Part 43

Yet motor-cars must be very rare apparitions along these Clare roads; for at their approach the people fling themselves sideways into the ditches and against the walls, when they cannot escape through a gap into the fields. Even the dogs will flee. One poor Collie flattened himself on a bank in a paroxysm of terror that we cannot forget. When I remember how along the English roads my heart is for ever in my mouth over the callous indifference of the British cur, I realize that canine folk are very much like human beings when all is said and done.

The Irish of the west have curious habits and customs which seem to link them with their forgotten eastern ancestral race. The women will draw their garments over their heads at the approach of a stranger, so closely that you may not get even a glimpse of their faces. Their husband is still “the master” to them, and they walk two steps behind him when they go abroad. But it is the old Catholic spirit that leads them to expect the greeting “God save all here!” when you enter their cottage, and “God bless the work!” when you pass them in the field.

We hurry away, much against our will, from these attractive scenes because of the breaking out of the railway strike. The newspapers are all very alarming, and we are threatened with being flung for an indefinite period upon the hospitality of our most hospitable friends. We do not fear for a minute that that would fail us, but we are due in England at appointed dates, and so we bustle off, “against the heart” as the French say.

But when you make acquaintance with a strike from an Irish point of view, it seems one huge joke. Never did we make a journey to the sound of so much laughter as that day. Every station was crowded with soldiers, and all the inhabitants mustered on the platforms to exchange sallies with them. An eager, curious, good-humoured gathering greets and speeds the train which is supposed to be kept running at imminent risk of riot and peril.

A very splendid looking police-inspector came into our carriage and had an animated conversation on the prospects with an elderly gentleman whom he addressed as “Judge.” Both seemed inspired with glee.

When we arrived in Dublin there was indeed a slight drawback in finding no porters available for our many boxes. But the stalwart man of the party made “no bones,” as they would say, about shouldering them himself, and this was accomplished amid the unstinted enthusiasm of the “jarvies.” He was aided ‹save the mark› by the only faithful porter, as old as Pantaloon, who quivered and quavered behind him. A further occasion for cheers.

“Ah, will ye look at the gintleman! To think of the likes of him now, being put to carry the thrunks! Isn’t it ashamed of themselves they ought to be! Well done, Larry, it is a grand old boy ye are! Let me get a hould of the box, yer honour. Oh, begorra, isn’t it the stringth of ten ye do be having....”

“And how do ye like Dublin now, Mr. Smith?” we heard a pretty Irish girl saying to a stalwart young British soldier on the platform.

He was grinning down at her in stolid admiration. She herself had dove-like eyes and a dove-like cooing voice.

We think he liked Dublin very much indeed.

It was the laughing face behind the mask of tragedy.

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XLI

Once more has the Equinox come and dropped into the past. Autumn—the Fall, as our older and more poetic term had it to balance the image of Spring, and as America still prefers to call it—is about us.

We disagree radically with Chateaubriand’s estimate of the “russet and silver days.”

“A moral character” ‹thus does the Father of Romantisme meditate, in his usual melancholy mood, upon the season of shortening days and long-drawing nights› “is attached to autumnal scenes.... The leaves falling like our years, the flowers withdrawing like our hours, the colours of the clouds fading like our illusions, the light waning like our intelligence, the sun growing colder like our affections, the rivers becoming frozen like our lives—everything about Autumn bears secret relations to our destinies....”

Yes, we disagree with every one of these similes. Rather should Autumn be considered as the happy season of the task accomplished. The wine is pressed and stored, the fruit is garnered.... In the garden it is the time of eager preparation against new delights, another year; of solicitude for the treasures of beauty which are to brighten another Spring, another Summer. The seed of the dying Annuals has been saved; the more tender of the Perennials are timely withdrawn into shelter, while the hardier are cosily tucked in their own bed for the coming long winter sleep. It is the time of the tidying down and of the confident “good night—till next year!”

“Colder, like our affections,” indeed! What will not love of rhetoric perpetrate?—and Christmastide drawing on apace!

* * * * *

The Master of the House has an old-fashioned weakness—what may be called a “Dickensy” weakness—for things Christmassy. And his family have all childlike tastes and are quite ready to minister to his picturesque fancy.

We have a Christmas tree—a Spruce sapling, selected yearly for sacrifice in the territory called the Wilderness. It must be said that the wide library, with the capacious hearth and the beamed ceiling, lends a suitable scenery to this homelike ‹but, we fear, obsolescent› entertainment. The tree is lit up on the first night for ourselves; on the second for the household; and a third time for the children. For the true pleasures of Yule would be incomplete without a “foregathering-and-rejoicing-together” ‹as only a tough German compound word could express it› of all grades of age and station. The children, in this case, are those of the Catechism class and of our employés—which pompous term must be understood to refer to the gardener, the chauffeur, the under-gardener, and the “occasional help.” This last has five of them—so it mounts up satisfactorily.

* * * * *

The beloved “furry ones” are not forgotten. Loki, who is always in a state of violent excitement on Christmas Tree nights, has a toy animal to make acquaintance with, tease, and finally worry. Some one ‹it must have been Juvenal› suggested tying up nice clean bones in red ribbons; but out of regard for Grandma’s carpet, the succulent thought has never been “materialized.”

The Master of the House, and Juvenal, are also full of solicitude for the feathery things in Winter. The bird-baths are carefully thawed—it seems, by the way, to be in the coldest days of the year that they appear to prefer to bathe; sand baths are generally found sufficient in the Summer, one wonders why. In cold weather generally, cocoanuts filled with fat are disposed in various parts of the garden, around which tits and finches of every shade dispute noisily all day. But on Christmas day the terraces, the balustrades and steps round the house are further disfigured with such an abundance of crumbs and other tempting morsels, that, even with the help of all the black birds from neighbouring copses, they cannot come even with the whole of the feast.

* * * * *

We give each other enchanting presents. The lovely little carved-wood Joan of Arc, on a bracket in Grandpa’s library; the Madonna of Cluny “prayer-stick” in one corner of the chimney-piece; the Medici copy of Filippino Lippi’s wonderful angel in the National Gallery, in the grey and yellow bedroom; the cut-glass goblets painted with purple plums and red cherries and blue grapes in the drawing-room—all these were this year’s Christmas gifts, cunningly chosen, we think, and a constant delight to our eyes.

* * * * *

Loki’s Grandma, after the fashion of a lady in a recent celebrated lawsuit, likes to choose her own presents. But she is not so indelicate as to demand money and buy it herself—No, she drops an absent hint, as Christmastide draws near. If this is not satisfactory, she abandons diplomacy for an engaging frankness.... But she is always overwhelmed with surprise and delight when “the very thing she wanted” duly appears about the Tree. The Master of the Villino, on his side, has had all the pleasure of purchasing; and, being of a guileless nature, is often quite persuaded that the choice was his own.