Hyacinth. George A. Birmingham
must have heard of him at all events. He’s Patrick O’Dwyer, one of the few who stood by O’Neill when he fought the priests. He gave up the Parliamentary people after that. No honest man could do anything else.’
He conducted Hyacinth to one of the old squares on the north side of the city. When the tide of fashion set southwards, spreading terraces and villas from Leeson Street to Killiney, it left behind some of the finest houses in Dublin. Nowadays for a comparatively low rent it is possible to live in a splendid house if you do not aspire to the glory of a smart address. Miss O’Dwyer’s house, for instance, boasted a spacious hall and lofty sitting-rooms, with impressive ceilings and handsome fireplaces; yet she paid for it little more than half the rent which a cramped villa in Clyde Road would have cost her. Even so, it was somewhat of a mystery to her friends how Miss O’Dwyer managed to live there. A solicitor who had his offices on the ground-floor probably paid the rent of the whole house; but the profits of verse-making are small, and a poetess, like meaner women, requires food, clothes, and fire. Indeed, Miss O’Dwyer, no longer ‘M. O’D.,’ whose verses adorned the Croppy, but ‘Miranda,’ served an English paper as Irish correspondent. It was a pity that a pen certainly capable of better things should have been employed in describing the newest costume of the Lord Lieutenant’s wife at Punchestown, or the confection of pale-blue tulle which, draped round Mrs. Chesney, adorned a Castle ball. Miss O’Dwyer herself was heartily ashamed of the work, but it was, or appeared to her to be, necessary to live, and even with the aid of occasional remittances from Patrick in New York, she could scarcely have afforded her friends a cup of tea without the guineas earned by torturing the English language in a weekly chronicle of Irish society’s clothes. Even with the help of such earnings, poverty was for ever tapping her on the shoulder, and no one except Mary herself and her one maid-servant knew how carefully fire and light had to be economized in the splendid rooms where an extinct aristocracy had held revels a century before.
Hyacinth and his friend advanced past the solicitor’s doors, and up the broad staircase as far as the drawing-room. For a time they got no further than the threshold. The opening of the door was greeted with a long-drawn and emphatic ‘Hush!’ from the company within. Maguire laid his hand on Hyacinth’s arm, and the two stood still looking into the room. What was left of the feeble autumn twilight was almost excluded by half-drawn curtains. No lamp was lit, and the fire cast only fitful rays here and there through the room. It was with difficulty that Hyacinth discerned figures in a semicircle, and a slim woman in a white dress standing apart from the others near the fire. Then he heard a voice, a singularly sweet voice, as it seemed to him, reciting with steady emphasis on the syllables which marked the rhythm of the poem:
‘Out there in the West, where the heavy gray clouds are
insistent,
Where the sky stoops to gather the earth into mournful
embraces,
Where the country lies saturate, sodden, round saturate
hamlets—
‘Out there in the sunset where rages and surges Atlantic,
And the salt is commingled with rain over desolate beaches,
Thy heart, O beloved, is still beating—fitfully, feebly.
‘Is beating—ah! not as it beat in the squadrons of Sarafield,
Exultantly, joyously, gladly, expectant of battle,
With throbs like the notes of the drums when men gather for
fighting.
‘Beats still; but, ah! not as it beat in the latest Fitzgerald,
Nobly devote to his race’s most noble tradition;
Or in Emmet or Davis, or, last on their list, in O’Brien.
‘Beats fitfully, feebly. O desolate mother! O Erin!
When shall the pulse of thy life, which but flutters in
Connaucht,
Throb through thy meadows and boglands, and mountains and
cities?’
A subdued murmur of applause greeted the close of the recitation, and praise more sincere than that with which politeness generally greets the drawing-room performances of minor poets. Hyacinth joined in neither. It seemed to him that the verses were too beautiful to speak about, so sacred that praise was a kind of sacrilege. Perhaps some excuse may be found for his emotion in the fact that for weeks he had heard no poetry except the ode about ‘wiping something off a slate.’ The violence of the contrast benumbed his critical faculty. So a man who was obliged to gaze for a long time at the new churches erected in Belfast might afterwards catch himself in the act of admiring the houses which the Congested Districts Board builds in Connaught.
‘I am afraid I must have bored you.’ It was Miss O’Dwyer who greeted him. ‘I didn’t see you and Mr. Maguire come in until I had commenced my poor little poem. I ought to have given you some tea before I inflicted it on you.’
‘Oh,’ said Hyacinth, ‘it was beautiful. Is it really your own? Did you write it?’
Miss O’Dwyer flushed. The vehement sincerity of his tone embarrassed her, though she was accustomed to praise.
‘You are very kind,’ she said. ‘All my friends here are far too kind to me. But come now, I must give you some tea.’
The tea was nearly stone cold and weak with frequent waterings. The saucer and spoon, possibly even the cup, had been used by someone else before. Mr. Maguire secured for himself the last remaining morsel of cake, leaving Hyacinth the choice between a gingerbread biscuit and a torn slice of bread and butter. None of these things appeared to embarrass Miss O’Dwyer. They did not matter in the least to Hyacinth.
‘Do you know the West well?’ he asked.
‘Indeed, I do not. I’ve always longed to go and spend a whole long summer there, but I’ve never had the chance.’
‘Then how did you know it was like that? I mean, how did you catch the spirit of it in your poem?’
‘Did I?’ she said. ‘I am so glad. But I don’t deserve any credit for it. I wrote those verses after I had been looking at one of Jim Tynan’s pictures. You know them, of course? No? Oh, but you must go and see them at once if you love the West. And you do, don’t you?’
‘It is my home,’ said Hyacinth.
When he had finished his tea she introduced him to some of the people who were in the room. Afterwards he came to know them, but the memories which Miss O’Dwyer’s verses called up in him made him absent and preoccupied. He scarcely heard the names she spoke. Soon the party broke up, and Hyacinth turned to look for Maguire.
‘I’m afraid Mr. Maguire has gone,’ said Miss O’Dwyer. ‘He has a lecture to attend this afternoon. You must come here again, Mr. Conneally. Come next Wednesday—every Wednesday, if you like. We can have a talk about the West. I shall want you to tell me all sorts of things. Perhaps Finola will be here next week. She very often comes. I shall look forward to introducing you to her. You are sure to admire her immensely. We all do.’
‘Yes, I’ve heard of her,’ said Hyacinth. ‘Mr. Maguire told me who she was.’
‘Oh, but he couldn’t have told you half. She is magnificent. All the rest of us are only little children compared to her. Now be sure you come and meet her.’
CHAPTER IV
Ever since Pitt and Castlereagh perpetrated their Act of Union two political parties have struggled together in Ireland. Both of them have been steadily prominent, so prominent that they have sometimes attracted the attention of the English public, and drawn to their contest a little quite unintelligent interest. The simplest and most