第16章

'But he lay like a warrior taking his rest, With his martial cloak around him.'

Charles Wolfe.

At midnight I heard a faint tap at my door, and Francesca walked in, her eyes wide and bright, her cheeks flushed, her long, dark braid of hair hanging over her black travelling cloak. I laughed as I saw her, she looked so like Sir Patrick Spens in the ballad play at Pettybaw,--a memorable occasion when Ronald Macdonald caught her acting that tragic role in his ministerial gown, the very day that Himself came from Paris to marry me in Pettybaw, dear little Pettybaw!

"I came in to find out if your bed is as bad as mine, but I see you have not slept in it," she whispered.

"I was just coming in to see if yours could be any worse," I replied. "Do you mean to say that you have tried it, courageous girl? I blew out my candle, and then, after an interval in which to forget, sat down on the outside as a preliminary; but the moon rose just then, and I could get no further."

I had not unpacked my bag. I had simply slipped on my macintosh, selected a wooden chair, and, putting a Cromwellian towel over it, seated myself shudderingly on it and put my feet on the rounds, quoting Moore meantime-'And the best of all ways To lengthen our days Is to steal a few hours from the night, my dear!"

Francesca followed my example, and we passed the night in reading Celtic romances to each other. We could see the faint outline of sweet Slievenamann from our windows--the mountain of the fair women of Feimheann, celebrated as the hunting-ground of the Finnian Chiefs.

'One day Finn and Oscar Followed the chase in Sliabh-na-mban-Feimheann, With three thousand Finnian chiefs Ere the sun looked out from his circle.'

In the Finnian legend, the great Finn McCool, when much puzzled in the choice of a wife, seated himself on its summit. At last he decided to make himself a prize in a competition of all the fair women in Ireland. They should start at the foot of the mountain, and the one who first reached the summit should be the great Finn's bride. It was Grainne Oge, the Gallic Helen, and daughter of Cormac, the king of Ireland, who won the chieftain, 'being fleetest of foot and longest of wind.'

We almost forgot our discomforts in this enthralling story, and slept on each other's nice clean shoulders a little, just before the dawn. And such a dawn! Such infinite softness of air, such dew- drenched verdure! It is a backward spring, they say, but to me the woods are even lovelier than in their summer wealth of foliage, when one can hardly distinguish the beauty of the single tree from that of its neighbours, since the colours are blended in one universal green. Now we see the feathery tassels of the beech bursting out of their brown husks, the russet hues of the young oak leaves, and the countless emerald gleams that 'break from the ruby-budded lime.'

The greenest trees are the larch, the horse-chestnut, and the sycamore, three naturalised citizens who apparently still keep to their native fashions, and put out their foliage as they used to do in their own homes. The young alders and the hawthorn hedges are greening, but it will be a fortnight before we can realise the beauty of that snow-white bloom, with its bitter-sweet fragrance.

The cuckoo-flower came this year before instead of after the bird, they tell us, showing that even Nature, in these days of anarchy and misrule, is capable of taking liberties with her own laws. There is a fragrance of freshly turned earth in the air, and the rooks are streaming out from the elms by the little church, and resting for a bit in a group of plume-like yews. The last few days of warmth and sunshine have inspired the birds, and as Francesca and I sit at our windows breathing in the sweetness and freshness of the morning, there is a concert of thrushes and blackbirds in the shrubberies.

The little birds furnish the chorus or the undertone of song, the hedge-sparrows, redbreasts, and chaffinches, but the meistersingers 'call the tune,' and lead the feathered orchestra with clear and certain notes. It is a golden time for the minstrels, for nest- building is finished, and the feeding of the younglings a good time yet in the future. We can see one little brown lady hovering warm eggs under her breast, her bright eyes peeping through a screen of leaves as she glances up at her singing lord, pouring out his thanks for the morning sun. There is only a hint of breeze, it might almost be the whisper of uncurling fern fronds, but soft as it is, it stirs the branches here and there, and I know that it is rocking hundreds of tiny cradles in the forest.

When I was always painting in those other days before I met Himself, one might think my eyes would have been even keener to see beauty than now, when my brushes are more seldom used; but it is not so.

There is something, deep hidden in my consciousness, that makes all loveliness lovelier, that helps me to interpret it in a different and in a larger sense. I have a feeling that I have been lifted out of the individual and given my true place in the general scheme of the universe, and, in some subtle way that I can hardly explain, I am more nearly related to all things good, beautiful, and true than I was when I was wholly an artist, and therefore less a woman. The bursting of the leaf-buds brings me a tender thought of the one dear heart that gives me all its spring; and whenever I see the smile of a child, a generous look, the flash of sympathy in an eye, it makes me warm with swift remembrance of the one I love the best of all, just 'as a lamplight will set a linnet singing for the sun.'