Penelope's Irish Experiences. Wiggin Kate Douglas Smith
duds she do be wearin’.”
“Call the docthor, is it? God give you sinse! Sure the docthors is only a flock of omadhauns.”
“Is it your daughter she is, ma’am?” (This to Salemina.)
“She’s from Ameriky, the poor mischancy crathur.”
“Give her a toothful of whisky, your ladyship. Sure it’s nayther bite nor sup she’s had the morn, and belike she’s as impty as a quarry-hole.”
When this last expression from the mother of the long weak family fell upon Salemina’s cultured ears she looked desperate.
We could not leave a fellow-countrywoman, least of all could Salemina forsake a fellow-citizen, in such a hapless plight.
“Take one cab with Francesca and the luggage, Penelope,” she whispered. “I will bring the girl with me, put her to bed, find her friends, and see that she starts on her journey safely; it’s very awkward, but there’s nothing else to be done.”
So we departed in a chorus of popular approval.
“Sure it’s you that have the good hearts!”
“May the heavens be your bed!”
“May the journey thrive wid her, the crathur!”
Francesca and I arrived first at the hotel where our rooms were already engaged, and there proved to be a comfortable little dressing, or maid’s, room just off Salemina’s.
Here the Derelict was presently ensconced, and there she lay, in a sort of profound exhaustion, all day, without once absolutely regaining her consciousness. Instead of visiting the National Gallery as I had intended, I returned to the dock to see if I could find the girl’s luggage, or get any further information from the stewardess before she left Dublin.
“I’ll send the doctor at once, but we must learn all possible particulars now,” I said maliciously to poor Salemina. “It would be so awkward, you know, if you should be arrested for abduction.”
The doctor thought it was probably nothing more than the complete prostration that might follow eight days of sea-sickness, but the patient’s heart was certainly a little weak, and she needed the utmost quiet. His fee was a guinea for the first visit, and he would drop in again in the course of the afternoon to relieve our anxiety. We took turns in watching by her bedside, but the two unemployed ones lingered forlornly near, and had no heart for sightseeing. Francesca did, however, purchase opera tickets for the evening, and secretly engaged the housemaid to act as head nurse in our absence.
As we were dining at seven, we heard a faint voice in the little room beyond. Salemina left her dinner and went in to find her charge slightly better. We had been able thus far only to take off her dress, shoes, and such garments as made her uncomfortable; Salemina now managed to slip on a nightdress and put her under the bedcovers, returning then to her cold mutton cutlet.
“She’s an extraordinary person,” she said, absently playing with her knife and fork. “She didn’t ask me where she was, or show any interest in her surroundings; perhaps she is still too weak. She said she was better, and when I had made her ready for bed, she whispered, ‘I’ve got to say my prayers’.
“‘Say them by all means,’ I replied.
“‘But I must get up and kneel down, she said.
“I told her she must do nothing of the sort; that she was far too ill.
“‘But I must,’ she urged. ‘I never go to bed without saying my prayers on my knees.’
“I forbade her doing it; she closed her eyes, and I came away. Isn’t she quaint?”
At this juncture we heard the thud of a soft falling body, and rushing in we found that the Derelict had crept from her bed to her knees, and had probably not prayed more than two minutes before she fainted for the fifth or sixth time in twenty-four hours. Salemina was vexed, angel and philanthropist though she is. Francesca and I were so helpless with laughter that we could hardly lift the too conscientious maiden into bed. The situation may have been pathetic; to the truly pious mind it would indeed have been indescribably touching, but for the moment the humorous side of it was too much for our self-control. Salemina, in rushing for stimulants and smelling salts, broke her only comfortable eyeglasses, and this accident, coupled with her other anxieties and responsibilities, caused her to shed tears, an occurrence so unprecedented that Francesca and I kissed and comforted her and tucked her up on the sofa. Then we sent for the doctor, gave our opera tickets to the head waiter and chambermaid, and settled down to a cheerful home evening, our first in Ireland.
“If Himself were here, we should not be in this plight,” I sighed.
“I don’t know how you can say that,” responded Salemina, with considerable spirit. “You know perfectly well that if your husband had found a mother and seven children helpless and deserted on that dock, he would have brought them all to this hotel, and then tried to find the father and grandfather.”
“And it’s not Salemina’s fault,” argued Francesca. “She couldn’t help the girl being born in Salem; not that I believe that she ever heard of the place before she saw it printed on Salemina’s trunk. I told you it was too big and red, dear, but you wouldn’t listen! I am the strongest American of the party, but I confess that U.S.A. in letters five inches long is too much for my patriotism.”
“It would not be if you ever had charge of the luggage,” retorted Salemina.
“And whatever you do, Francesca,” I added beseechingly, “don’t impugn the veracity of our Derelict. While we think of ourselves as ministering angels I can endure anything, but if we are the dupes of an adventuress, there is nothing pretty about it. By the way, I have consulted the English manageress of this hotel, who was not particularly sympathetic. ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t have assumed charge of her, madam,’ she said, ‘but having done so, hadn’t you better see if you can get her into a hospital?’ It isn’t a bad suggestion, and after a day or two we will consider it, or I will get a trained nurse to take full charge of her. I would be at any reasonable expense rather than have our pleasure interfered with any further.”
It still seems odd to make a proposition of this kind. In former times, Francesca was the Croesus of the party, Salemina came second, and I last, with a most precarious income. Now I am the wealthy one, Francesca is reduced to the second place, and Salemina to the third, but it makes no difference whatever, either in our relations, our arrangements, or, for that matter, in our expenditures.
Chapter IV. Enter Benella Dusenberry
‘A fair maiden wander’d All wearied and lone, Sighing, “I’m a poor stranger, And far from my own.” We invited her in, We offered her share Of our humble cottage And our humble fare; We bade her take comfort, No longer to moan, And made the poor stranger Be one of our own.’
The next morning dawned as lovely as if it had slipped out of Paradise, and as for freshness, and emerald sheen, the world from our windows was like a lettuce leaf just washed in dew. The windows of my bedroom looked out pleasantly on St. Stephen’s Green, commonly called Stephen’s Green, or by citizens of the baser sort, Stephens’s Green. It is a good English mile in circumference, and many are the changes in it from the time it was first laid out, in 1670, to the present day, when it was made into a public park by Lord Ardilaun.
When the celebrated Mrs. Delany, then Mrs. Pendarves, first saw it, the centre was a swamp, where in winter a quantity of snipe congregated, and Harris in his History of Dublin alludes to the presence of snipe and swamp as an agreeable and uncommon circumstance not to be met with perhaps in any other great city in the world.
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