Even as we landed at Rosslare there seemed to fall upon him an unnameable affinity with the country of his blood; as we travelled slowly—very slowly—over her truly emerald bosom, he sat in a dream watching the little black cattle, that we afterwards learnt to beware of for “cross bastes,” as they cropped the sedgy meadows, his eyes wandering from them to the tender Irish sky and then waking into fun as he saw a peasant at a small station trip a boy up unawares and cuff him soundly, laughing as he did it.
And when we reached Waterford—only a dirty town to me—he plunged at once among his people and laughed joyously at the retort of a begging urchin, whose pathetic plea of hunger he had pretended to rail at: “That’s where ye’re wrong, yer honour,” the cheery little villain had cried: “A man may be fat and hungry too.”
The horse races were going on, and the inn was in an uproar, which he sat up most of the night to watch.
But the next day sleepy ways prevailed once more, and it took us a long time to get off at the station, where I recollect his amusement at the porter’s instruction: “This way to America.”
We reached Killarney without trunks, and the conveyance sent to meet us broke down on the way to the hotel; but he would meet no contretemps save with a smile, and it was borne in on me that it was because he was an Irishman that Italian happy-go-luckiness had never ruffled him. So we fell in with the leisurely ways of the land, and were fain to “enjoy the soft rain” at that romantic spot and watch for the beautiful shapes of the hills to appear out of the mists on the lake.
Next morning, however, that unique green-blue sky, washed with rain and dappled with wisps of cloud, smiled on us in faint sunshine, and from that hour our journey was one passing from fair to fairer scenes.
In a short time our train was climbing, or burrowing, through perilous cliffs of granite, crowned with lonely moors and, presently swooping down on the glorious coast-line, that makes for Valencia Island.
This we left on one side, and at Lough Caragh we also did not halt, tempting as it was; for our destination was Waterville, where we had rooms booked at the charming Great Southern Hotel for the fishing season; and after an hour or so more of leisurely travel we reached Cahirciveen, where a ramshackle trap waited to carry us over the moors to the village that lies twixt sea and lough.
The whole journey, and the last of it not least, was a revelation to him of which I think he was proud to talk to me, and I certainly had formed no notion of the beauties of The Kingdom of Kerry. The rough road across the wild heather-moor was bordered almost continuously with hedges of the small purple-red fuchsia in full bloom, and the cabins—white or pink-washed, with thatched roofs—that we passed at rare intervals, were shaded with it and covered with honeysuckle.
“You live in a fair country,” said Joe to an old man standing one day at the door of his tiny hovel; and I—looking beyond him to the dim range of the Macgillicuddy Reeks—added, “and with beautiful hills.”