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A CLUSTER OF NUTS 
 
 BEING 
 
 SKETCHES AMONG MY OWN PEOPLE 
 
 BY 
 
 KATHARINE TYNAN 
 
 (Mrs. H. a. HINKSON) 
 
 " Kindly Irish of the Irish, 
 Neither Saxon nor Italian." 
 
 LONDON 
 
 LAWRENCE & BULLEN 
 
 i6, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, W.C. 
 
 1894 
 
Many of these sketches have already appeared in the 
 " Speaker ;' the " Westminster Gazette',' the " Weekly Sjm " 
 and the " Monthly Packet^' to the editors of which I am 
 under obligation for the first favour of their pitblication 
 and the second of permitting me to reptiblish them. 
 
1446 3 
 
 TO 
 
 MARY GILL, 
 
 FOND AND ENDURING FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 173 
 
MO CRAOIBHIN CNO,"^ 
 
 The Irish woods have sycajnore and quickeriy 
 
 Chestnut and beech and elm-trees set a-row; 
 And in the hazel copse the clusters thicken — 
 Mo craoibhin cno ! 
 
 In the green hazels play the squirrel people, 
 Bright-eyed and brisk^ not fearing any foe. 
 As safe above the world as daw in steeple. 
 Mo craoibhiit cno! 
 
 The nuts are sweeter to the dainty squirrels 
 Than garden-fruit or blackberries aglow ; 
 Sweeter than to the youth his brown maid's curls- 
 Mo craoibhin cno / 
 
 I wandered by the hazels ere they withered, 
 
 And heard the blackbird's liquid numbers flow ; 
 And from the bough a cluster brown I gathered — 
 Mo craoibhin cno I 
 
 Russet and small, but still within the brownness 
 
 May hide some sweetness— pray you find it so /— 
 As pleases squirrels in the old wood's loneness — 
 Mo craoibhin cno! 
 
 Brown nuts, my masters, from an Irish hazel ! 
 
 But if ye will not their rough flavour, go 
 And leave my fruit for finer fruits that dazzle — 
 Mo craoibhin cno! 
 
 * Ma creevin O, i.e,^ My cluster of nuts. 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A VILLAGE GENIUS i 
 
 WAYFARERS ...... 13 
 
 A COUNTRY AUCTION . . . .25 
 
 A HOUSE OF ROSES . . • . 37 
 
 A BOOK-LOVER 49 
 
 HARVESTERS 63 
 
 SHAMEEN 79 
 
 A MARTYR INDEED .... 92 
 A FARMER'S TRAGEDY . . . .115 
 
 FAREWELL TO BALLYSHANNON . . 127 
 
 CISSY: AN EXILE . .... 138 
 
 A SPOILT PRIEST 153 
 
 WAIFS 179 
 
 A DESCENDANT OF IRISH EARLS . . 194 
 
 MAD MOLLY 206 
 
 ROSE : FROM AN IRISH HEDGEROW . 219 
 
 A VILLAGE PRIEST 231 
 
CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 A VILLAGE GENIUS. 
 
 THEY burled him to-day In the green 
 God's Acre sown thickly with human 
 dead, In the shadow of the Httle church 
 with Its square Norman tower, in the longer 
 shadow of the Round Tower, raised so long 
 ago that even Its uses and Its age are dimly 
 guessed at, and that yet for all its hoariness 
 in the verdant landscape looks Time between 
 the eyes, and defies him, as it did — how many 
 centuries ago ? The Round Tower has seen 
 much of death : many times, no doubt, this 
 rich plain was a battle-field for many races. 
 
 B 
 
2 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 One who steals by the churchyard with a 
 trembling heart might start to realize that 
 underfoot, no matter whither one wends, there 
 lie the forgotten dead ; for our Old World has, 
 every inch of it, been honeycombed with 
 graves. The Round Tower stands in the 
 smiling landscape like a Sphinx holding its 
 secrets and its thoughts. Of a summer 
 afternoon it sets its long shadow like the 
 shadow on the dial-plate across the graves. 
 Tick, tick, goes the clock of Time ; if you 
 listen you hear it in the silence, and Time 
 passes, and we with it. But the Round Tower 
 knows that, like the seasons, everything 
 returns : there is never a lack of golden heads 
 at the cottage doors ; nor birds to sing in the 
 boughs in spring after the snow and the frost ; 
 nor apple blossoms, though last year's fell in 
 showers ; nor delicate pale leaves, though the 
 autumn swept such a myriad of dead leaves 
 down the village street, to creep and whisper 
 about the feet of the Round Tower like little 
 ghosts of dead dreams. To the Round Tower 
 
A VILLAGE GENIUS. 3 
 
 everything returns ; and because he is well- 
 nigh eternal, he never notices such a detail as 
 that they are not the same children, or the same 
 birds, or the same blossoms and leaves. But 
 it will not be next year, nor for many a year, 
 that he will again look upon a village genius. 
 The village genius was the son of a shoe- 
 maker, one of a family of robust brothers, all 
 of the same trade, and himself unwillingly 
 making boots for the farmers while his feet 
 would fain be climbing the hill of Parnassus. 
 I think, however, he was a shoemaker manqtid ; 
 or how else was it that one would meet him 
 sometimes striding along on a frosty afternoon 
 when the setting sun turned all the snow to 
 scarlet ? an open book in his hand wherein the 
 dusk was blotting out the letters, his gait a 
 little fierce ; striding along, as I have said, as if 
 he would so walk away from something that 
 irked him in his daily life. That was before I 
 knew him so well as I did of late years, before 
 I became his literary guide, and my word his 
 judgment, 
 
 B 2 
 
4 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 He was at the unromantic age of forty-two 
 when he died ; a spare man, with hair greyer 
 and thinner than it should have been, regular 
 pale features, eager eyes that jumped at you 
 when you gave an advice or an explanation, a 
 high bulging brow that might have given 
 warning of the brain disease he was to die 
 from. 
 
 His life had had many disappointments. His 
 own family were not untender, but were some- 
 what impatient of him ; they wanted him to be 
 a good shoemaker, not a bad poet. The people 
 among whom he lived smiled at his ambitions, 
 not realizing how much more ignoble were 
 their own : his aspirations and dreams were to 
 the world he lived in nothing like so poetically 
 named a thing as a midsummer madness. He 
 had a sweetheart once, a hypocritical meek- 
 faced thing, a village coquette with a pure 
 profile, and hidden eyes, and pale soft cheeks 
 under her drooping ringlets. She led the 
 village genius into Paradise, and walked with 
 him in its paths for a little while ; then she 
 
A VILLAGE GENIUS. 5 
 
 jilted him shamefully and shamelessly, for a 
 friend of his, a good earner, troubled with no 
 useless dreams and visions. They went to 
 America, and the village genius gave no second 
 woman the chance of wounding him. 
 
 Henceforth his devotion was to his lady 
 Literature. Devotion more profound and 
 entire I have never known. So long as he 
 touched the hem of her skirt he was satisfied. 
 He did wonders considering his difficulties. 
 He made his way to France and remained long 
 enough to learn the language, so as to get at 
 the French writers. He had dreams of going 
 further afield, especially when in latter days he 
 grew prosperous ; but, alas ! his feet will never 
 again wander from his own village. 
 
 The first essays in literature he brought to 
 me would have made me smile if he had not 
 been so deeply in earnest. He had read only 
 the stately, old-fashioned writers, the essayists 
 of the Spectator^ the poetry of Pope, who was 
 his favourite. Add to the formality thus 
 acquired the Irish peasant's love for big and 
 
O A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 sonorous words, and imagine the result ! 
 From the first I took him in earnest, and he 
 was very docile. I preached to him perpetually 
 the doctrine of simplicity. It was not easy to 
 persuade him that it was better to say a thing 
 was "red" than it was *'of ruby dye," but 
 little by little he learned, and was encouraged as 
 his simple verses became acceptable to a news- 
 paper, now and again. Then his subjects : he 
 was quite capable at the time of a Dantesque 
 poem on the Last Judgment, or another Ode 
 on the Nativity. But by degrees he accepted 
 my dictum that he must only write of things he 
 knew, and so he came in time to write sketches 
 of the life about him, with a certain vigorous 
 realism, and to make simple verses on familiar 
 things which, with every trial, came nearer to 
 being poetry. I can see him sitting before me 
 now, in his shoemaker s leather apron, as he 
 sometimes came early in the morning, waiting 
 with his eager eyes upon me as I read his latest 
 story or verse, and sensitively ready to wince if 
 my judgment were adverse. I often looked at 
 
• A VILLAGE GENIUS. 7 
 
 him, indeed more in sorrow than in anger, for 
 it was not easy to keep him from relapsing into 
 magnificence, and verses opening delicately and 
 sweetly would pull up about the third verse 
 with a burst of bathos. However, I think I 
 helped him every time he came, and he used to 
 go away happy, his arms, with the turned-up 
 sleeves, often full of the overflow from my book- 
 shelves. He was an ascetic genius — in life and 
 in his mind. He never touched drink ; and in 
 even the innocent pleasures of those about him 
 he had no part : so he was attracted in litera- 
 ture by a chilly excellence, and had little feeling 
 for colour or passion. 
 
 Those realistic stories of his often brought 
 him into ill-repute. They were literal tran- 
 scripts from the life about him, and when a 
 paper drifted into the village containing a 
 photographic description of how the Widow 
 
 S behaved to her husband in life and when 
 
 he lay dead, or a certain curious page in the 
 early family history of the most prosperous 
 person in the village, there was commotion. 
 
q A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 But the village genius heeded it no more than 
 the battle of the frogs that made all the water 
 tremble in a deep ditch he passed on his even- 
 ing walk towards the hills. If they thought 
 him an unprofitable, and now a scurrilous 
 perso/n, he was too remote from them to heed. 
 He lived in a world of his own ; when he was 
 hammering boots on the shop bench and his 
 thoughts were withdrawn into himself; when 
 he sat in his bedroom in the roof among his 
 books, and opened his high window to the 
 stars ; when he paced towards the mountains 
 in a mood of exaltation that marked their 
 solemnity and their eternal peace, but over- 
 looked their transcendent colouring. I fear 
 the village genius had a certain arrogance for 
 his surroundings, and that as he found his 
 expression, these people amongst whom he was 
 bred and born became only so much material 
 to him. 
 
 The stories led up to the season of pros- 
 perity of which I have spoken. His stories 
 and his sketches became acceptable to a couple 
 
A VILLAGE GENIUS. 9 
 
 of papers which were connected. One was a 
 Society paper of the most vapid sort, more 
 foolish if less vicious than its London proto- 
 types. To this the village genius not only con- 
 tributed stories and sketches, but also Society 
 paragraphs, for his sister had gone away and 
 become a modiste to the great world, by which 
 it will be seen that he was not the only remark- 
 able person of his family. I often thought the 
 editor of that Society paper was a bold man, for 
 the genius drew on the long memories of the 
 old people around him as well as his own, and 
 many a strange page in the histories of county 
 families found its way into the Society paper 
 thinly disguised. The village genius con- 
 tributed much to the paper for some time 
 before he died, and I often smiled, seeing It In 
 the hands of fashionable dames and misses, 
 over another vision of the village genius In 
 leather apron and with grimy face and hands. 
 He felt it as a somewhat ignoble prosperity, 
 but he was proud to earn money by the pen so 
 long derided, very proud to draw out with 
 
lO A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 pretended unostentation a cheque for his 
 literary services, in full sight of his brothers 
 and his fierce old father, who had raged against 
 the piles of useless manuscript and the feckless 
 son who would spend good sixpences by stealth 
 to procure the Athencsuni or the Saturday 
 Review. 
 
 Yet, apart from this sordid gain, he kept a 
 pure aspiration, and worked at his little poems 
 by night, and strove patiently in his prentice- 
 ship to the art he hoped some day humbly to 
 learn. It is all over now, and the rain will 
 beat to-night above his quiet face. The 
 little hard buds are forming on the trees, 
 and the green snowdrop spears pushing 
 sturdy heads above-ground ; even in the damp 
 days there is a fresh breath of spring that 
 sets all the birds to chattering. But he 
 is heedless of it all, and the lovely and 
 ordered procession of the months that once 
 delighted him will pass him unheeded At 
 last he lies quite close to the heart of nature 
 and the secret of all things. To him patiently 
 
A VILLAGE GENIUS. II 
 
 learning, might have been said, in the exquisite 
 
 words of a modern poet : — 
 
 " Wait, and many a secret nest, 
 Many a hoarded winter store, 
 Will be hidden on thy breast. 
 
 Things thou longest for 
 Will not fear or shun thee more. 
 
 Thou shalt intimately lie 
 
 In the roots of flowers that thrust 
 
 Upwards from thee to the sky, 
 
 With no more distrust 
 When they blossom from thy dust. 
 
 Silent labours of the rain 
 Shall be near thee, reconciled j 
 Little lives of leaf and grain — 
 
 All things shy and wild 
 Tell thee secrets, quiet child." 
 
 In hfe he would scarcely have had ear for the 
 subtle sweetness of such poetry, yet it makes 
 my thought of him, lying where the graves 
 crowd thickly towards human sympathy and 
 the occasional footfall of the living. The 
 Round Tower knows the secrets of the upper 
 air, but the quiet dead 
 
 " Fear no more the heat o' the sun 
 Or the furious winter rages," 
 
12 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 at rest in the earth amid the growing things, 
 and in hope of a glorious immortality. There 
 the village genius has learned masterfully inti- 
 macy with familiar things, and the last great 
 simplicity of death. 
 
WAYFARERS. 
 
 AT Limerick Junction we first heard it, the 
 indescribable wail, rising and falHng, 
 terrible as the ''keen" for the dead, 
 which means the farewell of the emigrants. We 
 were quite out of the station at the end of a long 
 train, and it was my travelling companion told 
 me what it meant. A country train laden with 
 emigrants and their friends had come in, and 
 they were parting here, the emigrants coming 
 on with us to Queenstown. No wonder they 
 wailed, one thought, looking away, and trying 
 to forget it. The rain was over, and the 
 Galtees had sailed royally out of the mist ; 
 Galtymore, that is the home of eagles, holding 
 his head so high, that I remembered how an 
 imaginative child once took him to be the 
 throne of God. Below the tall peaks ran a 
 
14 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 rampart of dark blue — a frowning natural 
 fortification behind which lies Aherlow, the 
 fairest of glens, with woolly catkins on the 
 willow boughs, and drifts of primroses among 
 the uncurling ferns, and the mountains all 
 around grey as glass, or red and brown like a 
 pheasant's breast, or streaked along the surface 
 with the blue and green of the peacock, or 
 again, towards evening flushed with roseate 
 light, pulsing from one knew not where. O the 
 dear country, so rich and ready to repay all 
 care! How often they will think of it, when 
 they are nipped to the heart with cold, or are 
 dying of the heat as cruel ! How they will long 
 for this cool green, full of dew and scent, and 
 this wind that comes across the mountains, 
 bracing as an air for giants ! They will see the 
 cattle going home so gently along the young 
 grass, and hear the Angelus-bell in their 
 dreams, ringing so peaceful and holy from a 
 distant belfry. But down at Queenstown there 
 is the big ship for them, puffing like a grampus 
 out near the forts ; and as they sail away 
 
WAYFARERS. 1 5 
 
 between those gates out into the world, they 
 will leave behind them more than the unforget- 
 table country they will never see again. 
 
 As the train steamed off, my travelling- com- 
 panion leisurely opened a violin-case beside 
 her, and began touching the strings. She was 
 a little woman, young and pretty, — married, I 
 discovered from the good-looking fellow who 
 had seen her off at Dublin — the brownest of 
 brunettes, with two rows of little white teeth, 
 and the brownest eyes I have ever seen in a 
 human face. She talked delicious Cork, with 
 a soft wail. She was dressed very prettily in 
 artistic colours that brought out her dear 
 brownness. Her music and her books made 
 us conversation, and I found that though she 
 hailed from the Ultima Thule to which she 
 was returning, she was very much of the best 
 part of the world and its ways, thoroughly up 
 to the last new thing in books and pictures and 
 music. I congratulated myself on such a com- 
 panion in my third-class carriage, for in Ireland 
 people of very small pretensions indeed disdain 
 
1 6 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 to travel third-class, and it is usually left to the 
 roughs. 
 
 At the first station we stopped at there was 
 a sound of argument in the first-class carriages 
 close by. Then our carriage door was opened, 
 and a couple of men were unceremoniously 
 pushed in, their bundles thrust after them, and 
 the train started on its way. One was a middle- 
 aged man, grey for lack of good living, but the 
 face redeemed from grimness by the most 
 innocent blue eyes, wide open, candid, blue as a 
 child's eyes. He stumbled over our feet almost 
 sobbing with excitement, clutching to his 
 breast something wrapped in many folds of 
 paper. He was followed by a tall, gawky 
 young fellow, his son evidently, from the like- 
 ness between them. The young fellow was 
 ruddier but had the same slow seriousness of 
 look, something quiet and heavy and patient, 
 as though they had no occasion for joy and 
 laughter. One could see them incessantly 
 striving to wring a sustenance from stony rock 
 and exhausted soil, incessantly face to face with 
 
WAYFARERS. 1 7 
 
 the wet climate that, though it gives such 
 beauty of cloud and mist, soddens the potatoes 
 and rots the corn and turns the meadow to bitter 
 rank grass. 
 
 Both were greatly disturbed. The boy's 
 blue eyes had even a dash of angry tears In 
 them. Dropped Into their seats, they talked 
 for a while In Irish that sounded very fierce. 
 One felt a curious lump In the throat for their 
 hurt and anger, whatever it might be ; it was 
 as if one saw a child or an animal greatly 
 aggrieved. I saw my little friend In the corner 
 watching them with eyes like brown jewels. I 
 think she knew their Irish, or some of It, for 
 she was plainly more in the secret of what was 
 going on than I. At last the excited talk 
 ceased, and the two faces began to take again 
 that look of grave patience which must have 
 been theirs habitually. 
 
 Then I saw her lean over and put a 
 dainty finger on the parcel on the elder man's 
 knee. 
 
 " Have you no case for your fiddle ? " 
 
 h 
 
1 8 A CLUSTER OF NUTS, 
 
 she said, *' Won't the damp get in and spoil it 
 as it does mine ? " 
 
 '' Spoil her, me lady ! " said the man, 
 brightening all over his face, '*is it spoil her? 
 Och, then, she'd take a power of spoilin', that 
 same fiddle. Tis she that knows the hard 
 weather. She's a fine fiddle," he said, pre- 
 paring to display "her"; ** she'd put the 
 joy in your heart and the spring in your 
 heels at a weddin' or a pattern, but it's at 
 home she's at her best, and many a night 
 she's made Thady here and me forget our 
 throubles." 
 
 The fiddle was carefully lifted out, and three 
 interested heads bent over it, for Thady had 
 joined the conclave. There was a string gone, 
 and my friend volunteered one from her store. 
 While she was arranging it, her soft talk and 
 sympathy got at the trouble we had seen 
 without understanding. As I watched her, the 
 peasant's old fiddle on her knee, while she 
 tuned and strung it, and resined the bow, the 
 two men bent forward, gazing at her manipula- 
 
WAYFARERS. 1 9 
 
 tion of it with almost Incredulous pleasure. I 
 said to her silently, — 
 
 '*Well, my dear, whoever you are, the 
 fairies gave you the gift to make men happy. 
 There may be prettier women and wittier 
 women, but the men who love you will 
 find other women unpleasing to come after 
 you. 
 
 ''An' so, me lady,'* the elder emigrant was 
 saying, " me an' Thady, that never travelled a 
 mile from Adeelish before, we just got into the 
 grand cushioned carriage as the train was 
 goln'. An' thin we saw a lady, or a woman 
 dressed grand, for she was no lady like you, me 
 lady, sittin' in the corner starin' at us as if we 
 were the dirt under her feet. 
 
 "'Do ye know,' she says, with the sparks 
 flashin' from her eyes, 'that ye're in the first 
 class ? ' 
 
 " ' Well, me lady, me and Thady didn't want 
 to inthrude,' and we were about to spake her 
 fair when she burst out, — 
 
 " ' An' I'll have yez removed by the guard at 
 
 c 2 
 
20 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 the very next station, yerselves an' your dirty 
 baggage.' 
 
 " Well, me lady, I could have answered her 
 bitther enough, but me heart was too heavy for 
 it, and sure it's a short world to be fightin' in, 
 so I said nothing ; only Thady, that's young 
 an' fiery, he says, 'It's no baggage, it's 
 luggage.' 
 
 *• * Baggage It Is,* says she, * an' out you and 
 it shall go.' 
 
 " Well, I just kept the boy quiet — for what's 
 the use of arguin' with a beggar a-horseback 
 like that ? — and so we said nothing, while she 
 looked out of the window sniffin', as if the sight 
 of us would make her sick. An' so when we 
 came to Emly, we were just putting together 
 our bits of things to get out, when she runs to 
 the window an' calls * Porter ! ' In a great flurry, 
 an' complains of me an' the boy travellin' first- 
 class. 
 
 " The porter just spoke her civil, though I 
 saw him winkin' at another porter, an' so we 
 got out ; but before I could reach back for the 
 
WAYFARERS. 2 1 
 
 darlln' fiddle, she comes and pitches it out on 
 the window, an' when it fell I thought it was 
 flesh and blood. The boy here was for pullin' 
 out her own fine portmanty ; an' as for me, all 
 the blood was in me head, but, glory be to God ! 
 the porters pulled us away an' there was no 
 harm done. An' she's no worse for the fall 
 ayther, for she was well swathed around. An' 
 sure it was great good luck, after all, that put 
 us in with such a kind lady as yourself." 
 
 My little friend was as much excited over 
 the story as the actors in it. The way she 
 entered into their pathetic indignation at their 
 bundles being called "baggage," which they 
 evidently took to be a term of contempt, was 
 wonderful. Her eyes flashed, and a bit of 
 scarlet came in her brown cheeks as she 
 denounced the fastidious first-class passenger 
 almost with tears of anger. When the com- 
 motion was all over, she asked to hear "her," 
 and first the father and afterwards the son 
 performed on the poor instrument, jigs, reels, 
 planxtys, giving way slowly to mournful Irish 
 
2 2 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 lamentations. After they had gone through 
 their repertoire, Brown Eyes produced her 
 fine fiddle, and, in accordance with delicately 
 urged entreaties, began to play. It was a fine 
 instrument, and a fine hand upon it, and 
 the music at first was from the great masters ; 
 then, having dazzled her audience a little, she 
 began to play Irish airs — "TheCoolun" and 
 ''The Blackbird" and others — while the tears 
 rolled down the faces of the two emigrants. 
 
 We were nearly at Cork when the musician 
 came out of her dream. If I ever saw adoration 
 on the faces of human beings, it was on those 
 simple faces. They will talk of her for years 
 and years I am sure. She was consistently 
 gracious, and after they had thanked her and 
 she them, with the prettiest of Irish com- 
 pliments on each side, they were preparing to 
 put the treasure in its wrappings when the 
 little lady said, ** Oh, but your fiddle would 
 be destroyed by the sea-air, and you could 
 never play on her again in America, you know. 
 Now, I'll get a case in Cork, and you'll make 
 
WAYFARERS. 23 
 
 me happy if you'll accept this old case.** And 
 so ''she" was put to sleep in a velvet-lined 
 case such as she had never dreamt of ia all her 
 hardworking life. 
 
 After we had gone through the long tunnel 
 and emerged in gay sunlight at Cork, she stood 
 up to leave us. She bowed to me with pretty 
 courtesy, but to the emigrants she held out 
 her little hands. The two big fellows dropped 
 down and kissed them as if she were a saint. 
 "God bless an' keep you," said the father; 
 ''we'll think of you in America when we play 
 the fiddle. 'Tis you God made for a lady, 
 an' to be the light of some one's eyes ; and the 
 man that loves you, you'll keep his love while 
 fire burns an' water runs." 
 
 There was a flash of answering tears in her 
 eyes, and she was gone down the platform, her 
 velvet hat pulled forward a little, and daintily 
 graceful in her hooded brown velvet cloak. 
 She passed the first-class passenger, whom 
 I recognized by the emigrants' sullen references, 
 though, indeed, she "jumped to the eye" by 
 
24 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 her vulgarity. A couple of apple- women pointed 
 delightedly at this arrogant dame, and one spat 
 out expressively. My poor emigrants dropped 
 into gloom after their benefactress left them, 
 and they looked grey and sad enough, despite 
 the new fiddle-case, by the time we reached 
 Queenstown, where the big liner was steaming 
 heavily near the quay. 
 
A COUNTRY AUCTION. 
 
 THE frost was come to stay, every one 
 declared, for the snow long threatening 
 had rolled up his wool-packs and be- 
 taken himself and them to the North Pole. 
 The air was windless and bitterly cold ; the 
 sun had gone down in a haze of scarlet. Now 
 the frost was sending up fingers of scarlet in 
 the west sky, shining redly in every steely car- 
 track on the road, faintly flushing the silvery 
 sprinkle of powdered snow on the fields ; 
 throwing up in delicate relief against a sky 
 of rose and sapphire the exquisite outlines of 
 the bare branches. The ground was imprinted 
 on its light snow with the delicate foot-prints 
 of the birds, and the hoofs and paws of beasts. 
 All day folk had flocked to the house on 
 foot, or, despite the iron-bound roads, by car 
 
26 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 from the city. Country people grumbled be- 
 cause the frost had not kept the town buyers 
 at home. Frowsy dealers filled the rooms 
 with an atmosphere of old clothes and un- 
 washed humanity, cursed openly the auc- 
 tioneer's flowery advertisement that had 
 brought them so far on a fool's errand, 
 handled carelessly and contemptuously the 
 old woman's treasures, and finally departed, 
 to the great sweetening of the air. All day 
 the crowd had tramped from room to room, 
 nothing being sacred to them, had discussed 
 and appraised, had squabbled over lots, and 
 defiled, with feet on which the snow was 
 melting, floors that had shone as white and 
 silvery as sand and scrubbing could make 
 them. 
 
 It was a generous, ancient, comfortable 
 house, stretching itself brown in the sun and 
 the fields — the very house to shelter troops of 
 merry children, lads and lasses, God-fearing 
 happy people in their prime, old men and 
 women ageing sweetly and venerably. It had 
 
A COUNTRY AUCTION. 27 
 
 been built by a rich young husband of long 
 ago as a country house for his fine-lady wife ; 
 but she, being urban and genteel, and the 
 place lonely, sighed for the city, away there in 
 blue mist, the roar of whose not over-con- 
 gested traffic rumbles here on the sea-wind. 
 So the doting husband shut up his mansion, 
 and the place grew old in loneliness ; and, 
 never the foster-mother it looked,, gazed from 
 its height with a more than human melancholy. 
 The sweet old garden was overgrown ; rose 
 and gooseberry, parsley and pansy, all in 
 wild tangle. The rabbits burrowed among 
 the stocks, the blackbirds helped themselves 
 daintily to cherries in season, the slugs ate the 
 strawberries, and in autumn the damsons fell 
 like a mournful purple blight among the yellow 
 plums. Now and then little cottage children 
 made a tiny raid, but on the very outskirts, 
 for the poor house, long untenanted, had 
 gained an evil repute, and they feared they 
 knew not what horror gazing upon them from 
 the barred, unshuttered windows. 
 
28 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 The old woman had taken away some of 
 its reproach. The rooms she inhabited she 
 made clean with an ancient habit of industry, 
 polishing the brown shutters and panels till 
 they reflected things, and the brass lining of 
 the fireplaces till they winked again. She set 
 up in them her solid, respectable furniture — 
 bureaux and bookcases made in the days when 
 furniture was fashioned, not for time, but eter- 
 nity ; clock-faces that clicked away the hours 
 with a deliberateness which seemed to make 
 time never-ending ; old-fashioned engravings 
 in solid frames ; china, brown and quaint ; 
 Waterford glass, heavy as rock crystal. She 
 sat among them on a Sunday afternoon, 
 drinking her tea of unparalleled strength and 
 fragrance, and reading a weekly paper, where- 
 of the entertaining paragraphs gave her a 
 quite sufficient outlook into the affairs of the 
 world. Other days she toiled as unremittingly 
 as though daily bread had to be obtained ; on 
 Fridays she jolted on her side-car to the city, 
 drew what money she needed from the bank. 
 
A COUNTRY AUCTION. 29 
 
 added perhaps to the store which was to buy 
 her another three per cent, debenture, and 
 jogged home again, pleasantly tired from her 
 outing. Her one extravagance in all the years 
 was a sealskin coat, which she sported at the 
 early mass one June Sunday, and then re- 
 legated as too precious to be worn to tissue 
 paper and camphor. A lonely old woman, 
 with her two brothers in the churchyard, and for 
 kin a crowd of unknown folk whom she would 
 not let pass her door, and whose fingers itched 
 greedily for her consols and her land ; derided 
 and cheated by her work-people, grown too 
 hard in long getting of money to keep even 
 her dreams — her dreams of the brown-faced 
 ambitious lover she rejected In her youth at 
 her elder brother's command. The heart that 
 had been hers was long ago ashes in the 
 earth ; the husband that might have been, 
 and the children that might have been, 
 vanished into the great limbo : the story of 
 him meant more to a young, sympathetic 
 listener hearing it from his contemporary, 
 
30 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 than to her who In her youth had broken 
 his heart. 
 
 The lots were nearly all sold, and the crowd 
 had made acquaintance with every nook and 
 corner, except the drawing-room, big enough 
 for a ball, which was long shuttered and silent, 
 the home of spider and mouse, and the kitchen, 
 where the gray-faced heir-at-law had hid him- 
 self, being ungenial. He was busy, no doubt, 
 musing on his ;^20,ooo of Government securi- 
 ties, and his twice as much burled In fertile 
 and kindly land. People enjoyed themselves 
 highly pulling old-world things into the light : 
 no one had compunction; not the round- 
 faced priest, with his rosy cheeks dimpling to 
 ready laughter, nor the country gentleman in 
 knickerbockers, with a fine collie at his heels, 
 nor the young farmer's wife, alert for crockery 
 and napery, and quivering with excitement 
 when the selling came near the object of her 
 desire. There was not one there had a 
 thought of love or of pity for the dead 
 woman, though many sighed virtuously over 
 
A COUNTRY AUCTION. 3 1 
 
 the accumulation of things, and with vicarious 
 charity wished they might have been sold and 
 given to the poor. 
 
 The dead woman may have turned in her 
 grave at the last scene of all. People were 
 grouped outside in the cold slush to see the 
 sale of the old woman's wardrobe. The things 
 had been kept in her bedroom upstairs in a 
 silent air of lavender and camphor. From the 
 upper window the auction took place to great 
 advantage. First there were bundles of house- 
 linen, old and yellow and fine, gathered with 
 God knows what girl's dream of home and 
 love. Then there were some pitiful things— a 
 beaver hat of the forties, which had belonged 
 to one of the dead brothers ; a sprigged waist- 
 coat with blue stars on a black velvet ground ; 
 an old coat of bottle-green cloth, many- 
 pocketed and brass-buttoned. As it flapped 
 forlornly from the upper window the crowd 
 screamed with delight, and the auctioneer's 
 clerk, snub-nosed and impudent, who had re- 
 placed his tired-out master at this the fag-end 
 
32 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 of the sale, was in his happiest vein of humour. 
 When the men's clothes had all been disposed 
 of, there came a couple of delicate Indian 
 shawls^ slightly moth-eaten, yellow with years, 
 worth their weight In gold to a connoisseur, 
 but mere caviare to this crowd. I had them 
 for a song. Then came the old woman's 
 gowns. As a preliminary to their sale, the 
 auctioneer's clerk set astride his Impudent 
 face with its red beard a cottage bonnet, 
 purple and white ribbons on white Dunstable, 
 In which the dead woman — who to the last 
 kept her skin of egg-shell china, and her deli- 
 cate prettiness of feature — may have looked 
 adorable in the eyes of a lover when the cen- 
 tury was still young. Some of the gowns were 
 very old, as the short skirts, frilled at the foot, 
 and the baby sleeves and bodices told. From 
 those cottons and muslins what soft shoulders 
 and arms may have peeped forth ! Over the 
 sealskin there was a fierce competition ; but 
 the ancient things fell by consent to the wives 
 of the work-people, who were all there enjoy- 
 
A COUNTRY AUCTION. 33 
 
 ing the show, and finding the witticisms of the 
 auctioneer's clerk as entertaining as a clown at 
 the pantomime. 
 
 I was hugging my Indian shawls, with their 
 little ancient air of distinction, and was think- 
 ing how they might have graced a fine lady's 
 shoulders at the Opera, or warmly enwrapped a 
 precious first baby being carried to the baptis- 
 mal font, when in language of sumptuous 
 irony th^ piece de resistance of the old woman's 
 wardrobe was introduced. " Somethin' ultra- 
 choice," said the brazen voice, *' for it has as 
 many peels on it as an onion, an' by all ac- 
 counts is such as any lady might wear walkin' 
 out with her beau." And then came out of 
 silver paper a modest quaint old gown, evi- 
 dently matched with the Dunstable, a delicious 
 frilled thing of shot purple and white, made 
 with elaborate hangings of fringe, and a 
 spencer to cross a modest bosom. The 
 empty laughter seemed shocking, for some- 
 how I guessed it was a wedding-dress, and, 
 wrapped away in It, I conjectured a dead 
 
34 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 youth, a dead love, hopes that had had no 
 fruition, desires that were dust and ashes. 
 So there was a touch of sentiment In the old 
 woman, after all. As the thing flapped by its 
 hanging sleeves, a sweet old odour drifted to 
 my nostrils. The others were too tickled in 
 ears and eyes to have another sense on the 
 alert. It seemed a horrible profanation, and It 
 made one grind one's teeth at the inheritor of 
 the old woman's wealth who had not saved her 
 from this. She had been well-loved by her two 
 brothers— the elder, who had made her what 
 she was because she was too dear to be given 
 to another man, the younger, who had outlived 
 him and leant upon her stronger nature in his 
 last years of later middle age. She had been 
 well-loved by the man she had rejected, who 
 had never put another in the place she had 
 laid waste. They were all work-a-day folk, 
 but there was a time when the passion of any 
 one of the three would have leaped out to 
 avenge a rough word to her. Now they were 
 mouldering quietly while her most secret 
 
A COUNTRY AUCTION. 35 
 
 things were jibed at with callous indecency. 
 Alas ! for the patient dead, and alas ! for the 
 husbandless and childless woman, who has 
 been of little account from the days of Holy 
 Writ down to the last comic opera of Messrs, 
 Gilbert and Sullivan. The wedding-dress that 
 had never been worn fell to some dealer In old 
 clothes, and was carried off on her arm, for- 
 lornly hanging, with a suggestion of a limp 
 human shape, like one of Bluebeard's wives 
 suspended In a closet. 
 
 The auctioneers clerk locked the desolate 
 rooms, gathered up his papers, and joined his 
 master for their cold drive to the city. The 
 heir-at-law follow^ed them. Gay groups were 
 going home by the lanes to bright fires and 
 good food, chattering, laughing, comparing 
 their bargains with each other. The thin 
 Christmas moon wheeled into the sky, with 
 Orion and Arcturus, Venus and Mars, in cloth 
 of silver, to attend her. The house was lonely 
 again, gaunt against the vivid black sky, and 
 full of mysterious sadness. There in the cold 
 
 D 2 
 
36 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 night it looked indeed haunted. One hurried 
 away from it, half fearing to see behind the 
 blank windows the old woman in her grave- 
 clothes, going from one to the other of her 
 ransacked hiding-places, discovering one after 
 another her losses, moaning and wringing her 
 pale hands because they had taken away from 
 her her treasures. 
 
A HOUSE OF ROSES. 
 
 IK NOW of no lonelier spectacle than that 
 of an old married couple without children. 
 When youth and health and beauty are 
 here it may matter less, according to tempera- 
 ment ; the most lover-like husbands and wives 
 among young married folk of my experience 
 are childless. But when they have grown old, 
 and bent, and withered, how lonely they are for 
 want of a staff, for some one to close the eyes of 
 that most lonely one — the survivor of the two. 
 It must give an added pang to death, for the 
 one that goes leaves the other desolate indeed. 
 My old lover of roses and his wife were less 
 unhappy than those who have never had a 
 child, for somewhere, in earth or heaven, there 
 was a son of theirs. For the old man there 
 was a never-failing spring of hope ; for the old 
 
38 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 woman there were memories of the child at her 
 breast, the httle one running between the well 
 and the orchard, the dear school-boy who, for 
 all his talents, had the child's heart. It was 
 twenty years since he had left them in tears. 
 Eighteen of these had been a long, dreadful 
 blank of silence. If he were living now he 
 might be a bearded man, with his children 
 about his knees. But he must have died long 
 since ; died or changed in some dreadful way, 
 or he never would have let them wait. Boys 
 with an unsullied heart, and bright wits like 
 his, have come -miserably to shipwreck before 
 now. Their old tin-type photograph of him, 
 beautiful in spite of elementary photography, 
 shows a face gay and tender, with a certain 
 fineness of nostril that promised intensity of 
 feeling. Such an one outraged and deceived 
 might take the path that leads to the pit. 
 Some fragment of a story was blown my way 
 of one who might have been the old couple's 
 only son, one dying lonely in a Melbourne 
 hospital, his face full of sweet and boyish 
 
A HOUSE OF ROSES. 39 
 
 curves that the hardness of excess had not had 
 time to obliterate. "Not the first man a bad 
 woman sent to the devil," said the surgeon to 
 the friend who told me the story. But if it was 
 the prodigal son he sent no message. He was 
 conscious at the last, and even confidential, but 
 he resolutely refused to communicate with his 
 home. " When people are dead they are better 
 dead," was his speech. I never hinted it to 
 the old people. Why should I ? There was 
 no evidence at all that this castaway was their 
 son. The name was the commonest' of Irish 
 names, and my friend, the Australian editor 
 who unearthed the thing for me, warned me 
 against attaching any weight to it. As likely 
 as not the dead man had given a false name. 
 After this I ceased making endeavours to track 
 the son of the simple old people, who would 
 not know how to undertake such a task 
 for themselves. Often indeed, " the dead are 
 better dead." 
 
 The old man was the most primitive of 
 farmers — had been I should say, for he farmed 
 
40 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 only the rose in days when I knew him. He 
 had once possessed a small farm, half a hundred 
 acres of thistly land, from which savour and 
 strength had long departed. It was handi- 
 capped by a big mansion, of which the old 
 couple inhabited a couple of bare rooms. The 
 land grew its weak hay year after year. There 
 was never any return made to it. The old man 
 pottered in the big ''garden, which was luxu- 
 riant, as old gardens are, with a wealth of 
 fruit, and clusters of roses flapping in your 
 face as you entered any gateway. Those 
 old mansions with great gardens and shrub- 
 beries are thick in Ireland, especially near the 
 metropolis. They were built long ago for 
 lords, spiritual and temporal, to whose heirs 
 London is now the town, and English shires 
 the country. 
 
 The day came when the lease fell in, and 
 they had to leave the place where their son 
 was born and they had lived their years of 
 hope. If they had kept the boy with them, 
 things might have been different; but they 
 
A HOUSE OF ROSES. 4 1 
 
 had been ambitious for him, and had given him 
 the best education within their reach. In the 
 pride of his youth he had laughed at the idea 
 of ever making anything of the exhausted land. 
 There was gold to be had in abundance oversea, 
 gold for the picking and mining ; for some new 
 bonanza had been discovered. What did they 
 know of the world, of sin, and temptation, 
 when they let him go? Such things as 
 gambling and wild living, bad women and 
 quarrels for their sake that make men mur- 
 derers, were as far away from them as a 
 legendary world, for they read little, and the 
 vice at their doors was of a harmless kind 
 enough. At first, good news had come 
 steadily, and money and a small nugget that 
 stands under a glass shade on the chimney- 
 piece. Then the letters ceased suddenly. The 
 woman suffered more than the man, for after 
 a time of suspense that took out of him any 
 possible spring or enterprise, he developed 
 an irrational and joyful hopefulness. She 
 had to put away her tears and motherly 
 
4^ A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 forebodings, because it made her husband 
 so angry to see them. 
 
 By-and-by it took some such irritation to 
 disturb his placidity. They had changed from 
 the big house soon after the cessation of the 
 letters. The house they went to had long 
 enjoyed the reputation of being haunted. No 
 one had lived in it within memory. It was a 
 gaunt place, on the very edge of the road, 
 narrow, with windows back and front, so that 
 you could see straight through to the trees at 
 the back. It is on the loveliest bye-road, where 
 every flower in its season appears first and 
 vanishes last on the luxuriant hedgerows. Far 
 down one looks through an avenue of splendid 
 old thorns to the blue walls of mountains. The 
 hawthorn is succeeded there by woodbine and 
 wild rose, the latter falling in close exquisite 
 veils of pink and green down to the daisied 
 grass that lines the ditches. The high road, 
 with its shrieking steam tram, runs at right 
 angles to it, but does not disturb the lane's 
 quietness. By contrast it makes this sylvan 
 
A HOUSE OF ROSES. 43 
 
 world lovelier, for it is pleasant to reflect that 
 one is a country mouse and yet on such easy 
 visiting terms with the city. 
 
 For all the surrounding beauty, the house 
 looked irredeemably ugly when the old folk 
 came to live there. Who could think it would 
 ever wear the gracious aspect that it does now 
 when it is absolutely a stack of roses ? Gloire 
 de Dijon, Marechal Niel, tea roses ; roses in all 
 colours, from tiny, close, white things, nine or 
 ten on a spray, through all the gamut of yellow, 
 pink, rose red, and velvety darkness that is 
 almost black. Never a one passes that way 
 but stops in delight. The roses are over the 
 house, and in the beds, but the house ends are 
 flanked by huge hollyhocks, and there are beds 
 at the sides where daffodils and hyacinths 
 flourish in spring ; and for shelter there is a 
 close hedge of sweetbriar, so ravishingly sweet 
 that I have seen a very noble and intelligent 
 St. Bernard dog pause with lifted nostrils to 
 inhale the fragrance. Folk may be incredulous 
 about this, but I should like them to see this 
 
44 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 country-bred dog, looking up with amazed 
 interest when the leaves first open In spring, or 
 following a lark's flight with grave intentness 
 till it Is lost in the dazzle. Perhaps he has 
 learnt his ways from humankind. Certainly 
 he is the only dog I have ever known to display 
 this kind of observation. 
 
 It was through great love that the once 
 hideous house came to be a rose-tree in full 
 bearing. They were no sooner settled than 
 the old man began to beautify against Patrick s 
 return. At first he was half anxious lest he 
 should come while the place was so ugly, before 
 the green had covered it. Seasons waxed and 
 waned. The roses throve apace, being cared 
 for as no roses ever have been, before or since. 
 In the winter they were swathed in cocoanut 
 fibre and sacking. In the spring and summer 
 there was an incessant round of kindly tasks 
 for the roses' benefit. I used to pass the house 
 every evening, and winter or summer the old 
 man was always there, with spade or watering- 
 pot or big pruning scissors. No doubt the roses 
 
A HOUSE OF ROSES. 45 
 
 growing so beautiful, blooming every year in a 
 superb plenty in June, throwing out a sparser 
 second crop in autumn, comforted him. Yet 
 he never ceased to listen for a foot, and when 
 in time he grew very deaf, he would look up 
 with a startled lightening of the face when a 
 shadow fell on him at his work. Rover, the 
 Irish terrier, that had been Patrick's, shared for 
 a long time in this hopeful and hopeless vigil. 
 He was a puppy when his young master went 
 away, but I don't think he ever forgot him. 
 He lived to a patriarchal age, a solitary dog, 
 with the care of an old couple on his mind, as 
 well as the strain of constantly listening for a 
 long silent footstep. These things steadied 
 him, even though the village and its tempta- 
 tions were not a quarter of a mile away. I used 
 to see him, in his grizzled old age, lying on 
 a sack near the old man at his work, his 
 nose on his outstretched paws, his melan- 
 choly brown eyes full of wistful thoughts. 
 He too, grew deaf, listening for the step that 
 never came. He died and was buried by 
 
46 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 the sweet-briar hedge, and they gave him no 
 successor. 
 
 Patrick's mother had no Illusions about his 
 coming back. With a woman's faith she 
 thought of him ever smiling-eyed, sweet-lipped 
 under an aureole in heaven. She prayed 
 incessantly for him, and thought of Paradise as 
 a place to be thirsted after, where her boy's 
 arms should be for ever clasped around her 
 neck. She kept her thoughts to herself, how- 
 ever, as the years went on. If she cried It was 
 when she was alone, and I think she must have 
 cried a great deal, for she became In time more 
 than half blind, and her eyes have a pale look, 
 as if the colour were washed away. Her 
 wound was never allowed to close. All those 
 twenty years Patrick's place was set at every 
 meal. His room in the roof, that was scented 
 as with attar of roses from the great bush that 
 draped the windows, was always kept ready. 
 There were periodical airings and dustings, but 
 everything was as though a traveller might 
 come any hour of the day or night. 
 
A HOUSE OF ROSES. 47 
 
 The master of the roses died last year, in the 
 full flush of the rose harvest. He sleeps in a 
 very ancient churchyard close by, with a green, 
 ivy-covered tower, the haunt of martins and 
 swallows, shadowing his grave ; across the road 
 is the garden of the Dominicans, where the 
 figures of the white-cowled, white-robed novices 
 give a touch of sanctity to the lovely place. 
 Sometimes a monk comes walking towards one, 
 with the hills for a background, and in a day of 
 serene blue skies and tremulous green boughs, 
 one might dream it mediaeval Italy. The 
 church, which is in the centre of the graveyard, 
 is a Protestant church, built long after saints 
 had begun to lay their tired bones to rest there, 
 but the Angelus-bell rings its more intimate 
 message to him lying among his brethren of 
 the old faith. 
 
 This year the roses grew a little rank, and 
 with an over-abundance of leaves. They had 
 to live through the fierce weather of last March 
 without their swathings. They are often 
 thirsty, dusty, and languid of evenings when no 
 
48 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 shower comes sllverly walking upon the hills. 
 They will deteriorate year after year, returning 
 gradually to wildness, or getting too weak to 
 open leafy buds. Already they are the prey of 
 the green fly. Since that brown old face, with 
 more wrinkles than I have ever seen, was 
 covered by the coffin-lid, the widow only 
 appears, stealing, a melancholy black figure, to 
 the church of the Dominicans, or to the grave- 
 yard. I often wonder if Patrick's place is still 
 set and his room ready. It was so much 
 a habit with the lonely old woman that it might 
 well continue. But none now listen for a 
 springing footstep on the road, and if Patrick is 
 yet in this world, he had better come, or no one 
 will be left to welcome him. 
 
A BOOK -LOVER. 
 
 I WILL describe him for you as he leans 
 over his half-door of a summer's evening, 
 looking across green fields to the blue 
 distance, where presently the lighthouse lamps 
 will set up their revolving lights. The city 
 is down there in the mist. Beyond it, and 
 beyond a strip of blue sea, the islands and the 
 rocky promontory are steeped in rose and 
 grey. He is quite an old chap, with a jolly, 
 round, bullet-head. His keen face is wizened 
 by many lines of laughter. He is whistling 
 jocundly to himself. If you should tempt him 
 across his threshold to a conversation, he will 
 presently, with hands deep in his pockets, 
 break into a comical jig of a few steps, just 
 for the mere fun of it. He comes up so 
 quite readily to my mind's eye out of the mists 
 
 E 
 
50 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 of nigh a score of years ago. That is my 
 childhood's impression of him, and I have for- 
 gotten, or perhaps never knew, the time when 
 he went heavily, with never a jig in his toes 
 and heels. 
 
 His house was high enough for a house of 
 two stories, but compromised matters by a 
 loft at each gable-end, ascended by a ladder 
 and leaving the common living-room a wide 
 space of smoke-blackened wall and thatch. 
 In those days, however, there was little of 
 the wall visible for the stacks of books. He 
 had them piled high, here on a rough brown 
 dresser intended for kitchen crockery, there 
 on a primitive arrangement of shelves, sus- 
 pended by a cord slung through holes in the 
 end of each. He had bought lavishly, if not 
 wisely, at the book-stalls, and at an occasional 
 sale. Where did he get the money ? Heaven 
 knows ! He was of the class known in Ireland 
 as "dairy boys," irrespective of age. His 
 wages might be eighteen shillings a week. 
 I suppose what other men spent in whisky 
 
A BOOK-LOVER. 5 1 
 
 or tobacco, with him went for books. His 
 wife, a placid, silent woman, never objected 
 to this extravagance of her man. I suppose 
 she thought it was a peaceable diversion, and 
 very desirable, seeing that other men's diver- 
 sions led to drink, to rows, and misery. 
 
 He might be called a book-worm in the 
 sense that the contents of the books, so far as 
 reaching his mind, concerned him but little. 
 If I said he was more intelligent, more bookish 
 than his fellows, I would be wrong. He 
 loved books with an intensity of devotion, but 
 it was because they were books. The fine dis- 
 tinction of biblia abiblia never reached him. 
 Equally delightful they were to him were they 
 *' Gumming on the Miracles " or a lurid 
 romance of G. W. M. Reynolds. It was to 
 carry them home, to hold them, to feel them, 
 to climb the ladder and add them to the 
 congested shelves ; that made the delight. 
 
 I don't know where he found the curious 
 taste. Perhaps it was as well it went no 
 further with him than skin-deep of the books. 
 
 E 2 
 
52 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 It is unsafe to be different from your fel- 
 lows. I once knew a pigeon who took into 
 his head to desert his own kind for human. 
 He was a handsome fellow, too, and of a high 
 and haughty spirit, A veritable anchorite of 
 the desert to the iris-necked maidens of his 
 kind, who came cooing and languishing about 
 him all in vain. He first constituted himself 
 watch-dog of the forge, opposite the kitchen 
 windows, and followed the blacksmith like a 
 dog, but with more respect for himself than 
 has anything canine. He watched the forge 
 jealously, and resented the presence there of 
 anything, human or otherwise, except himself 
 and his adopted master. Even the harmless 
 necessary horses were shod to the time 
 of his incessant pecking at their hoofs. But 
 one day, in seeking to eject an intrusive hen, 
 who had roosted on a pitch-pot, the pair, in 
 the heat of combat, fell in. But this was 
 not Tom's end. We, whom his originality 
 and fearlessness had made friends, took him 
 to the kitchen, and having cleansed him to 
 
A BOOK-LOVER. 53 
 
 the best of our power, left Time and his 
 indomitable spirit to complete the cure. 
 Alack, when he was well past convalescence, 
 and in full possession of the kitchen as he 
 had been of the forge, he disappeared one 
 night from the fender where we had left him 
 nodding. Either a passing cat, or our own 
 perfidious one, had made an end of this rare 
 spirit : which proves that a bird should keep 
 his wings, and not step on the earth to be a 
 prey to cats. 
 
 However, no one of his own kind resented 
 my old book-lover's hobby. As for us young- 
 sters he was our Mudie. From his shelves we 
 carried off the stories of the thirties, Mrs. 
 Gore's novels, and Mrs. Trollope's, Miss 
 Sewell's, and Miss Ferrier's. G. W. M. 
 Reynolds we devoured in '' The Coral Island," 
 a big tome of horrors ; and there was Eugene 
 Sue's " Mysteries of Paris " in three big 
 volumes, with a picture to every two inches of 
 letterpress. Side by side with such coarse 
 food for young imaginations we had Miss 
 
54 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 Wetherall in '' Say and Seal " and " The 
 Wide, Wide World," and had the good taste 
 to prefer her. We were omnivorous readers, 
 and were little in fear of check, as our 
 reading-room was an overgrown orchard, 
 where it was easy to elude pursuit or capture, 
 and where we were wicked enough to lie low 
 till voices were tired of calling us, and we were 
 left in peace till the owls began to hoot and 
 the moon swung into the delicate green and 
 rosy sky, and the long, long, delicious day 
 was over. 
 
 I don't know if the old fellow had read any 
 of his own books, but there were two he held 
 perpetually before us as a fee if we brought 
 back the long- missing members of batches, 
 as a threat of their being withheld from us if 
 we did not supply the same omissions. I 
 think, myself, they were apocryphal, for I 
 hunted the shelves from end to end and never 
 caught a glimpse of them. They were called 
 *' Fatherless Fanny " and " A Necklace of 
 Pearls." If he had the books he treasured 
 
A BOOK-LOVER. 55 
 
 them away in a safe place, and whether we 
 restored the missing ones or not, we never 
 caught sight of those oft-dangled brjbes. 
 
 There was Miss Edgeworth toa I think 
 we knew " Belinda " and '' Ennui " and the 
 ** Absentee" from cover to cover. Odd 
 volumes of Swift he had too. We liked 
 "Gulliver's Travels," but turned away from 
 the uninvitingness of '* A Tale of a Tub." 
 Our indiscriminate reading, after all, did us 
 but little harm. A child desires a story 
 beyond all things, and will turn away from 
 anything that is not a story ; and even if one 
 has to wade through much undesirable matter 
 to get one's story, it is with a single attention 
 fixed on it that takes in little else. 
 
 Those were good days for the book-lover, 
 and for us, his clients. It was always summer, 
 or the winters have escaped my memory. A 
 milestone of a pantomime stands out in 
 relief now and then, but nothing else at all 
 of the winter. Only for ever the long, 
 long days, and the apples, and the books 
 
56 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 that one read, devouring apples all the while 
 from one's pinafore with the appetite of some 
 little wood creature. 
 
 As well as his wife, there was a daughter 
 in the old book-lover's house ; an unexpected 
 girl of her class, as he was a man. Not 
 that she had gifts of any kind, but she was 
 pretty in a delicate way. She was a feather- 
 headed, innocent creature, tall and slender. 
 The old mother did the household work, and 
 Polly's hands were as white as a lady's. Her 
 face was a soft, delicate pink ; not rosy and 
 white, but just as faintly pink as a little rose. 
 Round her small head her light, tow-coloured 
 hair stood out as fluffily as if some one had 
 been blowing through it. She, often enough, 
 was leaning over the half-door, looking up 
 and down the road, when we sailed in sight, 
 young pirates, in quest of the books we were 
 so careless about restoring. I don't think she 
 ever did work more serious than making up 
 the muslins and prints that she affected ; and 
 that helped to give her that airy look as if 
 
A BOOK-LOVER. 57 
 
 one might blow her away Hke thistledown. 
 She was so innocent she often came with us 
 children mushroom-hunting or blackberry- 
 gathering. I remember, in a dim way, her 
 pretty, vacant laughter ; for despite her eigh- 
 teen years she was as young as the youngest 
 baby that would not be left at home, though 
 its company was such a clog and embarrass- 
 ment. We used to go over hills of furze, 
 where strange, beautiful little moths fluttered, 
 blue as the skies, golden-brown, silver. Polly, 
 in her green or pink muslin frocks, was as 
 light and fluttering. I don't know where they 
 have gone to, those moths — whether they 
 came out of Fairyland and flew back there — 
 but I never see them now, nor the poisonous 
 toadstools that grew in brilliant rings of 
 scarlet, bronze and azure, under the mys- 
 terious trees of a park, where now-a-days the 
 noon is commonplace. 
 
 Children notice much, half consciously. 
 Anyhow, the time came when we knew that 
 Polly had a lover. We met them sometimes 
 
58 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 in the green twilight, when the bats were out ; 
 or when we were selecting our tale of books, 
 Polly languidly looking on, a whistle would 
 come from outside, and Polly, with an increased 
 shade of pinkness, would glide through the 
 doorway, and we saw her no more. 
 
 He was a young farmer — much more than 
 Polly's social equal ; he would have called 
 himself a young gentleman, I dare say, having 
 been to boarding-school, and enjoyed other 
 advantages. He was not especially prosperous 
 at the time, for my father had just bought the 
 land which belonged to him and his brothers, 
 and which had been groaning under a weight 
 of debt. There was money enough, however, 
 when divided, to afford each of them a hopeful 
 start in America. By degrees they all did sail 
 for that Eldorado of Irish folk, and prospered, 
 for so long as w^e knew anything of their 
 doings. 
 
 Polly's love affair lasted during a summer. 
 It is like brushing the dust off things in a long- 
 closed room to piece my memories of it. I re- 
 
A BOOK-LOVER. 59 
 
 member a wet August evening when we came 
 upon them under an overhanging roof of ivy 
 by a grey wall. The roads were winding 
 ways of gold with the yellow bind-weed that 
 flared that summer in long lines, where in 
 spring there had been an innocent procession 
 of the daisies. The rain was sweeping silverly 
 over the hills. The pair were under one 
 umbrella, Polly's muslin-clad shoulders pro- 
 tected by a tweed-covered arm that was with- 
 drawn as soon as the little pitchers hove in 
 sight. They were having merry times ; for 
 before they had seen us we had heard Polly's 
 laughter, almost violently merry. 
 
 Whether her father and mother were anxious 
 over this unequal love-making I am not sure. 
 We sometimes came in on conversations 
 hushed at our entrance. I think our old book- 
 lover grew disturbed in his heart, for he no 
 more shuffled into his gay dance, and was 
 indifferent about the books we took. Judging 
 by later knowledge, I should think he was 
 getting afraid his little girl's heart would be 
 
6o A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 hurt. A coarser fear I am sure he had not. 
 He had the kind of simple refinement that 
 would keep him from wronging in his thoughts 
 the child he had reared with such unusual 
 daintiness. Then she was such an innocent 
 fly-away creature, somehow it would be hard 
 to associate sin with her, or even the serious 
 sorrow and trouble of the world. 
 
 A month after that August evening we 
 were caught and caged in school. It had 
 been discovered in some unhappy hour for 
 us that " those children were really running 
 too wild." Poor Polly's innocent love story 
 finished itself out after we went. We knew 
 that Polly's Jim was going to America ; it was 
 common report. About the time we were 
 getting into the habit of rules and lessons he 
 and his big brothers were on an Atlantic 
 liner. I suppose he was fond of poor Polly 
 in his own selfish way, but not fond enough 
 to marry her. Of course I know nothing 
 about the parting. She was not likely to be 
 very troublesome, poor, tender child, and the 
 
A BOOK- LOVER. 6 1 
 
 old father was too proud to go asking any 
 man to marry her. I suppose they thought 
 she'd forget in time, and once more be happy 
 in the love of the old father and mother, who 
 thought nothing too good for her. However, 
 Polly cut the Gordian knot of her troubles 
 more suddenly. 
 
 Another girl, stricken to the heart as she 
 was, would have fallen into a decline and 
 wasted away patiently to the grave. Poor, 
 feather-brained Polly, after a week or so of 
 dull quiet, woke up father and mother one 
 night by talking loudly in a rapid, unnatural 
 voice, broken by bursts of laughter more 
 dreadful still. From the beginning there was 
 no hope. The fever burned and wasted her 
 like wax before the fire. All her pretty hair 
 was cut off, the pink gave way to hectic 
 cheeks and ashen pallor, the pretty rounded- 
 ness grew into sudden sharp curves. On a 
 mild day of October a letter came that told us 
 Polly was dead. When we came home the 
 year after, the old book-lover and his books 
 
62 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 were gone. When he had laid his little 
 girl to rest he would stay no longer 
 in the place where she had died. He 
 went back to the city — he and his old 
 wife — heavy-hearted, with the books carelessly 
 heaped In a cart. He never came back to see 
 us, as his fellows have always done ; and 
 driving through the city's purlieus, where his 
 home would be, we never caught a glimpse of 
 him. I do not know if he even visits Polly's 
 grave, under the three twisted yev/s that the 
 west wind has blown awry. The churchyard 
 there abuts on the fields, and Is not eerie. 
 The hills look down on It for ever, and the 
 west wind riots above It, and beyond are the 
 fields where Polly walked with her lover 
 twenty long years ago. 
 
HARVESTERS. 
 
 I WAS going home for Christmas. It was 
 the long tiresome journey from Euston 
 to Dublin. A too careful porter had 
 bundled me into that abomination — a ladles' 
 carriage — and once installed, I had not taken 
 the trouble to change. What did it matter ? 
 I was going home to something so sweet that I 
 and my dreams of It made excellent company, 
 amid which the pleasantest companions one 
 could hope for would be intruders. My fellow- 
 travellers excited in me a less lively curiosity 
 than usual. Yet they were not without 
 interest. The lady with the many babies and 
 nurses had left us at Rugby, amid a general 
 feeling of relief that almost made us friends. 
 There was a forlorn little spinster with mittens, 
 and the Christian for her literature. There 
 
64 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 was the usual fat and comfortable lady, with 
 a frivolous yellow-back and an abundance of 
 sandwiches, which she good-naturedly offered 
 all round. There was an extraordinary little 
 girl who knitted incessantly and wore large 
 round glasses over large round eyes. She was 
 of an amazing self-possession, and when a jolly 
 old gentleman nearly invaded our feminine 
 privacy at Northampton, it was she who stood 
 up, and, pointing with a quivering finger at the 
 inscription on the carriage window, repeated, in 
 a majestic voice, the words, *' Ladies only," and 
 so put the intruder to flight. She changed at 
 Chester for somewhere or other, and before she 
 left us graciously regretted that I was not going 
 her way, as I might have taken care of her, I 
 was rather abashed at this, feeling my entire 
 unsuitability for such an enterprise ; but 
 replied, I trust, fittingly. Also there were two 
 High Church Sisters, whom I should have 
 taken for Irish nuns, but that they were in 
 charge of a pleasant-looking Anglican clergy- 
 man, who came to look after them at the 
 
HARVESTERS. 65 
 
 Stations we stopped at. They dropped their 
 rosaries through their white fingers, and read 
 their office, but added nothing to the sociabiHty. 
 The only other traveller I remember was a soft, 
 languid, lovely-faced woman, dressed in gar- 
 ments of a country cut, who when she left us 
 at a Welsh station was received by a gaitered 
 young farmer, evidently her husband. 
 
 *' No one for Ireland!" I said to myself, 
 scanning the faces of my travelling companions. 
 Out of Ireland one loves all Irish things so 
 much that an Irish face or voice might have 
 drawn me from my dreams into sociability. 
 Irish faces went by the carriage-windows, and 
 I heard the dear brogue, by fits and starts, at 
 every station ; but these belonged to men, or 
 to women in male escort, and happily inde- 
 pe ndent of the ladies' carriage. 
 
 None of us intruded on each other, save that 
 detestable little girl. She told us her family 
 history with great frankness ; and in an interval 
 between her knitting produced the family 
 photographs from a woollen reticule, and offere 
 
 F 
 
66 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 them for our inspection. I saw the two Sisters 
 smile at each other with a mundane slyness. 
 The comfortable-looking lady put down her 
 Rita novel, and looked amiably at the faded 
 old photographs, and .the awful presentments 
 of children of varying ages, with a strong 
 family likeness to our little girl. Her tide of 
 reminiscences flowed undisturbed till I made a 
 mild joke, which rather put her out. She was 
 very dogmatic as to the correctness of a little 
 silver watch she carried. I opined that New- 
 market time — she had told us she came from 
 that sporting town — was sure to be fast. After 
 this she left me severely alone, and her other 
 listener having brazened it out and returned to 
 her Rita, she was perforce silent. 
 
 It was at Crewe we got the Irish reinforce- 
 ment. It was not such as to please my national 
 vanity. The train was almost moving when 
 the door was flung violently open, and two Irish 
 harvestmen precipitated themselves into our 
 midst. I recognized their kind at once ; I 
 suppose some extra work had kept them 
 
HARVESTERS. 67 
 
 belated when the rest of their kin had flown 
 home — when the swallows were flying South, 
 and the golden wren was flinging herself over 
 the land's edge on her way to Egypt and the 
 Pyramids. 
 
 They spluttered in mixed Gaelic and Eng- 
 lish as they righted themselves, and got 
 seated ; placing their bundles beside them 
 in the corner seat the shrinking women had 
 left for them. I eyed them with a cold 
 disapproval. The first breath sent a whiff 
 of spirits and coarse tobacco through the 
 carriage. Their clothes reeked wet and 
 unwholesome ; the boots of one, the shorter 
 and stouter of the two, were much in evidence ; 
 they were unlaced, and he had evidently been 
 in a cowshed. I saw the little spinster use her 
 vinaigrette furtively. The matron held her 
 open book well between her face and them. 
 The two Sisters were gently disturbed and 
 unhappy. As for the little girl, the words, 
 '' Ladies only ! " had frozen on her lips, and she 
 was gazing at them with round eyes of objec- 
 
 F 2 
 
6S A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 tlon. I felt bitter against those poor country- 
 men of mine for cutting such a figure in 
 English eyes. It was not quite a mean feeling. 
 My bitterness was in proportion to my love of 
 native land, and my impatience of English 
 superiority. 
 
 I looked at the two. confounding them in a 
 common indignation. The elder man, if I had 
 had but eyes to see it, had a certain dignity. 
 He had the cavernous dark eyes, the olive skin, 
 and the unspeakably mournful look of the 
 Gal way peasant. His companion was low- 
 browed, red-haired, stubby-bearded, with little 
 red-brown eyes incessantly twinkling, and a 
 barbarous laugh. He chattered Gaelic to his 
 quiet companion, interspersing it with loud 
 spluttering laughter. He spat on the floor ; 
 he made strange noises ; he sneezed out- 
 rageously. Altogether he was a most uncom- 
 fortable travelling companion. The climax was 
 reached, however, when he pulled out an 
 abominable pipe and began stuffing it with 
 black twist. His companion nudged him, 
 
HARVESTERS. 69 
 
 whispered a few Gaelic words, and looked 
 towards us. Then he spoke for him In a gentle 
 drawl : " Would it disturb the lady if Mick had 
 a pull at the pipe ? " I was as angry with one 
 as the other. I thought I was applied to 
 because I happened to be the best-dressed 
 woman In the carriage. I answered sharply, 
 " No, he can't smoke. These ladies would 
 object, and he has no right to smoke here." 
 Mick was rather inclined to smoke without 
 permission, but his companion finally dissuaded 
 him. 
 
 At Chester I got out for a cup of tea, and felt 
 morally certain that my Irish harvestmen would 
 be removed before I came back by the strong 
 arm of the law. I rather wonder that little 
 girl didn't see to it before she collected 
 her own traps. However, I dare say she was 
 a selfish young monkey, and only resented 
 infractions of the law when they seemed to 
 affect herself. She had disappeared when I 
 got back. Her place was taken by a heavily- 
 veiled widow. The harvesters were still there. 
 
70 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 They were at the far end of the carriage, which 
 was obscure, that wet December day, and the 
 hurrying porters had not noticed them. I was 
 disgusted. I was half- tempted to invoke the 
 law myself; only I was Irish, and so, with a 
 rooted conviction that the law always takes the 
 wrong side in a quarrel, I sat down gingerly 
 in my seat opposite to them. 
 
 I had hardly sat down when the two stood 
 up. They deposited their bundles, and pro- 
 ceeded to get out of the carriage. I saw they 
 thought the train would not start for an 
 indefinite period, and had been slowly making 
 up their minds to get out. A warning was on 
 my lips, when I drew back cruelly. They were 
 a good riddance I thought. Conscience pricked 
 me, but I answered it : " What does it matter ? 
 At the worst they'll be sent on by the next 
 train ? Why should they gall all these people, 
 and so disgrace the old country ? Besides, 
 they've no right here." With which pronounce- 
 ment I sat firmly back in my corner. I saw 
 the two Sisters look at each other with a 
 
HARVESTERS. 7 1 
 
 deprecating question. No one spoke, however ; 
 but as the two frieze-coated figures disappeared 
 I think we all felt vaguely guilty. There were 
 the two poor bundles staring us in the face ; 
 and suddenly out of a mysterious brown paper 
 parcel, which the elder man had tenderly 
 deposited in the corner, came a little sweet 
 twitter. There was a bird there, and with the 
 knowledge I suddenly felt an overpowering 
 sense of meanness. I stood up, and hurried 
 to the door. A porter was slamming the doors 
 of the carriages. The train began to move. 
 Just then I saw the two men running. The 
 elder was a good bit ahead. I beckoned to 
 him frantically, somewhat to my own surprise. 
 He gained on the slowly-moving train, and 
 bounded in at the door I held open, just as the 
 pace lengthened, My conscience was salved, 
 even though I saw my other countryman in the 
 grip of two porters, as he was essaying a 
 desperate leap after his companion. 
 
 It made me feel doubly guilty when the poor 
 fellow began to shower blessings on me in 
 
72 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 mixed Gaelic and English. "Sure what would 
 he have done, with all the dures closed an' him 
 not knowin' where to turn, an' his little blind 
 colleen in Kilnaree expecting him to-morrow, 
 sure." I sat with the smug smile of the 
 hypocrite on my lips. 
 
 Presently he fell to bemoaning Mick. Mick 
 was all right, I assured him jauntily ; he would 
 be despatched by next train. '' And you will 
 be at home before him, so that his people won't 
 be anxious," I said. I wasn't really concerned 
 about Mick and his people — not to the extent 
 of inquiring who might be expecting Mick in 
 Kilnaree. Without that too-pronounced com- 
 panion my friend began to show to advantage. 
 His English was not fluent. It did not seem 
 to rise easily to his lips. What he had was the 
 delightful Irish-English, with the Gaelic idioms 
 transplanted, making the sentences curiously 
 roundabout and discursive. The slowness of 
 speech consorted with the infinite patience of his 
 face. His voice was rich and sweet in its de- 
 liberate wail. As he went on talking I could see 
 
HARVESTERS. 73 
 
 that there was a reaction of public opinion, and 
 that now it tended in his favour. He was as frank 
 about his poor little affairs as the little girl had 
 been two hours ago, but with a difference. His 
 little colleen — " O, she was blind, from taking 
 the measles w^hen it was a baby, she was, and 
 the mother of her being dead, the creature, 
 there was no one to keep her from getting cold, 
 and the measles they got into her eyes, and she 
 was Mark' ever since. It's for her the bird is, 
 and 'tis herself will be glad when she hears him 
 singing, for 'tis lonely for a dark child in 
 Kilnaree, an' Mrs. Murphy, that she does live 
 with, my own mother's cousin, 'tis an old woman 
 she is, an' no companion for \}ci^ girsha. But 
 Mary Doyle, that's the priest's housekeeper, 
 an' a good scholar, she writes her the weeny 
 letters, an' so it's not as bad when I do be 
 harvestin' in England as if no word come at all 
 to say was she dead or alive. She fretted 
 terrible when ould Pincher, that we had from a 
 pup, died, so I'm bringin' her the bird, an' 
 would your ladyship like to see it ? It has a 
 
74 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 grand song entirely, an' it's Patrick's Day I'm 
 trying to teach It, but It isn't good at learnln' 
 tunes whatever, only the weeshy song it picks 
 up itself." 
 
 He untied the string of the parcel and 
 disclosed a fine green cage, in which a very tiny 
 canary sat all In a chilly little bunch and looked 
 at us inquiringly. He had evidently been 
 kindly treated and knew his friends, for seeing 
 the dark face leaning over him he broke into a 
 glad little whistle. His master looked delighted 
 at the ready recognition, and began to whistle 
 ''The Blackbird" very lov/ and sweet. The 
 canary burst Into a merry trill of rivalry. So 
 they whistled against each other, man and bird, 
 till the canary's song became rather piercing. 
 Then his master pulled down the brown paper 
 curtain, and the bird retired to sleep, being 
 under the impression it was night. 
 
 It was growing to late afternoon, Indeed, by 
 this time, and we were approaching Bangor. 
 All the women in the carriage had leaned 
 together over the happy sdance of music. Our 
 
HARVESTERS. 75 
 
 harvester was telling us how he bought the 
 canary from a foreign man with earrings. "He 
 had finches too, an' blackbirds, an' thrushes, 
 an lonely the creatures looked in their cages. 
 The blackbird, that's cheerful at home wid us, 
 an' lookln' well fed, whin the rest of us can't 
 keep the life In us, sure It's desolate he was an' 
 mopin'. Now, Dick, here, he's used to the 
 cage, and would be fair lost out In the wide 
 world. I told the fellow some oxAd pishrogt^e 
 about the unlucklness It was to take the wild 
 birds, but he shook his ringlets an' his earrings, 
 as though he didn't understand. I bought Dick, 
 an' It's the comfort he has been to me, many a 
 time when I'd have been sorrowful widout 
 him." 
 
 I asked him weren't the Welsh hills like 
 Ireland. They were looming one after the 
 other out of the rain, and a bit of stormy sunset 
 in the west was turning their wet flanks to vivid 
 rose-colour. '' Like the part you come from, 
 me lady," he said, **but wid us at Kilnaree 
 there's no more risin' than dawny little sand- 
 
'j6 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 hills, though I'm thinkin' wid the stones on the 
 fields you might build mountains as big as 
 them out there." 
 
 We had by this time got to Bangor. I 
 thought he had quite forgotten Mick in our 
 pleasant conversation, but I found he hadn't. 
 He got up when the train slackened. " How 
 long here, yer ladyship ? " he asked. ** Five 
 minutes," I replied. ** Then Tm thinkin' I'll 
 go spake to the station-master about Mick. It's 
 the first time the boy was in England, an' it's 
 lost he'll be entirely, besides having little of the 
 English." I didn't dissuade him, and he got 
 out with a cheerful warning from his erstwhile 
 reluctant companions to hurry back. But, alas ! 
 the poor fellow had barely plunged towards the 
 booking office when the train was off. I suppose 
 I had made a mistake about the time, or he had 
 been slow in getting out, I saw his despairing 
 look and rush towards the train, but he was too 
 late.. We were flying on toward the Menai 
 Bridge, and he had shared Mick's fate of being 
 left behind. 
 
HARVESTERS. ^^J 
 
 I suppose our consternation would only be 
 possible to a crowd of women. The misfortune 
 that had seemed so remediable in Mick's case 
 was hopeless in this. It seemed to us all, some- 
 how, as If our guilty acquiescence at Chester 
 had entailed this misfortune. There were the 
 two forlorn bundles, knotted in red-spotted 
 cotton handkerchiefs, and each hung to a stick, 
 staring at us. But the bird was the last touch 
 of the pathos of the situation. We uncovered 
 the cage to see if he was well-provisioned. It 
 was as clean as possible, and seed-drawers and 
 water-pot were full. Poor Dick opened his 
 eyes drowsily at the sudden influx of daylight, 
 and, seeing only strangers, began to fly up and 
 down in terror and bewilderment. I've never 
 thought of Dick since without a pang. We did 
 the best possible. At Holyhead I selected the 
 gentlest-faced porter I could see, and gave the 
 lost canary Into his hands, with explicit instruc- 
 tions how to identify its master. I telegraphed 
 back to the station-master at Bangor : — '' Let 
 Irish harvestman left behind know his canary 
 
78 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 awaits him here." Then I went aboard the 
 boat, feeling that I was a miserable creature In 
 spite of my joy ahead. I wonder were the 
 canary and his master reunited ? I wonder 
 how the little ''dark" child at Kllnaree took 
 her disappointment of December 22 ? I have 
 no means of knowing. I trust all came right, 
 and for Mick too ; that the Fates were less 
 intolerant to them than one born like those two 
 "kindly Irish of the Irish." 
 
SHAMEEN.* 
 
 " A H, musha, Larry," said the man on the 
 J~\ other side of the long car to our driver, 
 "did you hear that James Hurley 
 was dead ? The news came to Miss Dempsey 
 at the post office from her brother at Cincin- 
 nati." 
 
 Our carman pulled up so suddenly that it 
 would have twisted the mare's mouth if she had 
 not been very leisurely ascending the sweet 
 mountain road. As it was, she only shook 
 herself with a mute remonstrance, and went on 
 more leisurely. 
 
 *' Ah, thin, Shameen ! " said the carman, with 
 the most wonderful tenderness, ** ah, thin, is 
 Shameen dead ? God rest you, Shameen ! 
 
 * Anglice, "little James." The diminutive "een" is 
 constantly applied in Ireland as a term of affection. 
 
8o A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 Sure It was you could lighten the road for the 
 mare with the lilt of a song." 
 
 Rosa and I looked at each other. It sounded 
 the sweetest lamentation in the crooning Irish 
 voice. The driver of the long car was a great 
 ruddy fellow, square-faced, dark-haired, deter- 
 mined-looking, as one often sees them in that 
 country where Noll's troopers Intermarried with 
 violet-eyed daughters of the mere Irish. An ex- 
 cellent fellow was Larry Hayes, and we had made 
 several trips with him ; for his long car which 
 conveyed the mails and a stray traveller or 
 two passed through an enchanting stretch of 
 country. He had quite a friendly Interest In 
 us and our excursions. We had got brown and 
 cheerful In our month that was now well-nigh 
 ended. To-day there was a dull silver of rain 
 In the air from morning. Last night there 
 were gusts that carpeted the valley with scarlet 
 and orange, and the woods that had been 
 gloriously clothed showed only ragged banners 
 of colour like the fragments of glory one sees 
 hanging high In the cathedral at home. 
 
SHAMEEN. 8 1 
 
 The rainy day broke up splendidly. It had 
 been almost too dark in the early afternoon for 
 Rosa to sketch those ruins we tramped to in 
 the mild mist. Now the western heaven 
 opened, and we saw the passage, as it were, 
 of a myriad angels, flying on in steady, long 
 flight, golden-headed, golden-gowned, golden- 
 feathered ; with now and then a glimpse of 
 delicate rose, as though one caught sight of a 
 young cheek or a naked foot in the rifts of 
 gold. 
 
 The other passenger on the long car we had 
 picked up as he trudged steadily along on his 
 way home from a distant fair. He communi- 
 cated all his news of "Shameen" stolidly; 
 how he had died in hospital, and how Miss 
 Dempsey's brother had heard of it from a priest, 
 and how his death had been the result of an 
 accident on the railway where he was employed, 
 in which it seemed he had given his life to 
 rescue some worthless one. 
 
 We listened for a while, and at last one of us 
 said, " Who was Shameen, Larry ? " 
 
 G 
 
82 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 '* Is it Shameen Hurley, Miss ? Well, thin, 
 ril tell you," was the reply; ''an' it's not to 
 every one I'd talk about Shameen this day. 
 You know Knockmeelderry over there? It's 
 the handsome hill, an' it's the first to see 
 the sun in the mornin' an' the last to bid 
 him good-bye at night. Well, Shameen's 
 little house an' farm was under the big flank 
 of Knockmeelderry; an' indeed there was a 
 time he was like what I'm after tellin' you 
 of that same hill, for he was always lookin' 
 at the sun — an* such a voice — he'd coax the 
 birds off the trees with it. Eh, ladies, it's 
 the quare world it is intirely. He was the 
 manliest fellow in the three parishes. He 
 was big an' gentle an' good. Good ! he was 
 as good as a pot of goold. He lived all 
 alone, did Shameen, with just an old woman 
 to come in an* clear up for him. The girls 
 used to be sayin' it was a quare way for him 
 to be, an' how much more he'd get out o' 
 the farm if he'd a wife to see after the butter 
 an' the calves an' the pigs for him. They 
 
SHAMEEN. 83 
 
 wor all leppin' to get him, but, indeed, though 
 he'd always the soft word for a woman or a 
 child, aye, and for a dumb baste, he gev no 
 girl raison to suppose he was thin kin* of her. 
 The boy was too innocent to know how they 
 wor all round him like flies around honey. 
 His father was handsome an' bad. There 
 wasn't a bit of badness in all Shameen's body. 
 He was his mother's son, and she was the 
 best an* sweetest girl in the barony, an' when 
 she found out the man she was married to, the 
 crathure, she died of it. They said it was 
 consumption she died of, my brown little 
 girl ; but it wasn't, it was silent contimpt. 
 When she found out what he was, an' she 
 had adored him, the love went back on her 
 heart an' killed her." 
 
 Larry's thoughts were evidently far back 
 in the past, and we had a clue to them, for 
 we had heard how "an ould, ancient love- 
 affair " had made him the determined bachelor 
 he was. 
 
 *' Shameen was like his mother,'^ he went 
 
 G 2 
 
84 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 on dreamily ; " he took things hard. I was 
 terrible fond of him from a boy. He was 
 always bright an' glad to gladden my heart, 
 till he fell in love ; an' as misfortunes never 
 come alone, no sooner was he in it over head 
 an' ears than th' ould Captain that was kind 
 went an' died on us, an' the naygur that's 
 there now," shaking his whip at a distant 
 turret, "fell in for the place. Eh, but she 
 was purty, little Susy O'Brien ; an' her father, 
 ould Kendal, the richest and closest-fisted 
 farmer in the county. I often wonder if 
 Shameen had known the misfortunes that 
 was comin' to him, whether he wouldn't 
 have kep' out of her way, but I don't know. 
 It was like as if it was to happen, an* he 
 was like his mother — love was hell or heaven 
 to him ; he was like her in another way, too, 
 for he was terrible proud. 
 
 " They said Susy came home from the Con- 
 vent wantin' to be a nun, an' that ould Kendal 
 was mad about it. I misdoubted that story 
 from the first day I seen her in the chapel ; 
 
SHAMEEN. 85 
 
 for though she was as demure-lookin' as a 
 statue, she had a pair of funny little dimples 
 that crep' about in her cheeks, an' as we were 
 comin' out I saw her givin' a long look at 
 some one from under her eyelashes, an' whin 
 I looked it was Shameen, an* faith he was 
 starin' at her as if he'd ate her. Purty she 
 was ; she was like a little wisp of thistledown, 
 so light an' airy she was, an' her face was 
 as innocent as a daisy, and soft an' pale, an' 
 set in hair like fine goold. She was delicate- 
 lookin', an' yet wholesome-lookin'. 
 
 " Ladies, did yez ever hear of a love that 
 sprung up an' took root an' got strong in two 
 hearts without ever a word of love being spoken ? 
 Well, that was the way with Susy an' my 
 poor Shameen. They met at neighbours' 
 houses, at weddin's and dances, at the chapel 
 on Sunday, and Shameen seemed drawn 
 wherever she was, an' yet determined to keep 
 away from her. But he couldn't help looking 
 an' as time went on, though nobody suspected 
 but me, yet I saw their looks once or twice, 
 
S6 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 and wondered the world didn't know. The 
 colleen would look at him appealln* as if she 
 thought he was angry, an' he'd look back at 
 her with his face cold an' pale, but his eyes full 
 of fire. I've heard of the love-light ; but poor 
 Shameen's love-light was more like a consumin* 
 fire. He got haggard and quare, an' even his 
 sweet songs he changed for ould lamentations 
 an' the like; that is whenever you'd get him 
 to sing, for it was seldom. On his little place 
 things was goin' from bad to worse with him. 
 I consoled myself thinkin' that ould Kendal 
 for all his nearness wouldn't deny his one little 
 girl the wish of her heart, seein' that Shameen 
 was so likely a lad, an' his misfortunes not of 
 his own makin'. 
 
 *' Eh, I'd reckoned without Shameen's pride. 
 Shameen beggared would never ask for a rich 
 man's daughter. It was seven years ago last 
 May, Clonmel fair-day. For a wonder I'd no 
 passengers, an' I was just lettin' the mare take 
 her time. I was heavy in heart, for I knew 
 things wor in a bad way with Shameen. He'd 
 
SHAMEEN. 87 
 
 gone to Dublin to see the agent an* ask for 
 time. Well, quite suddenly a man jumped up 
 out o* the ditch where he*d been lyin' on his 
 face. Glory be to God it was Shameen, yet 
 none need have blamed me if I hadn't known 
 him at first. His dress was tossed and 
 disordhered as if he'd been lyin' out all night. 
 He looked as wake an' quare as if food hadn't 
 seen the inside of him for a fortnight ; his hair 
 was tossed an' wild : but it was none of them 
 things made the terrible change in Shameen ; 
 it was the dead sick look of misery in his eyes. 
 Before I could spake to him he spoke to me, in 
 a quare, cracked voice. * Don't talk to me, 
 Larry,' he said, * I'm goin' to take a sate with 
 you as far as the Junction ; I'm off to America.' 
 * Off to America,' says he, as aisy as if he was 
 talkin' of Emly or Golden. Well, the poor 
 lad, I troubled him but little, but as we went on 
 he told me he was out of his farm — that visit 
 to the agent had only quickened things for 
 him. 
 
 " We went along an' along, and the sweet 
 
88 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 May evenin' it was, an' the blackbird — that 
 used always to stop when Shameen began — 
 singin' fit to crack his throat, and all the 
 pleasant country so quiet, by ralson of the 
 people bein' in the chapel attendin' to their 
 May devotions. I was sick to say somethin' 
 to him of Susy, but faith I didn't like to ; he 
 was leanln* down like an ould bent man, an' 
 more betoken, fond as he was of me, I'd found 
 out that Shameen could be very proud an' cold 
 over his saycrets. 
 
 " How did she find out at all, at all ? Or 
 what instinct brought her there ? — Och, sure, 
 women are wonders when they're in love. It 
 was in the loneliest part o' the road that she 
 suddenly stepped out of a boreen where she 
 was standin'. She ran up like a child with her 
 hands out, and I could see all her purty face 
 pinched like a snow-drop that's caught in the 
 frost. My poor Shameen gev a big cry, and 
 then jumped off — and the mare an' myself had 
 the sense just to move on a bit and let the 
 crathures have their say to themselves. An' I, 
 
SHAMEEN. 89 
 
 the big fool I was, -was all in a pucker of 
 delight, thinkin' I needn't drive Shameen to 
 the Junction after all. Och, wirra, wirrasthrue^ 
 it's a quare world, an' it's only when you're 
 ould an' lonely and the pain over that you 
 begin to see what value love was, and how 
 little the gabbin' tongues o' people matthered, 
 so long as you had the love. 
 
 *' It was only a minit anyhow. He hadn't 
 more nor time to kiss her purty lips once or 
 twice when he was back. * Drive on,' he says, in 
 a terrible, hard, dry voice that gives me an ache 
 to think of even now. I said no more till the 
 train was steamin' an' him in it. I was ould 
 enough to be his father, an' might have been 
 that same, but I couldn't question him : I 
 hadn't courage. Lookin' at his face, though, I 
 tried, wettin' my lips with my tongue, for they 
 were both dry with anxiety. He squeezed up 
 in the corner of the carriage, an' looked straight 
 before him in a dead sort of way. I stood with 
 my hand on the window, but I'm misdoubting 
 he knew a friend was there at all, at all. * Did 
 
90 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 you spake to the little girl, Shameen ? ' I said 
 at last ; * she's the thrue little girl that'd wait 
 for you.' * No/ said he, lookin' at me straight, 
 ' why should I spake to a rich man's daughter ? ' 
 * Well, thin, God forgive you, Shameen,' said I ; 
 but sure in the middle of it the whistle came, 
 and that was my last word with Shameen. 
 
 " An' little Susy, Miss ? Well, she drooped, 
 an* then she took up a bit, like as if she was 
 hopeful. The father tried to make her match 
 half-a-dozen times, but she gev them all the 
 go-by. But, sure, you can't live on hope for 
 ever, an' as the months went an' no tale or 
 tidin's of Shameen, she grew slindherer, an' 
 quieter. Miss Dempsey told me afterwards 
 that she gev up by degrees callin' for the post ; 
 an' the little screeds from the nuns an' the 
 school friends were called for by Thady 
 Murphy, the boy from the forge. I seen her 
 once lookin' like a Httle red rose : that was a 
 few months after Shameen left, an' I'm thinkin' 
 it was the thought of his kiss an' his arms about 
 
SHAMEEN. 91 
 
 her brought the purty colour in her cheeks. 
 Ochone, the blight came on as it might on the 
 same little red rose. Less than two years after 
 Shameen went, they buried her. I wonder 
 whether he ever heard. Anyhow, from that 
 day to this no word of mouth or letter came 
 from him. But, sure, he's spoken the word 
 now. God is good ; an' I'll go bail the love 
 that never was spoken between them on earth 
 was tould out full an' free when she ran to 
 meet him, the darlin', over the pavemints of 
 Heaven." 
 
 We were creeping up the hill to the town by 
 this time. We were all silent, in sympathy 
 with Larry's emotion ; he only spoke once 
 afterwards, and then it was to the mare, — 
 
 "Sheila, my honey, do you remember 
 Shameen ? Ah ! poor Shameen's dead ! An', 
 sure, it was many a long an' hard road he 
 lightened for you with the lilt of a song. He 
 made your heart bate so light you never felt 
 the load. But he's done singin' on earth long 
 ago, Sheila ! " 
 
A MARTYR INDEED. 
 
 TH E house is in the midst of a wide tract 
 of fields. The only approach is by a 
 stony boreen from the cheerful high 
 road, where the mountain farmers are going home 
 of an evening, and the scattered cottages show 
 children under a thatch of sun-bleached hair, 
 and dogs are barking, and ducks are quacking 
 in procession as they paddle along the running 
 waterways by the path. It is within reach of the 
 shrill whistle of the steam-tram. Yet so lonely, 
 so unspeakably solitary. There is no such 
 loneliness as that of the evening fields, more 
 especially if it be Autumn. Wandering in the 
 vicinity of the house one September evening, 
 a-mushroom-gathering, I remember to have 
 lost for a little while my companion. He was 
 
A MARTYR INDEED. 93 
 
 only in the shadow of the distant hedge, amid 
 the fairy rings on the grass, where one finds 
 the mushrooms cleverly covered up in the rich 
 growth of those mysterious circles. Yellow 
 was all the sky above the mountains. The 
 evening had grown cold. I looked through 
 the thorn hedges on top of a little bank, and 
 saw across the narrow field the fireless chimneys 
 of the old house. It looked quite dead. I 
 shivered with a sudden sense of desolation and 
 fear. The loneliness did not affect me as it 
 did a nervous small boy who lived in just such 
 fields, with only an elder and morose brother 
 for society. " When a hen croaks," he said to 
 me, " I feel as if I must scream. And then I 
 want to wring the damned things neck." I 
 stole away from the vicinity of the house as 
 though invisible ears might hear my tread on 
 the grass, and got back as speedily as possible 
 to my kind. 
 
 Yet quite within my memory the place had 
 been comfortable and homely enough. That was 
 before the Laverys, mother and daughter, went 
 
94 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 down hill at the pace that brought them to the 
 bottom within a very short time. The father was 
 dead then, happily for himself. He had held 
 his head high, poor man, and was even wealthy ; 
 the money he put into" the building of our 
 beautiful church ran into three figures. When 
 I knew the daughter, who was the evil influence 
 of her family, she was elderly, and hideous 
 with affectation and a certain brazen hard- 
 ness that was natural to her. I remember 
 the drawing-room in the taste of the day. 
 Glaring satin paper of a dead white ; gilt 
 mouldings round the cornices ; a big chan- 
 delier with many diamond drops glittering 
 from it ; and what was called a suite of 
 furniture. In grass-green rep, completed the 
 finethings. 
 
 We were hunted, we youngsters, out to the 
 garden to eat gooseberries. There were straw- 
 berries too under the high wall that makes a black 
 shadow with its masses of ivy. The currants 
 swung like jewels there in that plenty one only 
 sees in an ancient garden. All around stood 
 
A MARTYR INDEED. 95 
 
 up the big trees, silent sentinels of the place. 
 And away at the far end of the garden the 
 little house, gray and green, and covered with 
 jessamine and monthly roses, might have made 
 a paradise for some one. 
 
 We were not deceived, we youngsters, while 
 we devoured the ripe fruit. With all the acuteness 
 of small demoiselles we detected and giggled 
 over the absurdities of our hostess, her mincing 
 airs, her absurd pronunciation, her dress-im- 
 prover and high-heeled boots. We had not dared 
 to laugh before her, though the laughter was 
 importunate ; all the world knows the helpless 
 tittering to which school-girls are subject, and 
 which takes them at the most awful moments. 
 But though a drawing-room recitation drove us 
 behind the window curtains to lie strangling 
 with our laughter on the floor, we did not 
 dare laugh before our hostess that afternoon. 
 Through all her minauderies her hard eyes 
 kept their stare, — steely I should call it, if it 
 were not that their colour was a curious reddish- 
 brown — and it had scant toleration for us, even 
 
96 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 when we kept our countenances with Intense 
 composure. 
 
 The old mother sat in a chair and grumbled 
 and mumbled to herself in a half imbecile 
 fashion. The brother came into the room 
 once, as if by accident, — a square-jawed melan- 
 choly man, with colourless skin, and a down- 
 drawn sad mouth ; he had a timid air that belied 
 his square jaw, and when he shuffled away 
 awkwardly we were inclined to think him a 
 poor creature. However, later on, strolling 
 around the house impudently, we came on him 
 having his tea in the kitchen. We were 
 inclined to run away in wild shrieks of laughter; 
 but he came out to us with an air of awkward 
 kindness. I rather think the parlour tea was 
 over, and we, little pitchers, perhaps designedly, 
 forgotten. The two elder visitors were able to 
 discuss bonnets and beaux ; and we were sup- 
 posed to be kept out of mischief fruit-eating in 
 the garden. 
 
 He invited us to join him at his tea, which 
 invitation was supplemented by a white-capped 
 
A MARTYR INDEED. 97 
 
 ruddy-faced old woman he called Biddy. 
 '' Come in, come in, little ladies," she said. *' It 
 isn't often the master has company to his tay." 
 There was something at once defiant of some 
 person or persons unknown, and yet kindly, in 
 the tone of this invitation. We came in somewhat 
 timidly. He helped her to set the chairs, and 
 suggested this or that dainty : a pot of honey 
 it was one time, the currant cake another. 
 He seemed to like our company, though his 
 melancholy face only brightened for a minute 
 when, getting confident, we told him of our 
 naughtiest escapades. The kitchen was clean 
 and comfortable despite its clay floors, and the 
 black thatch of the roof coming through the 
 rafters. A wood-fire smouldered cheerfully, 
 and there were geraniums in the high 
 window. A screen of wall projected by the 
 side of the fireplace ; and before the embers 
 basked a collie and three kittens, in close 
 friendship. 
 
 The master of the house did the honours of 
 his deal table with great courtesy. We noticed 
 
 H 
 
98 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 that as Biddy went here and there, polishing a 
 plate or lifting the hot griddle-cakes from the 
 fire, she turned always that steady look of 
 affQction on her master's face. It was as 
 evident as the love in the eyes of the collie. 
 We chattered while we ate and drank, and 
 altogether enjoyed ourselves highly. When 
 Biddy was summoned by the parlour- bell to go 
 in search of us, she dismissed us each with a 
 hot griddle-cake and a compliment. She pro- 
 nounced us " rale dacint little ladies," and went 
 on, half to herself : ** I haven't seen the master 
 so cheered for a long time." And then to us : 
 " Yez'll be welcome whenever yez come, an' 
 most av' the week herself is gallivantin' to 
 Dublin, so yez can ate all yez can of the straw- 
 berries while they last." The master, too, 
 shook hands with us when we went out to the 
 primitive yard, where he was standing gazing at 
 his manure heap and two ducks cocking inquir- 
 ing eyes at the steady promise of fine weather 
 in the sky. He even volunteered to show us 
 the pups the next time we came, which we pro- 
 
A MARTYR INDEED. 99 
 
 mised should be soon, and so we rejoined our 
 elders and departed. 
 
 We never went again. By the time we came 
 back from school the following year things had 
 gone to the bad with them, and we knew them 
 and the place no more. 
 
 I pieced the story afterwards from what was 
 told me. There were of the family two sons 
 and the daughter. The father was a man of 
 ambitions ; the mother, as occasionally happens, 
 of no ambitions at all, liking, if her husband's 
 back was turned, nothing so well as a long 
 confidential chat with the servants or the farm- 
 hands. This mark of favour they repaid by 
 summing up Mrs. Lavery as *^ a rale mane 
 sort, wid a low drop in her somewhere." Adding, 
 '*God help poor Jimmy Lavery if he ever 
 thinks to make a lady of her f " For the Irish 
 peasant, though you can be extremely friendly 
 with him or her, knows just where an equal 
 familiarity begins, and is apt much to despise 
 folk who cannot keep their places. 
 
 The girl was the apple of old Jimmy's eye. 
 
 H 2 
 
lOO A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 The elder son he educated so well that the 
 young gentleman became an army doctor, and, 
 meeting and marrying the plain heiress of a 
 Lancashire manufacturer, drifted away, happily 
 for himself, from his doomed family. Michael, 
 the younger, was always dull and gentle. He 
 too went to the expensive school selected for 
 his brother ; but such ill reports of his wits 
 came home, that, after a year or so, his father 
 withdrew him, opining that there was no use 
 in throwing good money after bad. Michael 
 immediately began to forget the little polish and 
 school learning he had acquired, and having a 
 low opinion of himself he was happy, with no 
 sense of injustice, plodding after the plough- 
 horses or feeding the stall-feds ; while old 
 Jimmy, as his neighbours expressed It, " was 
 swellln' like a bantam over his larned son and 
 handsome daughter." 
 
 I have been told she was extremely hand- 
 some as a girl. She was tall and straight, 
 with a shape strong and supple. She had 
 the beautiful complexion that goes with 
 
A MARTYR INDEED. lOI 
 
 reddish hair sometimes. Her hair, which in 
 my memory was in faded hanks of dull red, 
 has been described to me as of great splen- 
 dour of colour and abundance. 
 
 The country shook its head over Jimmy's 
 fondness for his daughter. He sent her to 
 boarding-school, and while she was away built 
 a front for the house, which up to that had 
 been entered by the kitchen. When it was 
 finished he planted a little lawn with a carriage- 
 drive ; and malicious enemies had it that, in 
 addition to ** the pianny," this infatuated father 
 had laid in " crokay for the quality to play 
 at wid Miss 'Tilda." But when she came 
 home " finished," his doings exceeded the 
 wildest invention. The first thing he did was 
 to set her up with a pony and phaeton ; the 
 next to equip her with a horse to ride to 
 hounds. 
 
 This latter, among the conservative Irish 
 peasants, made a positive scandal; and it was 
 as bad with the neighbouring farmers, them- 
 selves but superior peasants. Not that any 
 
I02 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 one could deny that on horseback she was 
 twice as handsome as the Miss Bartons, and 
 twice as haughty too. But, indeed, the Miss 
 Bartons were soft-spoken young ladies, with 
 no more beauty than clear skin and silky hair 
 affords, and no more approach to haughtiness 
 than the somewhat mild wonder with which 
 they regarded this interloper in the hunting 
 field; who soon, however, came to have plenty 
 of acquaintances among the sons of the county 
 families and the officers from the barracks. 
 
 When at home, this darling of her father 
 sat and strummed wrong notes on the piano 
 in the . fine white-and-gold drawing-room 
 he had provided for her ; or stared listlessly 
 into the fire or out of the window, if she was 
 alone : but often she had a school-friend to 
 visit her, one who would listen to her 
 conquests and admire her beauty, for none 
 other would be tolerated. Occasionally, too, 
 a gentleman came to call. Even sprigs of 
 nobility were entertained in that chilly apart- 
 ment. But when his girl was at the height 
 
A MARTYR INDEED. IO3 
 
 of her social success, — for Jimmy, poor man, 
 had not yet found out that the acquaintance 
 of fine gentlemen is not the mark of lady- 
 hood—fortunately, for himself, he took sud- 
 denly ill and died. 
 
 To 'Tilda, no doubt, it seemed all right that 
 Michael should plod along in the old patient 
 way, with no more consideration now that he 
 was master. The mother, who grew more 
 whining and down-at-heel year by year, father 
 and daughter had long agreed to ignore. 
 Michael would have fared badly if it were not 
 for Biddy who had nursed him, and loved him 
 with a protecting fondness that was in propor- 
 tion to the hostility she had always entertained 
 towards his sister. 'Tilda would have been 
 contemptuously amused if she had known ; but 
 then, she never thought of a servant, except 
 as Biddy put it, '' like dirt under her feet ; " 
 and she probably considered the old servant 
 constitutionally sullen. 
 
 She was hard and masculine enough to 
 have taken care of herself, even then. I have 
 
I04 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 heard how she rubbed her horse down, and 
 washed her phaeton herself, when she found 
 it quite Impossible to get those things satis- 
 factorily done by a farm hand. But I imagine 
 she was a creature without moral stamina. 
 Anyhow, in the very heyday of her beauty 
 some mysterious scandal arose about her. I 
 know nothing of the story or its origin : it is 
 all so long ago : but it stuck to her, and 
 manifested itself so unpleasantly in the hunting- 
 field, that after a time she sold her mare, and 
 went riding no more. 
 
 Michael heard it In time. It put wrinkles in 
 his face and gray hairs on his head. He 
 began to grow into a patient drudge, without 
 youth or hope. Yet he kept the place going 
 somehow, and things were scarcely less pros- 
 perous in a monetary sense than of old. 
 
 The scandal had almost blown over when 
 his first and only bit of romance came to him. 
 What Nellie Curran, the tall, gipsy beauty 
 saw in him. Heaven knows ! Nellie's father, 
 too, was one of the snuggest men In the 
 
A MARTYR INDEED. IO5 
 
 county, and she the only chick or child 
 he had. Her mother was Nellie's predecessor 
 in goodness and beauty. She was the finest 
 housekeeper for miles round ; and her good- 
 ness included everything under Its wide wings. 
 It was she who first began the rehabilitation 
 of 'Tilda Lavery. It was by dropping a 
 kind word here or there. ''Well, Mrs. 
 Burke," she would say, " I do be thinking 
 there was nothing in that story at all, at all. 
 Sure none could tell where the weeny whisper 
 came from that blackened the creature. God 
 help us, sure the devil is powerful when he 
 goes scandal-mongering. Anyhow, you and 
 me has girleens of our own, and for their 
 sakes it's not every story against poor 'Tilda 
 I'd go to be believing." Gradually a kind of 
 feeling got about that 'Tilda Lavery had been 
 condemned on insufficient evidence. In con- 
 trition for having been so ready to believe 
 ill of the child of an old neighbour, people 
 began to make advances to her. She accepted 
 the civilities, and was seen at one or two 
 
I06 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 houses ; but, despite the good Intentions of 
 the contrite, people didn't seem to take to 
 her. Nor did she seem very anxious to be 
 sociable. Save for those drives In the 
 phaeton, which she still kept up, she was seen 
 little outside her own Isolated home. 
 
 Meanwhile Nellie Curran had cast glances 
 of pitying tenderness on Michael Lavery. 
 He used to pass the Currans' comfortable 
 farmhouse now and again by a field-path that 
 was a short cut to another road. He went 
 by at first with his head down In his habitual 
 attitude of dejection. Miss Nellie met him 
 one evening, blooming In her pink frock, with 
 starry eyes and cheeks like a ripe peach. 
 She was a young lady to take her affairs Into 
 her own hands. She conquered Michael 
 Lavery very easily. From the first the poor 
 fellow was but full of awe-struck wonder that 
 this young goddess should be civil to him. 
 All one happy summer his Idyll lasted. He 
 wasn't wanted at home, and used to spend the 
 long evenings, when the ruddy light took hours 
 
A MARTYR INDEED. IO7 
 
 to grow cool in the sky, hanging in a moon-struck 
 way about the Currans' house. There was 
 no doubt that Nellie was fond of him. She 
 bloomed like a Camille de Rohan rose ; and 
 she was so kind to her lover, never teasing him, 
 but treating him rather with a placid motherly 
 tenderness that was very sweet. Her father 
 opined humorously that Nellie was picking up 
 the crooked stick — for her rejections had 
 reached a respectable number; her mother 
 sighed when Nellie was not by. She had 
 hoped for better things for her lovely 
 daughter, though no one could deny that a 
 better poor lad than Michael Lavery never 
 existed, and well off too. Anyhow, if he had 
 been much less eligible, Nellie was bound 
 to have her way. 
 
 Half the country v/as wondering why he 
 didn't speak, when the thing happened that 
 closed his lips for ever. He came home from 
 Nellie one night, under an enormous August 
 moon, half beside himself with happiness. The 
 hall-door was wide open as he approached. 
 
I08 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 Instead of going to the kitchen, he went In 
 that way, and turned the handle of the parlour 
 door on his left. There was no light in the 
 room, but it perfectly reeked w^Ith the fumes of 
 brandy. He struck a match and looked about 
 him. His mother was lying back in her chair, 
 her cap disordered, her head lolling in the 
 stertorous sleep of the drunkard. His sister 
 was on the floor in the same condition ; some 
 one had thrust a pillow under her head. The 
 match flickered out in his fingers, as he 
 stumbled to the door. In the kitchen was old 
 Biddy, her apron over her head, while she 
 rocked to and fro. " How long has this been 
 going on ? " he said, with dry lips. '* This 
 many a month," the old woman moaned out, 
 '*but I was always able to get them out of the 
 way before you kem home. O wirrasthrue,'' 
 she went on, ** don't be lookln' Hke that, 
 darlin' ! Sure I thought you'd be married, an' 
 wid the darlin' wife of your own before you 
 knew the black shame and disgrace." 
 
 He turned from her and went up to his attic. 
 
A MARTYR INDEED. lOQ 
 
 Many evenings after that, pretty Nellie looked 
 for her lover, but he never came. She kept 
 up her heart till the Sunday morning, when she 
 was sure to see him at mass. He was not 
 there, having gone at daybreak to a distant 
 parish. Then Nellie was determined to see 
 for herself. She set out for the house In the 
 fields, hoping fortune would favour her. Nellie 
 didn't much like 'Tilda ; and as she explained 
 it herself, old Mrs. Lavery "gave her the 
 creeps." But she walked as close to the house 
 as she could — perhaps by that very hedge 
 where I peeped through to see the silent house. 
 She came upon him suddenly, leaning on a 
 gate in a forlorn attitude. She went up to him 
 confidently, sure of her beauty and his love ; 
 but when he saw her, a scared look came into 
 his eyes, and lifting his hat hastily, he turned 
 away and went back to the house. 
 
 Nellie walked home with her heart bursting. 
 She refused obstinately at first to believe him 
 guilty of ill-treating her. She even wrote to 
 him, and received in reply a dull missive that 
 
no A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 betrayed nothing of his heart-break. Presently, 
 being a girl of spirit, she plucked up ; she made 
 herself angry to kill out that dull pain of 
 rejected tenderness that was in her heart. The 
 anger made her handsomer than ever ; her 
 proud step, her haughty head, her lovely 
 colour, flashed themselves into the gallant 
 heart of a hunting squireen from a neigh- 
 bouring county. Six months after she had 
 been jilted by Michael Lavery — she said it 
 over to herself till it grew meaningless, in 
 order to keep up her spirit — she married her 
 squireeUy and is to this day the delight of her 
 husband's eyes. 
 
 That all happened ten years before that 
 visit of ours to the Laverys. How the poor 
 fellow kept the scandal quiet, God knows. 
 Biddy helped him ; and he turned off the 
 labourers by degrees, so that the house was 
 left more lonely. The farm went rather to the 
 bad. After a time he parted with some of the 
 fields, and pastured a few depressed-looking 
 beasts on the remainder. Those ten years 
 
A MARTYR INDEED. Ill 
 
 had made him prematurely middle-aged. His 
 mother was half imbecile. His sister as I have 
 described her, with nothing of her old beauty 
 but her height. Her brother she despised and 
 hated. He let her go where she would and 
 do what she would, but he did his best to keep 
 her from smuggling her brandy into the house, 
 so that the wretched old mother should not get 
 it. 'Tilda Lavery had a constitution and 
 nerves of Iron. Her potations seemed to 
 have had little effect on her health when I saw 
 her. However the whole thing came out In 
 the following year. What I heard of the 
 exposure is too painful, and the story is only 
 worth telling because of poor Michael Lavery s 
 unconscious heroism. During that year the 
 mother ended her dishonoured life, after a 
 horrible three months, when the shame had 
 been blazoned abroad, and the house In the 
 fields was left to its wintry darkness, and the 
 daughter rioted unrestrainedly while the mother 
 lay dying. It was a relief when she was dead. 
 The funeral was attended by all the old neigh- 
 
112 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 hours, many of whom longed to say a kind 
 word to the poor fellow who had suffered so 
 much. They said he looked a gaunt figure of 
 despair by the graveside. He returned to the 
 lonely house where only poor affectionate 
 Biddy awaited him. 'Tilda was gone as soon 
 as the breath was out of her mother's body ; 
 and the most dreadful stories were afloat about 
 her. However, I never knew any one who saw 
 her again or heard of her decisively. 
 
 Michael Lavery never goes to his parish 
 church now, nor to fair or market, where he 
 might meet his fellow-men. He has got Into 
 the habit of avoiding them, but I have met him 
 once or twice on my evening walks, and he looks 
 kindly despite his great melancholy. I saw 
 him on Wednesday, that wonderful evening of 
 rosy sunset. The mountains were pink and 
 blue, blent like the colours of a forget-me-not. 
 The trees in the lane showed a delicate brown 
 outline against the roses. Long after, below 
 the coppery-brown night that was swallowing 
 
A MARTYR INDEED. 1 1 3 
 
 the West, the rosy light peeped forth, and its 
 reflection tinged in the East many rosy bodies 
 of clouds floating on the filmy azure. Michael 
 Lavery struck a dreary note In the lovely 
 world. His face is gray and lean between Its 
 sparse side whiskers. He walks with stooped 
 shoulders like one long used to carrying a 
 burden. He is unkempt, dusty, forlorn, 
 solitary. Biddy is dead ; and the white and 
 gold drawing-room, I have heard. Is a store- 
 house for potatoes. There is not even a dog 
 attached to the place. Michael Lavery and 
 the rats are alone. For twelve years now he 
 has lived alone ; he will die alone. The house 
 has grown half-ruined, and the windows are 
 broken. It had such a bad name that the 
 village urchins delighted to fling stones at the 
 windows when the solitary master w^as out of 
 hearing in the kitchen where he lives. That 
 Wednesday night w^as wild, and I thought that 
 some such night might bring it tumbling about 
 his ears. If he were gone It were well the 
 house, with all its bad memories, were gone 
 
 I 
 
114 A CLUSTER OF NUTS.' 
 
 too, and the grass growing where once its 
 desecrated hearthstone lightened. There is a 
 vague pity for Michael Lavery ; but few of the 
 neighbours have reached the point of calling 
 him, as I do, a martyr. Perhaps it would seem 
 profane to those simple minds. 
 
A FARMER'S TRAGEDY. 
 
 IT IS a year since I met that mournful pro- 
 cession going home by green lanes. The 
 blackbirds sang in mad rivalry just the 
 same ; croak, croak went the corn-crake, the 
 harsh voice of the summer ; the meadows were 
 turning brown, yellow iris was springing on her 
 green flaggers ; the hawthorn, as now, was 
 turning to pink, making every bush look a more 
 lavish bower of little roses than Botticelli's 
 Spring herself could furnish forth. 
 
 Such a divine, dewy, green evening, with the 
 fragrance of a censer in the air ; and there was 
 coming towards me in the narrow lane a line of 
 labourers marching dejected, a horse and cart 
 following. I could not avoid it if I would. I 
 had spoken to the man at the horse's head 
 before I saw the thing that answered my 
 
 I 2 
 
Il6 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 question — something lying stark and awful, 
 under the sacks in the cart, that dimly outlined 
 a human shape, with the rigid dead feet pointing 
 upwards. There was no need to ask who it 
 was. The farmer's son had been missing for 
 some weeks, and I had heard of his loss with 
 a vague curiosity, which now quickened into 
 appalled interest. He had been lying all those 
 weeks in a pool, the waters of which scarcely 
 covered him. No one had thought of search- 
 ing the place, though every quarry-hole and 
 pond had been dragged. It was in a lonely 
 field, turning to a meadow, in the midst of 
 which is a curious dun or fort on a mound. 
 They say that somewhere below it, choked up, 
 led a subterranean passage to a great old house 
 of the neighbourhood. He must have drowned 
 himself, poor lad, with the terrible determination 
 of the insane ; must have lain face downward 
 in the mud of the place where they found 
 him ; lain all those weeks in sunrise and sun- 
 set, while the larks had soared out of the grass 
 beside him, and the little cottage-children had 
 
A FARMERS TRAGEDY. llj 
 
 filed by the hedge not many yards away, look- 
 ing for birds' nests and eggs speckled and blue. 
 The only son of his father ; but his mother s 
 son, one felt sure. He had nothing in common 
 with the dour, hard-faced, hard-fisted old man, 
 whom age had no power to break or soften. 
 His mother died the merest slip of a girl. 
 She had, I have heard, this boy's silky pale 
 hair and clear skin, and large frightened eyes. 
 They had married her with as much sentiment 
 as one sells a heifer at the market. Her old 
 husband — for he was old even then — was the 
 richest man of the country-side, and the aunt 
 and uncle who had the giving of her considered 
 her a right lucky girl. They took her out of 
 her convent school and her gentle, merry girl- 
 hood, and gave her over to this grey husband. 
 I have heard he was very gentle with her, but 
 in the months they were married she grew a 
 wofully frightened creature, shrinking from him, 
 the people said, and incessantly weeping when 
 she could steal away by herself So it was no 
 wonder that when this boy was born she had 
 
Il8 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 not the vitality to pull through. If she had 
 seen his face, indeed, she might have tried to 
 live for him — the acres and the dairy and the 
 jaunting-car, and the best parlour with roses on 
 the wall-paper, having proved all insufficient. 
 But she never rallied after the child was born, 
 just sinking into a stupor, which lasted till her 
 death a few hours later. 
 
 The old man asked no comfort, and would 
 take none. His face, they said, grew more 
 like a grey rock than ever, his hair went white 
 in quite a short time, but his sufferings — if 
 suffer he did — he bore with the proud stoicism 
 of an Indian brave. The child he never 
 noticed — seemed neither to love nor hate it. 
 But while the boy was young the soft-hearted 
 peasant-mothers made up for this coldness. 
 Katty, the old woman who was housekeeper 
 and general servant at the farm, adored him ; 
 and when he was old enough to be led by the 
 hand as she went on this or that short errand, 
 the neighbour women overwhelmed him with 
 fondness and praise. Pity it could not last 
 
A FARMERS TRAGEDY. II9 
 
 always, this quiet childhood. But a time came 
 when his father began to notice him as the heir 
 to his land and his bank-notes. The old man 
 should indeed have been the founder of a family. 
 With incredible industry, and wonderful sagacity 
 as well, he had added acre to acre and shilling 
 to shilling, until he was actually extremely 
 wealthy. And how he loved his land ! It is 
 the richest and kindliest land, with manure and 
 drainage and labour buried in it like gold-dust, 
 which it yields every year in smiling harvests. 
 He gave it the love which had been thrown 
 back on his heart by the wife who had cheated 
 him of her love. I think he was no stony- 
 hearted tyrant in the matter of the marriage. 
 In his own youth he had never had time for 
 love ; marriages were arranged so all about him : 
 and the girl had been too timid to show her 
 aversion so openly that he could read it. Then 
 he loved her no doubt, and had recognized that 
 marriage with him had killed her. Perhaps in 
 this whimpering, pale-faced son he saw her 
 aversion come to life again. 
 
I20 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 In a way it was hard upon him. Close-fisted 
 as he was, he had a certain largeness of view. 
 I think had his only son been but a fellow of 
 will and courage and ambition, the old father 
 would have opened his purse-strings and 
 lavished upon him the things that should give 
 a fair bent to his qualities. But this for his 
 only son ! This puling boy, who dissolved in 
 tears if he but looked at him, who dared 
 not sleep by himself for fear of hobgoblins, 
 who mooned incessantly with a dog at his heels, 
 and believed implicitly every superstition of the 
 peasantry. It turned him sick with anger to 
 think upon him. As he grew up it was no 
 better. He no longer wept, but he slunk out 
 of his father's way like a dog that has been 
 beaten once and may be again ; he crouched by 
 the hob if it was cold or wet ; he was always 
 being coddled by Katty for a chill or an ache ; 
 and in summer he desired no more than to be 
 hidden all day in the overgrown orchard at the 
 foot of the hill, reading a ragged book or a sheaf 
 of ballads purchased from the pedlar, or lying 
 
A FARMERS TRAGEDY. 121 
 
 in the grass with hands clasped below his head, 
 gazing into the apple-boughs, where presently 
 the horned moon should swing, and the screech- 
 owl call her melancholy whistle. 
 
 He was very familiar with birds, and beasts, 
 and plants ; very simple, devout, and imagina- 
 tive. A delicate lad, with easily jangled nerves 
 and too large organs of belief and veneration, 
 and with a capacity for a great affectionateness. 
 What schooling he got was from a poor tutor, 
 a disqualified candidate for the priesthood, who 
 came to the house for a couple of years. The 
 old man despised his son too heartily to put 
 him in competition with other boys at a boys' 
 school. 
 
 He was always a devout lad, but when his 
 tutor, whom he had grown attached to, had left 
 him, he became absorbed in his prayers and 
 devotions. His walks now generally led him 
 towards the church ; and, mushroom-gathering 
 on a July evening, I have come upon him 
 chanting his Rosary aloud to himself. He was 
 getting towards manhood when his father unfor- 
 
122 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 tunately began to think it was time to break 
 him into his own ways. The boy himself had 
 got the idea of being a priest. He did not 
 dare to speak of it to his father, but his one 
 confidant, a mild old curate yet awaiting the 
 promotion never to come, did it for him. The 
 old man laughed in his pastor's face with fierce 
 scorn, and bade him mind his own business so 
 very emphatically that the old priest bowed him- 
 self out with a forlorn sense of outrage. 
 
 The boy was turned into farm-work, and 
 began from then to drift into a melancholy 
 madness. I have seen him the forlornest 
 figure, awkwardly stumbling behind a plough, 
 on a high upland, against a grey winter sky : I 
 have caught a glimpse of him, moon-struck and 
 melancholy, standing by a hedge, while the 
 mowing-machine sang on its way and the chat- 
 tering women mocked behind his back. His 
 long fair hair, neglected, grew into his eyes 
 that looked at one dully, with a film of suffering 
 on them. No one noticed the growing mad- 
 ness because he was so silent and gentle. It 
 
A FARMERS TRAGEDY. 1 23 
 
 was only afterwards that Katty tore her hair 
 and beat her breast, recalHng Httle signs and 
 tokens that she had never recognized for such 
 terrible omen. 
 
 The poor drowned body was buried, and 
 things went on their dreary way at the farm- 
 house. At first one scarcely knew if the father 
 suffered ; but gradually he broke down, and once 
 the failure set in it went with wonderful rapidity, 
 as is often the case with old people v/ho keep 
 their strength and vigour long. H e soon was 
 only able to creep about his room with a pair of 
 sticks, and then, after a little while, could not 
 leave his bed. He did not die at the top, 
 certainly. To the last his head kept its clear- 
 ness. The man he had put in command could 
 tell strange stories of his searching questions. 
 The master's mind still supervised the place, 
 though his eye was off it, and he had always 
 inspired so great a fear that things went won- 
 derfully well, considering that he lay like a log. 
 Before he died he opened his mouth to speak 
 
124 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 in bitterness, in a half soliloquy, of the widowed 
 cousin who had made a feckless love-match long 
 ago, but who had four tall, brave, handsome 
 sons to inherit the land, which he had left 
 them, despite his bitterness, and though he had 
 kept them off in a half-envious hatred during 
 life. Of the dead boy, of the dead wife, he 
 said nothing while conscious, but old Katty 
 heard their names fall from his lips between 
 the death-rattles. " Poor Jemmie : I didn't 
 know, Mary ! " he muttered, at if he were trying 
 to extenuate his harshness to their boy. 
 
 It was Tommy Hogan told me what hap- 
 pened at daybreak, just when the old farmer 
 died. Tommy is a nut-brown, wizened man, 
 oracular, of a singular deliberateness of speech 
 and belief in himself. He it was who told me 
 how the crows begin to build on the ist of 
 March, except it be Sunday, in which case they 
 postpone till Monday morning. From him I 
 have full details of **a fairy blast " he had as a 
 child ; among ghosts and fairies he is quite at 
 
A FARMERS TRAGEDY. 1 25 
 
 home, and his knowledge of their ways not to 
 be disputed. This morning of the old man's 
 death he, with others, was milking my father s 
 cows beside the boundary hedge of his farm. 
 I can picture it, for I saw the dawn that morn- 
 ing — a luminous green dawn, widening and 
 throbbing up the east, casting where it fell a 
 ghostly green light, and leaving all else in 
 blackest shadow. The hawthorn, that was 
 thick this year as cotton-wool on a Christmas- 
 tree, was ghastly in the cold light ; the hills 
 were still wrapped in shrouds of mist ; some 
 tree in the hedgerow kept up a sharp tinkling 
 like a field of barley ; a little shiver of wind 
 was creeping along the earth, moaning amid 
 the seeding grasses that trembled as it passed. 
 The first birds were peering out, with an 
 inquiring twitter. The cows were folded in a 
 corner by an old house built on a fairy rath, 
 and of which I could tell another story an' I 
 would. The men were milking, not saying 
 much, each with his head in the cow's side, and 
 the air full of a cheerful sound of the milk 
 
126 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 spirting in the pails. They all knew that the 
 life of the old man at the house yonder among 
 the trees was running out to its last sands. Sud- 
 denly there came a noise, strange and terrible, 
 like a thunderclap out of a thundercloud, as 
 Tommy described it to me, and a cloud swept 
 by them out of which bellowed a howling wind, 
 blood-curdling and horrible. The men fell on 
 their faces in its path ; the cattle broke away 
 madly, and were afterwards found many fields 
 distant. Then, as the noise died in distance, 
 all things were again sweet and peaceful. It 
 was Tommy who — when the scare was over, 
 and In the warm, golden dawn — explained the 
 thing. " It was ould Mick,^' he said, " ridin' in 
 that whirlwind. He couldn't go widout biddin* 
 good-bye to the land his heart was in. He was 
 ridin' the boundaries of all his farm before lavin' 
 this world." Sure enough it was just at the 
 hour old Mick Crowley drew his last breath. 
 And henceforth to the men who had shared with 
 him this terrifying experience, Tommy will be 
 more than ever a seer and an oracle. 
 
FAREWELL TO BALLYSHANNON. 
 
 IT was as we were leaving the hotel door 
 we first saw Johnny, and had a hint of 
 the long journey he was bound on. All 
 the morning there had been unwonted bustle 
 in the big gray caravanserai, where men are 
 for ever coming and going. We had heard 
 many instructions called in a shrill, sweet voice ; 
 there was frequent passing of feet up and 
 down the corridor, and banging of trunks, and 
 halting feet on the stairs of them that went 
 down, carrying burdens. As we sat at the 
 hotel door on our car, the object of solicitude 
 somewhat proudly took his place on another 
 such vehicle. An ordinary boy of twelve or 
 so, he swung himself on the rickety car and 
 looked across at us from innocent blue eyes 
 under a thatch of fair hair. Something about 
 
128 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 him spoke of the mothers boy. His clothes 
 had the look of being made at home by a 
 woman ; his scarlet hand-knitted stockings told 
 of maternal care ; round his neck, though it 
 was balmy April, a fine muffler was knotted 
 carefully. He swung himself to the well of 
 the car, already laden with luggage and 
 packages, and perched there, with adven- 
 turous legs kicking high over the gutters. 
 
 " A fine boy, Master Johnny," said our 
 Jehu, half to us, half to himself, with an air 
 of unenvious admiration. *' An* the last 
 chick or child herself has by her, barrin' 
 Miss Susy, an she always that sensible that 
 she's more like the mistress's mother than a 
 slip of a girl. Sure, she's not the same 
 comfort like as Master Johnny." Before we 
 could ask any questions, we heard again the 
 thin sweet voice. It was '' Herself," Johnny's 
 mother, standing on the high steps that com- 
 manded the street. It was our first introduc- 
 tion to our hostess of last night. 
 
 " Did you put in the socks, my sweet- 
 
FAREWELL TO BALLYSHANNON. 1 29 
 
 heart ? " she called to the tow-headed boy. 
 " And the sandwiches that you'll want in the 
 railway carriage ? You haven't forgotten any- 
 thing, Johnny darling ? " 
 
 Johnny grinned somewhat uneasily under 
 the mother's solicitude. He was holding his 
 last audience in the steep street. Boots, bar- 
 maid, and chambermaid were gazing at him 
 from the hall with looks in which sorrow and 
 admiration were evenly blent. A crowd of 
 ragged loafers filled the street, and gathered 
 about the car. One could not help thinking 
 that Johnny might be as well away from 
 all those zealous understrappers, affectionate 
 though they seemed. 
 
 Johnny's mother presently came out and 
 climbed the car. An eager, hectic, handsome 
 woman, clad all her slender height in decent 
 black. She looked like one who had been 
 long a widow. Then came a sober-looking 
 girl with glasses, whom it was easy to recognize 
 as the jarvey's Miss Susy. She got up beside 
 her mother and arranged the parcels in a dull, 
 
 K 
 
130 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 methodical way. She looked as if she had 
 never been young. I suppose life in a decay- 
 ing Irish country town is very drab-coloured. 
 Miss Susy's settled dreariness was a strange 
 contrast to her mother's feverishly-eager face. 
 
 "He's but a little chap to take the green 
 fields to Amerikay alone. Ay, surely ! " said 
 our carman, musingly. By this time we were 
 rattling down the steep street, and over the 
 bridge, from which we could see the silver 
 spray of the falls below, and hear the dull 
 thunder. The other car was close behind, all 
 the ragged retainers trotting cheerfully in its 
 wake. ** Is there much emigration from 
 here ? " one of us asked. *' Ay, surely," said 
 the man ; " what else is there for them ? Sure 
 there isn't enough to keep the life in the 
 old bodies unless the young goes away to 
 Amerikay, and sends home the money. Och, 
 sure, it's the sorrowful place. If you was 
 here last Wednesday, you'd have seen a 
 trainful starting for Derry. An' the same 
 every Wednesday since March. I don't like 
 
FAREWELL TO BALLYSHANNON. 131 
 
 to be about the station myself them times.- 
 It's terrible hard for them to go.'* 
 
 We asked one or two sympathetic ques- 
 tions. He answered us, flicking his whip. 
 "There's some," he said, ''that'll hold up 
 strong an' silent ; an' there's others, again, 
 keenin' worse than the old women at the 
 wakes. There's a girl now," he broke off, 
 pointing at a straight, handsome creature, 
 who was just stepping across the street : 
 " There's a girl started for Amerikay, an' kem 
 home the next day. Ay, faith, it was the 
 shortest voyage ever known in this town. 
 She turned back from Derry. Said she 
 didn't give a thraneen for the passage-money. 
 She'd work her fingers to the bone to earn 
 enough money to keep the ould woman out of 
 the workhouse without lavln' her childless." 
 He said it with a certain admiration, and 
 added immediately afterwards, " There's not 
 a handsomer nor cleverer girl than that same 
 Nancy Gollgher in the three baronies." 
 
 Theil he planted his feet firmly, as if he 
 
 K 2 
 
132 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 had talked enough, and began to sing In a deep 
 baritone : 
 
 Farewell to Ballyshanny, where I was bred and born, 
 
 Go where I may, I'll think of you, as sure as night and 
 
 morn; 
 The kindly spot, the friendly town, where every one is 
 
 known. 
 And not a face in all the place but partly seems my own ; 
 There's not a house or window, there's not a field or hill. 
 But east or west, in foreign lands, I'll recollect them still ; 
 I leave my warm heart with you, though my back I'm 
 
 forced to turn, 
 So adieu to Ballyshanny and the winding banks of Erne. 
 
 It was the song of a townsman, who has won 
 the dehghtful immortality of being the ballad- 
 maker to his birthplace. Under the circum- 
 stances, the song sounded curiously mournful. 
 
 Inside the station, where we all were 
 presently awaiting the train, a few more 
 friendly folk came to Johnny's send-off. Miss 
 Susy stood apart, seemingly indifferent. The 
 mother talked to a grey old fellow, who 
 looked like a responsible friend of the family, 
 of Johnny, and the pity It was the child should 
 have to take that long, long journey alone. 
 
FAREWELL TO BALLYSHANNON. 133 
 
 She was certainly wonderfully handsome. 
 Her skin, for all its fine wrinkles, was delicate 
 as egg-shell china. Her features, of a severe 
 and classical beauty, well matched the trans- 
 parent colour. Her eyes were large, light 
 blue, and well opened under their large lids. 
 Her eagerness lit up the pale blue orbs, and 
 planted flickering flames of colour in each 
 delicate cheek. Incessantly, as she talked, 
 her eyes went after Johnny. His small 
 luggage was piled about her feet. Now and 
 again a nervous anxiety of some sort would 
 seize her, and she would make a flurried 
 application to her daughter. The quiet girl 
 reassured her monotonously that nothing had 
 been forgotten, that she knew exactly what to 
 do till her mother returned from Derry, and a 
 hundred such things. It was easy to see that 
 the monotony of her daughter's answers fretted 
 the nervous woman. 
 
 Johnny meanwhile was holding audience 
 outside the station, being glad to escape, I 
 suppose, from all the talk about him. He 
 
134 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 swaggered up and down with his hands in his 
 pockets, and we could hear him committing 
 himself to many rash promises of letter- 
 writing. Sometimes he blinked uneasily as 
 if a little salt-water drop troubled his eyesight. 
 After such moments of weakness he swag- 
 gered more than before, and shrugged his 
 shoulders with a fine manly impatience as his 
 mother's incessant pity of him fell upon his 
 ear. 
 
 The pair got into our railway carriage just 
 before we started. The other occupants 
 were a dried-up American nabob, with a seal- 
 skin coat, and a big brilliant in his scarf-ring, 
 and an acidulated lady of uncertain years, 
 who smiled contemptuously at poor Johnny, 
 and his mothers long-winded solicitude over 
 him. The train went in and out by the 
 banks of an exquisite river ; over yonder 
 were the blue lances of the first range of 
 mountains of the glorious hill-country. The 
 American was patronizing over Irish affairs, 
 and very inquisitive. Elucidation was difficult 
 
FAREWELL TO BALLYSHANNON. 1 35 
 
 under the disbelieving smile of the acidulated 
 damsel. We could see that Johnny's mother 
 threw eager glances at the rich American, 
 and understood that she somehow thought 
 he might be of use to Johnny. Her eyes 
 leaped at him, between spasms of concern 
 because Johnny would lie half his length 
 out of the carriage window. ''You see," 
 she said to us all, *' he's only a very 
 little boy to be going all the way tQ 
 America by himself." Presently she was 
 telling it all to us again, going over and over 
 the phrases I had heard at the railway station. 
 But what a story of sacrifice and patience ! 
 The woman grew heroic to us, as she sat 
 there, pouring it out as if it were a common 
 thing. Her husband was in Florida eleven 
 years. He had gone there alone, when the 
 needs of a growing family, and the decaying 
 trade of the town, became serious matters. 
 Each year one of the children had gone to 
 him, the mother keeping by her to the last 
 Susy, the eldest girl, who was wise and 
 
136 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 helpful. Now It had come to the parting with 
 the very little one, the boy who had been a 
 child at the breast when his father had last 
 seen him. Next year Susy would go ; the 
 year after, If God spared her, the mother. 
 We looked at her thin fingers and hectic 
 cheeks. " Could you not go next year 
 too ? " some one asked. She shook her head. 
 " There would not be the money for two," she 
 said, ** and Johnny's father, though he has tolled 
 and slaved, Is very poor still. In two years' 
 time, please God, the hotel will be sold, and 
 we'll all be under the same roof once more." 
 
 She spoke as If two years, to one who had 
 already endured so many, counted little. It 
 seemed a sublime patience and hopefulness. 
 The American looked out at the exquisite 
 country, and shook his head. It puzzled 
 him that there should be such poverty to 
 override God's precept, that husband and 
 wife shall not be parted ; and here, In a land 
 covered with tiny green spears of corn, 
 dappled with the gold and white of the 
 
FAREWELL TO BALLYSHANNON. 1 37 
 
 pastures, under such a sky, by such a river, 
 full of the rosy salmon. 
 
 Meanwhile Johnny had got used to his 
 mother's complaints. He was sitting with his 
 chin thrust forward, his head somewhat sunk, 
 his unseeing eyes fixed upon the silver river. 
 He was whisding to himself, softly through 
 his half-closed lips. He kept time to his 
 whistling, tapping with his finger on the 
 window pane. It was the song we had heard 
 the carman sing ; the song that is in every 
 itinerant street singer's repertoire in Bally- 
 shannon : 
 
 The thrush will call through Camlin groves the livelong 
 summer day ; 
 
 The waters run by mossy cliffs and banks with wild 
 flowers gay ; 
 
 The girls will bring their work and sing beneath a twisted 
 thorn, 
 
 Or stray with sweethearts down the path among the grow- 
 ing corn ; 
 
 Along the river side they go, where I have often been — 
 
 O never shall I see again the happy days I've seen ! 
 
 A thousand chances are to one I never may return — 
 
 Adieu to Ballyshanny and the winding banks of Erne ! 
 
CISSY : AN EXILE. 
 
 READING to-day that sketch on which 
 Henry James has spent his exquisite 
 skill, ^* A Passionate Pilgrim," I was 
 at once reminded of Cissy. Not that she need 
 be out of my mind yet, seeing that it was only 
 on the wet Tuesday of last week they laid her 
 below the tall poplars that are in the boundary 
 hedge of the village graveyard. Brother 
 Dominic, of the Dominicans, who is a French- 
 man, had planned her a pretty pageantry. The 
 French convents are the homes of such things 
 — of gauze-winged angels flinging flowers in the 
 path of the priest on Corpus Christi ; of clouds 
 and stars and angels — strange innovations in 
 the usually artless presentation of the Crib ; 
 things that delight much children and innocent 
 persons, such as nuns are, and monks very 
 
CISSY. 139 
 
 often, and peasants nearly always. The children 
 in white frocks were to carry Cissy from the 
 bed which had been her patient prison since 
 she came from India, to that last green bed 
 which, being Irish earth, must needs have 
 satisfied her heart-hunger for Ireland. Brother 
 Dominic is old enough to know better ; but he 
 has not long been over from France, and has 
 not learned how ill angels in white frocks agree 
 with an Irish January. Anyhow, the rain came 
 down in torrents, and the opportunity of 
 making some of these chubby children into 
 real angels never came off. I did not see the 
 poor little funeral, and do not know who were 
 Cissy's bearers. She was light enough, poor 
 child — a very featherweight. When I passed 
 the house later in the evening, a solitary candle 
 illuminated dully the whitewashed room. There 
 was no sign of life visible through the uncur- 
 tained pane. I imagined the old grandmother 
 sitting in the corner, her apron over her head, 
 rocking herself to and fro in the extremity of 
 her sorrow. The grandfather was outside in 
 
140 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 the little garden, his foot on the spade, on the 
 handle of which he leant motionless. In the 
 half-light he looked like an apparition, so still 
 was he. He did not seem to see or hear me 
 going by — I, who was Cissy's friend, and so 
 always welcome to them. 
 
 My very first impression of Cissy was from 
 a photograph of her sent home by the proud 
 parents from India. She was then about eight 
 months old. She was a solemn, dark-eyed 
 baby, with a soft down over her head, and 
 extremely well-developed limbs, apparently 
 kicking lustily in front of her, or at least ready 
 to kick. There was not a sign of consumption 
 then. No nursery I know could have fur- 
 nished forth a more promising baby. The 
 grandfather brought us the picture with pride. 
 It was in a cheap brass frame. I remember 
 that he said, with pretended indignation, 
 '* Sorra a thing at all the ould woman will do 
 since it came into the house. She's starin' at 
 it from mornin' till night. I believe she takes 
 it to the bed wid her." 
 
CISSY. 141 
 
 Cissy's mother was their daughter, a wild 
 youngster. I remember her, with brown hair 
 tied with a red ribbon, a wholesome colour, a 
 very wide mouth full of white teeth, innocent 
 dark blue eyes, and a nose so broad and cocked 
 that it sat astride her face. That nose would 
 have been fatal to her good looks in a more 
 advanced state of society. Yet somehow it 
 added to her look of frank good-humour. Then 
 she danced delightfully, as her tall brothers 
 did, and this gave her a certain little position 
 of a belle at the rustic dances. Not only did 
 she move as gracefully as a daffodil on Its 
 stalk, but she had by heart the fine science of 
 step-dancing. Seeing Essie in a jig, one 
 forgot her cocked nose, and gave her the 
 generous tribute due to beauty and genius. 
 She danced herself into the heart of a plain- 
 faced, good-natured, young soldier, who had at 
 the time of their marriage earned his corporal's 
 stripes. The more pretentious girls about the 
 place were rather disgusted, especially when a 
 year later Essie came back in a black silk 
 
142 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 gown, with a gold watch and chain, as a 
 sergeant's wife. It was to say good-bye to the 
 old folk, for Alick had got his orders for India. 
 
 I remember what a lady she seemed. She 
 had acquired a great softness of voice and 
 manner, and had a certain languor about her 
 and in her big velvety eyes. She had not 
 taken kindly to the other women in the 
 barracks. They were a little too versed in the 
 shady things of life for this innocent peasant 
 girl. Their speech and their manners had 
 only inspired her with a vague horror of them. 
 Though she had gained that matronly comeli- 
 ness, her eyes were as innocent as last year, 
 when she had run wild in the fields, her long 
 hair streaming. Alick's manner to her pleased 
 us. I think he was proud of the ladyhood 
 she had acquired so easily and naturally. She 
 gave one the impression of a woman who was 
 cherished. 
 
 Cissy was born three months after they 
 went out. They sent home grand stories of 
 the climate, and the pay, and of Alick's 
 
CISSY. 143 
 
 promotion, and of the baby's progress. They 
 were far north in a comparatively cool and 
 healthful spot of the great Indian Empire. 
 Years went — well with them, ill enough for 
 the old people at home. First a son went to 
 America and was lost sight of. Then the 
 youngest of the three sons died after a sharp 
 lung attack caught on a wet winter day. The 
 eldest son married against the old people's will. 
 They had something against the girl, though 
 what I never knew. He died, too, after a 
 year of married life, and his widow drifted 
 away to the town. None of Essie's children 
 lived except Cissy ; and the child became a^ 
 much the centre of life to the lonely old couple 
 at home in Ireland as she could be to the 
 young couple in India. Essie kept them well 
 informed. The letters, written in her large 
 straggling hand, were full of things Cissy had 
 said and done, which the old grand-parents 
 were never tired of rehearsing. I think they 
 learnt the letters by heart from hearing them 
 read, for neither could read. I found the 
 
144 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 grandmother one evening sitting crying at the 
 fire, with all the precious letters in her lap. It 
 was a day or two after the old fellow had con- 
 fided to me that the old woman " was frettin' 
 herself to death for a sight o' the babby." She 
 brightened up when we began to talk; and as 
 she verified this and that anecdote by appeal 
 to the letters, I could see she had every one 
 ranged and sorted and by heart. 
 
 So till Cissy was nearly seven years old — a 
 great girl, wrote her mother, and learning 
 sense, and going to be a credit to them all. 
 The Colonel's lady had taken notice of her 
 prettiness, and the regimental schoolmaster 
 prophesied of her cleverness ; and so good, 
 said the mother ; she knew her prayers by 
 heart, and was taking to the needle, and a 
 good patriot, like Jim, Lord rest him, who was 
 dead and gone. '* I do often be wishinV' she 
 wrote, " that she could be playin' in the fields 
 at home. She loves to be hearin' about 
 Ireland. Many a time will she draw her stool 
 beside me an' keep askin' me to tell about 
 
CISSY. 145 
 
 Ireland. Wid the questions she asks I often 
 think she does be thinkin Ireland's as fine as 
 heaven. An' sure it's heaven it is to them 
 that was born in it, and has to be out of it 
 
 now." 
 
 That was before the regiment moved to the 
 plains. Down there where the barracks stood, 
 amid boundless miles of dust and desert under 
 a pitiless sun, the vision of Ireland so green, 
 and full of waterpools, was like enough to be 
 the heaven of a mirage. 
 
 At first Essie wrote bravely enough. Then 
 the heat came, and with it sickness and death. 
 The officers sent their wives and children to 
 the hills. Those who could not do that dreed 
 their lot as best they could. Alick, who was 
 now quartermaster, could have sent Essie and 
 the child to the cooler heights, but Essie would 
 not leave him. Then the child grew puny 
 and fretted. Her cheeks, that had had a soft 
 wholesome paleness, set up two flaming red 
 ensigns. She went about restlessly, with her 
 eyes shining, or else she sat dully, with her 
 
146 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 chin, that was growing peaked, sunk on her 
 chest. The regimental doctor came and saw 
 her, said she should be sent to the hills or 
 home, and prescribed some simple cooling 
 medicine. Presently she set up a wailing cry. 
 " Mother, let us go home to Ireland ! Oh, 
 mother, do let us go to Ireland ! I am so hot 
 here ; I am so thirsty ! " She kept at it with 
 the heart-breaking persistency of a sick child. 
 Then her father and mother saw that if she 
 was to be spared to them she must go home; 
 and Alick got leave to take her up-country to 
 where a regiment was under orders for Ireland, 
 and there to put her in charge of the wife of an 
 old chum. 
 
 Essie wrote it all home to the old people 
 with a patient quietness. " I don't know what 
 has come over Cissy," she wrote, " to be so 
 glad to leave us : but she has so moidered us 
 wid questions about when she's goin', and how 
 long it will take to get to Ireland. It vexes 
 her father ; but sure she's sick, the creature, and 
 we have filled her head so full of ramaushes 
 
CISSY. 147 
 
 about Ireland, she thinks she'd never see a sick 
 day If she was once there. She's got Ireland 
 into her head the way other children get 
 heaven or fairyland. '^ 
 
 When I read this letter aloud, I looked with 
 a certain apprehension about the little cabin. 
 The walls were blackened with turf-reek then. 
 An uninviting settle-bed was in one corner. 
 There was a pool of mud at the door. The 
 plates on the kitchen-dresser had the smoke of 
 ages on them for the most part. I looked up 
 again at Cissy's last photograph, and read 
 dreams in the big eyes, and noted how above 
 them the forehead was over-big with imagina- 
 tion and ideality. The old woman answered 
 my unspoken thought. 
 
 '* Sure, Tom's goin' to whitewash for me, 
 plaze God, and fill up that ould hole in the flure. 
 An' Biddy Nugent's comin' in o' Monday to 
 help me wash up and tidy, and have the place 
 elegant for the darlin'." 
 
 She did indeed do wonders in her way. The 
 wife of the doctor, who was Tom's employer, 
 
 L 2 
 
148 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 helped when she found what was going on. I, 
 too, helped a little. The settle-bed went into 
 '* the room," which, being but a little place at 
 the back of the chimney, was warm for the old 
 couple. When the walls were whitewashed 
 and the floor mended, there was not a bad 
 background to work against.. The kitchen- 
 dresser and all its plates shone again. We put 
 lace curtains on the window and a few geraniums 
 in it. An iron bedstead, which the doctor's 
 children had outgrown, was set up in the corner 
 for the sick child. When we were done the 
 place looked clean and comfortable enough. 
 
 A little later I was sent for to see Cissy. I 
 expected to find great excitement, but the old 
 grandmother met me at the door with a subdued 
 air. "She's tired after last night, an' lyin' 
 down ; but she's awake," she said. The child 
 was lying on the bed when I went in. I was 
 rather shocked. She had the hectic flush of 
 illness, the vivid colour of the consumptive. 
 Her hair was in little red-gold curls, her cheeks 
 vividly red, her eyes intensely blue. She smiled 
 
CISSY. 149 
 
 at me with something of an effort. " She says 
 she's hot," said the grandmother ; " but awhile 
 ago I had to be wrappin' her in the blanket, 
 she was that cold. It's the changes of the 
 climate do be tryin' her at first." I gathered 
 that she had been full of excitement and chatter 
 the night before. Tom had brought her home 
 in a cab, the night being wet. She had sat in 
 the grandfather's big arm-chair before a red fire, 
 and seemed full of happiness. " The longin' is 
 on her," said the grandmother, "to get out in 
 the fields. She has seen a little o' them 
 through the window there, and thinks them 
 grand." I followed the child's gaze. Outside 
 a damp autumn mist was curling in the hollows. 
 The hedges were dark and the fallen leaves 
 soppy under one's feet. '' Cissy must wait," I 
 said, ** for a finer day." 
 
 That was my first of many visits. To me it 
 was evident very soon, even before Dr. Luttrell 
 had told me, that the child was in a rapid con- 
 sumption. We got her some things the old 
 people could not afford. She took nourishment 
 
150 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 greedily, as if the weakness were an unbearable 
 pain. She liked to see me coming with a little 
 gift. A brown rosary that had travelled to 
 Jerusalem and touched the Holy Sepulchre 
 was a precious gift to her. In the latter days 
 I rarely saw her without it twisted round her 
 little skinny hand. 
 
 The old grandfather and grandmother 
 thought the spring would make her well. I 
 never disturbed their delusion. Quiescent 
 about other things, Cissy had not forgotten 
 her old dreams of Ireland. She liked to have 
 me describe things outside for her, as if she 
 were still in India. I used to come in and tell 
 her how the mountains looked, and what a sun- 
 set there was. '' Tell her now, Miss," the old 
 woman would say, " how the country will look 
 in May, when the thorn-bushes are out in 
 flower, and the fields are full of buttercups and 
 daisies." The child loved these recitals as 
 children will love a familiar fairy tale, and be 
 content with no other. 
 
 I was away those ten days when she suffered 
 
CISSY. 151 
 
 greatly, and the old people at last gave up hope 
 that the spring would cure her. She was dead 
 when I came back. I did not see her dead ; I 
 shrank from the pain of it. But that evening 
 of her funeral, when they had laid her in the 
 grave, was such a sky as In my wildest picture- 
 painting for her I had not imagined. The rain 
 stopped, and the grey sky bloomed into a 
 splendour of fiery roses — the rose garden of the 
 sunset, I should have said, only that to east- 
 ward there were furrows and drifts of the 
 shining roses : gardens of roses, fields of roses, 
 a world of roses. The splendour in the sky 
 was mirrored in the wet earth. Every glitter- 
 ing hedgerow blushed rosily. The west 
 throbbed like a great mirror reflecting a rosy 
 fire. It shone ruddily on the ivy-leaves of the 
 church tower, where, as I passed, jackdaws 
 and martins were chattering. The three 
 poplar-trees stood up dark and slender against 
 it. But Cissy's grave was in shadow when 
 high In the poplars a blackbird began his full 
 song of the coming spring. The ears below 
 
152 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 were deaf to his message. Frost and snow, 
 rain and mist, had held the world since the 
 hungry-hearted little exile had come home, but 
 the spring she had not known, though she had 
 desired to see it most of all. She died with 
 her dream of it, and lies at the root of the 
 snowdrops that shall rise to answer its call. 
 Poor little Cissy ! 
 
A SPOILT PRIEST. 
 
 IN Ireland **'a spoilt priest" Is a term which 
 carries with it a certain profound con- 
 tempt. One who has entered at May- 
 nooth for the priesthood, and then relinquished 
 the ecclesiastical for mundane things is popu- 
 larly supposed to be good for nothing. The 
 same injustice of thought is half-unconsclously 
 dealt out to the woman who has entered a con- 
 vent, and left it finding she has mistaken her 
 vocation. Mrs. McNeils had these feelings 
 to an exaggerated extent, so, to her, it was 
 a bitter pill indeed when her son, Hugh, 
 with the courage of despair, announced his 
 unalterable resolve never to become a priest. 
 Yet In the first bitterness I doubt that she 
 quite gave up her cherished hope for lost, or 
 really believed that Hugh, whom she had 
 moulded like wax between her fingers through 
 
154 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 his length of days, would continue to uphold 
 his will against hers. 
 
 No doubt she loved the boy after her 
 fashion. She was a terrible old woman, straight- 
 backed, stern-featured, with eyes of cold blue 
 set in her colourless face — a woman who had 
 not known ache, pain, or moral backsliding, as 
 she understood it, and was as pitiless to the 
 helpless or sinning of this world, as she would 
 be to a lame chicken or a recalcitrant puppy. 
 "Away with it!" she would say. Hugh all 
 his life had been trained under sternest rule 
 and discipline. Whatever his character might 
 have been if it had been allowed to follow its 
 natural bent, there was no doubt that now it 
 had some defect of weakness. He was a 
 brown-eyed, pleasant-faced boy, with a sweet 
 mouth, his father's son every inch of him. The 
 marriage of his parents had not been a happy 
 one. His father too, I suppose, had Hugh's 
 pliancy. Anyhow, he was quite young when 
 the marriage was made for him, and it was 
 usual enough among his people to let the old 
 
A SPOILT PRIEST. 1 55 
 
 folk settle matters, while the intending bride 
 and groom were but more or less interested 
 spectators. The result in this union was that 
 the elder Hugh McNelis equally feared and 
 hated his dark-browed, handsome wife, while 
 she elbowed him aside to take the lead in all 
 things, and regarded him with a mingled 
 tolerance and contempt. 
 
 Mrs. McNelis was a very devout woman, 
 though she missed out all the love that is the 
 heart of religion. She should have been a 
 Jew of old, or a worshipper at some very fierce 
 and narrow Little Bethel. She liked sermons 
 on Judgment and Hell, and only tolerated the 
 gentler pronouncements of the priests because 
 they happened to proceed from priests. As a 
 Catholic she was out of place, for the Catholic 
 religion is one that insists more than any other 
 on the Love of God. Holding the priesthood 
 in enormous veneration, she had destined Hugh 
 from the hour he was born to be a priest. She 
 was a prosperous hotel-keeper in a country 
 town, and therefore the giving of her one child 
 
156 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 to the Church would be by many esteemed a 
 sacrifice. But this old woman would have been 
 amazed at the idea of sacrifice. There was 
 something heroic, though hopelessly wrong, in 
 her passionate purpose to make a priest of 
 Hugh. Just as readily would she stand by 
 glorying to see him burnt at the stake for his 
 faith's sake. Just as readily would she herself 
 walk upon burning ploughshares, or endure the 
 rack, the pincers, or the thumbscrew. She 
 would have suffered for her faith quite as 
 readily as she would have persecuted for it. 
 
 She would probably have had her will with 
 Hugh but for an unforeseen happening. Many 
 most admirable priests must have acquired 
 their vocation rather than received it. His 
 mother kept the idea before him through all 
 his childhood, so that he never thought of 
 disputing it. The little town is among heroic 
 scenery, holy with heroic memories. North- 
 ward the saw teeth of a great range of moun- 
 tains divide lowland and highland. To stand 
 in the town street and look at them in the dis- 
 
A SPOILT PRIEST. 157 
 
 tance makes one's heart beat ; they suggest 
 such a glorious country beyond. It is glorious 
 indeed. One enters it by a long pass heaped 
 high with stones a race of giants might have 
 used in their games ; they are set with great 
 symmetry, one upon the other, as though the 
 giants had had a play of housebuilding as a 
 child builds a card castle, being tired of hurley, 
 putting the stone, and the other old strong 
 games. In the highland country it is miles and 
 miles of desolate glens or mountain ranges, or 
 great bleak hills dreaming in solitary grandeur. 
 There is Muckish with slanting sides like a 
 house roof, and Slieve League with a giant 
 face in stone gazing sternly from its summit 
 into the quiet heaven, and Errigal, and many 
 others nearly as great, but with no names to 
 call them by. It was a great fighting country 
 long ago. Elizabeth^s men might ravage 
 Munster, and leave famine, like the locusts, 
 where they had found green pastures, but 
 before this wall of the North they sat helpless 
 and afraid. 
 
158 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 The place and its memories are full of 
 inspiration for the generous time of youth. 
 Even such thoughts in her son Mrs. McNelis 
 discouraged harshly. The heroism of martyrs 
 and missionary priests was the one heroism for 
 her. Hugh was trained, slightly against the 
 grain, to be quiet and prayerful. In due time 
 he went to Maynooth, and gave none of his pro- 
 fessors any uneasiness about him in the first 
 year of his course. 
 
 He said afterwards, that as his mind opened 
 to all the priesthood involved, he became dis- 
 satisfied ; but that was a mood which, passing, 
 might have left him all the more ready to 
 receive the true vocation. However, the 
 summer vacation of that year settled the 
 question for ever. He was looking a little 
 pale when he came home, and his mother, 
 more tender to him than she had ever shown 
 herself before, suggested after a while that 
 he should make an expedition into the moun- 
 tains and settle for a week or two at a little 
 town on the wild North coast, where the 
 
A SPOILT PRIEST. 1 59 
 
 Atlantic comes in under a frowning great 
 Head, and the people are all fisher folk or 
 sailors. In this town lived a cousin of his 
 father's, of whom the old womain entertained a 
 poor opinion. Yet she thought as a niatter of 
 duty that Hugh should see him when in the 
 town. Mrs. McNelis had certainly placed her 
 husband's business and position far beyond 
 what he could ever have done for himself, 
 good easy man. But while Hugh McNelis 
 had prospered Jerry McDonnell had stood 
 still, or perhaps had been a little retrograde. 
 His wife, Sabina, a soft creature, as Mrs. 
 McNelis called her contemptuously, was dead. 
 There was a household of daughters, she had 
 heard somehow or other, but it was an 
 acquaintance she had not cared to follow up ; 
 and indeed neither Jerry McDonnell nor 
 Sabina were ever tempted to intrude on their 
 repellant cousin-in-law. 
 
 Hugh settled down among his new-found 
 relatives with an ease that would have dis- 
 gusted his mother. The warmth and love 
 
l6o A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 that was between father and daughters warmed 
 poor Hugh Hke a fire when one comes in 
 out of cold rain. AHce, the eldest girl, was 
 my friend whom I knew in Dublin. Long 
 after, in their own country, I asked two or 
 three people whether the other girls were 
 like Alice. " Just as good, as gentle, as 
 charming," said one melancholy old lady ; a 
 remark corroborated by carmen and others to 
 whom I spoke, in rather different language. 
 It was hard to believe there could be more 
 than one such girl in an Irish village. 
 Alice was an exquisite motherly creature, 
 and had mothered both her father and her 
 sisters after her own mother died. I have 
 seen her setting her father's blue tie straight 
 or brushing away the dust from his coat 
 sleeves as, stick in hand, he set out on some 
 expedition, doing the little common offices 
 with a grave tenderness that suggested pity 
 and love and watchfulness, all combined. The 
 maternal in a motherly woman is not kept for 
 one love only. It embraces all things, and 
 
A SPOILT PRIEST. l6l 
 
 perhaps male creatures especially, in its great 
 pity. Alice used to treat the little girls as 
 if they were her own children. What work 
 there was with them at the common going- 
 forth to school ; and more than that at the 
 great function of Sunday morning before she 
 brought her demure little flock to mass, with 
 their Leghorn hats and grey frocks, sailing 
 down the windy street like pretty little craft 
 at sea. She loved those children so much 
 that before Hugh McNelis came to Ardmore 
 they filled her peaceful heart. It was a heart 
 that loved duty, and when afterwards, on a 
 somewhat flimsy pretence, she ran away to 
 Dublin and settled there all one winter, it but 
 proved to me how absorbing was the new 
 love that for the time pushed all those gentle 
 ones out of the first place in her heart. 
 
 How the love began who can say ? It 
 was Alice's way to be very kind, and the 
 boy, so simple and gentle, who seemed 
 years younger than herself, and who turned 
 to the kindness that was the law of the 
 
 M 
 
l62 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 house as eagerly as a long-darkened flower 
 turns to the sun, appealed to her strongly. 
 The fact that he was destined for the priest- 
 hood set her on easier terms with him. There 
 was no reason why she should not sit for 
 hours with her pile of household sewing, 
 listening to the thoughts so long pent up 
 that flowed eagerly to this interested listener. 
 Sometimes it was beside the window filled 
 w4th flower-pots that they sat, Alice with 
 her basket of stockings or linen to be 
 mended beside her ; the young fellow, lounging 
 all his length in an easy chair, watching her 
 bent head and her fingers moving swiftly. 
 Or, if the weather was unusually propitious 
 and the Atlantic breakers basking all their 
 length like sleeping lions, Hugh would carry 
 his cousin's basket up to the cliffs over the 
 sea, . where the rocks made many sheltered 
 places, and the lichened boulders provided 
 seats for all comers. I saw one of their 
 haunts in April : it was an enchanted glade 
 of tall ferns and nodding blue-bells, a place 
 
A SPOILT PRIEST. 1 63 
 
 where the fairies dance in moon-white nights. 
 Knowing Alice and her charming face, I 
 could picture her so well, with the red-gold 
 hair lifted back from her little ears, her soft 
 and changing colour and her velvety blue eyes, 
 full of a light of kindness. No wonder the 
 young fellow fell in love with her. 
 
 Whether she loved him then I do not 
 know. The very idea of the priesthood as 
 associated with the boy was pretty sure to 
 keep her conscious thoughts a thousand miles 
 away from love. He himself knew his own 
 case well, and guessed, perhaps, that it would 
 be easy to turn the girl's exquisite kindness to 
 love, if once the bar between them were 
 removed. He said nothing to her, however, 
 while he wore the garb of a divinity student. 
 He went home fully wound up to confront 
 his mother. 
 
 The storm swept him off his feet. His 
 mother was far more terribly wrathful than 
 even he had feared. He had not meant 
 to tell her about Alice ; but she divined 
 
 M 2 
 
]64 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 something of the truth, and, once brought to 
 bay, he brazened it out piteously. To her the 
 whole thing was as if one had rejected the 
 service of God for the service of sin. The girl 
 who innocently had defeated her purpose 
 seemed in her eyes worse than a Jezebel. 
 Her grey fury fairly frightened the boy out 
 of his wits. Standing, confronting him, with 
 one lean finger pointing, her words hissed at 
 him like curses. For two or three days their 
 wills wrestled, but it was a foregone conclusion 
 that the fight should fall to the strongest. By 
 the end of the week Hugh McNelis had given 
 in, temporizing with the fatal weakness that had 
 grown up in him, and had consented to sail 
 to Spain, there to continue his ecclesiastical 
 studies at the college of Salamanca. 
 
 Once he was gone Mrs. McNelis forgave 
 him ; but such a hatred grew up in her for 
 the girl who had decoyed her son away from 
 his vocation, that all that autumn she grew 
 yellower, bitterer, more uncompromising. She 
 nursed her wrongs in her own bosom, and I 
 
A SPOILT PRIEST. 1 65 
 
 doubt that even the confessor to whom she 
 told her lapses from the path of her terrible 
 rectitude, knew anything of the resentment 
 that was corroding her iron heart. But there 
 was a worse blow in store for her. One fine 
 day before Christmas Hugh returned to her, 
 walking into her private room, where she sat 
 casting up her accounts, in an ordinary secular 
 garb, which horrified her eyes as much as if 
 it had been a convict s black and yellow. He 
 looked ill and weary, and little fitted for a new 
 tussle with her. He handed her silently a letter, 
 which she read in a silence as grim as death. It 
 was from the President of the College, telling 
 her in polite Spanish terms that the young 
 gentleman had mistaken his vocation, and how 
 much they regretted that they could not have 
 the further direction of his studies. She looked 
 at him in a stony silence. ** Do you mean to 
 marry that girl ? " she said at last. Hugh 
 answered her wearily. "If she will have me 
 and wait for me ; she knows nothing of all 
 this." His mother pointed to the door : 
 
1 66 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 '* Carry your disgrace to her, then," she 
 said, '* for you are no son of mine." The 
 lad looked at her in wonder ; he was fagged 
 after a long journey, and had neither eaten 
 nor drunk ; his head, reeled with fatigue and 
 want of food. The colourless face told him 
 that she meant what she said. He stood 
 up and took his hat, and with a depressed 
 droop of the head and shoulders, left his 
 mother's presence. 
 
 He was not to go quite hopeless and un- 
 comforted. As he went down the stairs a 
 friendly hand was laid on his. *' Glory be to 
 God, Master Hugh," said Barney, the boots 
 and general factotum of the hotel ; '' sure 
 it's not lavin' your mothers house you are, 
 widout bit or sup." '' She has turned me out, 
 Barney/' said the boy bitterly. " God forgive 
 her, the ould naygur," said Barney, under his 
 breath ; and then, in a coaxing voice, as if 
 Hugh were a very small child, "sure it's only 
 her tantrums. Master Hugh, an' it's sorry she'll 
 be for it. But you won't go hungry, anyhow." 
 
A SPOILT PRIEST. 1 67 
 
 So In Barney s little room beside the stables 
 Hugh was fed and refreshed. 
 
 It was a long drive on the mail car to 
 Ardmore, and when Hugh walked into Jerry 
 McDonnell's fire-lit parlour he looked cold 
 and ill. Alice was alone, for the little 
 girls were all up at the Convent helping to 
 dress the Christmas tree. She was sitting in 
 the half-light knitting rapidly, with her eyes 
 far away, and the firelight on her bent head 
 and black gown. Before she could ask any 
 question he answered the surprise in her 
 eyes. He knelt on the hearthrug beside her, 
 and put his aching forehead on her lap, 
 "I've put off the priest's coat for ever, Alice," 
 he said, ** and my mother has turned me 
 out." I do not pretend to know all that 
 happened, but I can imagine that, seeing 
 her boy in great need, Alice would lean 
 over him and stroke his hair, and caress 
 his tired forehead with her cool fingers till 
 the ache had passed away. I think he 
 made no more declaration of his love than 
 
l68 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 that helpless putting his head upon her 
 knees. 
 
 He was ill for several days after that, but be 
 sure Alice coaxed him back to health. I wish 
 the story were different for the poor young 
 things. If it were only a story and not a 
 transcript from life I would make it begin to 
 end happily now. When Hugh was well again 
 he went off to Dublin to study medicine. 
 There was no chance for him but to work by 
 day for his bread, and at night to attend the 
 night schools, which at that time were thronged 
 by eager students. After a little he got a 
 place in a chemist's shop, and then began the 
 rather melancholy performance of burning the 
 candle at both ends. 
 
 It went on for a year and a half In the 
 beginning of the next winter Alice came to 
 Dublin, having got employment at the teach- 
 ing of lace-making to a class of girls under 
 some industrial scheme. It was then I came 
 to know her, and after a time, having grown 
 to love her, I heard of her poor little love- 
 
A SPOILT PRIEST. 1 69 
 
 affair. Her clients at the lace-making rapidly- 
 increased ; she was really the most charming 
 creature, and seemed to touch irresistibly all 
 manner of people. She got work in some Con- 
 vent schools and was in a way of being fairly 
 prosperous. She was happy too, being absorbed 
 in her lover and the care of him. His pittance 
 at the chemist's scarcely did more than pay his 
 fees and for his books. He might have starved 
 to death in a Dublin garret that winter if it 
 were not for Alice. I used to think them 
 a pathetic couple. Every evening they were 
 together for an hour, between the closing of 
 the chemist's shop and the opening of the 
 Medical School. Be sure I never intruded on 
 them willingly ; but I remember one evening 
 coming in by accident. The tea-table was 
 laid cosily for two, with the addition of a fowl 
 and fresh eggs to the menu. Alice was sit- 
 ting on the floor toasting bread. McNelis 
 was lying in the arm-chair with an air of 
 extreme content ; though even then he was 
 thinner than one liked to see him. 
 
170 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 They were near each other all that winter. 
 Alice was living with kind people who knew 
 about the love-affair and were sincerely- 
 Interested In the poor lovers. Mrs. McNeils 
 made no sign — not even when Hugh wrote a 
 letter to her at Christmas. 
 
 It was In spring, Alice first told me she 
 was anxious about Hugh. He had contracted 
 a cough In the winter which he found It hard to 
 shake off. Working by day and reading by 
 night were telling on his constitution. As the 
 summer went on I grew anxious about 
 Alice herself. The hot city summer was cruel 
 on the mountaln-and-sea-bred girl. The two 
 of them looked rather parched when they 
 used to come to me sometimes for a Sunday 
 in the country, but they were still pathetically 
 happy in being together. In the autumn, 
 Alice told me that Hugh had been asked to 
 take some one's place temporarily as doctor's 
 assistant and compounder on an Atlantic 
 steamer. She was eager that he should accept 
 It, for the sea-trips, she thought, were the very 
 
A SPOILT PRIEST. 171 
 
 thing he needed to set him up. He was not 
 anxious himself to go. He was so fond of her 
 that he would never have left her side if she 
 had not pushed him out into the world. He 
 sailed with the steamer, and for a time I heard 
 good reports of him. Then Alice came and 
 told me one day that he had been offered 
 something advantageous in New York, and 
 that he had decided to take it, at least tem- 
 porarily. She was somewhat fearful about him 
 by this time, as women will be when the men 
 they love are not under their own eyes ; and 
 I had to laugh her out of her fears, though, 
 Heaven knows, she had all my sympathy. 
 
 I don't like lingering over this sad time. In 
 October news came from Hugh that he was 
 ill. Alice gave me the letter without a word 
 when I went to see her after a few weeks' 
 of absence. She looked at me with heavy 
 mournful eyes. The letter was most pathetic. 
 The boy had evidently tried to write bravely, 
 but in every word was a longing for her pres- 
 ence and help far more touching than if he 
 
172 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 had spoken fully. I asked her if she had done 
 anything. '* Yes," she replied, In a dull way ; 
 *' I did what I never thought to do : I wrote 
 to his mother and implored her to give me 
 money to go to him ; she has never answered 
 me." I thought of a dozen schemes for raising 
 the money while I sat there holding her poor 
 hand. It could have been done, no doubt, 
 but before we could do more than move in 
 the matter we heard, indirectly, that Mrs. 
 McNeils herself had gone out to Hugh. 
 
 It was curious how Alice took this bit of 
 news. She raged like a young tigress when 
 first it was told to her. Her jealous love was 
 up in arms against the cruel mother, who 
 having reduced him to this, had now once 
 again come between them. But after a time 
 she said she was glad that he would not be 
 alone, nor without care. I was glad when she 
 made up her mind to go home. It was misera- 
 ble for her in Dublin now the short winter days 
 were closing in, and the streets were murky 
 with fog and rain. She had suffered enough. 
 
A SPOILT PRIEST. 173 
 
 my poor Alice. Mrs. Barry, the kind woman 
 in whose house she Hved, did her best to 
 take care of her. When she came in from 
 her lacemaking — for still she went mechanically 
 to her work — her dinner was given to her in 
 her own little room, beside a cheerful fire. 
 Mrs. Barry explained to me that she was 
 sure the greatest kindness was to leave Alice 
 alone as much as possible. The good woman 
 had tears in her eyes as she told me how 
 sorrowful it was to see the girl in those days 
 when first she heard Hugh was ill. " To see 
 her crumbling the bread and trying to swallow 
 it, and all the time feeling as if every bit 
 would choke her, the creature, would break your 
 heart. And then the watching for the post. I 
 declare I couldn't look at her when we heard 
 the postman's knock coming down the street, 
 for I knew how every drop of blood in her 
 body was listening. And the dead sick look 
 of disappointment when he passed by or 
 brought her nothing. God keep my little girls 
 from the like." And then Mrs. Barry furtively 
 
174 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 wiped away her honest tears with the corner 
 of her apron. 
 
 Of the rest of the sad little story I have no 
 personal cognizance. Alice was quite silent 
 after her return to the North, and feeling 
 that she was in such bitter trouble I did 
 not keep writing letters to her. For many 
 years now I have heard nothing directly from 
 her, and it was only last April I was told how 
 her love-story ran through that mournful winter 
 and spring. 
 
 She went home at least to great love, and to 
 that tender silence which is the most compre- 
 hensive sympathy. Jerry McDonnell might 
 be a poor creature from a worldly point of view, 
 but the finest gentleman that ever lived could 
 not have bettered him in the delicate kindness 
 he showed his unhappy daughter. When that 
 mournful pilgrimage of hers, which took place 
 daily for many months, was going on, he never 
 asked a question. He saw Alice go away on 
 the mail-car every evening and return every 
 morning, dull and fagged, and except for an 
 
A SPOILT PRIEST. I 75 
 
 added tenderness, there was no sign that this 
 was out of the way. Delia, the second girl, 
 who blooms more rosy than Alice ever was, 
 took the reins of housekeeping while Alice 
 slept or rested in her bedroom up in a gray 
 wind-swept gable. Her father knew that she 
 went every night over sixteen long miles of 
 country to nurse the dying lover, and made no 
 protest. Not even when the weather grew 
 fierce, and she became the only passenger by 
 the mail-car. He bought her a fine fleecy 
 shawl, and used to wrap her in it every evening 
 on the car with a kindness that brought tears 
 to her hot eyes. But he said nothing ; and 
 indeed many hearts as well as his ached with 
 sympathy for the forlorn girl. It was significant 
 of the esteem she was held in that no one 
 seemed to think the proceeding unseemly, 
 though the Irish are so conventional a people. 
 There was nothing but a profound pity and 
 sympathy for her, that survives even to this 
 day, when the story of her past wraps her about 
 like a widow's veil. 
 
176 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 Mrs. McNeils had brought her son home to 
 his father's house. There was no doubt of her 
 love for him, for when she came back from 
 America with her dying boy, people said she 
 was scarcely recognizable, she had grown so old, 
 so haggard and weak. Her unbending stature 
 had sunk by a couple of inches. Her fierce old 
 eyes had taken a look of misery. She pro- 
 cured for Hugh the best doctors, and every 
 thing else money could buy. The doctors 
 confirmed the verdict of the local man, that 
 Hugh's illness was consumption, rapid and 
 hopeless. She would give him all things but 
 one, and that was the society of the girl 
 he loved. Against Alice her old implacable 
 hatred had increased a thousand-fold. She 
 looked on her as the cause of all her troubles, 
 of her alienation from her son, his illness, his 
 death that was coming swiftly. 
 
 Fortunately for the two whose last solace 
 was to be together, the trouble had broken the 
 old woman's strength. All day she might be 
 about the sick room, but at night she was fain 
 
A SPOILT PRIEST. 177 
 
 to leave Hugh to other hands. ' The hotel ser- 
 vants, who v^^ere devoted to him from boyhood, 
 were supposed to sit up with him. But every 
 night, as soon as his mother was safely in bed, 
 the slender black-robed figure of his sweetheart 
 stole in, and all the night she was near him, 
 praying, smoothing his pillows, surrounding 
 him with every tender care, and making his 
 path to the grave, as far as might be, a happy 
 one. She came in the dusk of the evening ; 
 she stole out in the grey dawn of the morning. 
 The hotel servants were banded together to 
 keep the lovers' secret from the implacable 
 old mother. All the town knew the story, but 
 the sympathy being universally with the lovers, 
 no eavesdropper or spy carried stories. I doubt 
 that the old woman ever knew to her dying 
 day how her son's death-bed had been com- 
 forted. In the end he died in Alice's arms, 
 one chilly dawn when the first spring birds 
 were trilling their unaccustomed notes. 
 
 I passed through the little town where she 
 lives in April. The driver of the mail-car 
 
 N 
 
178 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 magnanimously offered me seven minutes In 
 
 which to see her, but I could not spring upon 
 
 her so suddenly, a ghost out of her dead past. 
 
 As I sat while he changed the horses I saw, 
 
 in the grey gabled house at the corner, a 
 
 figure by the window with a graceful bent 
 
 head. Perhaps It was Alice still mending the 
 
 house-linen as In the old days when Hugh 
 
 McNeils fell In love with her. She has a 
 
 beautiful reputation In her own country-side, 
 
 a reputation of a dutiful daughter, a most 
 
 loving and maternal sister, a tender friend and 
 
 helper, and outside it all the consecration of her 
 
 sad story. While I sat, thefigureat the window 
 
 never raised its head. If it had I am sure 
 
 I should have seen Alice's face, less like a^ 
 
 wild rose than of old, but with an exceeding 
 
 tender beauty on it of faith, and hope, and love. 
 
WAIFS. 
 
 THE Irish country lay sleeping in Sabbath 
 stillness. The hills had retired behind 
 warm mists, out of which flashed here 
 and there a fire like a beacon ; weeds or furze 
 burning that transfused the veils of the mist to 
 golden, and made a new beauty in the placid 
 evening. There was a rich sunset. The 
 dews hung in fiery drops on every grass blade ; 
 Stellaria and speedwell made drifts of blue and 
 white in the ditches ; and the first pearly buds 
 of the hawthorn were bursting their little green 
 shells. Exquisite weather, with a golden tran- 
 quillity that seemed to quiet even the cattle. 
 They browsed in the yellow and white pastures 
 with a low sound of feeding that but made 
 silence audible. Very lovely is that Irish 
 country ; and the bark of a distant dog, the 
 
 N 2 
 
l8o A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 subdued hum of the city by the far sea-shore, 
 and the bell floating its thought of prayer over 
 the browning meadows, were but sounds that 
 made harmony in the music of its quietness. 
 
 We came along a road where the catkins 
 were withering off the willows, and all the 
 marsh marigolds were out in the trenches. For 
 a good Irish mile around there was only a 
 lodge we vaguely guessed to be inhabited, to 
 bring us in touch with the human world. The 
 lodge belonged to an empty house. There are 
 scores such round Dublin going to rack and ruin, 
 the sweetbriar hedges of their gardens trampled 
 through by cattle ; the roses returning to a 
 wild state ; the fruit a prey to any venturesome 
 urchin who will brave the awe that hangs about 
 a desolated house, to gather it. The land, 
 which so near the city has an artifical value, is 
 in the hands of a farmer, who would if he 
 could, raze the old house to the earth, and bid 
 grass to grow on the hearthstone around which 
 a family had gathered. 
 
 We were coming close to the lodge of the 
 
WAIFS. 1 8 1 
 
 empty house. Just there the road sinks 
 between high thorn hedges, after passing which 
 one cHmbs the hill again into the world. There 
 is an avenue of beech and elm to the old 
 house. Behind it the sunset shows gor- 
 geously through the arches and pillars, and 
 beyond the bold, springing branches of the 
 trees. As we came along, the frogs were 
 croaking in the ditches, and all the dewy banks 
 were covered with snails out for exercise. As 
 we came near the sinking in the road we saw 
 sitting by the roadside the quaintest, strangest 
 wee figure. If I had been alone, the creature 
 at such an hour and place would have startled 
 me. It sat by the roadside buried in the grass 
 and wearing to all appearance the conical cap 
 of the fairies. My companion laughed, half- 
 scaredly. " What is it ? " she said, creeping 
 closer to me. '* Is it a leprechaun ? " 
 
 Our dog shared our distrust. As he 
 noticed the thing he erected his ears and 
 growled suspiciously. Then he crept cautiously 
 before us in a way he has when he suspects 
 
1 82 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 anything to be uncanny. Presently taking his 
 courage in both paws, so to speak, he galloped 
 straight up to the little fairy and inspected It. 
 A child's cry of terror reassured him and us. It 
 was indeed a preternaturally small child, who, 
 after that cry of distress, sat with grimy fingers 
 thrust In each eye, and resolutely refused to 
 look at us or answer our questions. He was 
 so unlike a child of the country people that we 
 never associated him with the lodge, which 
 was close at hand. We thought he must have 
 strayed somehow. There had been a gipsy 
 caravan In the neighbourhood, and he looked, 
 with his queer shrivelled appearance, as If he 
 might be some little acrobat, whose tiny limbs 
 were withered by many contortions. We 
 looked towards the lodge in vague distress. 
 There was no firelight in the uncurtained 
 windows ; the chimneys were black and smoke- 
 less ; the place looked quite forlorn, though I 
 had heard there were people living there. 
 
 However, our doubts were solved. From 
 the fields where the mists were blotting out the 
 
WAIFS. 183 
 
 sunlight came an eerie and mournful sound of 
 crying. We looked at each other ; it was as if 
 we had suddenly stepped from our safe, 
 pleasant country, every inch of which we knew, 
 into mysteries. Such things had happened to 
 people who stray at eve into fairy raths, but we 
 were not yet quite prepared to accept our 
 leprechaun and the ghostly crying as unreal. 
 While we waited developments the little boy 
 took his yellow fists out of his eyes. " It's 
 Alice," he said, with an unmistakable sigh of 
 relief ; '' she went away from me an' Biddy, but 
 she's coming back." 
 
 The sound came nearer, drearily along the 
 winding "passway," as they call it, which V(^as 
 once a right of way, but is now choked in parts 
 with briars and thorns. It leads one a very 
 lonely way through the fields, wide fields eerily 
 lonely when the evening comes down. 
 Presently the owner of the wailing voice 
 issued in the roadway, and came nearer, 
 scarcely hushing her monotonous wail even 
 for the surprise of seeing us engaged with the 
 
184 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 little brother. Her crying had a strange 
 meaning for a wee dot like her. It was a 
 wail of utter despair and weariness, as of 
 one worn out with trouble, to whom monot- 
 onous crying brought relief. The child 
 could scarcely be more than six, yet her 
 face was old and tired and lined with 
 responsibility. Her crying was unaccompanied 
 by tears, and the dry-eyed grief added 
 to the intensity of that unchildlike trouble. 
 She only stopped crying when one of us put a 
 hand on her head. " What is the matter, little 
 one ? " we said. She looked at first as If she 
 would not answer. Then she said with hesita- 
 tion, '' Mother went away a long time ago, and 
 I was frightened, and Jimmy and Biddy were 
 hungry." *' Where is she gone?" we asked. 
 ** She went away over the fields," she answered, 
 "and father went first, and they never came 
 back." We asked where they lived. She 
 pointed her finger to the lodge in the distance. 
 ** Is there no one in the house ? " we said. 
 ** Biddy is," she replied ; '* I was going home 
 
WAIFS. 185 
 
 to her. She'll be lonely without Jimmy or me. 
 Come along, Jimmy," she said to the little lad. 
 We went along the road, a party of four. 
 Jimmy, now he was no longer friendless, 
 trotted along with the happy confidence that 
 belongs by right to his three years of age. 
 Alice had his hand in hers, but there was no 
 corresponding dance In her footstep. She 
 walked heavily, as if already accustomed to 
 carrying burdens. By this time we were 
 tolerably well able to identify the missing 
 father and mother. We had been out through 
 the long hours of the April afternoon, and had 
 met, three or four hours earlier, a man on the 
 road to the village. We noticed that he was 
 slightly drunk from his flushed face. By the 
 hand he held a little chap, who was no doubt 
 the brother of Alice and Jimmy, and who 
 stepped out bravely in the effort to keep up 
 with the man's pace, not at all slackened for 
 his little feet. Half an hour later, as we sat on 
 a bank of violets, two women came by. One 
 was a tall, handsome, sullen -looking girl. 
 
1 86 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 Beside her walked an old crone, with a suspici- 
 ously red face and a pair of bleared eyes. She 
 was listening to some story the girl poured out 
 in a shrill vehement voice, with acute sym- 
 pathy. The girl herself, whom we took to be 
 the mother of these poor babies, was flushed 
 and excited. She looked as if she had been 
 quarrelling with some one, and as the two went 
 by us a reek of whisky floated on the sweet 
 air. Evidently the husband and wife had 
 quarrelled over their drinking, and each had 
 then set out to stupefy themselves anew. We 
 thought the pair of women might have 
 appeared In a picture to be called " Evil 
 Counsel." The passionate, handsome young 
 woman, and the old crone listening, sympathiz- 
 ing, leading the way to the village tavern, 
 where she herself had so often drowned her 
 sorrows and disgrace, were very suggestive. 
 
 We comforted Alice as well as we could. 
 In the lodge all was cold and dark. We were 
 very uncertain as to whether Biddy was an old 
 woman, a child, a cat, a hen, or what not ; 
 
WAIFS. ~ 187 
 
 SO we entered the low door with some curiosity. 
 There was nothing visible that could be Biddy. 
 There was no fire on the black hearth. An 
 empty kettle lay on its side on the floor. 
 Under the window a miserable bed was un- 
 made, and heaped with nondescript garments. 
 There was some broken crockery on the 
 dresser. Sign of food there was none, not 
 even a can of well-water in the wretched 
 hovel. 
 
 Alice was evidently concerned at Biddy's 
 non-appearance. She had expected to find her 
 in the bed. She gazed at it with a blank 
 incredulous look. Then she lifted the clothes, 
 and looked under them ; she peered beneath 
 the bed ; she looked into the little empty room 
 that was ofT the first room. Then she blinked 
 at us with a gaze of helpless bewilderment. 
 Before we could answer her look I chanced to 
 turn round. There was a great stone behind 
 the gate, evidently intended for a rough seat. 
 On this stone was squatted a naked year-old 
 baby as yellow and wrinkled as a little heathen 
 
1 88 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 idol. The creature stared at us with round 
 bright eyes, but made absolutely no sound or 
 motion. I laughed out : the little thing was 
 so odd. But Alice, when she saw it, ran at it, 
 with an inarticulate maternal cry, and hugged 
 it up in her arms. She sat down on the stone 
 seat and held the baby against her narrow little 
 chest, folding round it the tiny rag of shawl she 
 was wearing. While we watched, Jimmy too 
 crept up on the stone seat. He had evidently 
 forgotten his hunger, for he sidled around his 
 sister and began to coo to Biddy. Biddy was 
 not the smiling sort ; but a pleasurable excite- 
 ment came into her little yellow visage, and 
 she caught at the fingers extended to her. 
 Then the pair began a game of hide-and-seek, 
 and we were forgotten. But Alice sat in the 
 midst of it with the mournful responsibility in 
 her big eyes, and the strange gravity on her 
 little dark face. She never joined in the play, 
 but now and again she looked down at the 
 younger children with a brooding maternal 
 sweetness in her grave gaze. I thought 
 
WAIFS. 189 
 
 how if the group had been seen by a great 
 painter, he would have made of it an immortal 
 picture. 
 
 We asked Alice some questions about the 
 cruel father and mother. She answered us 
 with the most guarded air of reservation. It 
 was as if on this strange little one had fallen 
 not only the burden of maternal care for the 
 younger children, but also the maternal need of 
 sheltering from scandal or reproach her un- 
 happy parents. The loyal little soul would say 
 nothing against them. I fear she even perjured 
 herself to shelter their reputations, unwitting 
 all the time that she herself and the forlorn 
 little group of which she was the centre, made 
 the strongest indictment against them. 
 
 We went up the hill when the evening star 
 was in the sky, and from a motherly woman 
 begged bread and milk for the poor babes. 
 Her one little son, his father's idol, was learn- 
 ing unsteadily to travel from the settle to his 
 father's knee. They gave their food gladly, 
 and were full of eager sympathy, but were 
 
IQO A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 fearful to meddle or to see us meddling. '' O 
 Miss, dear," said the gentle little mother, 
 ** don't let Bryan an' the wife find you there 
 when they come home, for when the drink is 
 on them, there's no knowing what they'd say 
 or do. God help the poor childher ! Sure my 
 heart bleeds for them, an' it's glad I'd be to 
 cuddle them up at the fire with my own Neddy ; 
 but it's frightened I'd be of the father an' 
 mother." 
 
 I had forgotten the people, but remembered 
 then that Bryan had been in my father's em- 
 ployment at the time he was married. His 
 wife was a handsome, undisciplined creature, 
 almost a child, and came from some unknown 
 source. Some people said her father and 
 mother were gipsies ; and anyhow she had the 
 swarthy beauty of the gipsies. Mrs. Keogh, 
 hugging her own little son, had no very stern 
 condemnation of her. *' God help her, the 
 crature ! " she said ; " she was right good till Jim 
 began to beat her. Och, he's the brute when 
 he has the drink taken. An' Molly was 
 
WAIFS. 191 
 
 always that proud, that it nearly drove her mad 
 for him to lift his hand to her. An' so she 
 took to drownin' her sorrows herself, the 
 crature. An' they do say. Miss, that that ould 
 Mrs. Lloyd that rared her, is to blame for 
 leadin' her into evil ways. Och, God forbid 
 I'd blame the poor thing! an' they say she's 
 kind to the childher, even when she has drink 
 taken, an' would kill Bryan if he lifted his hand 
 to them." 
 
 When we went back with Mrs. Keogh's 
 bread and milk, Jimmy and Biddy were asleep, 
 curled up about the elder child, who sat grave 
 and unwinking, gazing at the procession of the 
 stars that was filing down the sky. She roused 
 up the sleepy-heads and fed them, not taking 
 bit or sup herself till they were satisfied. We 
 left them so in the warm spring night ; April 
 this year was warm as June ; and for long I 
 heard no more of them. Next day I left home 
 for a tour through a wild Northern country, 
 and only returned to pack up my things for a 
 flitting, '' for good," as they say. 
 
192 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 Poor little waifs ! I have often thought of 
 them. I heard the other day the mother was dead. 
 The father drinks worse than ever. Perhaps 
 now the mother Is better to them. I knew in 
 that wild Northern country a family of mother- 
 less bairns, just such helpless weans as Alice, 
 Jimmy and Biddy. The father was a drunkard. 
 The children, left alone three nights out of 
 four, were for some time a scandal to the 
 parish, so great was their dirt and misery. All 
 of a sudden they appeared one fine morning 
 washed and bright, with their little yellow curls 
 smoothed like silk. The neighbours marvelled. 
 Some curious person Interrogated the children. 
 " Mother came," they said, " dressed In white, 
 and kissed us and cried. And then she fed us 
 and washed us and went away." And no one 
 could shake them In their story, even though 
 they were confronted with that high tribunal, 
 the parish priest. But their father was so sure 
 of the truth of the story that It changed him 
 entirely, and he became a sober, God-fearing 
 man and a most tender father. Perhaps It is 
 
WAIFS. 193 
 
 not a solitary case. It might well be that the 
 barriers of another world, of death and the 
 grave, would not be strong enough to keep 
 away from her desolate babies a dead mother 
 who knew them neglected and ill-treated. 
 
A DESCENDANT OF IRISH EARLS. 
 
 HE sat in my little room on a brilliant 
 day of May, despite that he wore a 
 working-man's respectable cheap suit 
 of tweeds, in face and gaze a reverend signior. 
 The light blue eyes, that had just a film of 
 dreams upon them, regarded me with grave 
 dignity. The long slender olive face, with its 
 finely-pointed beard, was the ideal one for 
 doublet and ruff. Clap the head in an ancient 
 picture frame, and place it alongside a gallery's 
 length of Desmond s Earls, and you would at 
 once recognize the relationship. Certainly not 
 a pretender, and still less, one thought, marking 
 his air of quiet belief in his assertions, a man 
 who pretended to himself, or inwardly fell short 
 of his pretensions. I suppose noblesse oblige 
 will bind, or may bind, as surely the inheritor 
 
A DESCENDANT OF IRISH EARLS. 1 95 
 
 of proud blood and traditions fallen to a trade 
 of glass-making, as one yet in possession of his 
 inheritance. I do not know if my poor friend 
 was a glass-blower manqu4 because of his 
 Desmond blood ; but sure am I that his 
 dreams wove in the crystals such magic lines of 
 rose and opal that if such things were tangible 
 he were a finer craftsman than the finest of 
 Salviatis. Sitting at his work I make no doubt 
 he blew glass — and other things. Fairy 
 iridescent things that floated between earth and 
 sky, and had in them the glory of a prism. 
 But presently he must needs go home to the 
 tall tenement house in a grimy Dublin street, 
 where wife and weans were depending on his 
 mere prosaic glass-making ; and there, no doubt, 
 the poverty, the crying children, the poor room, 
 would prick that rosy bubble that had floated 
 home with him along the dark streets. 
 
 In Dublin one is not often out of sight of 
 the mountains, nor out of smell of the sea. At 
 least these things are nearly always easy to 
 regain. From upper .windows one can get a 
 
 o 2 
 
196 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 glimpse of the blue hills, these spring days 
 glorified with the rose and purple of the East 
 wind. These same East-windy mornings the 
 salt breath of the sea comes up through the 
 streets, reminding one delightfully that Dublin 
 
 is a seaboard city. G Street, however, 
 
 though the tenements be leaning over from 
 height and ricketiness, affords one no glimpse 
 of the mountains ; and though a five minutes' 
 walk will bring you in sight of Howth, like a 
 sapphire in the bay, the sea-strand you will 
 come upon is little more than mud-banks and 
 sewage deposit, and from that blows no sea- 
 salt, bright and sweet. 
 
 On the street itself is writ large, as with 
 many of its neighbours, Ichabod, These were 
 the dwellings of the peers and gentlemen- 
 commoners of Ireland in the palmy days before 
 the Union, the days that no legislation will 
 restore, any more than it will "■ The glory that 
 was Greece, and the grandeur that was Rome." 
 The houses have forlorn remnants of bygone 
 splendour. Doors and window-shutters are of 
 
A DESCENDANT OF IRISH EARLS. 1 97 
 
 wine-red mahogany, rich and ancient. Ornate 
 decorations in Italian stucco-work are on walls 
 and ceiling. Why, here Angelica Kauffmann 
 may have worked herself, for she came over 
 in that reign of splendour, the Rutland Vice- 
 royalty, to decorate some of these houses, the 
 Irish nobility having singularly munificent 
 ideas about decoration, and the best artists 
 to perform it. 
 
 It was of a Bank-holiday my Desmond 
 visited me. Any other day he had been at his 
 glass-blowing. I suppose it was delightful to 
 him to get out of the dark street, and come by 
 lanes of bloomy hawthorn, and fields of white 
 and gold, with scarce a grass-blade between, 
 and to find at the end of that delightful journey 
 — sympathy. I suppose the wife was a little 
 intolerant of her earl-presumptive. I am sure 
 the children were, especially the two elder 
 ones, a boy and a girl grown enough to be 
 employed respectably as a post-office sorter 
 and an apprentice to the dressmaking, respec- 
 tively. After all, when one is earning one's 
 
198 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 money, and well-content with the state of life 
 in which God has placed one, it is somewhat 
 irritating to have a father who is a pseudo- 
 earl, and with very serious ideas of the ways 
 and manners incumbent on one because 
 there is in one's veins the blood of nobles, 
 saints and warriors, who are come to be less 
 than dust, and of no possible use to their 
 descendants. 
 
 He came to me for sympathy because he 
 had seen an article of mine about Youghal, 
 once the seat of the Desmond power, in which 
 I had been enthusiastic over that great line — a 
 line rather of Irish princes than of Anglo- Irish 
 earls. Between them and their cousins, the 
 Kildare Fitzgeralds, they pretty well halved 
 Ireland. Indeed all the great Southern and 
 Eastern expanse of Ireland would have been 
 theirs, except for a race sprung from a plaguy 
 fellow who was Henry the Second's butler, and 
 had founded a race of Butlers, great in brain- 
 power as well as in thew and sinew. These 
 and the Fitzgeralds hated each other with a 
 
A DESCENDANT OF IRISH EARLS. 1 99 
 
 bitter rivalry. However, my Fitzgerald of 
 Desmond thought upon me as one likely to 
 understand what he had inherited. And, 
 poor soul, he had grown tired of trying to air 
 in the columns of newspapers — mostly closed 
 to him as a poor bore — the fact that he was 
 the lineal descendant of the great Earls of 
 Desmond, and that he would like to know on 
 what basis certain ladies of wealth and position 
 rested their claims to dispossess him of his 
 honours. 
 
 He had come to prove his claims to one 
 interested listener. Therefore he waved away 
 all offer of refreshment ; and producing from 
 an old portfolio, which he carried as if it con- 
 tained the Crown jewels, various documents, 
 he demanded my attention for them. Each 
 was tied and folded with scrupulous care ; each 
 wrapped in layers of tissue-paper. They were 
 worn so thin that they needed such protection. 
 " I am in the habit of perusing them frequently, 
 madam," he said in his formal manner, and 
 gazing at me over his great spectacles. It was 
 
200 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 easy to see that by the way he followed from a 
 distance my reading of the MSS. 
 
 There was an elaborate and careful account 
 of his derivation from Garrett Fitzgerald, nine- 
 teenth Earl of Desmond, and his wife Helen, 
 daughter of Lord Richard Condon. His 
 grandmother, Elizabeth Fitzgerald, was the 
 grand-daughter of this last Fitzgerald to bear 
 the title of Earl Desmond. They were three 
 forlorn damsels, Elizabeth, EUeanora, and 
 Helen, tricked of their inheritance as effectu- 
 ally as was their ancestor in 1589, by Sir 
 Walter Raleigh, who was himself stript bare by 
 the most astute Earl of Cork, thirteen years 
 later. They had friends, however, if they had 
 not gear, and no doubt were made much of in 
 the gay Dublin of their time. The lovely 
 Isabella, Duchess of Rutland, was their fast 
 friend and sympathizer. One thinks of her 
 protecting the wronged and innocent, for ever 
 fresh and lovely, as Sir Joshua Reynolds 
 painted her ; or as she shines out of a con- 
 temporary record at a Rotunda Gardens fete. 
 
A DESCENDANT OF IRISH EARLS. 20l 
 
 in a dress of pink silk with a stomacher and 
 sleeve-knots of diamonds, and a great hat of 
 brown velvet, sideways on her charming 
 powdered head, set with a plume of feathers 
 and an aigrette of diamonds. Perhaps the 
 three damsels danced at those Rotunda balls, 
 for their cousin, the Earl of Grandlson, or their 
 magnificent duchess, would surely never have 
 allowed them to languish in genteel poverty. 
 
 Helen, a woman of spirit, proceeded against 
 the Duke of Devonshire for the restoration of 
 their lost acres. But being single-handed and 
 a woman, she failed, poor soul, and taking her 
 failure to heart, died of it. I have forgotten 
 about Elleanora ; but Elizabeth, my Desmond's 
 grandmother, married a very gallant soldier, 
 who afterwards was killed at the Battle of 
 Bunker's Hill. So my Desmond has a lien 
 with American earth. 
 
 If the Duke of Rutland had not taken a 
 putrid fever after a gay progress through the 
 North of Ireland, and died of it after a few 
 days' illness, my sketch need never have been 
 
202 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 written. The duchess was so interested in her 
 proUgdes that she had obtained the Duke's 
 promise to settle a handsome pension upon 
 them. No doubt, too, she would have been a 
 powerful friend in any new effort they should 
 make to win back their own. However, the 
 Duke died ; the gay days of the Rutland reign 
 were over : her Grace fled back to England a 
 forlorn widow ; and there settled on Ireland 
 the black shadow of the approaching Rebellion. 
 And so the wrong went quite unrighted. 
 
 That it was acknowledged to a certain 
 extent was shown by the fact that my 
 Desmond's father enjoyed during his lifetime a 
 small State pension, which, however, lapsed 
 with his death. 
 
 I can see as I write the grave olive face with 
 the eyes regarding me. What an unsettling 
 thing for a common worker in glass to be lineal 
 descendant of so proud a line! I have said 
 they were Irish princes. They were; in their 
 power, the extent of their territories, and their 
 haughty bearing towards the race from whose 
 
A DESCENDANT OF IRISH EARLS. 203 
 
 loins they had sprung. More Irish than the 
 Irish, such were the Fitzgeralds, aHke of 
 Desmond and Kildare ; but yet no Irish 
 princes of a half - barbarous magnificence. 
 Rather with all the stately splendour of the 
 Courts of the Middle Ages superadded to their 
 free life ; with traditions of church-building and 
 college-founding, as you will know, seeing their 
 remains at Youghal, where is their college, and 
 the Church of St. Mary's, and the Warden's 
 House of one magnificent foundation ; and the 
 town yet landmarked on North and South by 
 the ruins of the abbeys built by them for 
 the great mendicant Friars of the Middle 
 Ages, Franciscan and Dominican. And 
 along Blackwater, most lovely of rivers, all 
 burnished copper and gold in the Autumn 
 because of the overhanging woods, every high 
 crag has its castle in ruins, once the proud 
 eyrie of a Desmond Earl. 
 
 The Atlantic roars like wild bulls at the 
 strand of Youghal. On the mildest day the 
 air is full of its thud and reverberation, and 
 
204 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 ever a shower of silver spray springs above 
 the strong sea-wall. It must be magnificent 
 in storm. Where the harbour of Youghal 
 narrows to the mouth of Blackwater, one is 
 ferried across to holy Ardmore of St. Declan, 
 with its church and holy well, and St. Declan's 
 stone. Across the ferry is county Waterford. 
 In Ardmore long ago they buried a Desmond 
 Earl ; but, exiled from his own Temple- Michael 
 on the Blackwater, his spirit would not rest. 
 So every night, over the breakers and the 
 storm they heard a strange, great voice, crying 
 terribly, " Garoult arointha! arointha," — which 
 is ** Hurry over! Give Gerald a ferry." So at 
 last they took up the unquiet dead, and ferried 
 him to Temple- Michael, where his sleep was 
 sound. 
 
 A race of giants certainly. In Youghal 
 streets, ghostly in the autumn weather, what 
 shadows elbow each other ! Knights Tem- 
 plars, Desmonds, Elizabethans, Spenser and 
 Raleigh, Noll Cromwell and his Round- 
 heads. The past of Youghal is great and 
 
A DESCENDANT OF IRISH EARLS. 205 
 
 misty, like a huge tapestry blown with the sea- 
 wind, on which stir gigantic figures of knights 
 and horsemen. But of the great and magnifi 
 cent Desmonds remains this — an old man with 
 a wallet of yellow papers, escaped from an irk- 
 some trade one hour of a summer day, to pour 
 into the ears of a willing listener his mouldy 
 old tale, at which the well-fed, well-clad world 
 had gaped and shrugged its impertinent 
 shoulders. 
 
MAD MOLLY. 
 
 HER cabin is close by a lonely lane 
 that in all its length of miles has not 
 half a dozen human habitations ; for 
 a good Irish mile each side there is nothing 
 but the loneliness of winter fields. Just opposite 
 the broken gate leading to her door a bit of 
 road goes between enormously high hedges to 
 the high road — a high road very innocent of 
 traffic, be it said, though occasionally a snorting 
 steam-tram puffs along it. Presently the road 
 winds from its placid level sweep at the foot of 
 the mountains and climbs a steep shelf of the 
 hill into a valley, and disappears through a 
 gorge into the next county. That bye-lane is 
 the eeriest place I know. By Mad Molly's 
 cabin stands a tall stone pine, that in the 
 gloaming looks like a mill chimney. Where 
 
MAD MOLLY. 207 
 
 the lane and the road meet there is a three- 
 cornered bit of grass, and standing out of it a 
 tall telegraph pole, with an irresistible suggestion 
 of a gibbet. The place is marshy, and looking 
 down at it of an evening from the higher 
 ground, a stranger will not be persuaded that 
 the solid floor of mist below is not a stretch of 
 water. The marsh vapours make the strangest 
 effects. I have walked there of an autumn 
 evening with my heart in my mouth, and need- 
 ing all my will not to keep looking appre- 
 hensively over my shoulder. I have always 
 companionship ; sometimes human and canine ; 
 more often canine only. But one could desire 
 no wholesomer company than a fox-terrier, 
 irreverently free from morbidness, and a St. 
 Bernard, very scrupulous as to his duties of 
 guardianship. By myself nothing would in- 
 duce me to walk that way — not though it were 
 the goldenest evening summer ever saw — not 
 even in the unwinking noon-light. 
 
 The first evening I knew Mad Moll had 
 taken possession of her own cabin, my experi- 
 
208 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 ence was eerie enough, or rather it was a 
 vicarious experience. I had a friend with me, 
 a girl cramped by the life of cities, and ever 
 eager to stretch her limbs or widen her country 
 sensations. The sun had gone down scarlet in 
 an orange sky. As we walked along, the white 
 smoke of the mist began to exhale from the 
 fields, yellow with old stubble. On one side of 
 the way the fields were clear. On the other 
 side, the mists presently covered them impene- 
 trably. It was as if the fairies were hiding 
 their mysteries from mortal eyes. A wisp of 
 the mist floated across our path ; breaths of it 
 came tangling about our feet as we walked. 
 The telegraph pole was full of the voices of the 
 wind ; for a minute we did not detect where 
 was the mysterious singing. By the roadside 
 the marshy land emptied its waters into a ditch 
 so deep and wide that it was a miniature pond ; 
 under its bushes some disturbance had set up a 
 ghostly suction, a sound of ebb and flow. 
 
 I shivered a little as the cabin stood up 
 across the neglected pathway. It looked what 
 
MAD MOLLY. 209 
 
 they called It, haunted. It stands on a little 
 hill — a fairy rath, that no wise human being 
 would desecrate by his or her Intrusion. The 
 good people did not manifest themselves there 
 prettily and pleasantly in the only case I know 
 where they made their presence felt. It was 
 not an occasion. Indeed, for fairy cavalcades or 
 dances. It proved, too, that though they have 
 no souls, poor little folk, they are yet friends of 
 God. It was In a bygone June. The fields 
 were lush with over-rich grasses ; and, like the 
 Field of the Cloth of Gold, with buttercups and 
 cowslips. Every hedgerow was a Milky Way 
 of hawthorn. The cows had just come out of 
 the city, and were browsing in exquisite con- 
 tentment amid the silver dews and the delicious 
 drifts of grass. They were in charge of half a 
 dozen fellows as reckless and daring as so 
 many Texan cowboys. It was their first night 
 to sleep In the haunted house on the fairy rath. 
 They were playing cards, though, if they had 
 been out of doors, under the large golden moon, 
 they might have heard the silver flutes of the 
 
2IO A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 fairies. There was one old reprobate of their 
 number who boasted that he feared not God nor 
 the devil. He was in bad luck at the cards, and 
 his profanity grew till it displeased even his 
 wild comrades. They were all clustered, with 
 their heated faces, about the table and its one 
 tallow-candle. Some who were not playing 
 said afterwards that there was an ominous wind 
 about the house, full of moaning and wailing, 
 and that shadows flitted by the small window, 
 shadows which had no corresponding sub- 
 stance. Then the gamblers grew quieter, 
 and the sounds outside died away. But 
 suddenly, at some stroke of ill-luck, this 
 blasphemer broke into a torrent of curses that 
 made his fellows shrink away from him with 
 pale faces. In the midst of it the cabin door 
 was burst violently open, and what they 
 described afterwards as a howling blast, with 
 sounds of men and horses, drove through 
 the place. The table and light were over- 
 turned. The gamblers were down on their 
 faces. When all was silent again, and some one 
 
MAD MOLLY. 211 
 
 summoned up courage to light a match, the 
 man who had sworn was dead, suddenly dead 
 as if killed by lightning, but with no cause to 
 show. 
 
 I told this story to my companion as we 
 went along — also another tradition of the place : 
 that it was once a pleasant little home among 
 apple-trees, long ago, before the famine of '48 
 had given Irish vitality a stroke from which it 
 still suffers. A widow and her two rosy- 
 cheeked growing girls lived there. Then there 
 came the time when there was little or no food. 
 Enough potatoes, perhaps, to tide one person 
 over the hard winter, eked out by the few hens 
 and other humble live stock. So the girls, 
 Nora and Katie, made up their minds to go 
 to America, and make a home for the mother 
 there. She would follow them in the spring. 
 The neighbours would be good to her, and she 
 would keep her heart alive in the hope of 
 reunion. They went with prayers and kisses 
 and tears. Perhaps she couldn't have borne 
 to let them go, only the skin was already loose 
 
 p 2 
 
212 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 on the faces that had been so plump, and the 
 girls' lips were growing blue with the famine. 
 She could not keep them to become gaunt 
 skeletons like some she had shuddered at. She 
 let them go, drugging herself with dreams of 
 a speedy reunion. Alas ! their ship went down 
 in mid-ocean and every soul perished. News 
 came to land by means of a few floating planks, 
 and was spelt out In the village forge by the 
 reader, who was giving less lucky folk the 
 benefit of his learning by translating for them 
 the contents of the papers. Some busybody 
 carried the news to the widow. The sudden 
 telling snapped her sanity. When kind people 
 stole to be with her in her trouble she was 
 gone; the house door open, but of her neither 
 tale nor tidings. For more than forty years 
 no tidings of her had come, and any one who 
 ever thought of her — but those of her own 
 generation were very old — concluded she was 
 long ago with her little girls in the distant 
 country that is heaven. 
 The stories but excited the interest of my 
 
MAD MOLLY. 213 
 
 adventurous friend. She would peep in at the 
 broken windows of the haunted house. At 
 first she begged for my company, but I had 
 never been near the place, and should never 
 dare to brave its memories. I waited for her 
 on the road while she lightly ran Over the 
 grass-grown path. The mist was forming 
 white walls all about. In the distance where 
 the wan sky turned pale as silver, the reflection 
 below was like a silver mirror. A tree in the 
 hedgerow tinkled its leaves like the tinkling of 
 barley. The water was sulking somewhere out 
 of sight. Suddenly my friend was at my side 
 with the rapidity of a startled deer. " Oh, 
 come away ! " she said, " there's some one, 
 something, in that awful house." I didn't need 
 her dragging me by the hand to run noise- 
 lessly — as if we feared some unknown terror 
 hearing our feet in the mist — between the 
 winding hedgerows, pale with the gold of 
 withered leaves, till we were in the world 
 again, the world of inhabited lodges and road- 
 menders scattering their shingles, and a 
 
214 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 solitary ploughman, whose assistance we knew 
 we could trust to, driving his patient team 
 up and down the lonely upland. Then we 
 leant in view of him over a wall that had 
 once walled in a quarry, and found our voices. 
 Peering in at the window she had gazed a 
 second or two at the place full of shadows, 
 till she had made out one that looked like a 
 human shape cowering by what was once 
 the hearthstone. She did not look twice, 
 but fled back to me with her heart in her 
 mouth. 
 
 We were in a mood to believe it anything — 
 ghost or banshee, or even that most horrible of 
 Irish spooks, the Watcher by the Ford. How- 
 ever, a day or two later I heard that old Moll 
 Donovan had come back. Where she had 
 been in the interval God knows — in the pauper 
 lunatic asylum of some county most probably, 
 for her gown of blue check looked like a 
 uniform. She was quite harmless, poor thing, 
 as the old neighbours found out presently. 
 Her mind had stopped short at the hour before 
 
MAD MOLLY. 215 
 
 she heard the girls were drowned. Finding 
 her so harmless, the country people were well- 
 disposed to take her as in trust from God. They 
 tidied up the place for her as well as long decay 
 would permit them, and put in a few sticks of 
 furniture. She accepted these kind offices 
 passively, and once installed, kept her cabin 
 in order. She is a little old woman of between 
 70 and So. In her ordinary moods you would 
 not guess her to be mad, as you see her from 
 a distance sitting in the sun, her thin hair 
 decently combed from a patient old face, her 
 little shawl drawn tightly around bent shoulders. 
 You would know, though, if you came closer, 
 and met her wandering eyes. The neighbours 
 send her a bit of food, enough to keep her 
 alive, for she does not need much. She calls 
 the comely and sturdy men and women by the 
 names of their fathers and mothers, and the 
 boys and girls are always the boys and girls of 
 long ago. Not that she is communicative. I 
 have heard that she rarely speaks, but sits 
 most of her time in the sun or by her fire- 
 
2l6 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 side crooning over old snatches of songs to 
 herself. 
 
 So much for every day and fine weather. In 
 the stormy weather and by moonlight her mad- 
 ness lays hold upon her and drives her out. 
 Perhaps that sulking pool so close to her cabin 
 keeps alive In her crazed memory the thought 
 of the sea that swallowed her darlings. On a 
 wild night by moonlight she is out looking for 
 them. To her every torn pool Is the ravening 
 ocean. She flits by one at such a time with all 
 her decent order gone, her scanty hair loose 
 about her face, her eyes full of a devouring 
 question. They say she Is still quite harmless, 
 but I am terrified of that apparition gliding by 
 In the shadows. At every ruffled pool she 
 stops, leaning down with anxious scrutiny. She 
 will put her hands to her mouth, trumpet 
 fashion, and holloa, as across the water — " Nora, 
 ahoy ! " goes the melancholy cry ; *' Ahoy, 
 ahoy ! Nora, Katie, ahoy ! Childher, come 
 home ! " Then she listens intently, and hear- 
 ing nothing but the crying of the wind, roves 
 
MAD MOLLY. 217 
 
 on again on her ceaseless quest. When this 
 occurs she will wander all night, crying over 
 every pool to the dead girls. 
 
 I met her only last night. It was early, but 
 at five o'clock of a November evening the 
 night is already on us. It was nearly full 
 moon, and where the great silver shield was 
 the sky was clear. But westward rose up a 
 dense bank of cloud scudding along to dis- 
 charge itself in thunderous rain, as the skies 
 had been doing all day. On the murky cloud 
 was a great rainbow, a beautiful perfect arch, 
 silver white as the steady moon- rays poured 
 upon it. I was watching it, heedless for 
 delight, of the storm that was coming up. 
 Suddenly the little dark figure scudded out into 
 the moonlight of the road. She was down on 
 her knees by a troubled pool. ** Nora ! ahoy ! 
 ahoy ! Katie, ahoy ! Come back, childher ! 
 come back ! " she went crying, with an 
 intensity of appeal that was agonizing. She 
 was out all night, I suppose, on the plains and 
 the mountains. She will be out many nights 
 
2l8 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 this rainy, wintry weather. She will die after 
 some such night of rain and wind. If she were 
 sane, indeed, one such night's wandering would 
 kill her, but the fire of insanity seems to feed 
 life rather than destroy. Kind Father Phil 
 says God will surely give her her reason before 
 she dies. I hope He will, just at the last, 
 when she will know that they are coming to 
 meet her out of a country where is no more 
 sea. 
 
ROSE : 
 
 FROM AN IRISH HEDGEROW. 
 
 WHEN Rose went away she took with 
 her a sweetness greater than the 
 honey-sweet of the garden-roses. 
 No returning spring or summer brings back 
 that wholesome fragrance. Where are you 
 blooming, Rose ? in which of the manifold 
 gardens of death ? Nay, in no garden, for you 
 were never a garden flower ; but on some high 
 sweet moorland of the Kingdom of Heaven, 
 where, it seems to me, we shall each find our 
 own country, but finer, rarer, and with neither 
 sickness, pain, nor mortality. Rose was like a 
 brave spray of heather, dancing before sun and 
 wind in that open Northern country of hers, 
 which is redolent of the peat-smoke. " My 
 
220 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 cluster of nuts," one might call her, emulating 
 the old poets of Ireland who so-named their 
 nut-brown mistresses. Her face only ceased 
 to be brown just below where the hair rippled 
 nobly off her frank forehead. Bright, sun- 
 caressed face, white teeth, white forehead ; 
 they gave her a frankness like an open-faced 
 boy. Add to these the bravest and most 
 unstained eyes that ever lit a human face, 
 and you will perhaps imagine, but dimly, my 
 Rose. 
 
 She was the daughter of a little Northern 
 farmer, and was born on the eve of St. John, 
 the night when the fairies are all abroad, and 
 their revels are lit by leaping fires on every 
 hill in the country-side. I think, when the 
 mother slept with the child on her breast, the 
 most beneficent of all the fairies must have 
 crept and kissed the baby's cheek, and have 
 whispered : *' Be brave and generous, truthful 
 and loving, child ; and also have eyes to see 
 and ears to hear and heart to feel all that is 
 sweetest and noblest." But who cast in this 
 
ROSE. 221 
 
 fair horoscope the black shadow of an early 
 death ? Not the fairies, for with the great 
 affairs of life and death they have nothing to 
 do. Life and death God holds In His hands ; 
 and He alone understands why in her bright 
 morning of life our Rose should have drooped 
 and broken on her stalk. 
 
 But this was years afterwards. Rose's 
 mother Is a little woman, with as many 
 wrinkles In her face as a walnut shell. The 
 father died so long ago that I do not remember 
 ever to have heard Rose speak of him. For 
 her growing up there were the exquisite 
 country pleasures, the long, long summer days 
 of a child's life, which seems, looking back, to 
 have been always summer. Rose was the 
 youngest child, much younger than her two 
 sisters, and therefore especially a pet. So 
 many interests there are in a country child's 
 life, with the lambs, the calves, the fowls, the 
 water-hen's nest under the osiers in the pond, 
 and the last brood of downy yellow ducklings, 
 so pretty that one could gaze all day at their 
 
2 22 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 yellow fluff and black jewels of eyes. And 
 there is the old orchard, which goes from pink 
 to green, and one day you shall find the green 
 globes of fruit turning rosy on the side next the 
 sun ; and the delight, when the reapers are 
 reaping, of finding the first blackberries ; and 
 the haymaking time, when one rode home 
 unsteadily on the first great load, and after- 
 wards, in the green evening lit by the white 
 lamp of a rnoon, disported in the hay ; and the 
 mushroom-gathering, when one runs here and 
 there in exquisite excitement over the white 
 heads, and is deceived now by a puff-ball, 
 again by a nodding dog-daisy buried in rank 
 grass. No wonder the day should be long, 
 being so full, for it is your monotonous, empty 
 days that slip over you like a dream, as it is 
 the monotonous lives slip by unnoted, till some 
 day one finds with a great surprise that one 
 is old, and Death knocking dully at the 
 portal. 
 
 But after such days it might well be that 
 Rose would be content to nestle by her 
 
ROSE. 223 
 
 mother's skirt on a little creepy stool, and 
 gazing into the dark peat, with its sudden 
 showers of sparks, to listen dreamily to the 
 stories of the fairies in the rath, and of giants 
 and heroes. No hobgoblin tales, however, for 
 the mother was too kind to frighten her wee 
 girl ; though I think even then my Rose's 
 well-balanced mind would have selected what 
 was profitable of the stories, and rejected the 
 merely horrible. 
 
 There, in the little brown house, Rose grew 
 and throve. She wrote her first little stories 
 in the tangled orchard, and poised her rhymes 
 sitting on the bench by the house-door, from 
 which she afterwards dated a letter : *' From 
 the stone bench in the sun, where I sit nursing 
 my little old cough." But then there was no 
 apprehension of coughs, though her father had 
 gone off in a rapid ** decline," as the country 
 people call it. In those valleys among the 
 hills it is hard to realize that consumption 
 scourges the tall people ; yet it is so. The 
 damps in winter curl heavily in the hollows, 
 
224 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 and wreathe the hill-brows ; and again, there 
 has been so much Intermarriage, for though 
 the Church of their allegiance strictly prohibits 
 the marriage of near kin, a whole county will 
 be far-away cousins to each other. 
 
 x^fter her convent school, Rose was at home 
 for a little while. She would never have left 
 home if one kindly neighbour could have had 
 his will. He was a man of the North, brave 
 and stalwart, and setting all his heart the way 
 of this thornless Rose ; but Rose had nothing 
 for him except that open friendship which was 
 so delightful a quality in her. His hope lasted 
 even to her grave, and it may be beyond it, 
 but she never gave him false hopes of winning 
 her. No man ever quite touched her heart in 
 this way. Among the many men who gave 
 her admiration and devotion she had her 
 preferences, but none warmed to love. Perhaps 
 it was this absence of an engrossing love 
 that enabled her to shine with such a steady 
 light of tenderness on those of us she cared for. 
 With Rose doubt or misunderstanding were 
 
ROSE, 225 
 
 impossible. Remembering her genius for 
 friendship, one sighs — 
 
 " What a thing friendship is, world without end ! " 
 
 There were no jealousies or bickerings or 
 hurts of any kind in one's friendship with Rose. 
 Yet on all the world outside she shone with such 
 a wide Impartial light of kindness and tolerance 
 that one Is tempted to say of Rose that, like 
 the sun, she shone on the just and the unjust. 
 
 After that little time at home she drifted to 
 the city — nay, not drifted, for she came with a 
 steady purpose. Her clever fingers worked 
 with her brain, and her untaught sketches were 
 full of promise. In Dublin she entered as an 
 art student, and there began the friendships 
 which sweetened her latter years. Literary 
 folk, artists, politicians ; her circle widened as 
 wide as the circles of the sea, and took in 
 many whom she had worshipped from afar off. 
 Of these there was one to whom she was able 
 to give sweet service. He, too, lived under 
 the roof of the kind woman who was Rose's 
 
 Q 
 
226 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 hostess. He had been In prison long years for 
 his Fenianism, and was the gentlest soul of all 
 those who took up arms In a forlorn attempt to 
 free their country. He was a poet and a 
 dreamer, with a man's heroic bravery and a 
 woman's softness and purity. He came from 
 prison stone-deaf, and with the dullest glimmer 
 of sight between his eyelids. To him Rose 
 devoted herself. To him she became eyes and 
 ears, and chained herself to his invalid's couch 
 with a strong delight In rendering service to 
 one who had so greatly dared and suffered. 
 For him she learned the deaf-and-dumb 
 alphabet, at which she became very 'proficient ; 
 and when I desire to recall my Rose at her 
 sweetest and brightest, I conjure up a picture 
 of her flashing the words from her fingers, her 
 dear cheeks colouring and paling, her eyes full 
 of bright questioning, as I once saw her Inter- 
 preting for a deaf friend of later years. Her 
 service to her friend lasted during two winters 
 and a summer. In the early part of the second 
 summer he died ; the deaf heard and the blind 
 
ROSE. 227 
 
 saw. He died with Rose kneeling by his head. 
 His last half-inarticulate words were of God, of 
 Ireland, and of Rose. 
 
 After that, veering between Dublin and 
 Tyrone, Rose lived and loved, and wrought 
 her delicate stories and poems. Finally she 
 settled in Dublin, and became one of a little 
 set of bookish and artistic people. Folk were 
 enchanted with her fresh naturalness ; she had 
 the beauty of a lovely peasant with the added 
 charm of cultivation of mind and heart. Those 
 were days of prosperity for this Rose. She 
 went hither and thither, taking the joy of her 
 youth and living every hour of her waking life. 
 She was ever well and normal in mood. As 
 editor of the children's department of a large 
 weekly newspaper, she had a delightful office ; 
 crimson blinds behind lace curtains, brilliant 
 Japanese fans and gay pictures ; a roaring fire 
 behind a picture screen, and in the midst of 
 this warmth — Rose. One stepped out of the 
 winter streets into Rose's sanctum, and winter 
 was flown ; and there stood Rose ready to take 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 one's fardel of troubles, and, blowing on the 
 unsubstantial things, laugh them away Into air 
 and mist. 
 
 Alack ! the gay days. One never-to-be- 
 forgotten Christmas, when the streets were full 
 of murk, Rose heard from Tyrone that the 
 beloved little mother was ill and longed for 
 her. The wise physician who was Rose's 
 attached friend, and had watched over her lest 
 in her, too, the seeds of *' the decline " should 
 appear, In vain tried to keep her. Her love 
 sent her on the long railway journey in the 
 damp December day. She returned with a 
 heavy cold, caught on the journey down. The 
 remainder of that winter and the following 
 summer she had varying health, and after an 
 absence I just came back in time to see her 
 before she went to Arcachon for sure recovery. 
 I said good-bye to her one November evening, 
 in a little house by the sea. Afterwards I 
 remembered that the last words were all of my 
 concerns. The brave reticence was with her 
 to the last ; I suppose to her, as to other 
 
ROSE. 229 
 
 people, it would be easier to face the night of 
 death with a warm hand in hers, but, instead, 
 she closed upon herself the door of life, and 
 with her face to the storm, and her heart 
 uplifted to God, stepped out on the drear way 
 she must walk alone. 
 
 Arcachon proved but an added pain. A cruel 
 winter withered all the South, and the Southern 
 folk, unused to frost and snow, lit up starveling 
 fires that were but a mockery of warmth. The 
 home-hunger, too, ached in the heart of this 
 untravelled traveller. From the inhospitable 
 South she went home to the North with the 
 swallows. We who did not know how ill she 
 was, clamoured for her return. She bade us 
 wait till she was better. We waited through 
 the fresh spring and summer, and while the 
 pale autumn darkened to winter. In the 
 winter she died, quite without warning to us, 
 in the morning of life, like herself I am not 
 sure that there was not some cruelty in that 
 she would not trust us with the heavy secret, 
 but should let us be wounded some day with 
 
230 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 that sorrowful news in the blind columns of a 
 newspaper. However, she thought it right, 
 and she was not one, like me, to make and 
 unmake her judgments of right and wrong ten 
 times a minute. 
 
 She sleeps on the sunny side of an old 
 Tyrone churchyard, among the saints, and in a 
 spot which she chose herself while she had yet 
 six months of life. They asked me once to 
 come and see the room where she died, and 
 her grave covered thick with primroses ; but I 
 would not go. I saw nothing of her slow 
 dying, and to me she is still as one living, 
 though she comes not nor speaks out of the 
 silence. 
 
A VILLAGE PRIEST. 
 
 HI S house stood as formal as a toy house 
 in a Noah's Ark amid patches of 
 grass, grey with sea-sand. It was 
 very new, and built of dreary yellow brick. 
 There were no flowers about. What flower- 
 would thrive indeed in this valley of wind- 
 blown sand ? His was the one house of con- 
 sideration, for the people were so poor that 
 even the meanest public-house could find no 
 customers. The homes of his parishioners 
 were high on the steep walls of the vale, 
 ragged things, clinging like last year's nests on 
 a storm-swept bough. His house was the 
 nearest to the sea, that was out there beyond 
 the lines of yellow sand. The sound of it was 
 in the air. Lonely as the place was on an 
 April day, one shuddered to imagine it of a 
 
232 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 November evening ; nature was so tremendous 
 there and humanity so little. The great and 
 awful Heads rose like a gigantic wall against 
 the sky, and ever their stony faces gazed out 
 to sea away from the stunted figures of men 
 moving about their base. 
 
 His cure was a wide one. The valley ran 
 for some miles inland ; five miles they said it 
 measured, and it was dotted along its course 
 by the curious little pillars which marked a 
 saint's stations. If he wore his knees from one 
 of those stones to another he was indeed 
 saintly. One entered the oblong gash in the 
 land climbing over a high hill's edge, and then 
 tumbling precipitously down the steep ravine, 
 in imminent danger of breaking the horse's 
 knees and one's own neck. It is an experience 
 to be gone through at first with your heart in 
 your mouth, but after a score of escapes you 
 begin to trust in your star and the sure-footed 
 mountain ponies. At the foot of the descent a 
 bridge crossed a little river singing on its way 
 from the hills to the sea. Here the cabins 
 
A VILLAGE PRIEST. 233 
 
 clustered most thickly. In one or two a blear- 
 eyed man came to the door to look at us, and 
 we could see through the thick smoke within 
 an old-fashioned weaver's loom. Weaving has 
 been their industry from time immemorial, but 
 with so many hindrances : for first there is a 
 scarcity of yarn, and then the looms are so 
 unreliable, and the cloth once spun, it is so very, 
 very far to the market, that they can scarcely 
 be said to thrive out of their weaving. There 
 were no children playing in the gutter, as one 
 usually sees them in an Irish village. The 
 few we saw at the doorsteps were dirty and 
 pallid. The fowls croaked complainingly of 
 how hard it was to pick up a living. The only 
 cheerful things were the adorable mountain 
 lambs, that, with wee black faces of a mingled 
 innocence and sagacity, trotted by us with the 
 tameness of a dog. 
 
 Down in the valley one was out of the world. 
 The weaver folk only spoke the Irish, and 
 we had no interpreters. As we made our way 
 to the priest's house, we had to spring from 
 
234 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 one spit of sand to another, for the ground was 
 threaded by devious little streams making their 
 way to the sea. The water was stained red 
 with the iron ore of which the mountains are 
 full. 
 
 We came opportunely, for as we approached 
 the square, ugly dwelling, we saw coming 
 towards us, from another side, a tall, slender 
 clerical figure, which, as it came, leaped stone 
 walls and streamlets with a surprising agility. 
 Its owner came up to us hat in hand, a smile 
 on his lean dark face. The priest was quite a 
 young man, twenty-seven at the outside. We 
 knew at once that he was very glad to see us, 
 so glad that he scarcely listened to 9ur reasons 
 for coming. He stood mechanically stroking 
 the head of the retriever that followed at his 
 heels, with the kind, wintry smile on his melan- 
 choly mouth. The smile really lit up his face 
 palely, as you may see winter sunlight bright- 
 ening all the bare fields. Presently he pre- 
 ceded us courteously into his house. 
 
 The room into which he led us had two large 
 
A VILLAGE PRIEST. 235 
 
 undraped windows. The floor was uncarpeted, 
 but very clean. There was no sign of the 
 tobacco with which a lonely man might some- 
 times companion himself. A crucifix on the 
 mantleshelf, a couple of pious pictures on the 
 wall, a bookcase of theological works, most 
 unprofitable to the lay person, and in a corner 
 a few ordinary books, novels, and the like, 
 were the adornments. Some hard chairs and a 
 square centre-table were all the furniture. He 
 apologized for his novels with a deprecatory 
 smile — the follies of his student days, he said, 
 but we noticed that they were dog's-eared and 
 thumbed far more than Suarez and Liguori. 
 
 After he had given some whispered orders to 
 his bare-foot maid servant he volunteered to 
 show us something of the glen. We sallied 
 forth, facing the enormous Heads that seemed 
 to shut away the world. We went up to a 
 weaver's cottage In their shadow, wading and 
 climbing half the time. The old weaver and 
 the young weaver, his son, showed us how the 
 loom worked, while a red-shawled girl sat with 
 
236 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 her bent head against the little square window 
 singing low to her spinning-wheel. The 
 interior of the cottage was dense with smoke 
 that smarted In our eyes, and made us cough 
 vigorously. One wondered how they lived In 
 the atmosphere, but they seemed to mind It 
 little, nor did the priest, who stood and Inter- 
 preted for us. 
 
 On our way back he led us to talk of many 
 things — politics, art, books, society. He put 
 to us many leading questions In his soft, slow 
 voice. A great eagerness brightened up his 
 face, that was at once Innocent and sad. He 
 had In his mind a curious hotch-potch of 
 information. He was like the nuns in a con- 
 vent school I well knew, some of whom had 
 not read a newspaper since they came into the 
 convent, and who believed that the world had 
 since stood still. 
 
 When he returned to his house he showed 
 us a photograph of his home, a long, low farm- 
 house, with an abundance of flowers. Before 
 he door stood the farmer himself, In the 
 
A VILLAGE PRIEST. 237 
 
 familiar attitude, his arm on his pony's neck. 
 His wife sat on a stone seat in the sun, with 
 white ringlets under a be-rlbboned cap, and her 
 hands folded demurely in her lap. 
 
 " It is so long since I have seen them," 
 sighed the priest wistfully. *' O no ; it was not 
 that they were so far away — only In the next 
 county ; but here, where there was no railroad, 
 nor even mail-cars, travelling was so expensive." 
 We said something of the pretty house. He 
 sighed his acquiescence. " Ah, yes, very 
 pretty ; and smothered in flowers. And that 
 country all velvet green, with a salmon river, 
 and woods on the horizon, and far away the 
 blue hills so mild against the sky. Now here 
 one could not grow a flower ; there is only the 
 heather, and the little rock mosses. A rose- 
 tree my mother sent was blown beyond recall 
 last winter, and since I have not tried to rear 
 flowers." He said It as out of utter home- 
 sickness. Afterwards he told us it was five 
 years since he had seen his father or mother. 
 
 Presently we sat down to a bit of roast 
 
238 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 mutton, flanked by the temperate tea. As he 
 uncovered the meat he rubbed his hands with 
 mild satisfaction. By the merest chance he 
 had fresh meat to-day of all days, and like most 
 people beyond reach of a market he over- 
 estimated the dainty. As we talked over the 
 meal he became very frank. The poor priest 
 was full of aspirations after literature and art — 
 indeed his notions were somewhat crude as to 
 what these included. He took with great 
 pride the top paper from a heap in the corner. 
 It was a London Sunday paper. He beamed 
 at us deprecatingly. ''You see I get a little of 
 everything in this," he said, " so that I am not 
 out of the world." 
 
 He told us something of the isolation in 
 which he lived. There was not an English- 
 speaking person nearer than six Irish miles 
 away. He knew only so much of the Irish as 
 enabled him to get along with his people. 
 There was not one to exchange an idea with 
 him. His flock, so poor and wretched, were 
 atrophied in mind as in body. " These good 
 
A VILLAGE PRIEST. 239 
 
 friends keep me from madness," he said, 
 pointing to the books, "in the winter when 
 the sea is roaring with a thunder that fills all 
 the Glen, and the Heads shut out the grey- 
 sky." He beamed at the shabby covers. " I 
 don't get tired of them," he said, "as you 
 young ladies, living in the world, might 
 imagine. They are such good books, and full 
 of Information as well as amusement." This 
 last with an Innocently apologetic air. 
 
 He told us so much of his daily life that we 
 could picture It. He had enormously long 
 walks to visit his flock. There were many 
 sick calls, for vitality in the Glen was low, and 
 consumption, and all the forms of chest disease 
 scourged the under- fed people. Mental diseases 
 too were common, and the county supposed to 
 furnish an extraordinary large percentage of 
 the madness of the entire island. The priest 
 had theories on the subject. It was partly due 
 to the irritation of the brain caused by much 
 fish-eating, for at times of the year the people 
 exist entirely on fish ; partly to the inter- 
 
240 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 marriages, for these people had married in 
 their own county since the Cromwellian 
 planters drove them there from the fertile 
 lowlands, and relationships amongst them were 
 practically inextricable ; partly too, no doubt, 
 to the place, with its extreme humidity and 
 loneliness. 
 
 '' I fear the madness myself," said our poor 
 priest, his face relapsing to its old unlit melan- 
 choly, " for there is always the famine coming. 
 It was here last year, and the year before, and 
 will be here this year. Famine! Indeed, 
 except for the time when the boats can put 
 out, they are always famine-stricken. And 
 always there is the low fever bred by starva- 
 tion, in the Glen. But the thing that haunts 
 me is the big famine that will come some day, 
 when all the Glen will die of starvation. Year 
 after year we have had help just in the nick of 
 time. But what if the help should come late ? 
 This year, or next year ! God forgive me for 
 fearing it, but it haunts me all night and every 
 night, and when I go my long walks through 
 
A VILLAGE PRIEST. 24 1 
 
 the Glen." As he told us his long-contained 
 fears, the sweat came on his forehead in big 
 beads. '' I pray hard," he said again, " against 
 the madness that may come to me of loneliness 
 and the fear for my people. Perhaps such 
 despair is a temptation from the devil, but 
 what if God had destined us in the Glen for 
 martyrdom?" He looked at us with dilated 
 eyes, and we felt that we understood then the 
 profound and terrible melancholy of his face. 
 
 Poor priest! So kind and gentle and 
 hospitable. As we left him, the melancholy 
 that had lifted, settled down on his face. His 
 breviary was under his arm, his stick in his 
 hand, the dog, his one friend, rubbing himself 
 insinuatingly against the black cassock. He 
 was going one of his long tramps to visit a sick 
 girl. He would not return till the evening 
 was settled down on the Glen, where it comes 
 early, for the mountains and the Heads blot 
 out the sky. So human in his sympathies, with 
 his pathetic intellectual longings ; how long 
 before another companionable spirit came to 
 
 R 
 
242 A CLUSTER OF NUTS. 
 
 his Glen at the end of the world ? I often 
 think of him in his loneliness, and shall think 
 with more acute sympathy when winter has 
 settled grayly on the Glen. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Woodfall & Kinder, Printers, 70 to 76, Long Acre, London, W.C. 
 
November^ iS(pj. 
 
 MESSRS. 
 LAWRENCE & BULLEN'S 
 
 ilist of PuljUfations. 
 
 LONDON: 
 j6, HENRIETTA STREE:T, COVENT GARDEN 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 
 FACE 
 
 Allen, Grant 
 
 3 
 
 Muses' Library — 
 
 
 Anacreon 
 
 3 
 
 William Browne 
 
 ... lO 
 
 Andersen, Ilanr, Christian ... 
 
 1. 
 
 William Blake .. 
 
 ... lO 
 
 
 J 
 
 John Donne 
 
 ... lO 
 
 Barrett, C. R. B 
 
 3 
 
 Robert Herrick... 
 
 ... lO 
 
 Beckiord, William 
 
 4 
 
 Andrew Marvell 
 
 ... lO 
 
 Boccaccio, G iovanni 
 
 4 
 
 Edmund Waller 
 
 ... lO 
 
 Bullen, A. H 
 
 5 
 
 John Gay 
 O'Neill, Moira 
 
 ... lO 
 
 ... II 
 
 Catullus 
 
 5 
 
 Orme, Temple 
 
 II 
 
 Churchill, Charles 
 
 5 
 
 Owen, J. A 
 
 .. II 
 
 Crane, Walter 
 
 5 
 
 Pearce, J. H 
 
 II 
 
 D'Aulnoy, Madame 
 
 6 
 
 Powell, G. H. 
 
 II 
 
 Davidson, John 
 
 6 
 
 Prideaux, Miss S. T. 
 
 .. II 
 
 Earle, A. M 
 
 6 
 
 Rabelais, Francis 
 
 12 
 
 Edmonds, Mrs 
 
 6 
 
 Roberts, Morley 
 
 • 13 
 
 
 
 Roberts, Cecil 
 
 • 13 
 
 Gift, Theo 
 
 6 
 
 Robinson, IL J. . ... 
 
 • 13 
 
 Gissing, George 
 
 
 Russian Fairy Tales... 
 
 .. 14 
 
 Plarraden, Beatrice ... 
 
 
 Scarron, Paul 
 
 .. 14 
 
 Jokai, Maurus 
 
 
 Strang, William 
 
 .. 14 
 
 Knight, Joseph 
 
 
 " Told in the Verandah " 
 
 •• 15 
 
 Linton, W. T- 
 
 
 "A Black Prince" ... 
 
 •• 15 
 
 ' J 
 
 
 Tynan, Katharine ... 
 
 • 15 
 
 Miscellanies — 
 
 
 Vanbrugh, Sir John... 
 
 • 15 
 
 Salomon and Marcolphus 
 
 8 
 
 Wallis, Henry 
 
 • 15 
 
 Antonio de Guaras 
 
 9 
 
 Wells, Charles 
 
 •• 15 
 
 Caxton 
 
 9 
 
 Wills, C. J 
 
 •• IS 
 
 Informacon for Pylgrymes 
 
 9 
 
 Yeats, W.B 
 
 .. IS 
 
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 November^ 1893. 
 
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