Penelope's Postscripts Part 10

Suddenly I saw Billy, who had wandered from the table, sitting on the steps bending over a tiny bird's egg in his open hand. I knew that he must have taken it from some low-hung nest, but taken it in innocence, for he looked at it with solicitude as an object of tender and fragile beauty. He had never given a thought to the mother's days of patient brooding, nor that he was robbing the summer world of one bird's flight and one bird's song.

"Did you hear the whippoorwills singing last night, Daddy?" I asked.

"I did, indeed, and long before sunrise this morning. There must be a new family in our orchard, I think; but then we have coaxed hundreds of birds our way this spring by our little houses, our crumbs, and our drinking dishes."

"Yes, we have never had so many since we came here to live. Look at that little brown bird flying about in the tall apple-tree, Francie; she seems to be in trouble."

"P'r'haps it's Mrs. Smiff's wenomous cat," exclaimed Francie, running to look for a particularly voracious animal that lived across the fields, but had been known to enter our bird-Eden.

"Hear this, Daddy; isn't it pretty?" I said, taking up the "Life of Dorothy Grey."

Billy p.r.i.c.ked up his ears, for he can never see a book opened without running to join the circle, so eager he is not to lose a precious word.

"The wren sang early this morning" (I read slowly). "We talked about it at breakfast and how many people there were who would not be aware of it; and E. said, 'Fancy, if G.o.d came in and said: "Did you notice my wren?" and they were obliged to say they had not known it was there!'"

Billy rose quietly and stole away behind the trees, returning in a few moments, empty-handed, to stand by my side.

"Does G.o.d know how many eggs there are in a bird's nest, mother?"

he asked.

"People have so many different ideas about what G.o.d sees and takes note of, that it's hard to say, sonny. Of course you remember that the Bible says not one sparrow falls to the ground but He knows it."

"The mother bird can't count her eggs, can she, mother?"

"Oh! Billy, you do ask the hardest questions; ones that I can never answer by Yes and No! She broods her eggs all day and all night and never lets them get cold, so she must know, at any rate, that they are going to BE birds, don't you think? And of course she wouldn't want to lose one; that's the reason she's so faithful!"

"Well!" said Billy, after a long pause, "I don't care quite so much about the mother, because sometimes there are five eggs in a weeny, weeny nest that never could hold five little ones without their scrunching each other and being uncomfortable. But if G.o.d should come in and say: 'Did you take my egg, that was going to be a bird?' I just couldn't bear it!"

June 15, 19-.

Another foreign mail is in and the village postmistress has sent an impa.s.sioned request that I steam off the stamps for her boy's alb.u.m, enriched during my residence here by specimens from eleven different countries. ("Mis' Beresford beats the Wanderin' Jew all holler if so be she's be'n to all them places, an' come back alive!"--so she says to Himself.) Among the letters there is a budget of loose leaves from Salemina's diary, Salemina, who is now Mrs. Gerald La Touche, wife of Professor La Touche, of Trinity College, Dublin, and stepmother to Jackeen and Broona La Touche.

It is midsummer, College is not in session, and they are at Rosnaree House, their place in County Meath.

Salemina is the one of our trio who continues to move in grand society. She it is who dines at the Viceregal Lodge and Dublin Castle. She it is who goes with her distinguished husband for week-ends with the Master of the Horse, the Lord Chancellor, and the Dean of the Chapel Royal. Francesca, it is true, makes her annual bow to the Lord High Commissioner at Holyrood Palace and dines there frequently during a.s.sembly Week; and as Ronald numbers one Duke, two Earls, and several Countesses and Dowager Countesses in his parish, there are awe-inspiring visiting cards to be found in the silver salver on her hall table,--but Salemina in Ireland literally lives with the great, of all cla.s.ses and conditions! She is in the heart of the Irish Theatre and the Modern Poetry movements,--and when she is not hobn.o.bbing with playwrights and poets she is consorting with the Irish n.o.bility and gentry.

I cannot help thinking that she would still be Miss Peabody, of Salem, Ma.s.sachusetts, had it not been for my generous and helpful offices, and those of Francesca! Never were two lovers, parted in youth in America and miraculously reunited in middle age in Ireland, more recalcitrant in declaring their mutual affection than Dr. La Touche and Salemina! Nothing in the world divided them but imaginary barriers. He was not rich, but he had a comfortable salary and a dignified and honourable position among men. He had two children, but they were charming, and therefore so much to the good. Salemina was absolutely "foot loose" and tied down to no duties in America, so no one could blame her for marrying an Irishman. She had never loved any one else, and Dr. La Touche might have had that information for the asking; but he was such a bat for blindness, adder for deafness, and lamb for meekness that because she refused him once, when she was the only comfort of an aged mother and father, he concluded that she would refuse him again, though she was now alone in the world. His late wife, a poor, flighty, frivolous invalid, the kind of woman who always entangles a sad, vague, absent-minded scholar, had died six years before, and never were there two children so in need of a mother as Jackeen and Broona, a couple of affectionate, hot-headed, bewitching, ragged, tousled Irish darlings. I would cheerfully have married Dr. Gerald myself, just for the sake of his neglected babies, but I dislike changes and I had already espoused Himself.

However, a summer in Ireland, undertaken with no such great stakes in mind as Salemina's marriage, made possible a chance meeting of the two old friends. This was followed by several others, devised by us with incendiary motives, and without Salemina's knowledge.

There was also the unconscious plea of the children working a daily spell; there was the past, with its memories, tugging at both their hearts; and above all there was a steady, dogged, copious stream of mental suggestion emanating from Francesca and me, so that, in course of time, our middle-aged couple did succeed in confessing to each other that a separate future was impossible for them.

They never would have encountered each other had it not been for us; never, never would have become engaged; and as for the wedding, we forcibly led them to the altar, saying that we must leave Ireland and the ceremony could not be delayed.

Not that we are the recipients of any grat.i.tude for all this!

Rather the reverse! They constantly allude to their marriage as made in Heaven, although there probably never was another union where creatures of earth so toiled and slaved to a.s.sist the celestial powers.

I wonder why middle-aged and elderly lovers make such an appeal to me! Is it because I have lived much in New England, where "ladies- in-waiting" are all too common,--where the wistful bride-groom has an invalid mother to support, or a barren farm out of which he cannot wring a living, or a malignant father who cherishes a bitter grudge against his son's chosen bride and all her kindred,--where the woman herself is compa.s.sed about with obstacles, dragging out a pinched and colourless existence year after year?

And when at length the two waiting ones succeed in triumphing over circ.u.mstances, they often come together wearily, soberly, with half the joy pressed out of life. Young lovers have no fears! That the future holds any terrors, difficulties, bugbears of any sort they never seem to imagine, and so they are delightful and amusing to watch in their gay and sometimes irresponsible and selfish courtships; but they never tug at my heart-strings as their elders do, when the great, the long-delayed moment comes.

Francesca and I, in common with Salemina's other friends, thought that she would never marry. She had been asked often enough in her youth, but she was not the sort of woman who falls in love at forty. What we did not know was that she had fallen in love with Gerald La Touche at five-and-twenty and had never fallen out,-- keeping her feelings to herself during the years that he was espoused to another, very unsuitable lady. Our own sentimental experiences, however, had sharpened our eyes, and we divined at once that Dr. La Touche, a scholar of fifty, shy, reserved, self- distrustful, and oh! so in need of anchor and harbour,--that he was the only husband in the world for Salemina; and that he, after giving all that he had and was to an unappreciative woman, would be unspeakably blessed in the wife of our choosing.

I remember so well something that he said to me once as we sat at twilight on the bank of the lake near Devorgilla. The others were rowing toward us bringing the baskets for a tea picnic, and we, who had come in the first boat, were talking quietly together about intimate things. He told me that a frail old scholar, a brother professor, used to go back from the college to his house every night bowed down with weariness and pain and care, and that he used to say to his wife as he sank into his seat by the fire: "Oh!

praise me, my wife, praise me!"

My eyes filled and I turned away to hide the tears when Dr. Gerald continued absently: "As for me, Mistress Beresford, when I go home at night I take my only companion from the mantelshelf and leaning back in my old armchair say, 'Praise me, my pipe, praise me!'"

And Salemina Peabody was in the boat coming toward us, looking as serenely lovely in a grey tweed and broad white hat as any good sweet woman of forty could look, while he gazed at her "through a gla.s.s darkly" as if she were practically non-existent, or had nothing whatever to do with the case.

I concealed rebellious opinions of blind bats, deaf adders, meek lambs, and obstinate pigs, but said very gently and impersonally: "I hope you won't always allow your pipe to be your only companion;--you, with your children, your name and position, your home and yourself to give--to somebody!"

But he only answered: "You exaggerate, my dear madam; there is not enough left in me or of me to offer to any woman!"

And I could do nothing but make his tea graciously and hand it to him, wondering that he was able to see the cup or the bread-and- b.u.t.ter sandwich that I put into his modest, ungrateful hand.

However, it is all a thing of the past, that dim, sweet, grey romance that had its rightful background in a country of subdued colourings, of pensive sweetness, of gentle greenery, where there is an eternal wistfulness in the face of the natural world, speaking of the springs of hidden tears.

Their union is a perfect success, and I echo the Boots of the inn at Devorgilla when he said: "An' sure it's the doctor that's the satisfied man an' the luck is on him as well as on e'er a man alive! As for her ladyship, she's one o' the blessings o' the wurruld an' 't would be an o'jus pity to spile two houses wid 'em."

July 12, 19-.

We were all out in the orchard sunning ourselves on the little hayc.o.c.ks that the "hired man" had piled up here and there under the trees.

"It is not really so beautiful as Italy," I said to Himself, gazing up at the newly set fruit on the apple boughs and then across the close-cut hay field to the level pasture, with its rocks and cow paths, its blueberry bushes and sweet fern, its clumps of young sumachs, till my eyes fell upon the deep green of the distant pines. "I can't bear to say it, because it seems disloyal, but I almost believe I think so."

"It is not as picturesque," Himself agreed grudgingly, his eye following mine from point to point; "and why do we love it so?"

"There is nothing delicious and luxuriant about it," I went on critically, "yet it has a delicate, ethereal, austere, straight- forward Puritanical loveliness of its own; but, no, it is not as beautiful as Italy or Ireland, and it isn't as tidy as England. If you keep away from the big manufacturing towns and their outskirts you may go by motor or railway through shire after shire in England and never see anything unkempt, down-at-the-heel, out-at-elbows, or ill-cared-for; no broken-down fences or stone walls; no heaps of rubbish or felled trees by the wayside; no unpainted or tottering buildings--"

"You see plenty of ruins," interrupted Himself in a tone that promised argument.

"Yes, but ruins are different; they are finished; they are not tottering, they HAVE tottered! Our country is too big, I suppose, to be 'tidy,' but how I should like to take just one of the United States and clear it up, back yards and all, from border line to border line!"

"You are talking like a housewife now, not like an artist," said Himself reprovingly.

"Well, I am both, I hope, and I don't intend that any one shall know where the one begins or the other leaves off, either! And if any foreigner should remark that America is unfinished or untidy I shall deny it!"

"Fie! Penelope! You who used to be a citizen of the world!"

"So I am still, so far as a roving foot and a knowledge of three languages can make me; but you remember that the soul 'retains the characteristic of its race and the heart is true to its own country, even to its own parish.'"

"When shall we be going to the other countries, mother?" asked Billy. "When shall we see our aunt in Scotland and our aunt in Ireland?" (Poor lambs! Since the death of their Grandmother Beresford they do not possess a real relation in the world!)

"It will not be very long, Billy," I said. "We don't want to go until we can leave the perambulator behind. The Sally-baby toddles now, but she must be able to walk on the English downs and the Highland heather."

"And the Irish bogs," interpolated Billy, who has a fancy for detail.