the succeeding years in lysterby are obscured. here and there i recall a vivid episode, an abiding impression. papa came over with one of my elder sisters. they arrived at night, and i, half asleep, was dressed hurriedly and taken down to the parlour. a big warm wave of delight overwhelmed me as my stepfather caught me in his arms and whisked me up above his fair head. it was heaven to meet his affectionate blue eyes dancing so blithely to the joy of my own. seated upon his shoulder, i touched a mole on his broad forehead, and cried, as if i had made a discovery—
"you've got the same little ball on your forehead, papa, that you had when you used to come down to kildare."
bidding me good-night, he promised to come for me early next day, and told me i should sleep in the craven arms, and spend two whole days driving about the country with him. how [pg 171]comforting the well-filled table, the cold ham, the bacon and eggs at breakfast, the bread and marmalade, all served on a spotless tablecloth, and outside the smell of the roses and honeysuckle, and the exciting rumble of flies up and down the narrow street! i was so happy that i quite forgot my woes, and did not remember to complain of my enemies. there was so much to eat, to see, to think of, to feel, to say! i not only wanted to know all about everybody at home, but i wanted to see and understand all about me.
in the abbey we saw vandyke's melancholy charles, and it was a rare satisfaction for me to be able to tell how he had been beheaded. at the great castle we saw queen elizabeth's bed with the jewel-wrought quilt, and my romantic elder sister, fresh from reading "the last of the barons," passionately kissed the king-maker's armour. she told us the thrilling tale as we sat in the famous cedar avenue, when the earl's daughter, all summery in white muslin and leghorn hat, passed us with her governess, and although she was a fresh slip of a girl just like my sister, because of her name we felt that a living breath of history had brushed us. she was not for us an insignificant girl of our own[pg 172] century, but something belonging to the king-maker, a breathing memory of the wars of the roses, the sort of creature the dreadful richard might have wooed in his hideous youth.
and then at night, in the old inn, we discovered two big illustrated volumes about josephine and napoleon. i had not got so far in history as napoleon, and here was an unexplored world, whose fairy was my voluble and imaginative sister. with a touch of her wand she unrolled before my enthralled vision scenes of the french revolution and the passionate loves of bonaparte and the young viscountess de beauharnais. i wish every child i know two such nights as i passed, listening to this evocative creature revive so vividly one of the intensest and most dramatic hours of history. thanks to her eloquence, to her genius, napoleon, vile monster, became one of my gods. i think the thrilling tale she read me was by miss muloch. impossible now to recall the incidents that sufficed to turn succeeding weeks into an exquisite dream. who, for instance, was the beauteous creature in amber and purple velvet, with glittering diamonds, that usurped such a fantastic place in the vague aspirations of those days? and the lovely polish countess napoleon loved?[pg 173] and those letters from egypt to josephine, and josephine's shawls and flowers, and the ghost-stories of malmaison, and the last adieu the night before the divorce. hard would it be to say whom i most loved and deeply pitied, the unadmirable josephine or the admirable queen of prussia. my sister read aloud, as we sat up in bed together, i holding the candle, and gazing in awe and delight, wet-eyed, at the coarse engravings.
other sisters came in quick succession, but they remained strangers to me. they fawned on sister esmeralda, whom i hated: they were older and wiser than i; they aspired to the ribbon of the children of mary, and walked submissively with the authorities of church and state. they played "il baccio" on the piano, and a mysterious duet called the "duet in d." the only sister i remember of those days as an individual was pauline, who had opened to me a world of treasures. at school, she naturally forsook me for girls of her own age; but on play-days, when we were free to do as we liked all day, she sometimes condescended to recall my existence, and told me with an extraordinary vivacity of recital the stories of "east lynne,"[pg 174] "the black dwarf," "rob roy," and "kenilworth."
but for the rest she was a great and glorious creature who dwelt aloft, and possessed the golden key of the chambers of fiction. my immediate friend was polly evans, whose mamma once took me to tea in an old farmhouse along the kenilworth road.
there were strawberries and cream on the table, and delicious little balls of butter in blue-and-white dishes, and radishes, which i had never before eaten; and the air was dense with the smell of the flowers on table, sideboard, mantelpiece, and brackets. polly and i, with her brother godfrey, played all the long afternoon in the hay-field, drunk with the odour, the sunny stillness, the hum of the bees—drunk, above all, with this transient bliss of freedom and high living.
another time mrs. evans took me with polly and godfrey to kenilworth castle, where we dined among the ruins on ham, cold chicken, fruit, and lemonade. yet she herself is no remembered personality: i cannot recall a single feature of hers, and even polly herself is less clear in memory than mary jane of kildare, than the abominable frank.
years after, polly and her brother visited ireland as tourists, and having all that time treasured my parents' address, called to see me. but i was abroad, a hopeless wanderer. godfrey, i learnt, was quite a fine young fellow, who shared his sister's attachment to me. polly was sprightly and pretty, it seems, engaged too. but i never saw them again.
an eminent bishop came to confirm us, and we were taken down to town church, where, to our infinite amusement, we occupied several rows of benches opposite a boys' school, also brought hither for the same ceremony, each with a white rosette in his button-hole. none of us took the rite very seriously. we found it droll to be tapped on the cheek by a white episcopal hand and told that we were soldiers, and we watched the boys to see if their bearing were more martial than ours. they seemed equally preoccupied with us, and looked as if they felt themselves fools, awkward and shamefaced. they stared hard at our noble youth, frank, in his eternal skirts—his curls had recently been clipped—and nudged and giggled. much of a soldier looked frank! heaven help the religion of christ or the constitution if either reposed faith in his prowess!
whither has he drifted, and what has life made of the meanest little rascal i ever knew? has he learnt to tell the truth at least? has some public school licked him into shape, and kicked the cowardice and spitefulness out of him? when i became acquainted with barnes newcome afterwards, i always thought of that boy frank. "sister so-and-so, that nasty angela is teasing me." "mother this, i can't eat my bread-and-milk; that horrid angela has put salt into it." and then, when no one was looking, and a child weaker than himself was at hand, what sly pinches, and kicks, and vicious tugs at her hair. noble youth, future pillar of the british empire, i picture you an admirable hypocrite and bully!
i wonder why the bishop singled me out of all that small crowd for a stupendous honour. he had asked my name, and after a luxurious lunch with a few privileged mothers in the convent, he requested somebody to fetch me. the nuns did not fail to impress the full measure of this honour upon me, and when i came into the refectory, where the bishop was enthroned like a prince, i caught a reassuring beam from my dear friend, mother aloysius!
the bishop pushed back his chair and held out both arms to me. i was a singularly pretty child,[pg 177] i know. my enemy, sister esmeralda, had even said that i had the face of an angel with the heart of a fiend. a delicate, proud, and serious little visage, with the finish, the fairness, the transparency of a golden-haired doll, meant to take the prize in an exhibition. but this would hardly explain the extraordinary distinction conferred on me by a man who has passed into history,—a grave and noble nature, with as many cares as a prime minister, a man who saw men and women in daily battalions, and to whom a strange little girl of nine he had never spoken to, could scarcely seem a more serious creature in life than a rabbit or a squirrel.
he had a kind and thoughtful face, deeply lined and striking. i liked his smile at once, and went up to him without any feeling of shyness.
he lifted me on to his knee, kissed my forehead, and looked steadily and long into my steady eyes. then he kissed me again, and called for a big slice of plum-cake, which mother aloysius, smiling delightedly at me, was quick to hand him. he took it from the plate, and placed it in my willing grasp.
"a fine and most promising little face," i distinctly heard him say to the superioress. "but[pg 178] be careful of her. a difficult and dangerous temperament, all nerves and active brain, and a fearful suffering little heart within. manage her, manage her. i tell you there's the stuff of a great saint or a great sinner here, if she should see twenty-one, which i doubt."
alas! i have passed twenty-one years and years ago, with difficulty, it is true, with ever the haunting shadow of death about me, and time has revealed me neither the saint nor the sinner, just a creature of ordinary frailty and our common level of virtue. if i have not exactly gone to perdition—an uncheerful proceeding my sense of humour would always guard me from—i have not scaled the heights. i have lived my life, by no means as well as i had hoped in the days we are privileged to hope and to dream, not as loftily, neither with distinction nor success; but i have not accomplished any particular villainy, or scandal, or crime that would justify my claiming an important place in the ranks of sinners. i have had a good deal more innocent fun, and known a great deal more suffering, than fall to the common lot; and i have enjoyed the fun with all the intensity of the mercurial irish temperament, and endured the other with what i think i may[pg 179] proudly call the courage of my race. i have not injured or cheated a human being, though i have been greatly injured and cheated by more than i could now enumerate. there ends my scaling of the hill of virtues.
of my sins it behoves me not to speak, lest i should fall into the grotesque and delightful attitude of the sailor i once heard in london make his public confession to a salvation army circle.
"my brothers, i am a miserable sinner. in australia i murdered a man; i drank continually, i thieved, i ran after harlots, and led the life of debauchery. oh, my friends, pray for me, for now i am converted and know jesus. i am one of the just, may i remain so. but wicked and debauched and drunken as i was, there were lots more out there much worse than i." in summing up our errors and frailties, it is always a kindly comfort offered our conceit to think that there are on all sides of us "lots more much worse than we." unless our pride chooses to take refuge in the opposite reflection, so we prefer to glory in being much worse than others.
and so ends my single interview with an eminent ecclesiastic. he kissed me repeatedly, and[pg 180] stroked my hair while i munched my plum-cake on his knee. he questioned me, and discovered my passionate interest in napoleon and josephine and the queen of prussia, the king-maker, and the children in the tower. and then, having prophesied my early death and luminous or lurid career, he filled my two small hands with almond-drops and toffee, and sent me away, a being henceforth of something more than common clay.
from that hour my position in lysterby was improved. i was never even slapped again, though i had had the stupendous good luck to see, unseen myself, the lay-sister who had flogged me go into a cupboard on the staircase, whose door, with the key on the outside, opened outward, and crawling along on hands and knees, reached the door in time to lock her in. i was also known to have climbed fruit-trees, when i robbed enough unripe fruit to make all the little ones ill. yet nobody beat me, and i was let off with a sharp admonishment. i went my unruly way, secretly protected by the bishop's admiration.
if i did not amend, and loved none the more my tyrants, their rule being less drastic, i had[pg 181] less occasion to fly out at them. besides, semi-starvation had subdued me for the while. i suffered continually from abscesses and earache, and spent most of my time in the infirmary, dreaming and reading.
