Penelope's Irish Experiences

Even the all too common drunk-and-disorderly cases had a flavour of their own, for one man, being dismissed with a small fine under condition that he would sign the pledge, assented willingly; but on being asked for how long he would take it, replied, 'I mostly take it for life, your worship.'

We also heard the testimony of a girl who had run away from her employer before the completion of her six months' contract, her plea being that the fairies pulled her great toe at night so that she could not sleep, whereupon she finally became so lame that she was unable to work. She left her employer's house one evening, therefore, and went home, and curiously enough the fairies 'shtopped pulling the toe on her as soon as iver she got there!'

Not the least enlivening of the prisoners was a decently educated person who had been arrested for disturbing the peace. The constable asserted that he was intoxicated, but the gentleman himself insisted that he was merely a poet in a more than usually inspired state.

“I am in the poetical advertising line, your worship. It is true I was surrounded by a crowd, but I was merely practising my trade. I don't mind telling your worship that this holiday-time makes things a little lively, and the tradesmen drink my health a trifle oftener than usual; poetry is dry work, your worship, and a poet needs a good deal of liquid refreshment. I do not disturb the peace, your worship, at least not more than any other poet. I go to a grocer's, and, standing outside, I make up some rhymes about his nice sweet sugar or his ale. If I want to please a butcher—well, I'll give you a specimen:—

I can go on in this style, like Tennyson's brook, for ever, your worship.” His worship was afraid that he might make the offer good, and the poet was released, after promising to imbibe less frequently when he felt the divine afflatus about to descend upon him.

These disagreements between light-hearted and bibulous persons who haunt the courts week after week have nothing especially pathetic about them, but there are many that make one's heart ache; many that seem absolutely beyond any solution, and beyond reach of any justice.

Chapter XIII. 'O! the sound of the Kerry dancing.'

One of our favourite diversions is an occasional glimpse of a 'crossroads dance' on a pleasant Sunday afternoon, when all the young people of the district are gathered together. Their religious duties are over with their confessions and their masses, and the priests encourage these decorous Sabbath gaieties. A place is generally chosen where two or four roads meet, and the dancers come from the scattered farmhouses in every direction. In Ballyfuchsia, they dance on a flat piece of road under some fir-trees and larches, with stretches of mountain covered with yellow gorse or purple heather, and the quiet lakes lying in the distance. A message comes down to us at Ardnagreena—where we commonly spend our Sunday afternoons—that they expect a good dance, and the blind boy is coming to fiddle; and 'so if you will be coming up, it's welcome you'll be.' We join them about five o'clock—passing, on our way, groups of 'boys' of all ages from sixteen upwards, walking in twos and threes, and parties of three or four girls by themselves; for it would not be etiquette for the boys and girls to walk together, such strictness is observed in these matters about here.

When we reach the rendezvous we find quite a crowd of young men and maidens assembled; the girls all at one side of the road, neatly dressed in dark skirts and light blouses, with the national woollen shawl over their heads. Two wide stone walls, or dykes, with turf on top, make capital seats, and the boys are at the opposite side, as custom demands. When a young man wants a partner, he steps across the road and asks a colleen, who lays aside her shawl, generally giving it to a younger sister to keep until the dance is over, when the girls go back to their own side of the road and put on their shawls again. Upon our arrival we find the 'sets' are already in progress; a 'set' being a dance like a very intricate and very long quadrille. We are greeted with many friendly words, and the young boatmen and farmers' sons ask the ladies, “Will you be pleased to dance, miss?” Some of them are shy, and say they are not familiar with the steps; but their would-be partners remark encouragingly: “Sure, and what matter? I'll see you through.” Soon all are dancing, and the state of the road is being discussed with as much interest as the floor of a ballroom. Eager directions are given to the more ignorant newcomers, such as, “Twirl your girl, captain!” or “Turn your back to your face!”—rather a difficult direction to carry out, but one which conveys its meaning. Salemina confided to her partner that she feared she was getting a bit old to dance. He looked at her grey hair carefully for a moment, and then said chivalrously: “I'd not say that that was old age, ma'am. I'd say it was eddication.”

When the sets, which are very long and very decorous, are finished, sometimes a jig is danced for our benefit. The spectators make a ring, and the chosen dancers go into the middle, where their steps are watched by a most critical and discriminating audience with the most minute and intense interest. Our Molly is one of the best jig dancers among the girls here (would that she were half as clever at cooking!); but if you want to see an artist of the first rank, you must watch Kitty O'Rourke, from the neighbouring village of Dooclone. The half door of the barn is carried into the ring by one or two of her admirers, whom she numbers by the score, and on this she dances her famous jig polthogue, sometimes alone and sometimes with Art Rooney, the only worthy partner for her in the kingdom of Kerry. Art's mother, 'Bid' Rooney, is a keen matchmaker, and we heard her the other day advising her son, who was going to Dooclone, to have a 'weeny court' with his colleen, to put a clane shirt on him in the middle of the week, and disthract Kitty intirely by showin' her he had three of thim, annyway!

Kitty is a beauty, and doesn't need to be made 'purty wid cows'—a feat that the old Irishman proposed to do when he was consummating a match for his plain daughter. But the gifts of the gods seldom come singly, and Kitty is well fortuned as well as beautiful; fifty pounds, her own bedstead and its fittings, a cow, a pig, and a web of linen are supposed to be the dazzling total, so that it is small wonder her deluderin' ways are maddening half the boys in Ballyfuchsia and Dooclone. She has the prettiest pair of feet in the County Kerry, and when they are encased in a smart pair of shoes, bought for her by Art's rival, the big constable from Ballyfuchsia barracks, how they do twinkle and caper over that half barn door, to be sure! Even Murty, the blind fiddler, seems intoxicated by the plaudits of the bystanders, and he certainly never plays so well for anybody as for Kitty of the Meadow. Blindness is still common in Ireland, owing to the smoke in these wretched cabins, where sometimes a hole in the roof is the only chimney; and although the scores of blind fiddlers no longer traverse the land, finding a welcome at all firesides, they are still to be found in every community. Blind Murty is a favourite guest at the Rooney's cabin, which is never so full that there is not room for one more. There is a small wooden bed in the main room, a settle that opens out at night, with hens in the straw underneath, where a board keeps them safely within until they have finished laying. There are six children besides Art, and my ambition is to photograph, or, still better, to sketch the family circle together; the hens cackling under the settle, the pig ('him as pays the rint') snoring in the doorway, as a proprietor should, while the children are picturesquely grouped about. I never succeed, because Mrs. Rooney sees us as we turn into the lane, and calls to the family to make itself ready, as quality's comin' in sight. The older children can scramble under the bed, slip shoes over their bare feet, and be out in front of the cabin without the loss of a single minute. 'Mickey jew'l,' the baby, who is only four, but 'who can handle a stick as bould as a man,' is generally clad in a ragged skirt, slit every few inches from waist to hem, so that it resembles a cotton fringe. The little coateen that tops this costume is sometimes, by way of diversion, transferred to the dog, who runs off with it; but if we appear at this unlucky moment, there is a stylish yoke of pink ribbon and soiled lace which one of the girls pins over Mickey jew'l's naked shoulders.

Moya, who has this eye for picturesque propriety, is a great friend of mine, and has many questions about the Big Country when we take our walks. She longs to emigrate, but the time is not ripe yet. “The girls that come back has a lovely style to thim,” she says wistfully, “but they're so polite they can't live in the cabins anny more and be contint.” The 'boys' are not always so improved, she thinks. “You'd niver find a boy in Ballyfuchsia that would say annything rude to a girl; but when they come back from Ameriky, it's too free they've grown intirely.” It is a dull life for them, she says, when they have once been away; though to be sure Ballyfuchsia is a pleasanter place than Dooclone, where the priest does not approve of dancing, and, however secretly you may do it, the curate hears of it, and will speak your name in church.

It was Moya who told me of Kitty's fortune. “She's not the match that Farmer Brodigan's daughter Kathleen is, to be sure; for he's a rich man, and has given her an iligant eddication in Cork, so that she can look high for a husband. She won't be takin' up wid anny of our boys, wid her two hundred pounds and her twenty cows and her pianya. Och, it's a thriminjus player she is, ma'am. She's that quick and that strong that you'd say she wouldn't lave a string on it.”

Some of the young men and girls never see each other before the marriage, Moya says. “But sure,” she adds shyly, “I'd niver be contint with that, though some love matches doesn't turn out anny better than the others.”

“I hope it will be a love match with you, and that I shall dance at your wedding, Moya,” I say to her smilingly.

“Faith, I'm thinkin' my husband's intinded mother died an old maid in Dublin,” she answers merrily. “It's a small fortune I'll be havin' and few lovers; but you'll be soon dancing at Kathleen Brodigan's wedding, or Kitty O'Rourke's, maybe.”

I do not pretend to understand these humble romances, with their foundations of cows and linen, which are after all no more sordid than bank stock and trousseaux from Paris. The sentiment of the Irish peasant lover seems to be frankly and truly expressed in the verses:—

I gave Moya a lace neckerchief the other day, and she was rarely pleased, running into the cabin with it and showing it to her mother with great pride. After we had walked a bit down the boreen she excused herself for an instant, and, returning to my side, explained that she had gone back to ask her mother to mind the kerchief, and not let the 'cow knock it'!

Lady Kilbally tells us that some of the girls who work in the mills deny themselves proper food, and live on bread and tea for a month, to save the price of a gay ribbon. This is trying, no doubt, to a philanthropist, but is it not partly a starved sense of beauty asserting itself? If it has none of the usual outlets, where can imagination express itself if not in some paltry thing like a ribbon?

Chapter XIV. Mrs. Mullarkey's iligant locks.

Mrs. Mullarkey cannot spoil this paradise for us. When I wake in the morning, the fuchsia-tree outside my window is such a glorious mass of colour that it distracts my eyes from the unwashed glass. The air is still; the mountains in the far distance are clear purple; everything is fresh washed and purified for the new day. Francesca and I leave the house sleeping, and make our way to the bogs. We love to sit under a blossoming sloe-bush and see the silver pools glistening here and there in the turf cuttings, and watch the transparent vapour rising from the red-brown of the purple-shadowed bog fields. Dinnis Rooney, half awake, leisurely, silent, is moving among the stacks with his creel. How the missel thrushes sing in the woods, and the plaintive note of the curlew gives the last touch of mysterious tenderness to the scene. There is a moist, rich fragrance of meadowsweet and bog myrtle in the air; and how fresh and wild and verdant it is!

As for Lough Lein itself, who could speak its loveliness, lying like a crystal mirror beneath the black Reeks of the McGillicuddy, where, in the mountain fastnesses, lie spell-bound the sleeping warriors who, with their bridles and broadswords in hand, await but the word to give Erin her own! When we glide along the surface of the lakes, on some bright day after a heavy rain; when we look down through the clear water on tiny submerged islets, with their grasses and drowned daisies glancing up at us from the blue; when we moor the boat and climb the hillsides, we are dazzled by the luxuriant beauty of it all. It hardly seems real—it is too green, too perfect, to be believed; and one thinks of some fairy drop-scene, painted by cunning-fingered elves and sprites, who might have a wee folk's way of mixing roses and rainbows, dew-drenched greens and sun-warmed yellows; showing the picture to you first all burnished, glittering and radiant, then 'veiled in mist and diamonded with showers.' We climb, climb, up, up, into the heart of the leafy loveliness; peering down into dewy dingles, stopping now and again to watch one of the countless streams as it tinkles and gurgles down an emerald ravine to join the lakes. The way is strewn with lichens and mosses; rich green hollies and arbutus surround us on every side; the ivy hangs in sweet disorder from the rocks; and when we reach the innermost recess of the glen we can find moist green jungles of ferns and bracken, a very bending, curling forest of fronds:—

Carrantual rears its crested head high above the other mountains, and on its summit Shon the Outlaw, footsore, weary, slept; sighing, “For once, thank God, I am above all my enemies.”

You must go to sweet Innisfallen, too, and you must not be prosaic or incredulous at the boatman's stories, or turn the 'bodthered ear to them.' These are no ordinary hillsides: not only do the wee folk troop through the frond forests nightly, but great heroic figures of romance have stalked majestically along these mountain summits. Every waterfall foaming and dashing from its rocky bed in the glen has a legend in the toss and swirl of the water.

Can't you see the O'Sullivan, famous for fleetness of foot and prowess in the chase, starting forth in the cool o' the morn to hunt the red deer? His dogs sniff the heather; a splendid stag bounds across the path; swift as lightning the dogs follow the scent across moors and glens. Throughout the long day the chieftain chases the stag, until at nightfall, weary and thirsty, he loses the scent, and blows a blast on his horn to call the dogs homeward.

And then he hears a voice: “O'Sullivan, turn back!”

He looks over his shoulder to behold the great Finn McCool, central figure in centuries of romance.

“Why do you dare chase my stag?” he asks.

“Because it is the finest man ever saw,” answers the chieftain composedly.

“You are a valiant man,” says the hero, pleased with the reply; “and as you thirst from the long chase, I will give you to drink.” So he crunches his giant heel into the rock, and forth burst the waters, seething and roaring as they do to this day; “and may the divil fly away wid me if I've spoke an unthrue word, ma'am!”

Come to Lough Lein as did we, too early for the crowd of sightseers; but when the 'long light shakes across the lakes,' the blackest arts of the tourist (and they are as black as they are many) cannot break the spell. Sitting on one of these hillsides, we heard a bugle-call taken up and repeated in delicate, ethereal echoes,—sweet enough, indeed, to be worthy of the fairy buglers who are supposed to pass the sound along their lines from crag to crag, until it faints and dies in silence. And then came the 'Lament for Owen Roe O'Neil.' We were thrilled to the very heart with the sorrowful strains; and when we issued from our leafy covert, and rounded the point of rocks from which the sound came, we found a fat man in uniform playing the bugle. 'Blank's Tours' was embroidered on his cap, and I have no doubt that he is a good husband and father, even a good citizen, but he is a blight upon the landscape, and fancy cannot breathe in his presence. The typical tourist should be encouraged within bounds, both because he is of some benefit to Ireland, and because Ireland is of inestimable benefit to him; but he should not be allowed to jeer and laugh at the legends (the gentle smile of sophisticated unbelief, with its twinkle of amusement, is unknown to and for ever beyond him); and above all, he should never be allowed to carry or to play on a concertina, for this is the unpardonable sin.

We had an adventure yesterday. We were to dine at eight o'clock at Balkilly Castle, where Dr. La Touche is staying the week-end with Lord and Lady Killbally. We had been spending an hour or two after tea in writing an Irish letter, and were a bit late in dressing. These letters, written in the vernacular, are a favourite diversion of ours when visiting in foreign lands; and they are very easily done when once you have caught the idioms, for you can always supplement your slender store of words and expressions with choice selections from native authors.

What Francesca and I wore to the Castle dinner is, alas! no longer of any consequence to the community at large. In the mysterious purposes of that third volume which we seem to be living in Ireland, Francesca's beauty and mine, her hats and frocks as well as mine, are all reduced to the background; but Salemina's toilet had cost us some thought. When she first issued from the discreet and decorous fastnesses of Salem society, she had never donned any dinner dress that was not as high at the throat and as long in the sleeves as the Puritan mothers ever wore to meeting. In England she lapsed sufficiently from the rigid Salem standard to adopt a timid compromise; in Scotland we coaxed her into still further modernities, until now she is completely enfranchised. We achieved this at considerable trouble, but do not grudge the time spent in persuasion when we see her en grande toilette. In day dress she has always been inclined ever so little to a primness and severity that suggest old-maidishness. In her low gown of pale grey, with all her silver hair waved softly, she is unexpectedly lovely,—her face softened, transformed, and magically 'brought out' by the whiteness of her shoulders and slender throat. Not an ornament, not a jewel, will she wear; and she is right to keep the nunlike simplicity of style which suits her so well, and which holds its own even in the vicinity of Francesca's proud and glowing young beauty.

On this particular evening, Francesca, who wished her to look her best, had prudently hidden her eyeglasses, for which we are now trying to substitute a silver-handled lorgnette. Two years ago we deliberately smashed her spectacles, which she had adopted at five-and-twenty.

“But they are more convenient than eye-glasses,” she urged obtusely.

“That argument is beneath you, dear,” we replied. “If your hair were not prematurely grey, we might permit the spectacles, hideous as they are, but a combination of the two is impossible; the world shall not convict you of failing sight when you are guilty only of petty astigmatism!”

The grey satin had been chosen for this dinner, and Salemina was dressed, with the exception of the pretty pearl-embroidered waist that has to be laced at the last moment, and had slipped on a dressing jacket to come down from her room in the second story, to be advised in some trifling detail. She looked unusually well, I thought: her eyes were bright and her cheeks flushed, as she rustled in, holding her satin skirts daintily away from the dusty carpets.

Now, from the morning of our arrival we have had trouble with the Mullarkey door-knobs, which come off continually, and lie on the floors at one side of the door or the other. Benella followed Salemina from her room, and, being in haste, closed the door with unwonted energy. She heard the well-known rattle and clang, but little suspected that, as one knob dropped outside in the hall, the other fell inside, carrying the rod of connection with it. It was not long before we heard a cry of despair from above, and we responded to it promptly.

“It's fell in on the inside, knob and all, as I always knew it would some day; and now we can't get back into the room!” said Benella.

“Oh, nonsense! We can open it with something or other,” I answered encouragingly, as I drew on my gloves; “only you must hasten, for the car is at the door.”

The curling iron was too large, the shoe hook too short, a lead pencil too smooth, a crochet needle too slender: we tried them all, and the door resisted all our insinuations. “Must you necessarily get in before we go?” I asked Salemina thoughtlessly.

She gave me a glance that almost froze my blood, as she replied, “The waist of my dress is in the room.”

Francesca and I spent a moment in irrepressible mirth, and then summoned Mrs. Mullarkey. Whether the Irish kings could be relied upon in an emergency I do not know, but their descendants cannot. Mrs. Mullarkey had gone to the convent to see the Mother Superior about something; Mr. Mullarkey was at the Dooclone market; Peter was not to be found; but Oonah and Molly came, and also the old lady from Mullinavat, with a package of raffle tickets in her hand.

We left this small army under Benella's charge, and went down to my room for a hasty consultation.

“Could you wear any evening bodice of Francesca's?” I asked.

“Of course not. Francesca's waist measure is three inches smaller than mine.”

“Could you manage my black lace dress?”

“Penelope, you know it would only reach to my ankles! No, you must go without me, and go at once. We are too new acquaintances to keep Lady Killbally's dinner waiting. Why did I come to this place like a pauper, with only one evening gown, when I should have known that if there is a castle anywhere within forty miles you always spend half your time in it!”

This slur was totally unjustified, but I pardoned it, because Salemina's temper is ordinarily perfect, and the circumstances were somewhat tragic. “If you had brought a dozen costumes, they would all be in your room at this moment,” I replied; “but we must think of something. It is impossible for you to remain behind; we were invited more on your account than our own, for you are Dr. La Touche's friend, and the dinner is especially in his honour. Molly, have you a ladder?”

“Sorra a wan, ma'am.”

“Could we borrow one?”

“We could not, Mrs. Beresford, ma'am.”

“Then see if you can break down the door; try hard, and if you succeed I will buy you a nice new one! Part of Miss Peabody's dress is inside the room, and we shall be late to the Castle dinner.”

The entire corps, with Mrs. Waterford of Mullinavat on top, cast itself on the door, which withstood the shock to perfection. Then in a moment we heard: “Weary's on it, it will not come down for us, ma'am. It's the iligant locks we do be havin' in the house; they're mortial shtrong, ma'am!”

“Strong, indeed!” exclaimed the incensed Benella, in a burst of New England wrath. “There's nothing strong about the place but the impidence of the people in it! If you had told Peter to get a carpenter or a locksmith, as I've been asking you these two weeks, it would have been all right; but you never do anything till a month after it's too late. I've no patience with such a set of doshies, dawdling around and leaving everything to go to rack and ruin!”

“Sure it was yourself that ruinated the thing,” responded Molly, with spirit, for the unaccustomed word 'doshy' had kindled her quick Irish temper. “It's aisy handlin' the knob is used to, and faith it would 'a' stuck there for you a twelvemonth!”

“They will be quarrelling soon,” said Salemina nervously. “Do not wait another instant; you are late enough now, and I insist on your going. Make any excuse you see fit: say I am ill, say I am dead, if you like, but don't tell the real excuse—it is too shiftless and wretched and embarrassing. Don't cry, Benella. Molly, Oonah, go downstairs to your work. Mrs. Waterford, I think perhaps you have forgotten that we have already purchased raffle tickets, and we'll not take any more for fear that we may draw the necklace. Good-bye, dears; tell Lady Killbally I shall see her to-morrow.”

Chapter XV. Penelope weaves a web.

Francesca and I were gloomy enough, as we drove along facing each other in Ballyfuchsia's one 'inside-car'—a strange and fearsome vehicle, partaking of the nature of a broken-down omnibus, a hearse, and an overgrown black beetle. It holds four, or at a squeeze six, the seats being placed from stem to stern lengthwise, and the balance being so delicate that the passengers, when going uphill, are shaken into a heap at the door, which is represented by a ragged leather flap. I have often seen it strew the hard highroad with passengers, as it jolts up the steep incline that leads to Ardnagreena, and the 'fares' who succeed in staying in always sit in one another's laps a good part of the way—a method pleasing only to relatives or intimate friends. Francesca and I agreed to tell the real reason of Salemina's absence. “It is Ireland's fault, and I will not have America blamed for it,” she insisted; “but it is so embarrassing to be going to the dinner ourselves, and leaving behind the most important personage. Think of Dr. La Touche's disappointment, think of Salemina's; and they'll never understand why she couldn't have come in a dressing jacket. I shall advise her to discharge Benella after this episode, for no one can tell the effect it may have upon all our future lives, even those of the doctor's two poor motherless children.”

It is a four-mile drive to Balkilly Castle, and when we arrived there we were so shaken that we had to retire to a dressing-room for repairs. Then came the dreaded moment when we entered the great hall and advanced to meet Lady Killbally, who looked over our heads to greet the missing Salemina. Francesca's beauty, my supposed genius, both fell flat; it was Salemina whose presence was especially desired. The company was assembled, save for one guest still more tardy than ourselves, and we had a moment or two to tell our story as sympathetically as possible. It had an uncommonly good reception, and, coupled with the Irish letter I read at dessert, carried the dinner along on a basis of such laughter and good-fellowship that finally there was no place for regret save in the hearts of those who knew and loved Salemina—poor Salemina, spending her dull, lonely evening in our rooms, and later on in her own uneventful bed, if indeed she had been lucky enough to gain access to that bed. I had hoped Lady Killbally would put one of us beside Dr. La Touche, so that we might at least keep Salemina's memory green by tactful conversation; but it was too large a company to rearrange, and he had to sit by an empty chair, which perhaps was just as salutary, after all. The dinner was very smart, and the company interesting and clever, but my thoughts were elsewhere. As there were fewer squires than dames at the feast, Lady Killbally kindly took me on her left, with a view to better acquaintance, and I was heartily glad of a possible chance to hear something of Dr. La Touche's earlier life. In our previous interviews, Salemina's presence had always precluded the possibility of leading the conversation in the wished-for direction.

When I first saw Gerald La Touche I felt that he required explanation. Usually speaking, a human being ought to be able, in an evening's conversation, to explain himself, without any adventitious aid. If he is a man, alive, vigorous, well poised, conscious of his own individuality, he shows you, without any effort, as much of his past as you need to form your impression, and as much of his future as you have intuition to read. As opposed to the vigorous personality, there is the colourless, flavourless, insubstantial sort, forgotten as soon as learned, and for ever confused with that of the previous or the next comer. When I was a beginner in portrait-painting, I remember that, after I had succeeded in making my background stay back where it belonged, my figure sometimes had a way of clinging to it in a kind of smudgy weakness, as if it were afraid to come out like a man and stand the inspection of my eye. How often have I squandered paint upon the ungrateful object without adding a cubit to its stature! It refused to look like flesh and blood, but resembled rather some half-made creature flung on the passive canvas in a liquid state, with its edges running over into the background. There are a good many of these people in literature, too,—heroes who, like home-made paper dolls, do not stand up well; or if they manage to perform that feat, one unexpectedly discovers, when they are placed in a strong light, that they have no vital organs whatever, and can be seen through without the slightest difficulty. Dr. La Touche does not belong to either of these two classes: he is not warm, magnetic, powerful, impressive: neither is he by any means destitute of vital organs; but his personality is blurred in some way. He seems a bit remote, absentminded, and a trifle, just a trifle, over-resigned. Privately, I think a man can afford to be resigned only to one thing, and that is the will of God; against all other odds I prefer to see him fight till the last armed foe expires. Dr. La Touche is devotedly attached to his children, but quite helpless in their hands; so that he never looks at them with pleasure or comfort or pride, but always with an anxiety as to what they may do next. I understand him better now that I know the circumstances of which he has been the product. (Of course one is always a product of circumstances, unless one can manage to be superior to them.) His wife, the daughter of an American consul in Ireland, was a charming but somewhat feather-brained person, rather given to whims and caprices; very pretty, very young, very much spoiled, very attractive, very undisciplined. All went well enough with them until her father was recalled to America, because of some change in political administration. The young Mrs. La Touche seemed to have no resources apart from her family, and even her baby 'Jackeen' failed to absorb her as might have been expected.

“We thought her a most trying woman at this time,” said Lady Killbally. “She seemed to have no thought of her husband's interests, and none of the responsibilities that she had assumed in marrying him; her only idea of life appeared to be amusement and variety and gaiety. Gerald was a student, and always very grave and serious; the kind of man who invariably marries a butterfly, if he can find one to make him miserable. He was exceedingly patient; but after the birth of little Broona, Adeline became so homesick and depressed and discontented that, although the journey was almost an impossibility at the time, Gerald took her back to her people, and left her with them, while he returned to his duties at Trinity College. Their life, I suppose, had been very unhappy for a year or two before this, and when he came home to Dublin without his children, he looked a sad and broken man. He was absolutely faithful to his ideals, I am glad to say, and never wavered in his allegiance to his wife, however disappointed he may have been in her; going over regularly to spend his long vacations in America, although she never seemed to wish to see him. At last she fell into a state of hopeless melancholia; and it was rather a relief to us all to feel that we had judged her too severely, and that her unreasonableness and her extraordinary caprices had been born of mental disorder more than of moral obliquity. Gerald gave up everything to nurse her and rouse her from her apathy; but she faded away without ever once coming back to a more normal self, and that was the end of it all. Gerald's father had died meanwhile, and he had fallen heir to the property and the estates. They were very much encumbered, but he is gradually getting affairs into a less chaotic state; and while his fortune would seem a small one to you extravagant Americans, he is what we Irish paupers would call well to do.”

Lady Killbally was suspiciously willing to give me all this information,—so much so that I ventured to ask about the children.

“They are captivating, neglected little things,” she said. “Madame La Touche, an aged aunt, has the ostensible charge of them, and she is a most easy-going person. The servants are of the 'old family' sort, the reckless, improvident, untidy, devoted, quarrelsome creatures that always stand by the ruined Irish gentry in all their misfortunes, and generally make their life a burden to them at the same time. Gerald is a saint, and therefore never complains.”

“It never seems to me that saints are altogether adapted to positions like these,” I sighed; “sinners would do ever so much better. I should like to see Dr. La Touche take off his halo, lay it carefully on the bureau, and wield a battle-axe. The world will never acknowledge his merit; it will even forget him presently, and his life will have been given up to the evolution of the passive virtues. Do you suppose he will recognise the tender passion if it ever does bud in his breast, or will he think it a weed, instead of a flower, and let it wither for want of attention?”

“I think his friends will have to enhance his self-respect, or he will for ever be too modest to declare himself,” said Lady Killbally. “Perhaps you can help us: he is probably going to America this winter to lecture at some of your universities, and he may stay there for a year or two, so he says. At any rate, if the right woman ever appears on the scene, I hope she will have the instinct to admire and love and reverence him as we do,” and here she smiled directly into my eyes, and slipping her pretty hand under the tablecloth squeezed mine in a manner that spoke volumes.

It is not easy to explain one's desire to marry off all the unmarried persons in one's vicinity. When I look steadfastly at any group of people, large or small, they usually segregate themselves into twos under my prophetic eye. It they are nice and attractive, I am pleased to see them mated; if they are horrid and disagreeable, I like to think of them as improving under the discipline of matrimony. It is joy to see beauty meet a kindling eye, but I am more delighted still to watch a man fall under the glamour of a plain, dull girl, and it is ecstasy for me to see a perfectly unattractive, stupid woman snapped up at last, when I have given up hopes of settling her in life. Sometimes there are men so uninspiring that I cannot converse with them a single moment without yawning; but though failures in all other relations, one can conceive of their being tolerably useful as husbands and fathers; not for one's self, you understand, but for one's neighbours.

Dr. La Touche's life now, to any understanding eye, is as incomplete as the unfinished window in Aladdin's tower. He is too wrinkled, too studious, too quiet, too patient for his years. His children need a mother, his old family servants need discipline, his baronial halls need sweeping and cleaning (I haven't seen them, but I know they do!), and his aged aunt needs advice and guidance. On the other hand, there are those (I speak guardedly) who have walked in shady, sequestered paths all their lives, looking at hundreds of happy lovers on the sunny highroad, but never joining them; those who adore erudition, who love children, who have a genius for unselfish devotion, who are sweet and refined and clever, and who look perfectly lovely when they put on grey satin and leave off eyeglasses. They say they are over forty, and although this probably is exaggeration, they may be thirty-nine and three-quarters; and if so, the time is limited in which to find for them a worthy mate, since half of the masculine population is looking for itself, and always in the wrong quarter, needing no assistance to discover rose-cheeked idiots of nineteen, whose obvious charms draw thousands to a dull and uneventful fate.

These thoughts were running idly through my mind while the Honourable Michael McGillicuddy was discoursing to me of Mr. Gladstone's misunderstanding of Irish questions,—a misunderstanding, he said, so colossal, so temperamental, and so all-embracing, that it amounted to genius. I was so anxious to return to Salemina that I wished I had ordered the car at ten thirty instead of eleven; but I made up my mind, as we ladies went to the drawing-room for coffee, that I would seize the first favourable opportunity to explore the secret chambers of Dr. La Touche's being. I love to rummage in out-of-the-way corners of people's brains and hearts if they will let me. I like to follow a courteous host through the public corridors of his house and come upon a little chamber closed to the casual visitor. If I have known him long enough I put my hand on the latch and smile inquiringly. He looks confused and conscious, but unlocks the door. Then I peep in, and often I see something that pleases and charms and touches me so much that it shows in my eyes when I lift them to his to say “Thank you.” Sometimes, after that, my host gives me the key and says gravely “Pray come in whenever you like.”

When Dr. La Touche offers me this hospitality I shall find out whether he knows anything of that lavender-scented guest-room in Salemina's heart. First, has he ever seen it? Second, has he ever stopped in it for any length of time? Third, was he sufficiently enamoured of it to occupy it on a long lease?

Chapter XVI. Salemina has her chance.

I was walking with Lady Fincoss, and Francesca with Miss Clondalkin, a very learned personage who has deciphered more undecipherable inscriptions than any lady in Ireland, when our eyes fell upon an unexpected tableau.

Seated on a divan in the centre of the drawing-room, in a most distinguished attitude, in unexceptionable attire, and with the rose-coloured lights making all her soft greys opalescent, was Miss Salemina Peabody. Our exclamations of astonishment were so audible that they must have reached the dining-room, for Lord Killbally did not keep the gentlemen long at their wine.

Salemina cannot tell a story quite as it ought to be told to produce an effect. She is too reserved, too concise, too rigidly conscientious. She does not like to be the centre of interest, even in a modest contretemps like being locked out of a room which contains part of her dress; but from her brief explanation to Lady Killbally, her more complete and confidential account on the way home, and Benella's graphic story when we arrived there, we were able to get all the details.

When the inside-car passed out of view with us, it appears that Benella wept tears of rage, at the sight of which Oonah and Molly trembled. In that moment of despair and remorse, her mind worked as it must always have done before the Salem priestess befogged it with hazy philosophies, understood neither by teacher nor by pupil. Peter had come back, but could suggest nothing. Benella forgot her 'science,' which prohibits rage and recrimination, and called him a great, hulking, lazy vagabone, and told him she'd like to have him in Salem for five minutes, just to show him a man with head on his shoulders.

“You call this a Christian country,” she said, “and you haven't got a screwdriver, nor a bradawl, nor a monkey-wrench, nor a rat-tail file, nor no kind of a useful tool to bless yourselves with; and my Miss Peabody, that's worth ten dozen of you put together, has got to stay home from the Castle and eat warmed-up scraps served in courses, with twenty minutes' wait between 'em. Now you do as I say: take the dining-table and set it out under the window, and the carving-table on top o' that, and see how fur up it'll reach. I guess you can't stump a Salem woman by telling her there ain't no ladder.”

The two tables were finally in position; but there still remained nine feet of distance to that key of the situation, Salemina's window, and Mrs. Waterford's dressing-table went on top of this pile. “Now, Peter,” were the next orders, “if you've got sprawl enough, and want to rest yourself by doin' something useful for once in your life, you just hold down the dining-table; and you and Oonah, Molly, keep the next two tables stiddy, while I climb up.”

The intrepid Benella could barely reach the sill, even from this ingeniously dizzy elevation, and Mrs. Waterford and Salemina were called on to 'stiddy' the tables, while Molly was bidden to help by giving an heroic 'boost' when the word of command came. The device was completely successful, and in a trice the conqueror disappeared, to reappear at the window holding the precious pearl-embroidered bodice wrapped in a towel. “I wouldn't stop to fool with the door-knob till I dropped you this,” she said. “Oonah, you go and wash your hands clean, and help Miss Peabody into it,—and mind you start the lacing right at the top; and you, Peter, run down to Rooney's and get the donkey and the cart, and bring 'em back with you,—and don't you let the grass grow under your feet neither!”

There was literally no other mode of conveyance within miles, and time was precious. Salemina wrapped herself in Francesca's long black cloak, and climbed into the cart. Dinnis hauls turf in it, takes a sack of potatoes or a pig to market in it, and the stubborn little ass, blind of one eye, has never in his wholly elective course of existence taken up the subject of speed.

It was eight o'clock when Benella mounted the seat beside Salemina, and gave the donkey a preliminary touch of the stick.

“Be aisy wid him,” cautioned Peter. “He's a very arch donkey for a lady to be dhrivin', and mebbe he'd lay down and not get up for you.”

“Arrah! shut yer mouth, Pether. Give him a couple of belts anondher the hind leg, melady, and that'll put the fear o' God in him!” said Dinnis.

“I'd rather not go at all,” urged Salemina timidly; “it's too late, and too extraordinary.”

“I'm not going to have it on my conscience to make you lose this dinner-party,—not if I have to carry you on my back the whole way,” said Benella doggedly; “and this donkey won't lay down with me more'n once,—I can tell him that right at the start.”

“Sure, melady, he'll go to Galway for you, when oncet he's started wid himself; and it's only a couple o' fingers to the Castle, annyways.”

The four-mile drive, especially through the village of Ballyfuchsia, was an eventful one, but by dint of prodding, poking, and belting, Benella had accomplished half the distance in three-quarters of an hour, when the donkey suddenly lay down 'on her,' according to Peter's prediction. This was luckily at the town cross, where a group of idlers rendered hearty assistance. Willing as they were to succour a lady in disthress, they did not know of any car which could be secured in time to be of service, but one of them offered to walk and run by the side of the donkey, so as to kape him on his legs. It was in this wise that Miss Peabody approached Balkilly Castle; and when a gilded gentleman-in-waiting lifted her from Rooney's 'plain cart,' she was just on the verge of hysterics. Fortunately his Magnificence was English, and betrayed no surprise at the arrival in this humble fashion of a dinner guest, but simply summoned the Irish housekeeper, who revived her with wine, and called on all the saints to witness that she'd never heard of such a shameful thing, and such a disgrace to Ballyfuchsia. The idea of not keeping a ladder in a house where the door-knobs were apt to come off struck her as being the worst feature of the accident, though this unexpected and truly Milesian view of the matter had never occurred to us.

“Well, I got Miss Peabody to the dinner-party,” said Benella triumphantly, when she was laboriously unlacing my frock, later on, “or at least I got her there before it broke up. I had to walk every step o' the way home, and the donkey laid down four times, but I was so nerved up I didn't care a mite. I was bound Miss Peabody shouldn't lose her chance, after all she's done for me!”

“Her chance?” I asked, somewhat puzzled, for dinners, even Castle dinners, are not rare in Salemina's experience.

“Yes, her chance,” repeated Benella mysteriously; “you'd know well enough what I mean, if you'd ben born and brought up in Salem, Massachusetts!”

Copy of a letter read by Penelope O'Connor, descendant of the King of Connaught, at the dinner of Lord and Lady Killbally at Balkilly Castle. It needed no apology then, but in sending it to our American friends, we were obliged to explain that though the Irish peasants interlard their conversation with saints, angels, and devils, and use the name of the Virgin Mary, and even the Almighty, with, to our ears, undue familiarity and frequency, there is no profane or irreverent intent. They are instinctively religious, and it is only because they feel on terms of such friendly intimacy with the powers above that they speak of them so often.