Part 39

The next incident partakes of the tragi-comedy in which every Irish problem is set. All Ireland stands like one of those figures of mimes on an old drop-curtain; a laughing face behind a tragic mask—or indeed the reverse. We laughed while our hearts grew sad at the sight of a stalwart devil-may-care individual in a frieze coat who strolled up to a group of jarvies while we sat in the cab waiting for our luggage to be loaded. The whole business was conducted with a fine artful carelessness. Now one, now another of the standing group of cab-drivers would lurch up against him of the frieze coat or clasp him jovially by the hand, and there would ensue a passage of coppers from one grimy palm to another. Then out of a deep side-pocket of the frieze coat a black bottle would be drawn, with all the désinvolture of the conjuring trick. No doubt some four yards away on either side stood a policeman; the illicit traffic was conducted, so to speak, under his nose. But, splendid fellow as he is, is he not, too, an Irishman? He knows when to sniff in another direction.

‹And here we may parenthetically remember a charming and typical spectacle which once met our eyes in the County Wicklow: a local police station, a large placard commanding that all dogs shall be muzzled, and five or six curs of different low degrees snapping untrammelled in the sunshine at the feet of two smiling members of the constabulary.

Some brutish Saxon member of our party stops to point out the discrepancy.

“Unmuzzled, is it?” says the elder policeman genially. “And, begorra, so it is, ma’am. But, sure, isn’t that Tim Connolly’s little dog? Sure, what ’ud we be muzzling him for? Thim orders is only for stray dogs!”›

* * * * *

We drove away across the cobbled Dublin streets at a hand gallop. Whether the poor animal that drew us had to be kept at this unnatural speed lest it should collapse altogether, or whether our “jarvey” had had more than one pull at the black bottle I know not; certainly we went in peril of our lives. Shaving off corners, striking the edge of the curb, oscillating violently from side to side, the antique vehicle threatened at every leap and bound to break into fragments like a pantomime joke. The Dublin cab is a thing apart. From the musty straw upon which your feet rest, to the dilapidated blue velveteen cushion upon which you leap, to its wooden walls and rattling windows, you would not find its like upon any other point of the globe. It searches you to your least bone socket; and the noise of its career deafens your wails on the principle of the “painless extractor” at the fair, who blows a trumpet for every wrench.

It was useless for us to thrust our heads out of the window, like “Bunny come to town”; the frightful clatter of an arrest, a grunt, and a start at fresh speed were the only result. We trembled in every limb and so did the poor horse, as we were at last flung out in front of our hotel with a jerk that nearly broke the bottom of the cab in two.

We tendered what we knew to be considerably more than the fare. The driver surveyed it and looked at us, then rolled a disgusted glance back to the coins, and dropped them into his pocket.

“Is that all? And me afther dhriving you in such style!”

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XXXVIII

Humours pursued us during our brief sojourn in the hotel. We are very fond of that hotel. It is associated with the repeated charm of its hospitable reception on each of our visits. We were glad to see we were given the same set of rooms as on a previous occasion; and when we found the same broken lock on the door, we felt indeed that we were among old friends.

When our tea was brought—we were lying down to rest—we had however to ring and protest.

“Look at this spoon!” we exclaimed dramatically.

The soft-voiced maid looked at it quizzically.

“What is it?” Then she smiled. “It’s apt to have been in the honey, by the look of it,” she observed dispassionately.

“Please take it away,” we said, “and bring another.”

She thought us strange and dull of wit. There was a clean napkin on every plate. But—no doubt with a mental “Ah, God help us. Travellers is queer folk!”—she departed, we feel sure, no farther than the passage, there to wipe the honey off on the inside of her apron.

The next day saw us landed at a small wayside station in the rich flat land of Meath, where we were met by a charming old-fashioned “turn out,” a handsome waggonette and a sturdy pair of carriage horses. At least we thought the waggonette old-fashioned and delightful, in these motor times; but it seems it was on the contrary new and wonderful.

The coachman surveyed us tentatively two or three times while our divers small goods were being collected, magisterially directing the footman with the butt end of his whip. Presently he broke into speech:

“Will you be noticing the carriage, sir?” he remarked, addressing the head of the party. “Her Ladyship’s just bought it. I chose it for her meself, so I did. It’s a grand contrivance. You can have it the way it is now, and it’s real comfortable, isn’t it, sir? But sure, you can turn it into an omnibus. And you’d never believe now, how many it would hold. I drove six ladies to a ball in it the other night, and not one of them crushed on me—And fine large ladies they were,” he observed admiringly.

“We do wish he would not tell every one that,” observed one of the “large ladies” a little later. “Every time he’s gone to the station in the new waggonette this summer he’s told that story.”

But she was quite good-humoured and amused. Indeed, her largeness was of the beautiful order. It was no wonder the coachman was proud of conveying it uncrushed.

The gardens where these hostesses dwelt were pleasantly green and flowery. There was the usual high-walled garden. Villino Loki, with its absurd terraces, can never dream of attaining to such an enclosure of antique charm. For if we walled in the Kitchen and Reserve Garden at the foot of our hill we should wall out the moor from below, and obstruct our sweeping vision from above. But my heart yearns to an old walled garden. A place quite apart, with its mingled odours of herb and flower and ripening fruit; with its perpetual murmur of bees, its tangled walks, its old bushes of Rosemary and Lavender, its mossy Apple-trees, its crisp Parsley beds, its tumble-down greenhouses.

This particular walled garden was a very good specimen of its kind. It was here that our ignorance first made acquaintance with the invaluable Cosmia; that treasure of the herbaceous border that keeps on blooming in the face of adversity from June till November. There was also a huge bed of Salvias, one sheet of gentian blue. ‹Why cannot we grow Salvias like that?› It ran at the foot of an overgrown, very old rose plot, the trees of which had developed into fairy-tale luxuriance. And opposite, across the gravelled path, which from old associations we prefer to any other species of walk, was a field of Snap-dragon against the high wall where the leaves of the plum branches were reddening as they clung. Duly mossed was this old wall, and richly lichened; overtopped by the great trees without. These swayed to the mild Irish wind, with long, pleasant, choiring sounds, the rooks cawing as they circled in them. It was small wonder that I should have felt content and at peace as I stood there—if only my heart had not swelled with envy over those Salvias! But one can’t be the owner of an Italian Villino on a Surrey Highland and encompass the antique peace of a centuries-old Irish home. One must be reasonable—as a French governess of our youth used to say to us when she began her most lengthy harangues. “Voyons—de deux choses l’une ...”

The park was typically Irish, and possessed some wonderful trees. Amongst others a chestnut, four or five immense branches of which, sweeping to the ground, had taken root again and started fresh trees, forming a singular tropical-looking grove. How children would have delighted in such a leafy palace, roofed in and pillared of its own stateliness!

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Memories of laughter pursue us at every stage of those weeks. There was the visit to a neighbouring castle; a genuine old castle this, but irretrievably “restored” in that bygone period of history when Pugin reigned supreme.