shall restore it to us? O misguided France! what firm and Christian hand
shall take thy helm and steer thee into port? At the beginning of this
century, and up to the close of its first half, what noble characters,
what ardent Catholics defended the cause of liberty! And now, alas! how
this oracle of the Holy Scriptures makes me fear: “A kingdom is given
over from one people to another, because of its injustice, violence, and
crimes.”
Kate, what is said in heaven? O dearest sister, my other mother! protect
René and pray for France.
OCTOBER 30.
Bazaine has surrendered; 120,000 troops, 20,000 wounded, cannon, flags,
and Metz, the strongest of our citadels, the heroic city—all is
Prussian! It is, then, finished. It seemed as if all French hearts had
there their hope—not the last, which can be only God. The circular of
Gambetta begins by a _sursum corda_: “Lift up your hearts! lift up your
souls!” It is well, but _whither_? You say not, “Up to God,” nor do you
pronounce that saving name.
Ah! France has deserved this shame of being again vanquished, of seeing
all her citadels fall one after another, until the day when, repentant
and humbled, she will implore the divine aid. Schélestadt has also
capitulated.... Gertrude is ill and keeps her room. The blade has worn
out the scabbard, the body has been broken down by the soul. O my God!
wilt thou take from me also this elder sister—this admirable saint, my
model and consolation? “Weep for France, dear sister,” she said, “not
for me. I have given all to God; I do not fear. I offer for my country
my last sorrow—that of not seeing Adrien once more....”
This unexpected blow crushes me. Pray for us, Kate!
NOVEMBER 1.
“Heaven is opening. O Jesus! have pity upon France.” And thus she
died.... It is, then, true! Henceforth I must seek her in heaven with
you, dear Kate, and all our dear ones who have taken wing from hence.
What an example she leaves us! Not a complaint: she owned to me that she
had long been suffering. What austerity of life! What renunciation of
her own tastes! What love of poverty! “She was too near heaven to remain
below,” my mother says. Margaret is very unwell, because of so many
emotions. O this life and this death; these adieux, this generosity of
heart, these last lines traced for Adrien, for her brothers! A few
minutes before her departure she said to me: “_You will come soon._”
I scarcely know where I am; my soul is in a chaos of sorrows, but the
love of God prevails over all. I am writing this by her funeral couch.
Three days ago she went out with us. She fatigued herself too
unsparingly; she never shrank from trouble. Kate, welcome her and bless
your sister! Gain strength for me, and, if I must die without once more
seeing René, obtain that I may know how to say, _Fiat!_
Mourning in the family, mourning for the country—for everything,
mourning!
NOVEMBER 7.
I feel ill.... Anxiety is killing me. O Kate! O Gertrude! remember us on
high. The day before her death Gertrude said: “Prayers, prayers! Oh! the
_Lætatus_ of the angels must be so beautiful.... I hear it!...” Mary and
Ellen at her request sang her an Irish melody on the love of one’s
country. “Georgina, to pray, to suffer—this is everything!”
What words! And how well I understood her at that moment, when all was
passing away from this valiant and strong soul who had fought the good
fight! Poor Adrien!
Troops have been levied _en masse_, from twenty to forty years of age.
The Lamentations of Jeremias apply to us in our calamities! Who shall
number the widows and the orphans? May God protect us! The sadnesses of
the present life complete my detachment from this world by discovering
to me its nothingness. The details respecting Metz throw me into
stupefaction. My mother has heroically borne the great trial; she
herself closed the eyes, so bright, so beautiful, of her eldest
daughter. She insists that Lord William shall take Margaret away,
because the enemy is certain to come upon us also. “Well, then,” says my
friend, “we will defend you!”
NOVEMBER 10.
The _Univers_ is here, edited at Nantes. Yesterday it contained a
magnificent page, vibrating with Catholic faith, addressed by Louis
Veuillot to General Trochu. The illustrious convert of Rome has, then,
quitted the country of his heart and is present at the agony of that
Paris whose corruptions he has so energetically denounced. I have been
glad (if one may use the word) to find, in this believing journal, an
expression of the indignation of my soul against those who have dared to
give to that gouty fetich, Garibaldi, the rank of a French general at
the moment when Piedmont was consummating its sacrilegious attacks
against Pius IX. There is fighting at Orleans. O Joan of Arc!
Kate dearest, we all suffer. What has become of all our hopes? No, they
are not destroyed; they had heaven for their object.
NOVEMBER 13.
I dare not make a complete narrative of our disasters, and I know not
how to speak of anything else. “Revolutionary France is no longer the
France of Christ. She has kept the name, but repudiated the heart. O
France, France! nation of so many centuries, of such men, and of so much
glory, crouched beneath the boot of Flourens, before the sword of the
Prussian.” These are the words of Louis Veuillot. Paris is wrought upon
by rioters, the dregs of the Revolution. Bismarck is said to have
uttered the pride-inflated words that “there is nothing but Prussia in
the world: there is no more Europe!”
“Let us,” cries Louis Veuillot—“let us examine the inexorable logic
which rolls us in the mire, and see by what hands it has been possible
to lay prostrate a nation which is proud of having no more thought of
God! O mockery! O derision! And this is France!”
We know nothing of the absent.... Uncertainty—the cross of crosses!
NOVEMBER 16.
Orleans is delivered. Cathelineau, the morning of his solemn entry, went
with his Vendéans to hear a Mass of thanksgiving. _In hoc Signo vinces._
Marseilles and Lyons, the Queen of the Mediterranean and the city of
Notre Dame de Fourvières, are agitated by violent intestine struggles.
_Pazienza! Speranza!_ Oh! what need has my soul of these two sources of
strength to bear up beneath this hour of unutterable anguish! René and
Adrien are wounded! “Remember, my daughter, the sacrifice is short and
the crown eternal,” my poor mother says to me, wounded to the heart like
myself. Where are they? The date is torn off the letter, which has been
brought us by an unfortunate soldier with an amputated limb, who has
faced a thousand dangers to come and die in his own part of the country.
I wish to go—but whither? Kate, inspire me!
NOVEMBER 22.
My anxiety has brought on fever.... Yesterday was a great day in the
religious history of France. Mgr. de la Tour d’Auvergne convoked the
whole church of France to a solemn act of faith. At one and the same
hour, in all the sanctuaries of this nation, bent beneath the strokes of
the divine Justice, Mass was said to obtain pardon. O Lord! if only so
many prayers and tears might obtain peace. “All for God and our
country!” cried Cathelineau, before that altar[58] where joys so pure
were granted me. “Let official France make her act of penitence!” says
the Univers. Alas! it does not appear that this thought occurs to her. O
these dates, these memories, my whole life in my remembrance! I examined
myself this morning and had to acknowledge my own weakness. My God! wilt
thou require of me this sacrifice? I would desire to submit, but my
heart!... Dear and sweet friend, chosen for me by the best-beloved and
most devoted of sisters, return, return! O fatal war! I comprehend the
words of Rousseau: “The man who has lived longest is not he who can
reckon up the greatest number of years, but he who has felt most what is
life.”
Footnote 58:
In the cathedral of Orleans.
There are presentiments.... My soul is crushed. Ah! these hours, these
days which are passing by—what are they for France?
The Duke of Aosta, son of Victor Emanuel, is named King of Spain by the
Cortes. Into what hands is Europe yet to fall? The diadem of Charles V.
and of St. Ferdinand in the family of the excommunicated King of Italy;
these two countries of noble memories thus fallen, and France defended
by Garibaldi; the insulter of sanctity, the blasphemer of Jesus Christ,
made a French general! O blindness, O impiety of a government which
pretends to be a regenerator! And this, too, in the age in which we
live, in the century of Pius IX. and of the Immaculate Conception!...
Deluges of rain for weeks past. Our unfortunate youth of France
decimated by misery and cold!
Wrote to Marcella and Lizzy—two lovely, beloved, and poetic souls.[59]
Footnote 59:
A few hours after tracing these lines Georgina learnt of the death of
René. Of the five brothers, two had given their lives for France.
Adrien and Gertrude rejoined each other in heaven.
NOVEMBER 26.
The Lord gave him to me; the Lord hath taken him away! Thou hast willed
it, my God; thou hast taken back this life which was so dear to me. I
adore thy will!
NOVEMBER 29.
Is this _dying life_ deserving of a single regret? And yet I weep! My
God! thou pardonest these tears—thou who didst weep over us. Oh! if I
had at least had his last look.
It is a week ago this evening since I knew of my misfortune. O my God!
that unusual stir, those sinister noises, and the entrance of Raoul,
Edouard, and Paul. Dead—both dead! I would see that dear face once
again, to try and restore its warmth by my kisses!
DECEMBER 1.
Kate, I can write no more.... A _widow_! Can you comprehend this word
and the desolation which freezes my heart? All my soul was devoted to
him, placed in him. _Miserere mei, Deus!_ Friend so dear, so loving, so
heroic, so kind, obtain for me that I may follow you to the home where
separation is no more. O you who stood on Calvary, Our Blessed Lady!
pray for us. Have pity upon my distress!
He is dead! The heart which loved me has ceased to beat! And if only
France were saved, and my mourning might win her salvation!
And still I must live, move about, spend myself in attendance on the
sick, when I feel as if the heavy stone which hides him from me were
weighing down my soul. O the destruction wrought by death! Thus one
single year has taken all from me!
Prayed for two hours yesterday by this newly-closed tomb. O Lord! I
spoke to him, I understood him, I comprehended that thou requirest holy
victims to disarm thy justice.
O France! which I loved so much.
DECEMBER 25.
Margaret leaves us suddenly. Her father-in-law is dying. God be praised
for having left her with us during these days of trouble!
I am still weak in the inferior part of my soul, feeling every hour an
increase of bitterness and depression. “You will come soon!” This
farewell of Gertrude’s resounds continually in my ears. Nevertheless, if
the pain of a long life should be in store for me, if her words were
symbolic only, if I must grow old, I pray the Author of all good to
permit that the unending mourning of my heart may overflow in tenderness
towards all who suffer, that I may wipe away or comfort tears—I, who
henceforth can only live in tears.
Christmas, feast of gladness, of the birth of Jesus, and of love; the
anniversary of Edith’s death!
JANUARY 1, 1871.
Spent this day in the church and cemetery. O René! how I hear you still.
I seek you now in heaven. Pray for France, and also for me, who cannot
accustom myself to widowhood.
O ye almost infinite delights enjoyed in the intimacy of that noble
heart! can I think upon you and not die?
Dear René, dear Kate, it is before God that I weep; it is on these pages
concealed from all that I write my regrets. Does God permit this, or is
it cowardice?
JANUARY 4.
Edouard has this morning put René’s pocket-book into my hands. My name
is on every page. Observed these words, which I have read a hundred
times over: “If I die, comfort her, ye good angels who guided me to
her!”... Oh! it is more than I can bear—emotion and regrets so deep.
JANUARY 6.
_He is at rest._ Eternal felicity of rest in God, thou art become his
inheritance. I loved him so much, and, alas! I could not secure his
happiness! Just now I opened my book of _Hours_ at this Psalm: “_Cantate
Domino canticum novum, quia mirabilia fecit._” I seemed to obtain a
glance into heaven, and this friend, so ardently and faithfully loved,
was smiling upon me.... Rapid flashes of light, after which the darkness
thickens and the loneliness grows more oppressive!
JANUARY 13.
May God console the mothers, the widows, and the orphans!
If I had time to think of self in this chaos of nameless events, I
should feel myself unfortunate beyond all expression. O Lord! the
happiness of loving thee, of possessing thee in heaven, is well worth
some years of Calvary; and although mine appears to me at times so
difficult to climb, thou knowest that it is no more for myself that I
weep, but that the sufferings of René’s country alone fill my heart. My
poor France, so glorious whilst she still served thee, wilt thou efface
her for ever from the book of nations, or wilt thou restore her power?
_Fiat voluntas tua!_ Turn us to thee, O Christ! who didst die to save
the world, and, for the sake of so many hearts that turn to thee,
shorten our woes!
JANUARY 18.
Heard for the first time the complete account of _his death_.... My
brothers are on the point of setting out again; they are of a race in
which self-devotion is hereditary.
O René! how proud I am of you—dead on the field of honor, after
receiving your God that morning; and dying in defence of France! Ah! I
would fain be a Sister of Charity, to have a right to receive the last
sigh of our courageous defenders.
Often had you said to me: “It seems to me that I should have strength to
love God even to suffering martyrdom!” And the hour came when it would
have been permitted you to remain quietly at home; but your country was
in mourning, and you went forth, a soldier for right, a soldier of God!
Ah! then I felt indeed something which broke within me....
Do you, on high, remember her who loved you better than herself? Do you
call to mind those delightful days when heavenly love shed a ray from on
high upon our love? Do you remember our conversations, in which the
thought of eternity was always present? Ah! we both knew well that our
happiness was not of this world.
Yesterday I dressed the wounds of an unhappy victim of this war, which
posterity will call inexplicable. What a horrible wound! The man was a
Vendéan and a Catholic. He saw tears in my eyes, and thanked me with a
hearty and naïve simplicity. He regrets his wife, whom he wants to see.
Poor woman!—or rather, happy woman; for she will see him!
JANUARY 25.
A letter from Karl, addressed to René. O my God!
The enemy is approaching; France is agonizing. René, Kate, Mad, pray for
us!
FEBRUARY 2.
_Miserere nostri, Domine!_
I return to these pages on a day of cruel disappointment. Paris has
capitulated! The Prussians occupy the forts; the army has been made
prisoners of war. There is an armistice of twenty-two days. There were
elections on the 8th for a constituency. How many sorrowful events have
taken place!—the bombardment of Paris, the defeat of Chanzy at Mans, the
civil discords.... One must despair, were it not that God overrules all,
and that if he punishes he is ready to pardon. The question is whether
France is to be or not to be!
Edouard writes. He hopes that the Prussians will not advance so far as
to the sea. Margaret and Marcella—what do they think at this time, at
this Gethsemani of France?
“O my God! I am as thou wert, falling prostrate from weakness, when
another had to carry thy cross!”[60]
Footnote 60:
The Abbé Perreyve.
Si vous pouviez comprendre et le peu qu’est la vie,
Et de quelle douceur cette morte est suivie![61]
Footnote 61:
“Could you but know how small a thing is life, and also by what
sweetness death is followed!”
FEBRUARY 12.
Prayer and charity fill up our time. Alas! there is still room for
regrets. Everything revives them; to-day it is a passage from Montaigne:
“We were seeking one another, and our names were intermingled before we
had made acquaintance. It was a festival when I saw him for the first
time; we found each other all at once so bound together, so united, so
well-known, so obliged, that nothing was so dear to each of us as the
other. And when I ask myself whence comes this joy, this ease, this
repose that I feel when I see him, it is because it is _he_ and because
it is _I_; this is all I can say.”
O René! it was thus that we loved, and thus our love will be eternal.
FEBRUARY 18.
The fatherland of our soul is God! Trial is not sent only as an
expiation to purify us, but also to detach us from earth and raise us
near to God. “_Jubilate Domino, omnis terra; servite Domino in
lætitia!_” O my soul! do thou serve the Lord with gladness. Lift the
veil; behind your troubles and sorrows God is there, who counts them
all, and whose love will change them into an unknown weight of glory!
_Beati qui lugent!_ Heaven! heaven!
I was thinking this evening of the motto of Valentine of Milan: _Plus ne
m’est rien, Rien ne m’est plus[62]_. Is this sufficiently Christian?
From this world’s point of view, from the frivolities of life and of all
that charms the senses, oh! nothing is anything to me. But one’s
country, the church, the poor, one’s family!
Footnote 62:
More is naught to me; naught is aught to me more.
O Jesus, who seest my tears! remember that thou hast said: “All that you
shall ask the Father in my name, he will give you.” May thy adorable
will be done! He who believes, hopes, and loves—has he the right to
complain? Can the soul whom thou dost protect call herself abandoned?
Will the heart that is rich in thy love feel despoiled and desolate?
Draw me to loftier heights, O Christ, my King!
FEBRUARY 21.
Belfort has capitulated! _Tristis est anima mea usque ad mortem._ Must
we say with Dante: _Lasciate ogni speranza_? How empty and desolate
earth appears to me! My God, show thyself; let thy power shine forth in
our behalf! I will hope in thee against all hope. “Every soul is the
vicar of Jesus Christ, to labor, by the sacrifice of himself, at the
redemption of humanity. In the plan of this great work each one has a
place marked out from eternity, which he is free to accept or to
refuse.” René, Kate, Gertrude, you all understood this! O my God! have
pity upon France. I offer myself as a holocaust to thee. I accept every
sacrifice; I give myself up; take with me all who have in like manner
devoted themselves: let not France undergo the fate of Ireland; let her
not be crushed by Protestantism, but leave her her faith and love.
MARCH 1.
Peace is declared, but at what a price!—five milliards, Alsace, and
Metz; the occupation of Champagne until the payment of the indemnity,
the entry into Paris of thirty thousand men on this very day. O the
Alsatians! To think that henceforth they belong to the Vandals who have
ruined their territory, made a desert everywhere, brought mourning into
every home—what infinite grief! No! the Prussian will not be their
master; the heart of Alsace is too French; the yoke of the enemy may
weigh down bodies but not souls. We have here a friend of Berthe’s, a
young wife and mother, who ever since this morning has been in the
chapel, weeping in despair. Poor Alsace! Terrible alternative—the
mother-country sacrificing her more unfortunate sons to purchase the
others!... Where is Joan of Arc? Where are even the women of Carthage!
Lord, save us!
MADAME DE T—— TO LADY MARGARET.
MARCH 20, 1871.
God be with us!
Dear Lady Margaret, our so dear, beautiful, and perfect Georgina has
departed from us for ever!
I cannot leave to any one else the sorrow of acquainting you with this
fresh bereavement.... Shall I have strength for it? I feel as if my
heart were enclosed in the tomb where my children rest.
A pernicious fever has carried from us this most lovable creature, who
has been amongst us like an apparition from heaven. She is now reunited
to him whom she so loved and mourned, and she who had “_unlearnt
happiness_” is happy now! This thought is necessary to sustain those who
remain. You know what she was to me—the most loving, devoted, and
piously amiable of daughters; you know what she was to all—an adviser, a
comforter, and a light. And all this in a few hours has vanished from
us. Who shall console us for the loss of this angelic child, the very
sight of whom was a consolation?
Dear friend, she thought of you; she murmured your name in her last
prayer. God, the church, France, Ireland, and all those who loved her,
by turns were on her lips; the voluntary victim of charity, she accepted
death with gladness. You who were her sister, kind Lady Margaret, would
that you had been with us at that time which was at once both sweet and
cruel! Ah! tears are not permitted to me; the place of angels is in
heaven.
Do not think of returning to us until peace is definitely established.
Alas! only a few days since we were forming a project to go and take you
by surprise. Henceforth I quit Brittany no more—my _Campo Santo_, as my
beloved daughter called it.
Oh! how she must pray for our sorrows on high.
On the morning of the last day she twice repeated to me these beautiful
words of the Père Lacordaire: “However hard may be the separations of
this world, there always remains to us Him who is its author, who has
given and who removes us, who never fails, in whom we shall all be one
day reunited by the faith and charity which he has given us.”
And a few minutes before breathing the last sigh she said: “Mother, I
asked that I might die for France; it was a sacrifice, because of
leaving you. Now all regret has disappeared from my heart; I am going to
see Mad, Gertrude, Kate, René—and God!”
May she call me soon also!
Dear and kind friend, I would comfort you, but I am powerless. Let us
love and pray.
My remembrances to Lord William; kisses to Emmanuel, the treasure whom
she so much loved, and to yourself, the expression of the maternal
affection of my desolate heart.
COMTESSE DE T——.
* * * * *
Madame de T—— survived this last affliction only a few months, and the
_Campo Santo_ received yet another tomb. May these delineations of love
so pure and Christian, and of resignation so sublime, benefit at least
some souls! This is the editor’s sole aim.
The premature end of Lady Margaret has unfortunately only too soon
facilitated the sorrowful task of the friend who has been desirous of
revealing to loving hearts the private life of her dear Georgina, this
poetic flower of Ireland, transplanted to the soil of this our France,
which became the second country of her heart, and which she loved even
to death.
PROSE AND POETRY OF ANCIENT MUSIC.
The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils:
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus.
Let no such man be trusted.
_—Merchant of Venice._
Music, in its most general sense, is the art of producing melodious
sounds, and, from its power over the passions, it is called the
sentimental art. In the mythology of Greece it was cultivated chiefly by
the Muses, from whom the term _music_ is derived; but, although dear to
all of them, it was presided over by Euterpe, who is always represented
with a flute in her hand. The great divinity of song and instrumental
music, however, was Apollo, who is mentioned in the _Iliad_ as
delighting the immortal gods with the sweetness of his notes; for he was
the inventor of the lyre and leader of the Pierian nine, whence he is
called sometimes _Citharœdus_ and sometimes _Musagetes_, in both which
characters very fine statues of him have come down to us from antiquity.
The worship of the Muses began early in Greece, and the favorite resort
of these divinities of intellectual pleasure was the flowery border of
the rills that murmured down the sides of Mount Parnassus, while their
chaste grove and sacred fountain of Castalia was on that part of the
Parnassan range called Helicon. Here their statues were seen and
described by Pausanias, and afterwards removed by Constantine to his new
capital on the Bosporus.
Pagan authors ascribed the origin of music to fanciful occurrences, or,
at best, to chance and natural operations. Thus, according to some, it
was a gift to man of this one or that of their national divinities; but,
according to others, the babble of running waters, the warbling notes of
birds, mountains that echoed, winds that sighed through the forest trees
and
Fill the shade with a religious awe,—
in a word, the general song of nature inspired Apollo and the Muses, who
were no more than shepherds of Arcadia, to please the world with music;
for
The birds instructed man,
And taught him songs before his art began;
And while soft evening gales blew o’er the plains,
And shook the sounding reeds, they taught the swains;
And thus the pipe was framed and tuneful reed.
—_Lucretius._
But Christian writers believe that Adam, the first man, being endowed by
the Creator with every sort of knowledge, excelled in music as well as
in the other arts and sciences. With his fall this knowledge was
weakened, while in his descendants many things were lost and all things
became obscured. That music has in some way a heavenly origin all are
agreed—even the Hindoos, who say that its effects are produced in us by
recalling to memory the airs of Paradise, which we heard in our state of
pre-existence; even the Greeks, whose fables are founded on the
corruption of primeval traditions, and whose invocation to music is:
O art divine! exalted blessing!
Each celestial charm expressing!
Kindest gift the gods bestow!
Sweetest good that mortals know!
But the writer in the English or, perhaps, in any other language who has
most poetically stated the case of music, and given us a Christian view
of it, is Newman, in the last of his Oxford University sermons. “Can it
be,” he asks, “that those mysterious stirrings of heart, and keen
emotions, and strange yearnings after we know not what, and awful
impressions from we know not whence, should be wrought in us by what is
unsubstantial, and comes and goes, and begins and ends, in itself? It is
not so; it cannot be. No; they have escaped from some higher sphere;
they are the outpourings of eternal harmony in the medium of created
sound; they are echoes from our Home; they are the voice of angels, or
the _Magnificat_ of saints, or the living laws of divine Governance, or
the divine Attributes; something are they besides themselves which we
cannot compass, which we cannot utter, though mortal man—and he,
perhaps, not otherwise distinguished above his fellows—has the gift of
eliciting them.”
The ancients urged in favor of music three principal benefits to
mankind: its effects in softening the manners of men, thereby promoting
civilization and raising a people out of the barbarous and savage state;
its effects in exciting or repressing the passions; and its effects as a
medicinal power to cure diseases. Thus Polybius ascribes to the
cultivation of this art the refinement of the inhabitants of Arcadia,
and to the absence of such a discipline the roughness which
characterized the citizens of Cynæthæ; thus Homer places a musician near
the person of Clytemnestra as a guard upon her chastity, and, until he
was away, Ægistus, who then wronged her, had no power over her
affections. The subduing influence of music was again tried with success
many ages after by the Jesuit missionaries in Paraguay, who used to play
upon guitars and flutes to attract the melody-loving Indians from their
forest haunts towards the village communities which they had established
on the banks of the Parana.[63] Lycurgus regulated the music of Sparta,
and his laws were set to measure by the celebrated musician Terpander;
while Plato not only attributed an instructive virtue to music, but
maintained that a people’s music could not be interfered with without
altering their form of government. This civilizing influence of music is
beautifully illustrated by the old legend of the Greeks, that when the
workmen toiled on the walls of Thebes, Amphion played so sweetly on a
lyre borrowed from Mercury that the stones did move of themselves. This,
of course, is an allegory, to signify that by his musical talents,
poetical numbers, and the wisdom of his counsel Amphion prevailed with a
rude people to submit to law, live in society, and raise a defence
against their neighbors.
Footnote 63:
After religion there is certainly no greater means of civilization
than commerce; and commerce in the middle ages began with fairs, at
which merchants employed the seductions of minstrelsy and music to
draw numbers together, and thus be able to display and sell their
goods.
Since two things greatly contribute to the effects of music, its powers
of imitation and of association, the ancients gave it a large measure of
influence over the passions. Thus Plutarch relates that Terpander
appeased a violent sedition among the Lacedæmonians by the aid of his
lyre, and that Empedocles prevented a murder by the soothing sound of
his flute; and the painter Theon, having brought one of his works, which
represented a soldier attacking an enemy, to be exhibited on the public
square, would allow the veil to be withdrawn only after his attendant
musicians had wrought up with military airs the crowds that gathered
before it. Hence Plato wrote that a warlike air inspires courage,
because it imitates the sounds and accents of a brave man, and that a
calm air produces tranquillity in the soul on the same principle; or, as
Burke says, “The passions may be considerably operated upon, without
presenting any image at all, by certain sounds adapted to that purpose,
of which we have a sufficient proof in the acknowledged and powerful
effects of instrumental music”; for it counterfeits by sound some
quality or state of the mind. Thus, rage is loud, anger harsh, but love
and pity are gentle; consequently, loud and clangorous music stirs up
the stronger passions, while a smooth measure imitates the gentler
emotions of the mind. The wonderful influence of martial music on the
ardor of soldiers in battle has been remarked by many writers on
military affairs, and opera-goers must confess the bad tendency of
sensuous music. Shakspere knew it well when he wrote of the fellow
Who capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
The effects of music on the heads and hearts of men were so strongly
perceived by Plato that he banished from his model republic the Lydian
and Ionian modes, because they excited the lower instincts, but retained
the severe Doric and Phrygian measures on account of their manliness and
decency; and some of our best English poets have recorded their
testimony to these same effects. We subjoin a few examples, taken almost
at random:
And ever against eating cares.
Lap me in soft Lydian airs.
—_Milton._
Music alone with sudden charms can bind
The wand’ring sense, and calm the troubled mind.
—_Congreve._
Chiron with pleasing harp Achilles tamed,
And his rough manners with soft music framed.
—_King._
Timotheus to his breathing flute and sounding lyre
Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire.
—_Dryden._
Now wild with fierce desire,
My breast is all on fire!
In soften’d raptures now I die!
Can empty sound such joys impart?
Can music thus transport the heart
With melting ecstasy?
—_Cunningham._
Music! the greatest good that mortals know,
And all of heav’n we have below.
Music can noble hints impart,
Engender fury, kindle love,
With unsuspected eloquence can move,
And manage all the man with secret art.
—_Addison._
When Music, heavenly maid, was young,
While yet in early Greece she sung,
The Passions oft, to hear her spell,
Thronged around her magic cell,
Exulting, trembling, raging, fainting,
Possessed beyond the Muse’s painting:
By turns they felt the glowing mind
Disturbed, delighted, raised, refined.
—_Collins._
Music the fiercest grief can charm,
And Fate’s severest rage disarm;
Music can soften pain to ease,
And make despair and madness please;
Our joys below it can improve,
And antedate the bliss above.
—_Pope._
Association of ideas, which has so large a share in the operations of
the human mind, often contributes much to the effects of music; for, as
Shakspere says:
How many things by season seasoned are
To their right praise, and true perfection!
Thus, music that has been heard in an agreeable place or that was played
by some one near and dear to us, or music that is connected with the
trials and triumphs of our native land, will awaken sentiments of love
or melancholy, or sympathy or ardor, on the principle of associated
ideas. This is feelingly expressed in the 136th Psalm in the persons of
the captive Hebrews, in whom the sound of music which they had listened
to in happy days would have awakened too keen an anguish.[64] In more
modern times we have had public illustrations of the same principle in
those simple melodies called _ranz des vaches_, which are such favorites
with the mountaineers of Switzerland, and are played upon a long trumpet
or Alpine horn. The sound of these tunes, and the rude words set to
them, which are expressive of scenes of pastoral life—the shingled
cottage, the dashing waterfall, the bleating of sheep, the lowing of
herds, and the tinkling cow-bells—sometimes recalled so vividly to the
native in a foreign clime the memories of his own land as to produce a
disease called _nostalgia_, that often showed itself among the Swiss
soldiers in the Neapolitan service;[65] for
Footnote 64:
This plaintive Psalm was turned into most musical English verse by
Donne, who makes it touchingly suggestive; and later, and better
still, by Aubrey de Vere in his beautiful drama, _Alexander the
Great_.
Footnote 65:
A person who was present has feelingly described the deep effect
produced on some of our poor wounded soldiers who had been brought to
a church in Fredericksburg on their way North, after one of the
battles in the Wilderness, when some person sat down at the organ and
played “Home, sweet Home.”
There is in souls a sympathy with sounds;
And as the mind is pitched, the ear is pleased
With melting airs, or martial, brisk, or grave;
Some chord in unison with what we hear
Is touched within us, and the heart replies.
—_Cowper._
The belief of the ancients that music was auxiliary to medicine is
attested by a great number of writers. Chiron the Centaur, who educated
Achilles, was careful to unite instructions in the healing art to those
which he gave on music. Plutarch tells us that Thales of Crete delivered
the Spartans from a plague by the aid of his lyre; Athenæus quotes
Theophrastus as authority that the Thebans cured epilepsy by the notes
of a flute; Aulus Gellius says that music will rid a man of the gout;
Xenocrates employed music in the cure of maniacs; while the judicious
Galen gravely speaks of playing the flute over the suffering parts of
the body; and the idea that music is the sovereign and only remedy for
the bite of the tarantula still lingers in Southern Italy. The Tyrrhenes
always hired a flute-player to perform while they flogged their slaves,
to give them some relief under the lash; and there was usually an
arch-musician on board of the triremes—in which the rowers’ strength and
endurance were more severely taxed than in smaller vessels—not only to
mark the time or cadence for each stroke of the oar, but principally to
cheer the men by the sweetness of the melody; whence Quintilian takes
occasion to remark that music is a gift of nature, to make us the more
patiently to support labor and fatigue.[66]
Footnote 66:
Blessed Peter Claver, Apostle of the Negroes, used to contrive that
the sufferers in the hospitals at Cartagena, in South America, should
be solaced with music; and for centuries it has been a custom at Santo
Spirito, in Rome, to have the magnificent organ which is set up in the
main ward play three times a week for the patients.
Among the nations of antiquity Egypt was long thought to be the mother
of ancient civilization; and the Egyptians were well acquainted with
music, for representations of musical instruments have been discovered
on some of their oldest monuments, such as obelisks and tombs. But they
never popularized music, because they thought that it had the effect of
making youth effeminate; yet Strabo says that their children were
instructed in one, and only one, special kind of music, of which the
government approved. Like every other profession, that of musician was
hereditary. Egyptian music was originally grave and in solemn accord
with the stiffness of the kindred arts, which were hampered by strict
hieratic rules, and almost exclusively devoted to the service of
religion. When the country fell under the sway of the Greeks, music
became of a gayer and less moral sort, being as much or more employed at
banquets and on other profane occasions as in the temples and beside the
bier. The Ptolemies encouraged Greek music, and the musical contests
introduced into Egypt by this race of splendid princes were all of
Hellenic origin. Athenæus relates that at a grand Bacchic entertainment
given by Ptolemy Philadelphus over six hundred musicians formed the
orchestra. Musical talent was hereditary in the Ptolemaic dynasty, and
the father of Cleopatra was surnamed _Auletes_, or the flute-player,
from his excessive attachment to this instrument.
We have little knowledge of music as a science among the Hebrews, but
there is abundant proof of its practice. They had music on their
festival days, whether domestic, civil, or religious, and professional
musicians were attached to the royal court; but the art was
systematically studied in the schools of the prophets, and received its
highest application in the Temple, where it entered largely into divine
worship.
The music of the Greeks has engaged the attention of many learned men,
but is so difficult a subject that no one understands it; and it is as
easy to imagine how the Pyramids were raised as to conceive what Greek
music was like.
Music enters largely into the mythology of Greece, and strange
legends—some of which are pure myths, others the exaggeration of
facts—have been made up about it. The Muses were extremely jealous of
their musical talents, and whoever ventured to compete with them was
punished. Thus the impudent Sirens or sea-nymphs lost their wings, and
the lovely daughters of King Pierus were changed into birds.[67] Two of
Apollo’s contests are famous for their mournful ending. One was with
Marsyas, a ranger of the woods, who, having found the flute which
Minerva threw away because it distorted her handsome features, rashly
challenged the divine Apollo to a contest between this instrument and
the lyre, the condition of which was that the victor might do what he
wished with the vanquished. The Muses decided in favor of their leader,
and the miserable mortal was tied to a tree and flayed alive. A statue
of Marsyas, bound and suffering, was generally placed by the Greeks, and
afterwards by the Romans also, in the vestibule of their halls of
justice, as a warning not to go into litigation hastily, and, above all,
not to dispute with the gods—_i.e._, bring religion into court.[68]
Footnote 67:
The adventure of Ulysses and the melodious Sirens was a subject early
seized upon by Christian art within the Discipline of the Secret to
convey an idea of the cross (Ulysses attached to the mast of his
vessel), the church (under the figure of a ship), and the seductions
of the world (of the flesh particularly) in this voyage of life. See
De Rossi's _Bulletin of Christian Archæology for 1863_, page 35, in
which a curious monument bearing on this strange _rapprochement_ is
described.
Footnote 68:
One of these old statues having come to light in good condition while
the palace of Monte Citorio, designed by Pope Innocent XII. for the
seat of the higher tribunals of law at Rome, was being built, it was
appropriately placed on the landing at the head of the great stairway.
The Italian Deputies have doubtless removed it, as too significant of
_divine vengeance_.
Another triumph of Apollo was over Pan, a _dilettante_ of music and
inventor of the reed-pipes, which he called _syrinx_ after the beautiful
Arcadian nymph whose adventure with her tuneful lover is well known from
Ovid. Midas, King of Phrygia, was chosen umpire, and, deciding in favor
of Pan, was disgraced by having his ears changed into those of a donkey.
Poor Midas contrived for a time to conceal his mishap by wearing day and
night a cap of a peculiar form;[69] but as no man is long a hero to his
valet, his body-servant, while trimming his hair one day, pushed up the
bonnet a little and discovered the deformity. The secret so embarrassed
him that, fearing he might unwittingly divulge it, he dug a hole in the
ground beside a meandering brook and whispered therein: “Midas has ass’s
ears!” He then filled it up and thought himself secure against himself;
but, alas! on the very spot a tell-tale reed grew up, which, as the
breezes rocked it to and fro, murmured the fatal secret, “Midas has
ass’s ears.” While this fable may signify one of the ways by which the
ancients believed nature to have drawn man’s attention to instrumental
music—for travellers tell us that in some parts of the world there are
plants called vocal or singing reeds, which emit a sweet strain when
moved by the wind—it may also be a myth to insinuate that music is a
sort of language; and as such, says Metastasio, it has the advantage
over poetry which a universal language would have over a particular one,
for music can touch all hearts in every age and country, but poetry
speaks only to the people of its own age and country. One of the Greek
stories of sublimest significance, and which mysteriously enters into
early Christian art under the discipline of the secret, is the Orphic
legend. Orpheus, presented by Apollo with a lyre and instructed in its
use by the Muses, was able to tame with his sweet notes the wild beasts
that gathered around him, and to enchant even the trees and rocks of
Olympus, which started from their places and followed the sounds that
charmed them:
Since naught so stockish, hard, and full of rage
But music for the time doth change his nature,
Footnote 69:
We find in this story the origin of the _Phrygian cap_ which came to
be a symbol of slavery and degradation among the Romans, by whom the
Phrygians were considered a stupid people—whose rulers even had
asinine qualities; and it never quite lost this character, but was
used in France up to the time of the Revolution by galley-prisoners,
and it is well known that an irruption of escaped convicts into Paris
during the Reign of Terror, carrying one of their caps at the end of a
pole and singing the _Marseillaise_, gave rise to the absurd custom of
the liberty-pole and cap now so common.
as Shakspere remarks. That some animals are amenable to the influence of
harmony is certain—hence the success of the Hindoos with their deadly
cobras; and some recent botanists are of opinion that the growth of
flowers, and especially roses, is stimulated by music. But whatever
slight foundation of fact there may be in the wonders of the
_historical_ Orpheus, it fades into obscurity beside the noble
conception of the _mythical_ Orpheus, whose history seems based on a
traditional knowledge of the happy state of man in Paradise when all
things of earth were subject to him:
Till disproportioned Sin
Jarred against Nature’s clime, and with harsh din
Broke the fair music that all creatures made
To their great Lord, whose love their motion swayed
In perfect diapason, whilst they stood
In first obedience, and their state of good.
—_Milton._
Music is mentioned with a degree of rapture in more than fifty places of
the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. The Lacedæmonians had a flute blazoned on
their standards, and the military airs composed by Tyrtæus continued to
be played in the Spartan army until the end of the republic.
The Pythagoreans and Platonists not only supposed the soul of man to be
a substance very like a disembodied musical instrument of some sort, but
believed the universe itself and all its parts to be formed on the
principles of harmony; hence their not altogether imaginary music of the
spheres which enters into their systems of philosophy:
Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:
_There’s not the smallest orb which thou behold’st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins_:
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
—_Merchant of Venice._
And this idea of a close connection between music and the heavenly
bodies was still lingering in the minds of some philosophers as late as
the eleventh century of our era, when Psellus the younger, treating of
music and astronomy, describes the former as symmetry and proportion
itself, which reminds one of Hegel’s profound and intelligible
definition that “music is architecture in time”! Pythagoras especially
is said to have regarded music as something celestial and profound, and
to have had such an opinion of its powers over the human affections that
he ordered his disciples to be waked every morning, and lulled to sleep
at night, by the dulcet notes of the lyre or the flute.[70]
Footnote 70:
Dr. Burney, _History of Music_, vol. i. p. 436, has a note which bears
too quaintly on this part of the subject not to be reproduced. He
says: “Master Thomas Mace, author of a most delectable book called
_Musick’s Monument_, would have been an excellent Pythagorean, for he
maintains that the mystery of the Trinity is perspicuously made plain
by the connection of the three harmonical concords 1, 3, 5; that music
and divinity are nearly allied; and that the contemplation of concord
and discord, of the nature of the octave and unison, will so
strengthen a man’s faith 'that he shall never after degenerate into
that _gross subbeastiacal sin_ of Atheism.’”
The love and cultivation of music formed so much a part of the
discipline of the illustrious men who sprang from the school of
Pythagoras that almost every one of them left behind him a treatise on
the subject. Plato, in the seventh book of his work on laws, says that
children in a well-ordered commonwealth should be instructed for three
years in music, which reminds us of the commendable efforts made of late
years in Great Britain and the United States to make music a necessary
part of popular education, in which connection the late Cardinal Wiseman
wrote an interesting letter to the Catholic Poor-School Committee of
London in 1849 about “the importance of introducing music more
effectually into our system of education.”
In the third book of Plato’s _Republic_ music is treated of at
considerable length with reference to education; “for whatever is
concerned with the art of music ought somehow to terminate with the love
of the beautiful.” But to seize the full meaning of this passage we must
remember that, in the doctrine of the Academy, _the Good, the True, and
the Beautiful_ are reciprocal terms, and consequently that music should
elevate to the contemplation of the great Godhead—Goodness itself, Truth
itself, Beauty itself.
Eloquence was thought by the ancients to be so intimately connected with
music that the orators of Greece and Rome had a flute-player standing at
a proper distance behind them while they spoke, who kept up an undertone
of musical sound, now swelling as the speaker rose with his theme, now
gently falling when, as in panegyrics on the dead or in pleadings for
mercy, he sought the chords of sorrow or sympathy in the human heart.
Musical contests of flutes, trumpets, and other instruments were among
the attractions at the public games of Greece; and the profession of
music was so highly honored, and often so remunerative, that many
musicians lived in splendor. There was Dorion the flute-player, who
lived like a Sybarite and was a frequent guest at the table of King
Philip of Macedon; there was Ismenias of Thebes, who was sent on an
embassy to Persia, and (like the late Duke of Brunswick) had a passion
for collecting jewels which his enormous wealth enabled him to gratify
to the utmost. He once reproved a smart agent for not having paid as
much for a pearl as it was worth, saying that it belittled him in the
jeweller’s eyes not to have given, and the gem in his own eyes not to
have cost, its full value, and sent him back with the surplus money. The
flute which he bought at Corinth for three talents (about $4,000) must
have been encrusted with precious stones. Amœbeus, the harper, received
an Attic talent (about $1,000) for every appearance on the stage. But
although proficients in music were highly honored and rewarded, the mere
makers of musical instruments enjoyed no greater esteem than did other
artisans, and we know that the comic poets of the time often ridiculed
the celebrated orator Isocrates because his father had been able to give
him a liberal education with money made by manufacturing flutes. Not
only men but women also publicly exhibited their musical
accomplishments; they belonged, however, mostly, if not exclusively, to
the class of _Hetairai_. Such was the famous Lamia, whose skill as a
flute-player, hardly less than her personal charms, won the heart of
King Demetrius.
Passing over to Italy, we can only mention the Sabines and Etruscans,
who early cultivated music, and from whom the Romans derived their
knowledge of the art; the former giving them their profane, and the
latter their sacred, music. At a later period the genius of Greece
banished her ruder rivals and monopolized the art in Rome. It was a
general custom among people of rank, towards the end of the republic and
under the empire, to keep a private band of musicians; but in the
earlier days of Rome music, being almost exclusively devoted to
religion, either in the temples or at burial rites, was under government
control; hence it was forbidden in the Twelve Tables to have more than
ten flute-players at funerals, and the _Salii_, who were priests of
Mars, were obliged, in their annual procession through the city, to
accompany their stately tread by a sort of music made by striking their
rods of gold on the metal shields which they carried in the hand. The
most important body of musicians at Rome, and the recognized officials
of the art, were the _tibicines_, or pipers, who formed a college, and
on one occasion brought the religious affairs of the city to a
stand-still by seceding in a body, after some real or fancied grievance,
to the neighboring town of _Tibur_ (Tivoli).
The “ambubajarum collegia” of Horace, and the Syrian musicians satirized
by Juvenal, were held in contempt by the Romans as not delighting the
soul with exalted harmony, so much as exciting the instincts to sensual
gratification.
THE ROMANCE OF A PORTMANTEAU.
“We shall be happy to see you at Rathdangan Castle, sir,” said Sir
Geoffry Didcote. “If—aw—you come down on Saturday and—aw—stop till
Monday, we shall—aw—be pleased”; stroking his finely-shaven chin at each
“aw.”
I accepted with a gratified alacrity. We had won the rubber trick by
trick, and, although the honors were against us, I had somehow or other
managed to establish a long suit commencing with the king, and had ended
by lugging in all the poor relations, including a miserable deuce of
diamonds, for which I contrived to secure as good a berth as that held
by any member of its illustrious family. Flushed with victory, Sir
Geoffry’s hospitality spread forth its arms and enfolded me within its
embrace. This _was_ a chance for a briefless barrister during the long
vacation. Briefless! Why, I could not even command a nod from an
attorney, much less that magic roll of paper whose cabalistic
inscriptions are so readily deciphered by—the pocket. The Hall of the
Four Courts was a most delightful club-room, where all the news of the
day was freely discussed, from Mr. Justice Keogh’s latest witticism to
the new street-ballad by Doctor Huttle; from Baron Dowse’s joke to
Sergeant Armstrong’s wig. And as for Circuit, it was nothing more or
less than a charming country excursion, where the wit and wine of the
bar mess amply compensated for any little _ennui_ the hours occupied in
doing nothing during the day might have reasonably engendered. In vain I
strutted across “The Hall” with a bagful of old French novels,
endeavoring to appear as though absorbed in some pending case in which
my dormant talent would be strained to the utmost limits of its
capacity; in vain I caused myself to be called forth from the library as
often as it pleased the porter to summon me for the sum of five
shillings, with which I had retained his eminent services; in vain I
buttonholed country friends. But why continue? The word “briefless”
speaks for itself; and were it not for sundry remittances from a maiden
aunt, my sole surviving relative, I should, _bon gré mal gré_, have been
compelled to take the queen’s shilling or to seek employment from the
Corporation of Dublin in the capacity of a street scavenger.
As yet I had made but little way in society. I could not talk Wagner or
fall foul of Tennyson. I had not brass enough for a ballad or talent for
a _scena_. Too nervous for anecdote, my modesty muffled me even in
conversation. I was not a man’s man, nor yet a _cavaliere servante_. I
did not hunt, fish, or shoot. In a word, I was somewhat of a dreary drug
in Vanity Fair.
Why Sergeant Frizwig asked me to dinner I cannot determine; and why Sir
Geoffry Didcote, after that excellent repast, took it into his head to
invite me to Rathdangan Castle is a mystery unto this present hour.
The vulgar question of ways and means stared me in the face and almost
out of countenance as I walked homewards. Rathdangan was distant from
Dublin at least thirty-five miles, thirty of which could be traversed by
rail. The cost of a conveyance from the station might or might not be a
“crusher”; and then the tips to the retainers! Luckily, my aunt had
forwarded a remittance of five pounds upon that very morning, sixty
shillings of which still remained firm and true; and as she invariably
impressed upon me, in addition to the necessity of obtaining briefs, the
advisability of mixing in the best society _only_, I naturally
calculated on a “tenner” upon receipt of the intelligence of my arrival
at the Castle, inscribed upon the Didcote paper. My wardrobe was the
next consideration, and this was of the scantiest description. The
evening suit might pass muster in candlelight, but once turn a jet of
gas upon it, and the whole fabric tumbled to pieces. The grease of
countless dinners, the patches beneath the arms, the seams artfully
blackened with ink, the frayed linings, would jointly and severally step
into the witness-box and turn evidence against me. My shirts were
singularly blue, and worn away from constant friction with the horny
palms of the washerwoman, whilst the collars resembled those “sierras,”
or saw-edged mountains, which the observant traveller recognizes upon
entering the dominions of his most Catholic Majesty Alfonso the Twelfth
of Spain. My walking-suit was presentable enough, consisting as it did
of Thomastown frieze, and my boots, although machine-made, possessed the
redeeming influence of novelty.
“I’ll risk it,” thought I. “The investment is a safe one, and the return
will amply repay the outlay.” A new and unforeseen difficulty presented
itself. The battered portmanteau which usually bore my “fixins,” whilst
quite good enough for “the boots” of provincial hotels, was utterly
unfit to be handled by the genteel retainers at Rathdangan Castle; and
as nothing bespeaks a certain _ton_ more than smart-looking luggage, I
found myself under the necessity of investing in a new valise.
“There’s wan fit for Roosia, or Pinsylvania—no less,” exclaimed the
proprietor of a description of open-air bazaar situated behind the Bank
of Ireland, with whom I was in treaty for the desired article. “Its
locks is as sthrong as Newgate, an’ ye might dhrop it from Nelson’s
pillar an’ ye wudn’t shake a nail in it.”
This was a large black box strongly resembling a coffin, both in size
and shape.
“Mebbe it’s a hair thrunk yer looking for? Here’s wan. There’s brass
nails for ye! There’s hair! Begorra, there’s many a man in Merrion
Square that hasn’t half as much.”
Informing him that I had no intention of emigrating just at that
particular moment, and that I required a small, solid leather
portmanteau, Mr. Flynn proved himself equal to the emergency.
“That’s solid enough, anyhow. Shure, ye’d think it was Roman
cimint—sorra a less,” he cried, as he administered several resounding
whacks to the article in question.
“What are you asking for this?” I demanded.
“What am I axin’ for it?” Here he fixed me with his eye, as the Ancient
Mariner fixed the wedding-guest. “It’s worth thirty shillin’s.”
“Say twenty,” said I.
“I couldn’t if ye wor to make me a lord-mayor.”
“I cannot give more.”
“Well, here now: we’ll shplit the differ—say twinty-five.” And he spat
upon what he elegantly termed “the heel of his fist.”
“Twenty,” said I.
“Begorra, yer a hard man! I suppose ye must have it.”
My preparations being now completed, five o’clock on the Saturday
evening found me on the platform of the Amiens Street terminus.
“Hillo, Dawkins!” exclaimed Mr. Dudley Fribscombe, a brother barrister,
whose father (in the bacon trade) allowed him five hundred a year.
“Going as special, eh? A hundred guineas—you’re coining, by Jove!”
“No,” I replied with assumed _nonchalance_, “just running down to
Rathdangan Castle to spend a few days with the Didcotes.” I never felt
better pleased in my life. This fellow was always sneering at the
poverty of his briefless brothers, and as his people happened to reside
near Rathdangan, but were of course _un_visited, my red-hot shot told
with withering effect.
“Oh! indeed,” he muttered. “What an awful swell! Going second?”
“First,” was my sententious reply.
“Let us travel together.”
“All right.”
Now, my intention was to have taken a second-class ticket, but the tone
of Fribscombe altered my mind. What a crisis in my destiny as I walked
to the booking office! What a pivot in my fate!
Had I travelled second—but I will not anticipate.
“The smoking-carriage is full. Let’s get in here; _I_'ll tip the guard
to let nobody else pass,” said Fribscombe, carrying his idea into
execution.
We ensconced ourselves snugly in the pet corners, and made a great
display of luggage all over the compartment. My companion offered me a
cigar, but I preferred my ebon meerschaum, bought of Hans Larsen himself
at Lillehammer, and which I had colored with possibly as much delicate
assiduity as Mr. Millais, R.A., bestows upon his delightful
masterpieces.
We were about to “scratch,” as the last bell had rung, when the door was
suddenly unlocked, thrown open, and a bundle of rugs bristling with
umbrella-handles, a portmanteau, and a lady attired in the newest and
presumably most correct thing in widow’s weeds were flung violently into
the compartment. The whistle sounded, the door was banged to, and the
train glided out of the station ere we could make any move in the
direction of a change of seats.
“What an infernal sell!” muttered Fribscombe.
“Too bad!” I growled.
“That guard is a 'do.’ Half a crown thrown into the Liffy!”
“Would she stand it, Fribscombe?”
“Not she. If the dear departed smoked, it would remind her too forcibly
of him; and if he didn’t smoke, she’d scream and call the guard.”
In the meantime the object of our solicitude had shaken out her
draperies and snugly wrapped herself in a wolf-skin rug, the head and
glass eyes of which reposed in her lap like the sporran of a Highlander.
Her figure appeared to very little advantage in the heavy folds of her
ribbed-silk, crape-laden cloak; nevertheless, it betrayed a youthful
grace and symmetry. She kept her veil down, and from the posture she
assumed—her head pressed back against the cushion—it became pretty
evident that, if she were not _en route_ to dreamland, she wished to
indulge in a profound meditation.
“This train won’t stop till we get to Skerries,” said Fribscombe. “I
think,” he added _sotto voce_, “that she is asleep, and a whiff or two
of real Havana will not awaken her.”
“It’s much better to ask her consent, and I’ll do it,” I whispered.
She sat directly opposite to me, facing the engine. I leaned a little
forward.
“I beg your pardon, madam; but may I ask if you have any objection to
our smoking? If you have the slightest feeling on the subject, I beg to
assure you that it will be no deprivation to us to wait until we reach
Skerries.”
She raised her veil.
“I have no objection whatever,” she said in a low, sympathetic murmur.
“I like the perfume of tobacco.” And, as if smitten by some sorrowful
remembrance, she sighed and sank back, but did not lower her veil.
I mumbled some incoherent expression of thanks, scarcely knowing what I
said; for my whole soul was focussed in my eyes as I gazed into one of
the loveliest faces that I had ever beheld.
“You are not availing yourself of my permission, sir,” she observed,
almost laughingly.
“'Pon my conscience! I forgot all about it,” was my reply.
Woman-like she felt the compliment, and woman-like she was grateful for
it; she knew it to be genuine.
Somehow or other we drifted into conversation. There are some women who
can trot a man’s ideas out for him, walk them gently up and down,
canter, and, lastly, gallop them. Any little defects are concealed by
the excellent hand which is over him; and were he to come to auction at
that particular moment, he would be knocked down to the very highest
bidder, be he ever so modest—namely, himself. This young girl—for she
could scarcely have passed her teens—possessed this marvellous gift,
and, as she deftly passed from subject to subject, I found myself,
usually so dull, so reticent, so uninformed, discussing topic after
topic—travel, music, the drama, literature, anything, everything—with a
feverish facility, and offering decided opinions upon subjects even to
approach which would have ordinarily been a matter of no little
enterprise, doubt, and difficulty.
So deeply had I become absorbed that when Fribscombe, whose existence I
had totally forgotten, suddenly awakening from a cosey slumber, shouted
in a very excited tone: “I say, Dawkins, jump out, man! This is your
station. We’re moving off,” I could scarcely realize the fact of its
proximity, and that two hours had rolled by, compressed into so many
minutes.
My first thought was to journey onwards with my fair _vis-à-vis_—I cared
not whither; my second, that Fribscombe would laugh me to death at the
“Hall.” With a sense of sorrow—I might almost say of agony—in my heart
at the idea of parting from her, I seized upon my portmanteau, and just
succeeded in alighting without accident as the train moved rapidly away.
I stood upon the platform like a person just aroused from a deep
slumber. I was purposeless. The tide had receded, and the bleak
barrenness of my shore life confronted me. The fair enchantress whose
wand had conjured up a new order of being within me had departed.
“Ye’ll have for to come inside the station, sir. I’m goin’ for to lock
the doore,” observed a porter, as he significantly pointed in the
direction of the exit.
“Can I get a car over to Rathdangan Castle?”
“Sorra a wan, sir. Billy Heffernan dhrew two gintlemin over there that
come be this thrain.”
“Will he return here?”
“Sorra a fear av him. Ketch him lavin’ a house where there’s such
lashins as at the Castle! Ow! ow! sez the fox.”
“How am I to get across?” I asked in some trepidation.
“Shure, it’s only a nice little taste av a walk—nothin’ less.”
“How far is it?”
“Well, now, you might _coax_ it into four mile, but, be the powers!
it’ll fight hard for five.”
I could not refrain from laughing at this peculiar form of expression,
although there was anything but mirth in my present position. To be late
for dinner would be a high crime and misdemeanor, and nothing short of
_lèse majesté_, even were I to accept the porter’s _ultimatum_ and walk.
I could scarcely reach the Castle in anything like time.
“Did they expect you, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Troth, thin, they might have sint a yoke for ye. They always does for
the quollity.”
This was not complimentary, but, like many a speech of a similar nature,
it contained a great deal of truth in it. Could Sir Geoffry have
forgotten all about his invitation? It had been given hurriedly as the
whist-table was breaking up. He had had his share of wine, if revoking
twice might be taken as an index. Yes, the following morning had erased
me from the tablets of his memory. What an ass to come all this way to
be instructed by a common fellow in a corduroy suit. Served me right! I
ought to have known better.
“What time does the next train go up to Dublin, my man?” I asked.
“What time?” he ejaculated.
“Yes, yes, what time?”
“In forty minits, if she’s not late; but she’s shure to be in time if
_I’m_ not here, bad cess to her!”
I sat down in the cheerless waiting-room, disgusted with Sir Geoffry
Didcote, disgusted with myself, boiling with anger, and writhing with
mortification, till the recollection of my fair travelling companion
descended like oil upon the troubled waters of my mind, and the desire
to discover who she might be became overwhelming. Fool that I was not to
have gained even a solitary clue! She might be travelling to Belfast _en
route_ for Scotland, or she might have alighted at the next station. The
last thought induced me to question the porter.
“Did you see a handsome lady in weeds in the train that I travelled by?”
I asked.
“Is it a widdy woman ye mane?”
“Yes.”
“Young?”
“Yes—very.”
“Purty?”
“Beautiful!” I exclaimed.
Here he winked facetiously. “I seen her. Me an’ her is acquainted.”
“Who is she?” I eagerly asked.
“She’s the widdy av a dacent, sober man be the name av O’Hoolahan, that
died av the horrors av dhrink.”
“Poor thing!” I muttered half-aloud.
“Poor? Begorra, it’s him that left her warm an’ snug, wud three av the
elegantest childer.”
“Three children!” I interposed, somewhat disconcerted. The name
O’Hoolahan was bad enough, but three little O’Hoolahans!
“She left this parcel wud me.”
“When?”
“A few minits ago, whin she got out.”
“Got out? Where!”
“Out av the third class, foreninst the doore there.”
Pshaw! We had been talking of the wrong woman, and somehow I felt
intensely pleased to think that my fair _incognita_ was _not_ the relict
of the defunct O’Hoolahan and the mother of three little O’Hoolahans.
“Whisht!” suddenly exclaimed my communicative friend. “I hear a horse’s
feet. He’s tearin’ along like murther—a rale stepper”; then turning to
me: “Yer not forgotten. It’s from Rathdangan. Yer sint for. It’s
Highflier, an’ Jim Falvey’s dhrivin’ him.”
These surmises proved to be correct.
“I’ve to beg your pardon, sir, for being late,” said Falvey, touching
his hat; “but we cast a shoe at Ballinacor, and I done my best to pull
up the lost time. Any luggage, sir?”
“This portmanteau.”
“All right, sir. Will you be pleased to jump in? You’ll only get over at
the first dinner bell, if you do that same.”
Having tipped the loquacious porter, I sprang into the tax-cart, and the
next minute Highflier was dashing at a hand gallop on the road to
Rathdangan.
Mr. Falvey informed me that there was the “hoigth” of company at the
Castle; that every room was full; Lord Dundrum and Captain Buckdash had
arrived by the morning train, and the Bishop of Ballinahoo and his lady
had just entered the avenue as he was leaving it; the partridge were
plenty, and a covey might be found within “a few perch” of the west
wing; Master James (the Didcote heir) was expected with two of his
brother officers of the King’s Dragoon Guards; Miss Patricia’s
collar-bone was now as good as new, etc. We then talked horses, and he
was still hammering away at the pedigree of Highflier when we reached
the entrance gate. This was castellated and partly covered with ivy. A
stout old lady unlocked the ponderous portals, and, as she admitted us,
dropped a courtesy whilst she uttered the cheery words, “Yer welkim,
sir.”
Why do people keep gloomy-looking servants, dismal phantoms who reply to
your ring with a sigh, answer your query with a sob, and wait upon you
with a groan? Their depression is infectious, and although you may, with
a naturally lively constitution, baffle the disease for a time, sooner
or later you are laid low by it.
According to a time-honored maxim of the road, we kept a trot for the
avenue, and just as we whirled up to the grand entrance the sound of a
gong reached us.
“Jump out, sir. You’ve only ten minutes; that’s the second bell. There’s
some of them in the drawing-room already,” cried Falvey, as he flung my
portmanteau to a solemn-looking domestic, who gazed at me as though he
were engaged in a deep mental calculation as to the length of my coffin
and the exact quantity of linen necessary for the formation of a shroud.
Following this grim apparition across a low-ceiled, wainscoted hall, in
which a billiard-table of the present contrasted strangely with oaken
furniture of the sixteenth century, and up an old oak staircase
decorated with battered corselets, deeply-dented morions, halberds,
matchlocks, steel gloves, and broadswords, along a wainscoted passage as
dark as Erebus, and up a spiral stone staircase the ascent of which took
all the breath out of my body, I was finally deposited in a little stone
chamber in one of the towers of the Castle.
“Your keys, please, sir,” demanded my janitor.
“Oh! never mind; thanks; I’ll get out my things myself.” I feared the
penetrating gaze of this man. I shuddered as I thought of the frayed
linings and the inked seams.
“Very good, sir,” uttered like a parting benediction; and with a bow
which plainly said, “We shall never meet at this side of the grave
again,” the dread apparition vanished. The old saying, “More haste, less
speed,” never exemplified itself more unhappily than in my case. With
the thoughts of the last gong ringing through my brain, I vainly
endeavored to open my portmanteau. My keys had got mixed up, and, as
they were nearly all of a size, I had to travel round the entire ring
before I could manage to induce one to enter the keyhole. Then, when I
came to turn it, it got blocked and wouldn’t move either backwards or
forwards. I withdrew it, whistled it, probed it with my breast-pin,
tugged and strained until my backbone ached again, but without effect.
What was I to do? Break it open. But how? I possessed no implements.
Perceiving a bronze figure poised upon one leg on the chimney-piece, I
resolved upon utilizing the outstretched limb of the harlequin, and,
having inserted it in the ring of the key, I finally, to my unspeakable
delight, succeeded in detaching the bolt.
Throwing open the portmanteau, I plunged my hand into the corner where I
had deposited my brushes, but found that they must have shifted during
the journey. I tried the other corner, with similar success. I then
probed and groped in the lower compartment. Here was a pretty go. I must
have forgotten to pack them, although I could have sworn not only to
their having been packed, but as to the precise spot in which I had
deposited them. Mechanically I drew forth my linen and laid it on the
bed, in order to mount my studs.
I was somewhat astonished to find that the breast was most elaborately
adorned with floriated needlework.
Some mistake of the laundress. I detest worked shirt-fronts, which are
only worn by cads and shoddy lords, so I picked out another. If number
one was embroidered, number two was done in fresco, and, in addition to
the vast _tumuli_ of birds, beasts, fishes, and flowers, an edging of
lace played a prominent part. What could this mean? Surely I put up my
own time-honored linen myself, and here were bosom decorations fit for a
fop of the year 1815. Hastily turning out the contents of the
portmanteau upon the floor, in order to realize my own property, what
were my sensations in discovering that this pile of snowy drapery did
not contain one single article of male apparel!
The truth flashed across me now in all its appalling reality: Heavens
and earth! _I had taken the young widow’s portmanteau for my own._
I do not know what the exact sensation of fainting comes to, but this I
do know: that if I did not faint, I went within a pip of it. A cold
perspiration burst out all over me, and I felt as if I was on board the
Dover and Calais boat and about to call the steward. How could I appear
to the assembled company? With what ridicule would I be overwhelmed when
the true state of the case came to light! And then what would _she_
think? _She_ would write me down an ass—a donkey unfit to be allowed to
wander from a thistle-grove. Her key would open _my_ leathern
“conveniency,” and the ghastly condition of my wardrobe would be laid
bare, whilst I had profaned the sanctity of—but it was too dreadful to
contemplate. How could I meet her? How could I look into that beautiful
face again? How was I to recover my wandering wardrobe? My whole stock
of clothes, save those I wore, were now in the possession of another,
whilst in exchange I had received a commodity of no value to me
whatever. On the contrary, my prize was worse than valueless—it was
contraband.
Bang-ang-ang-ang-oong-ang! went the gong.
Let it go! What were its sounds to me? If I were starving, I could not
descend in my present costume.
“Sir Geoffry Didcote begs me to say, sir, that he waits on you in order
to enter the dining-room,” mournfully announced the dismal servitor.
“Please say to Sir Geoffry that I don’t feel quite well—that I will go
down by and by.”
“Thank _you_, sir.” This was uttered as if he wished to say: “I am glad
that you are dying. _I_ knew how it would be—you couldn’t deceive _me_.”
The man had scarcely time to deliver my message ere Sir Geoffry himself
panted and puffed into my apartment.
“My dear sir—aw—I hope—aw—that you are not—aw—ill. It would—aw—grieve me
very much”—here he availed himself of my mirror to adjust his spotless
white choker—“if—aw—upon your—aw—first visit you—aw—became indisposed.”
Honesty, thought I, is the best policy, and it saves a lot of trouble;
so I made a clean breast of it to the pompous baronet.
“How very unfortunate—aw—for the lady! We will dispense—aw—with ceremony
under—aw—the peculiar, not to say delicate—aw—circumstances of the case,
and Lady Didcote will—aw—receive you in your—aw—present attire. You can
telegraph—aw—for reinforcements, which—aw—will arrive on—aw—Monday
morning.”
I could not see the force of this. I might easily telegraph for
reinforcements, but would they come? Secondly, as my visit was to
terminate upon Monday, reinforcements were not necessary, unless they
could be brought up at once. I begged to be excused from attending
table; but this he would not listen to, and, as he informed me that I
was keeping dinner waiting, there was nothing for it but to descend with
him.
I have, when a boy, been lugged into the school-room to suffer condign
punishment; at a later period I have been forced into the presence of a
young lady of whom I was deeply enamored; I have had to march up to the
pulpit in Trinity College dining-hall to repeat the long Latin grace
amid the muffled gibes of my peers; I have been placed in positions
where my bashfulness has been ruthlessly tortured and my retiring
modesty tried by fire and water; but never did I experience the pangs of
the rack until the full blaze of that drawing-room burst upon my vision.
The apartment appeared to swim round, carrying with it the form of a
hooked-nosed dowager in a turban, who screwed an eye-glass into the
corner of a wicked old eye, to have a good stare at the strange figure
her husband had introduced into her _salon_.
A confused murmur of many voices, in which “Who is he?” “What is he?”
“Stole a portmanteau,” “Highway robber,” “Police” smote upon my ear,
whilst a general craning of necks in my direction announced the
curiosity which my appearance had naturally excited.
I am aware that I bowed to something in blue drapery surmounted by a
head, that it placed the tips of its fingers on my arm, that I
mechanically followed a crowd of people towards an aperture in the wall
which proved to be a door, that I plunged downwards upon a chair, and
that then I came slowly to my senses. Having gulped down three glasses
of sherry in rapid succession, I found myself seated beside a gaunt
young lady of about five-and-thirty, so covered with pearl powder that
she was only partially visible to the naked eye. On my right hand sat a
portly dowager, who viewed with some alarm my inroads upon the sherry,
and she appeared so interested in my movements that I fully expected to
receive a temperance tract before the evening was half over. There were
about twenty at table, all stiff, solemn, and ceremonious.
“So you have been robbed?” snappishly remarked the young lady in blue.
“Oh! dear, no; merely an exchange of portmanteaus.”
“How stupid!”
Now, whether this applied to me or to the fact, I was not in the
position to say, so I merely rejoined:
“Very stupid _of_ me and _for_ me.”
“How so?”
“Why, I was the offending party.” And I endeavored to make myself
agreeable by narrating the circumstances exactly as they had occurred.
“And do you mean to say that you opened the lady’s trunk, sir?” demanded
my companion with great asperity.
“In mistake, madam, I assure you.”
The waspish lady waited until a portion of the ice which she was engaged
in despatching had cleared two very shaky-looking teeth bound in gold.
“There are some mistakes, sir, which no _gentleman_ should make.”
This was quite enough for me. To endeavor to make terms with this foe
were worse than folly, explanation weakness, and concession cowardice.
She gained nothing, however, by her viciousness; whilst I remained upon
the field and prepared to bivouac, surrounded by sturdy sentinels in the
shape of port, claret, and Madeira.
“The—aw—guard insisted upon his taking the old lady’s—aw—portmanteau.”
And Sir Geoffry was proceeding to retail his version of the story when
Lord Dundrum gaily exclaimed:
“Oh! by Jove, we’d better put the witness into the box. Let us
cross-examine the lawyer.”
“With all my heart,” said I; “the absurdity of the sensation will redeem
itself by its novelty.”
My story flowed joyously along, and peal upon peal of laughter greeted
me as I described my sensations upon discovering the strange garments.
“So—aw—the widow was—aw—young?”
“About eighteen, Sir Geoffry.”
“And pretty?” added his lordship.
I devoutly kissed my second finger and thumb, and flung them in the
direction of the ceiling.
“I’ll lay five to two he never hears of his portmanteau,” lisped Captain
Buckdash.
“Shall I be at liberty to hunt it up?” said Lord Dundrum.
“Certainly. Are you on?”
“In tens?” asked his lordship.
“Ponies, if you but limit the period to one week.”
“Done, Buckdash! I’ll book it.” And the peer, producing a pocket-book,
entered the bet, the terms of which he read aloud, and which the gallant
captain pronounced eminently satisfactory.
“I’m afraid, my lord, that you’ll lose your money,” I observed to Lord
Dundrum as we ascended to the drawing-room.
“I’ll give you the same bet, and that I’ll get your portmanteau, without
any interference of _yours_, in less than a week—say five days.”
“You know the lady?”
“No.”
“You suspect who she is?”
“I have no more idea of who she is, where she came from, or where she is
going to, than the man in the moon. Will you evince your sincerity by
betting now?”
“The fact is, my lord, I cannot afford to bet.”
“Quite right,” slapping me on the shoulder. “Never do. It’s a doosid
bad, pleasant habit.”
“And might I venture to ask how you purpose proceeding towards winning
your money?”
“I’ll tell you. I have just ordered round a trap. I’ll drive to
Ballynamuckle Station and telegraph along the whole line. If she’s local
or a county swell, we’ll have her name and address to-night. If, on the
contrary, she is not known along the line, she will have gone on to
Belfast. I’ll set the police to work there, and put advertisements in
all the papers on Monday morning. If Tuesday tells me nothing, I’ll put
the wires in motion north of Belfast, and on Wednesday we’ll have a
touch at Scotland. I feel certain, however, that we’ll find her this
side of Newry.” And his lordship retired for the purpose of equipping
himself for the road.
This bet was a lucky chance for me. Not that I cared much whether my
wardrobe ever turned up again or not, but I longed to discover the
identity of my fair acquaintance. I would at least enjoy the
satisfaction of learning her name, and gain some knowledge of her
surroundings, and then—pshaw! bow over my restored baggage and utter
_Vale, Vale, Vale_ to my three-hour dream.
In the billiard-room the menkind were assembled for pool. By a series of
ghastly flukes I managed to clear the table and divided every pool.
Captain Buckdash muttered something in reference to Dawson Lane, and one
young fellow, whose lives were sacrificed to my ruthless cue with
startling rapidity, offered to back me against some formidable player in
the Guards, laying the odds. For the second time in this eventful day
did I feel myself fit for the front rank. Lord Dundrum lounged into the
room about eleven o’clock. He indicated by a look that he wished to
speak to me, and, under cover of “splitting a bottle,” exclaimed in a
low tone:
“It’s all right.”
My heart gave a bound.
“The portmanteau is found.”
“Where?”
“At Nobberstown, the next station but one. She evidently discovered your
mistake; for she tumbled it out. It’s coming on.”
“And where is she?”
“Oh! hang me if I know or care. My ponies are safe. _You_ can look her
up.”
“Did she leave no message, no directions?” I asked eagerly.
“Don’t know,” said his lordship, as he chalked the top of his cue
preparatory to joining in the pool.
Lord Dundrum was correct in saying that _I_ should take up the running
now. It was my business to make restitution and to deliver the white
elephant left on my hands to its rightful owner. This task should be
undertaken at once. I scarcely closed my eyes all night, thinking of the
_modus operandi_; and when I came down to breakfast next morning I had
resolved upon nothing more definite than a searching cross-examination
of the _employés_ at Nobberstown Station.
“I’ll thank you for a check, Buckdash,” said Lord Dundrum, as the
gallant warrior entered the breakfast-room.
“For what?” asked the captain.
“For Mr. Dawkins’ portmanteau.”
“Wait till you get it.”
“I have it here.” And as he spoke he lugged my valise from beneath the
table, accompanied by a roar of laughter from all assembled.
“A capital joke,” grinned the captain.
“A capital joke, indeed! Hand over the coin.”
Captain Buckdash turned to me.
“Mr. Dawkins, is this your portmanteau?”
“It is indeed,” I replied.
“The one which you left in the railway carriage?”
“Yes.”
“I am quite satisfied, Lord Dundrum. You shall have a check after
breakfast; in the meantime will you kindly inform us how you managed to
lay hold of it?” And he cracked an egg with a violence that almost
crushed in the china cup.
I searched for some note or mark by which to obtain a clue to her
identity, but in vain; my leathern “conveniency” was as bald as when I
purchased it behind the Bank of Ireland. No message had been forwarded,
not a line of instruction. This course appeared singular, inasmuch as it
was unlikely that she would make no effort to regain her property; and
why lose this most legitimate opportunity? Had she no desire to place
herself in communication with _me?_ Ah! there was that in her glance
which gave this thought the lie. Heigh-ho! I was in love up to my
eyebrows and badly hit. I was obliged to come face to face with myself,
to place my hand upon my heart, and to plead guilty. I thought of the
elder Mr. Weller, and of his opinion respecting widows, and voted him
vulgar. My preconceived ideas upon the subject of relicts underwent a
total change, and now a bashful maiden seemed but an insipid nonentity.
I longed to quit Rathdangan, and, excusing myself under the plea of an
important professional engagement, started for Nobberstown at cockcrow.
This station consisted of simply a “porter and a platform,” one equally
intelligent as the other, and of the two the platform was “the better
man.”
“Sorra a know I know,” was the invariable reply to almost every query.
“Did the lady alight here?”
“Sorra a know I know.”
“Did she give you no message?”
“Sorra a know I know.”
“No card?”
“Sorra a wan.”
“Who handed you the portmanteau?”
“Sorra a know I know.”
A thought now flashed across my brain: Fribscombe! He was not the man to
lose a chance of talking to a pretty woman. He would have told her who I
was, and it was through him that she had communicated. How asinine not
to have thought of this before!
Chartering a jarvey, I started across the country to the family mansion
of the Fribscombes, accompanied by the two portmanteaus.
“I never opened my lips to her. She dried up after you left, and pulled
down the shutters.” This gave me a pang of the keenest delight. “I got
out at Killoughter, the next station, and she went on.”
On my return to Dublin I caused advertisements to be inserted in several
of the leading Irish papers; I also tried the second column of the
_Times_ and the _Glasgow Herald_, but, alas! with no effect.
Six months had glided away, during which she made no sign. The
portmanteau maintained possession of a corner of my solitary apartment,
and the image of its whilome proprietor defiantly held more than one
corner of my heart; indeed, I may as well candidly confess that it was
strongly entrenched in all four.