man of fashion, with the hall-light directly upon his lean
and bronzed visage, eyes devoutly lifted to heaven in mimicry of my
eldest sister's ecstatic gaze, and hands folded like those of a
stained-glass picture: "Holy Mary! pray for me, a miserable sinner.
Blessed St. Agnes, help, oh help to convert me!"
Even the devotion of my eldest sister was unsettled, and we could see
her mobile lips twitch. It sufficed to reveal to us that the autocrat
was off guard, and we lay about the floor, and shrieked with delight.
Whenever he met my eldest sister upon the roads or rocks, the elegant
guardsman raised his hat with the air of a prince, and never a hint
about him of nocturnal iniquities.
But austere as she was in all things pertaining to discipline and
religion, she allowed us unbounded freedom out-of-doors. Some notion of
our use of that liberty may be seized from the following ejaculations of
an elderly bachelor, a political friend, who came to visit my
stepfather, and was confronted with this young saint of the golden
locks, the established mistress of a large household.
The elderly gentleman, looking out of the window in front, perceived
two little boots dangling from the branch of a high tree, almost against
the heaven.
"Who's up that tall tree?" asked the elderly gentleman.
"Oh, that's Angela. She always reads up there."
"Bless my soul!" exclaimed the elderly gentleman.
After further conversation, he walked down the room to examine the view
from the back. In gazing across the sea, seemingly near Howth, he
detected a rock point surrounded with heavy waves, and two little specks
upon this rock.
"It looks as if there were some creatures in danger of being drowned,"
remarked the elderly gentleman.
"Oh, not at all. That's Pauline's rock. She and Birdie always go out
when the tide is out, and spend the whole day wading there, and they
come back when the tide runs out again."
"My God!" cried the elderly gentleman.
Looking later up to the stable roof, he saw three little golden heads
bent over cards.
"What's that?" he blankly asked.
"Those are the three youngest, playing beggar-my-neighbour on the
roof."
"What extraordinary children!" muttered the elderly gentleman.
She devised a notable and original punishment for me whenever I flew
into one of my diabolical rages. She would order Miss Kitty, the
sentimental little stitcher, to hold my feet, a servant to hold my head,
and while I lay thus on the ground in durance vile, she would piously
besprinkle me with holy water, and audibly beseech the Lord and my
guardian angel to deliver me of the devil. It would be difficult for me
to conceive an operation more suitable as entertainment of the devil
than my sister's pious and fiendish method of obtaining his dismissal.
The first thing I inevitably did, when liberated, was to go into the
yard, and pump all the holy water off my wicked person. Then, dripping
like a Newfoundland, I would return to the house and decline to change
my dress or shoes, in the vociferated hope of immediate death from
consumption.