CHAPTER VI.

“SITTING ON LITTLE STOOLS INSIDE THE BIG FIREPLACE.”

“Back in the room” was a small whitewashed place with an earthern floor as clean, though not quite as dry, as the one in the kitchen. A big four-poster bed filled one end of it, and a red painted press, a square table, a huge American chest with the washing apparatus on it, and two or three chairs, were the rest of the furnishing. But though the upholstery was of a simple character, it was evident that the decorative sense was not lacking. The walls were lavishly hung with fervidly coloured religious prints; two or three sheets of an illustrated fishing fly-list had a place of honour near the widow’s patron saint over the fireplace, the gorgeous salmon flies being probably regarded by the younger Joyces as portraits of some new kind of angel; and drapery’s adventitious aid was lent by the suspended wardrobe of the family, both male and female, which relieved the severities of the bedposts, and gave a little air of interesting mystery to the corners of the room. Rather more than half the room had a rough ceiling of boards, and near the door we noticed a ladder leading up to the loft thusmade. We had felt anxious about the bestowal of the widow and her family, not knowing what duties the four-poster might not be called upon to perform, and as the witching hour of ten o’clock drew nigh, and the low murmur of Joyce discourse still continued, we had made up our minds to ask what the arrangements might be, when there came a tap at the door.

“I beg yer honour’s pardon, Miss,” said our hostess’ soft, polite voice, “but would there be any harm in meself and the children goin’ above up to the loft?”

We said no, quite the contrary, and after some whispering and giggling outside the door, a procession of Joyces slowly filed up the ladder, headed by the younger sons of the house, and followed by the widow and the daughters. The last pair of stout red legs was hoisted off the ladder, the rustling and pounding overhead gradually subsided, and my second cousin and I found ourselves face to face with the most serious situation—not excepting either the bulldog or the runaway—of the expedition. The fear of interruption had hitherto prevented us from making as thorough investigation as we might have wished, and now we “stared at each other with a wild surmise, silent upon a peak in Darien.” Then she said—

“I’ll look.”

She turned down the bedclothes with a stiff, nervous hand. “They seem pretty clean,” she said at last; “they mayn’t perhaps have been washed very lately, but I think they must have dusted them. I can only see one crumb and a used wax match.”

The account was not encouraging, but it might have been worse. Of the sufferings of that night, however, as much cannot be said. After our occupancy of that bed, not one used match, but twenty, might have been collected. In explanation of this circumstance, I will merely quote one line from the charming duet for bass and tenor inThe Lily of Killarney—

To light the way, to flea my love.

FROM the indications given in the last chapter, the intelligent reader will probably have gathered the fact that we did not sleep well.

“It isn’t the little bit they ates I begridges them,” quoted my cousin, as in one of the long watches of the night she wearily lit her candle for the nineteenth time, “but ’tis the continial thramplin’ they keeps up.”

Even when the greater part of these foes was either gorged or slain, the sleep that hummed its mellow harmonies in the loft over our heads held far from us, tossing and stifling among feathers and flock pillows. It must have been about two a.m., and I had just, by various strategies, induced myself to go to sleep, when I was once more awakened, this time by a convulsive clutch of my arm.

“Don’t stir!” whispered my second cousin, in avoice so low that it felt like one of my own dreams, “but listen!”

A stealthy sound, as of a slow, barefooted advance, crept to us, buried though we were in the perfumed depths of the flock pillows.

“Whatever it is, it came out from under the bed,” breathed my cousin, “and it has gone twice round the room—looking for our money, I expect!”

The steps ceased for a moment, then there came a sound as of a little rush towards the bed, and in an instant something with loud flappings and rustlings had descended upon us, and rested heavily, with hollow cacklings of contentment, upon our buried forms (for I suppose I need hardly state that we had both bolted under the bedclothes).

“I believe it’s only the goose after all!” I said, as soon as I was sufficiently recovered to speak.

“Only the goose!” returned my second cousin, with concentrated fury; “I don’t see much to be grateful for in that. And how do you know it isn’t the gander? I’m simply stifling here, but I know the brutewould peck me if I went out from under the clothes. I wish to goodness ithadbeen a burglar. Anyhow, they don’t peck.”

This was indisputable; as was also the fact that the bird had to be dislodged. She had worked herself into a position that was probably more satisfactory to her than it was to me, and judging, as I was well able to do, by her weight, she must have been a remarkably strong and vigorous bird.

“Get the matches ready,” I said, gathering myself for an effort. Then, curving myself till the goose must have thought she was sitting on a camel, I gave a heaving plunge. There was a croak, a flop, and a minute afterwards the light of a match revealed a monstrous grey goose standing in pained astonishment on the floor near the bed.

Fortunately the profundities of Joyce repose knew no disturbance, and, still more providentially, the three shilling umbrella was within reach of the bed. Opening this as a safeguard against an attack, which in our then thin costume we should be ill-fitted to

“REVEALED A MONSTROUS GREY GOOSE.”

withstand, we gently but firmly ushered the majestic goose-lady into the kitchen, and, getting back to bed slept in peace till the usual hideous farmhouse clamour began. We need not dilate upon it here. The war-whoopings of the cocks, the exhausting self-satisfaction of the hens over a feat which, however praiseworthy in itself, lacks originality; the yells of the pigs, and their impatient snuffings and bangings against the kitchen door; all, all, were alike detestable, and we welcomed almost with ecstasy the lowering of the first pair of Joyce legs, which told us that the family, like a certain distinguished cricketer, were going out “leg before.”

My cousin and I are old travellers, and we have two properties, a spirit lamp and a folding indiarubber bath, without which we never take the road. It is my belief that if my second cousin were told that a chariot of fire was at the door, waiting to waft her to the skies, she would rush upstairs for the indiarubber bath and the spirit lamp. After this I suppose I need hardly say that they had accompaniedus to Connemara. We do not for an instant wish to insinuate that the bath, as an institution, does not obtain in those parts. We have every reason to believe that it flourishes there; but a melancholy experience has taught us that the age of chivalry is dead, so far as hotels are concerned, and if there is a scarcity or competition in any department, whether of newspapers, or green peas, or baths, the most recent paper, and the first helping, and the last available bath is reserved by the truckling domestics for the largely-eating, heavily-tipping male traveller. We have had moments of fury, when violent death has stalked behind the chambermaid who has just informed us that “the last bat’ in the house is afther goin’ in to the gentleman in No. 11.”

But at such times the remembrance of the indiarubber bath floats sweetly into our minds; and we reflect that its tin rival would have cost sixpence or a shilling. Its gentle influence, combined with a dash of chill penury, represses our noble rage, and we endure the favouritism of the hotelemployéswith calm;knowing also that retribution is coming for her whose duty it will be to deal with the weird and wobbling thing that will, on the smallest provocation from the unskilled in its ways, become a mere mass of gaping mouths, pouring forth accusation of her and her treatment of the slightest visitor.

At the Widow Joyce’s hot water was unexpectedly abundant, and the spirit lamp was not called into requisition. We were given to understand that the Meejer was loud and instant in his demands for “plenty of biled water,” but how he performed his ablutions with it it is not for us to say. Except they lent him a churn, there was, so far as we could see, no vessels competent to undertake the duties of a bath, and a churn in such a capacity would, we should think, leave a good deal to be desired. We were, however, independent of such makeshifts. The chief drawback to an indiarubber bath is its propensity to slop; but on an earthen floor slop is little accounted, and all would have been well if my second cousin had not persisted in trying to empty it through the air-hole broken by the Meejer in the window. She did this nominally out of kindness to the Widow Joyce, but really because she thought she could pour its contents on the widow’s cat, who was sunning herself on the window-sill. As a matter of fact, I think our luncheon-basket suffered more than the cat—but we will not pursue the subject. My cousin now recognises that it requires an exceptionally high and hardy intellect to control an indiarubber bath, even in repose, and few, very few, are able to direct it in action.

When we went out that morning, we found it was that “gift of God, a perfect day.” Everything looked washed and brilliant after the rain; the little lake was twinkling all over in sharp points of light till it looked as if it were bristling with new pins, and the mountains had left off their half-mourning costumes of black and grey, and wore charming confections of softest green and lavender. We stood out in the sunshine, on the narrow strip that ran between the cottage and the lake, and threw some languid stonesat the widow’s geese, who were bobbing along before the wind, led on their voyage by the stout disturber of our slumbers. The air was singing with the noise of streams; each pale blue ravine had a white line dividing it; at the back of the cottage a little over-fed river came foaming into the lake at a pace that ought to have given it indigestion after all it had swallowed the night before, and the plash of the contents of the indiarubber bath, as the widow emptied it on the step of the front door, gave the last note in the chord of water-music.

We had had an excellent breakfast, founded on fresh eggs and hot griddle cake, with a light top dressing of potted meat; we had paid our modest reckoning, and Pat James, the eldest hope of the house of Joyce, was harnessing “the pony.” That “the pony” was giving Pat James a time, not to say seven times and a half time, was obvious from the shouts that came to us through the stable-door, but finally, round the corner of the cow-house, Sibbie’s cross, prim face appeared with Pat James leading her, and the governess-cart reeling over the big ruts in the lane behind her.

“He’s very crabbed, Miss,” said Pat James, in tones of soft reproach, “he’s afther hittin’ me the divil’s own puck inside in the stable.”

There was a spiteful gleam in Sybylla’s bright eye that spoke to the truth of his statement, and we felt sorry for Pat James.

We took a mutually affectionate farewell of the Widow Joyce, promising to convey her respects to the Meejer if we met him in England, as she seemed to think probable, and we set forth to make our way back to “the big road below,” accompanied by Pat James, whose mother had charged him to see us safe over the first bad bit of the road.

He was an idyllically picturesque creature of seventeen or eighteen, with large, gentle grey eyes, set in a golden-brown face several shades darker in value than they were, and the most charming voice and manner imaginable. The cat, on whom my cousin had basely tried to empty the bath, came with him; sometimesstrolling behind with a set face of unconsciousness, but with a tail that twitched with inward plottings, and sometimes making possessed scuttles on ahead, with a sort of squirrel’s tail held high, and a little dreadful air of being moved by some unseen power. Pat James was evidently rather ashamed of it, and at such moments would throw stones at it to cover his confusion.

“We have it for a dog, Miss,” he said in answer to our enquiries, “and it have the way now to be running with us when we’d be going out.”

Here he threw another stone at the cat who had usurped the position of household dog, which had the effect of wafting it across the road under Sibbie’s nose, and thereby alarming her seriously. He left us after about half a mile, and when we saw him last he was sitting on a big rock, his slouched felt hat and creamy flannel “bawneen” looking all that could be desired against their background of clear blue sky, whilst the cat performed unearthly gambols in the heather at his bare feet.

“After all,” we said to each other, as we turned into the main road, and set Sibbie’s long nose for Recess, “it was just as well we missed our way, for if we hadn’t we should have missed Pat James.”

The road that was to be our portion was the one known as the New Line, leading out of the Recess and Clifden road into another road that leads through the Pass of Kylemore, and on into Letterfrack, where we meant to spend the night. Sibbie was fresh and full of going, and the long level road, following the curves of Lough Inagh and Lough Derryclare, inspired her with a fine and unusual zeal. The accustomed boats, each with its little patient whipping figure, were paddling about the lakes, and, according to our custom, we reined in the fiery Sibbie to watch them. They were a depressing spectacle, and, as usual, our cold, though anything but fishy, eye blighted all their chances of a rise. We left them all flogging away like Dublin cabdrivers, and made up our minds that if we wanted to spend thirty shillings a day on fish, we would do it at the Stores.

Our way lay through a long up-sloping tract of heathery, boggy valley, with the splendid towers and pinnacles of the Twelve Pins hanging high over the lakes on our left, and on our right the last outworks of the Maam Turc ranges rising almost from the road. It was an utterly lonely place. The small black-faced sheep pervaded the landscape, speckling the mountains like grains of rice, and we could see them filing along the ledges over purple depths where more than one climber has been killed. The little black and brindled cattle stared at us defiantly as we drove along, and the only human creature we met on the road was a grey old bagpiper, who looked as though he might have lost his way among the hills some time in the last century, and had only just found the New Line when we met him.

It certainly was a perfect day and a perfect drive. The delicious mountain wind, which was charged with all the subtle perfumes drawn from bog and heather; the marvellous cloud effects on the great crags of the Twelve Pins; the sparkle and rush of the brownstreams under the innumerable hog-backed bridges; the intense blue of the lakes, even the yellow whiteness of the slow-climbing road, all combined to fill us with that vague delightful yearning which can only be satisfied by lunch half an hour earlier than usual.

One only sign of civilisation did we see between Recess and Kylemore, and it was of a wholly unexpected type. A middle-sized house, bow-windowed, gabled, stucco-covered, hideous beyond compare, standing in the middle of a grass plot at the foot of one of the hills, and looking as if some vulgar-minded fairy had transported it bodily from Brixton or Clapham Rise. It had at first the effect of being deserted, but, as we got nearer, a melancholy old horse strayed out of a sort of dilapidated shed and stared at us, and an outside car propped against an elaborately gabled end showed that he was not a mere derelict. As we drove by, a cat climbed out of one broken pane of glass, and a cock crept in by another, and then suddenly at three of the upstairs windows there appeared the faces of three dirty littlegirls. The hall door was shut, and the thin wiry grass round the house was untrampled. No other living thing appeared, and we can only conclude that we stumbled in upon the middle of a fairy tale. The house, of course, was the work of enchantment, and the three princesses, who were held there in durance vile, were about to be rescued by the princely cock whom we had seen forcing an entrance, while the bad fairy—the cat, naturally—had to creep out and throw up the sponge (of which, by-the-bye, the princesses might with advantage have made practical use).

We left the New Line just as we came in sight of the Pass of Kylemore, and the road on which we now found ourselves wound along the shore of the lake, according to the custom in Connemara, where, unlike the rest of Ireland, the roads are not planted along the backs of the highest hills procurable. We pulled up on one of the bends of the road to look at the view and make a sketch. That is the supremest of the advantages of driving your own donkey-cart, you can generally stop when and wherever you like. Theonly exception to this rule is when, as happened at Ballinahinch, your donkey has had too many oats.

On this occasion the donkey was quite ready to stop, and she surveyed, with a connoisseur’s cold eye, the unsurpassable view, while the evening clouds thronged the gap between the steep tree-covered sides of Kylemore on one side, and the stony severities of the Diamond Mountain on the other, and sent changing lights and shadows hurrying over the wide lake, and drove the labouring sketcher of these things almost to madness.

Mr. Mitchell Henry’s place, Kylemore Castle, stands close in among the woods under the side of Kylemore Mountain, with a small lake shutting it off from the road. It is a great, imposing grey mass of turrets and towers, and, close by, the white spire of a charming little limestone church is reflected among the trees in the lake, and gives an amazing finish of civilisation to the whole view—in fact, civilisation and fuchsia hedges are the leading notes from Kylemore to Letterfrack, wide crimson banks of fuchsia lining

MR. MITCHELL HENRY’S PLACE, KYLEMORE CASTLE.

the road, and prosperous farm buildings presiding over fat turnip fields, until the road lifts again into the barer uplands whereon is situated the village of Letterfrack.

No map we have as yet encountered pays Letterfrack the compliment of marking it, but it is nevertheless a very fine place, with a post and telegraph office, an industrial school, and a tolerably regular double row of houses of all sorts. Our various delays of luncheon and sketching, &c., along the road had made us later than usual, and we were only just in time for thetable d’hôteat Mr. O’Grady’s fuchsia-covered hotel. There was a wonderful sunset that evening, and after dinner we wandered out to see as much as we could before bedtime. It was the strangest country we had yet seen. A long down-sloping tract of semi-cultivated land, and, starting up round its outskirts, tall, crudely conical mountains, “such a landscape as a child would draw,” my second cousin said. There was something volcanic and threatening about these great dark tents, showingawfully against the red background of the sunset. We were almost glad when everything melted into a grey sea-fog—for the sea, though out of sight, was very near—and we had to walk back the hotel; while from a shadowy cottage back of the road the piercing screams of a concertina rendered in maddening iteration the first theme of the “Sweethearts” waltz. Only one incident did we meet with on our way back. Quite suddenly, out of the greyness, three men appeared, and as they passed us, one of them turned and said, “Genoong i dhieri,” which, being translated, is “God speed you.”

We said feebly “Good evening,” and it was not till we were nearing the hotel that my second cousin remembered that she should have answered, “Ge moch hay ritth,” which is the Irish method of saying, “The same to you.”

THERE is reason in the roasting of eggs, and presumably in their poaching, but we are beginning to think we shall never fathom the principle which ordains that the hotel poached egg shall invariably be underdone. Charmed we never so wisely, commanded we never so timely, the same pinkish blobs were placed fluent and quaking before us, the same lavish gush answered the diffident knife puncture, and in a moment our plates became like sunrise painted by an impressionist, with red bacon streaks weltering in the widespread orange glories, and the golden mustard blob surmounting all as serenely as Phœbus Apollo.

This phenomenon was at all events our only specimen of a Letterfrack sunrise. As we sat at breakfast in the coffee-room the mist blew softly against theFrench windows, and swept past on the road like a procession of ghostly ball dresses; the furniture seemed clammy to the touch, and the paper decorations in the grate mocked the eye with their futile elegance and affectation of summer heat. Our fellow guests, evidentlyhabituésof the place, took only the most casual notice of the weather, and talked of local matters with the zest which so surprises the newcomer; of their single or conglomerated prowess in scrambling up the Diamond mountain, of their tumbling down it, of their tea, their sandwiches, and their wet boots; while we moodily ate our breakfasts, without even self-respect enough to make conversation for one another. Our depression was deepened soon afterwards, on hearing that an ancient raw on Sibbie’s shoulder had been touched by the collar in the drive of the day before, and that unless a person described as “Jack’s father” could put some additional padding into the collar we could not get on to Renvyle that day, though it was only a four mile journey.

The prospect of a day spent in the coffee-room

JACK’S FATHER.

and the little ladies’ drawing-room goaded us to energy. We determined to see the damage for ourselves, and putting on our waterproofs, we paddled out into the yard, and picked our way across it to the stable by some convenient and apparently recognised stepping-stones. The invalid Sibbie was in the darkest stall of the stable, standing in severe preoccupation, with her back to the outer world, and as we delicately approached her we became aware of an eye like that of a murderess rolling at us with a whitegleam in the obscurity, and saw that her long, bell-rope tail was drawn tightly in. We hastily agreed that we would take Jack’s word for the rubbed shoulder, and retired into the yard again. At the door of another stable we found the person whose only identity, or indeed profession, seemed to consist in being Jack’s father, sitting on an upturned bucket, with Sibbie’s collar in his lap and a monstrous needle in his hand. He explained that he was putting in a pad at each side, stuffed with cotton wool that he had got “from Herself, within in the house, because ’twould be kindher than the hay.” He had a serious face, with a frill of grey beard, like a Presbyterian minister of the most amiable type, and he looked up as he spoke with an expression that we felt to be kinder even than the cotton wool. “If that collar puts a hurt on the pony agin as long as yee’ll be thravellin’ Connemara, ye may—ye may call me blackbird!”

This handsome permission, emphasised by the tug with which the big needle was dragged through theleather, was evidently the highest reassurance known to the speaker, but, notwithstanding, we felt that even to apply the opprobrious name of blackbird to Jack’s father would be an indifferent consolation if in the midst of a wilderness of moor and mountain we found the red spot appearing on Sibbie’s shoulder. We looked, however, as properly impressed as we were able, and returned to the house in better spirits.

It was not till the afternoon that the weather gave us a chance of starting, and even then it required courage of a high order to turn out of our comfortable quarters into the thick, damp air. The volcanic mountain spikes, that last night had notched the sullen fire of the evening sky, had with one accord taken the veil, and retired from public observation, and the sloping pastures and turnip fields looked as nearly repulsive as was possible for them. Under these circumstances we left Letterfrack without emotion, and proceeded northward towards Renvyle.

After we had gone a little way we began to speculate as to whether the road had been made with aneye to the possibility of a future switchback railway. It seemed to us that at every hundred yards or so we had to get out and trudge up a hill through the mud, our consciences approving our consideration for Sibbie, and our every other feeling bewailing it; then came the scrambling into the trap again at the top, the tucking in of wet rugs, the difficult closing of the door, and having driven down the far side, the next hill rose immediately before us in the mist. The next thing we began to notice was that on every hill we met a donkey-cart and some young cattle, evidently coming from some fair or market. There were two courses of procedure on these occasions. The calves turned and fled before us at full gallop along the way they had come, until retrieved with huge expense of shouting and bad language, or they at once jumped the fence by the roadside and stampeded at large through the fields. The donkey-cart, which generally contained a pig, and an old woman screaming in Irish, had but one method, which was to cross to the wrong side of the road at the critical

AT TULLY FAIR.

moment, and then, abandoning itself to panic, endeavour to retrace its steps. During three or four miles theserecontresbecame more and more frequent, till at length, when the mist lifted at the top of a hill, we found that we had reached their source. In the hollow between the two hills was a village, its single street black with people, and the roads leading to it full of cattle and pigs. In other words, we had hit off the fair of Tully.

My cousin and I began to wonder how we were to get to the other side of it. We drove down into the town with dignity and circumspection, hoping that our aristocratic appearance might clear the way for us; but after a minute or two we were forced to the conclusion that the peasantry were not impressed. Not till Sibbie’s aggrieved visage was thrust into their midst did the groups separate, and even then they could scarcely spare time from the ardours of debate to give us more than a passing stare of bewilderment. An obstacle that seemed for a time likely to prevent our ever getting to Renvyle was a donkey-cart, withits shafts propped on a barrel so as to make a stall for the sale of sugar-stick, gooseberries, and piles of the massive biscuits known as “crackers.” The press of customers and their friends round this brought us to a standstill, and my cousin, in a politely dignified voice, asked those nearest us to move aside. There was a movement and a turning to stare.

“Holy Biddy! What’s thim?” exclaimed a girl, pushing back against the donkey-cart, and in so doing sending some of the “crackers” sliding down into the mud.

The proprietress, an old woman with protruding teeth and generally terrific aspect, made a futile attempt to avert the catastrophe, and then whirled round upon us with a ferocity whetted by this disaster and matured by long combat with small boys.

“That the divil may blisther yerself and thim!” she screamed. “What call have thim dirty thravellers here throwin’ down all before thim? Aha! I knew ye,” she said, addressing herself to my second cousin in tones of thunder, “and yer owld mother before ye,the time ye were thravelling the counthry in a pack on her back, puckin’ at every hall-doore in the counthry beggin’ spuds! For so grand as ye are, with yer specs on yer nose and yer fine sailor hat on the back of yer head!”

My cousin and I should, of course, have passed on with a pale hauteur, as if we had not heard this amazing effort of biographical romance, but we are, unfortunately, not of the complexion that turns pale with ease; on the contrary, we became a violent turkey-cock scarlet, and ended by a collapse into unsuppressible laughter, in which the crowd joined with unfeigned delight, as they at length made a way for us to pass.

“Don’t mind her at all, Miss,” said a cattle drover, encouragingly, as he dragged a calf from before the wheel; “that one’d bother a rookery with her tongue; there isn’t a fair in the counthry but she’ll be bawling and fighting in it this way, so it’s little regard the people pays to her and her chat. Sure, as Shakspeare says, “ye’ll always know a rale lady wherever ye see her!”

This gallantry was so refreshing, that we did not stop to inquire more closely into the whereabouts of the quotation, and we slowly made our way out of the fair, past the bulging, grimy tents where porter and whisky were sold, and the screaming crowd of children in front of a showman’s booth, till the last knot of blue-cloaked women was circumnavigated, and the last incensed pig was dragged from between Sibbie’s forelegs.

We looked back as we crawled up the hill outside the village, and wondered what the pleasure could be of standing all day long in the drizzle, in mud ankle-deep, as many do who have nothing either to buy or sell. But a fair is not to them merely a place of business, it is a conversazione, extending from sunrise to sunset, at which the keen spectacular enjoyment of bargaining is blended with the purely personal pleasure of getting drunk.

Another mile or two of switchbacking brought us in sight of trees, which, in Connemara, answers to coming in sight of land, as far as civilisation is concerned; before long we were driving underneath them, and pulling up at the entrance gate of a demesne. We drove down a long avenue (when we say “avenue” in Ireland, we mean it according to the true sense of the word, and do not necessarily imply that it is over-arched with trees), with the sound of the sea in our ears, and became aware that we were on a strip of land like the battlefield of Lyonesse.

“On one side lay the ocean, and on one lay a great water.”

We wound by the edge of the lake, and might easily have mistaken the frothy ripple along its shore for the salt lip of the tide, but for the tall band of reeds that shook stiffly in the mist-laden wind. But we were nearing the sea every moment. We emerged from a plantation, and came in sight of it at last, and at the same time came to our destination, a long, grey, two-storey house, with low Elizabethan windows, and pale weather-slated walls, wholly unexpected, and altogether unique, as far, at all events, as this part of Ireland is concerned.

Anyone who knows Galway at all, knows the name of Blake; and anyone who read the reports of the Parnell Commission will remember the Mrs. Blake whose evidence there was thought by both sides to be of so remarkable a kind. Renvyle House, at whose oaken, iron-studded door Sibbie was now joyfully coming to a standstill, has been the home of the Blakes for several centuries; now, in its old age, it is the home of any tourist who chooses to go there. The bad times and the agitation hit Renvyle very hard; so hard that when the fight with the Land League was over, Mrs. Blake was not able to sit down and tranquilly enjoy her victory. She had, on the contrary, to rise up and give all her energies to repairing the ruin that such a victory meant. Her plan was a daring one for a boycotted woman to undertake; but it was carried out to its fullest intention. Before long, advertisements appeared in the newspapers and the guide books to the effect that Renvyle House had been added to the list of Connemara hotels, and the sound of traffic, “the coorsing andrecoorsing” of cars began to be heard on the long avenue by the lake, as in the old times, when “exclusive dealing” and decrees of isolation were unknown.

We cannot here say much about the difficulties she had to contend with. Whatever they were they were overcome. It is both easier and pleasanter to speak of the advantages at her command. The charming, rambling old house, with its innumerable panelled bedrooms, the lakes, “shtiff” with brown trout, the woods and rocks in which hide all manner of strange beasts—from otters and seals downwards—the untainted Atlantic for the tourist to disport himself in or upon, as seems good to him, and the tallest mountains of Connemara to stare at across the bay, while sprawling at ease on such a level, creamy stretch of sand as is seldom found except in those places where it is the sole and much-bragged-of attraction. We had heard of all these things in advance; we were accustomed to thinking of Renvyle as an hotel; and yet, when we knocked at the door, and a grave anddecorous man-servant appeared, the look of everything conspired to make us forget that we were tourists, prepared to exercise our lawful right of “bed and board,” and we came very near stammering out an inquiry if Mrs. Blake was at home.

[Image of two ladies and the letter W]HEN the iron-studded hall-door of Renvyle House Hotel had closed behind us, we found ourselves in a low-panelled hall, with oaken props for guns and fishing rods, and long black oaken chests along its walls. Everything was old-fashioned, even mediæval, dark, and comfortable. Nothing was in the least suggestive of a hotel, unless it might have been a row of letters and telegrams on the chimney-piece, and I was beginning seriously to fear that we had made a mistake, when I noticed my second cousin’s eye-glasses were at full cock, and following their direction, I saw the “Innkeepers’ Regulation” Act hanging framed on the wall. It was both a shock and a relief.

Our various belongings—somewhat disreputable and travel-stained by this time—having been conveyed from the trap, we were told that tea was ready in the drawing-room, and followed the servant through two deep doorways into another room, also mediæval and panelled. “What is so rare as a day in June?” asks Mr. Lowell. Nothing, we can confidently reply, except a fire in July, and there on the brick hearth we saw with gloating, incredulous eyes a heap of burning turf sending a warm, dry glow into the room, and making red reflections in the antique silver tea-service that was placed on a table near it. For ever quelled were our vague anticipations of the hotel drawing-room and its fetishes, the ornate mirrors, the glass-shaded clocks, and the alabaster chimney ornaments; and as we extended our muddy boots to the blaze, and sipped hot tea through a heavy coating of cream, we felt reconciled to the loss of an ideal.

RENVYLE HOUSE HOTEL.

After the clank of our tea-cups had continued for a few minutes, there was a stir under the frilled petticoat of the sofa, and a small black-and-tan head was put forth with an expression of modest but anxious inquiry, the raised flounces making a poke bonnet round the face, and giving it an old-ladyish absurdity, of which its owner was happily unaware. We laughed—an unkindness which was followed by an expression of deep but amiable embarrassment, and atapping on the floor that told of deprecatory tail waggings. We simultaneously extended a piece of bread-and-butter, and an animal, allied apparently to the houses of black-and-tan terrier and dachshund, at once came forward with its best manner and took our offerings with suave good breeding and friendliness. A trick of sitting up and waving the fore-paws as a request for food was exhibited to us without delay, and further researches discovered a proficiency in that accomplishment of “trust” and “paid for,” which must be the bitterest problem in dog-education, and perhaps gives in later dog-life some free-thinking ideas about the unpractical nature of the exercise, and the flippancy of supreme beings generally. We said all this to each other, luxuriously and at great length, and had some pleasure in contrasting the refined behaviour of the Renvyle dog with the brutal cynicism of the Recess penwiper and theblaséeffeteness of its fox-terrier. Under the influences of dark mahogany panelling and a low Queen Anne window we became mellow and thoughtful, and sank into soothing reflection on our natural affinity to what is cultured and artistic. I am sure, at least, that my second cousin felt like that; she always has since the disastrous day on which a chiromantist looked at her hand and told her that it was essential to her to have nice surroundings.

I was beginning to feel a little acrid at this recollection when the door-handle turned in its place high up in the panels, and Mrs. Blake came in to see her visitors. That my cousin belonged to her county seemed to her a full and sufficient reason that she should welcome us as friends, and perhaps it gave us throughout our stay an advantage over the ordinary tourist in the more intimate kindnesses and opportunities for conversation that fell to our lot.

We looked as hard at Mrs. Blake as politeness would permit, while the broad columns of theTimesseemed to rise before our mind’s eye, with the story sprinkled down it through examination and cross-examination of what she had gone through in the first years of the agitation. It required an effort toimagine her, with her refined, intellectual face and delicate physique, taking a stick in her hand and going out day after day to drive off her land the trespassing cattle, sheep, and horses that were as regularly driven on to it again as soon as her back was turned. We did not say these things to Mrs. Blake, but we thought about them a good deal while we sat and talked to her, and noticed the worn look of her face and the anxious furrows above her benevolent brows.

It was some time before we went up to see the two rooms of which we had been offered a choice. Both were low and panelled, both had low, long windows; in fact it will save trouble if we say at once that everything at Renvyle was long and low and panelled. The first room looked to the front of the house, and out over the Atlantic towards the muffled ghosts of Innis Boffin and Achill Islands; a fine view on a fine day, and impressive even at its worst; but to us, the room’s chiefest attraction was the four-poster bed, a magnificent kind of upper chamber, like asumptuous private box, with gilded pillars, and carved work, and stretched canopy; something to admire with the help of a catalogue at South Kensington. We felt, as we were taken down two long passages to view the other room, that it was a mere matter of form, and that the golden bed was too regal a circumstance to be abandoned. But before my cousin’s eye-glasses were fairly adjusted for the inspection, we had begun to waver. The other bed was brass instead of gold, there was no denying that; but these windows looked out to a great ridge of mountains, crowded about the head of the bay, roses climbed to the sill, and the grassy stretch below was cut out in gaudy flower-beds. A peacock screamed just under the windows, and we saw him with his meek spouse trailing his tail about the grass among the flower-beds that were wired in from his ravaging beak. I think it was the broad window seat in conjunction with the mountains that turned the scale—(the peacock also turned the scale, but in a different way, generally turning it at C in alt; but, as Mr. RudyardKipling says, that is another story). We forewent the golden glories of the new Jerusalem bed, and remained where we were.

There was unconfessed peace in the certainty that it was not an afternoon for sight-seeing; rather for fervent shin-roasting at the drawing-room fire, blended with leisurely, unsystematic assimilation of theTimesfor the last four days. Fishermen, apparently, take a holiday from newspapers, along with their other duties when they go a-fishing, and expose themselves to nothing more severe in the way of literature than theFieldorLand and Water; at all events, these and a pre-historicIllustrated London Newshad been our only opportunities for keeping ourselves in touch with the outer world since we had left it. Boaconstrictor-like, we slowly gorged ourselves with solid facts, and then subsided into a ruminative torpor, misanthropically delighted at the fact that we had chanced upon an intermediate period as to tourists, and that the owners of the letters and telegrams that we had seen in the hall had not arrived to claim

Back to Index Next