“That Good Luck may attind you every day you see the sun! That I mightn’t leave this world until I see you well marrid!” A pause, and a luscious look that spoke unutterable things. “Ah ha! I’ll tell the Miss Connors that ye thrated me dacint!” A laugh, triumphing in my superiority to the Misses Connor, followed, and I made haste to produce the boots.
“Oh! Oh! Oh! Me heart ’d open! Ye-me-lay, but they’ll go on me in style!”
Then, in a darkling whisper, and with a conspirator’s eye on the open hall-door: “Where did you get them, asthore? Was it Mamma gave ‘em t’ye?” (The implication being that I, for love of the “Womaneen,” must have stolen them, as no one could have parted with them voluntarily.) Then returning to the larger style. “That God Almighty may retch out the two hands to ye, my Pearl of a noble lady! How will I return thanks to ye? That the great God may lave me alive until I’d be crawlin’ this-a-way”—(an inch by inch progress is pantomimed with two gnarled and ebony fingers)—“and on my knees, till I’d see the gran’ weddin’ of my fine lady that gave me the paireen o’ shluppers!”
I think it will be admitted that this was an adequate return for value received.
CHAPTER XIII
THE RESTORATION
It was in June, 1888, that Mrs. Martin became the tenant of Ross House and that she and her daughters returned to Galway, sixteen years, to the very month, since they had left it.
It would demand one more skilled than I in the unfathomable depths of Irish Land Legislation to attempt to set forth the precise status of Ross, its house, demesne, and estate, at this time. It is not, after all, a matter of any moment, save to those concerned. Mrs. Martin had been staying in Galway, and had paid a visit to Ross, with the result that she decided to rent the house and gardens from the authorities in whose jurisdiction they then were, and set herself to “build the walls of Jerusalem.” The point which may be dwelt on is the courage that was required to return to a place so fraught with memories of a happiness never to be recaptured, and to take up life again among people in whom, as was only too probable, the ancient friendship was undermined by years of absence, misrepresentation, and misunderstanding. The handling of the estate had been unfortunate; the house and demesne had been either empty, or in the hands of strangers, careless and neglectful of all things, save only of the woodcock shooting, and the rabbit-trapping. When Mrs. Martin proposed to become a tenant in her old home, it had been empty for some time, and had suffered the usual indignities at the hands of what are erroneously known as caretakers. It is possible that caretakers exist who take care, and take nothing else, but the converse is more usual, and I do not imagine that Ross was any exception to the average of such cases.
The motives that impelled my cousin Nannie to face the enormous difficulties involved can, however, be understood, and that Martin should have sacrificed herself to the Lares and Penates of Ross—Ross, the love of which was rooted in her from her cradle—was no more, I suppose, than was to be expected from her.
From her mother had come the initiative, but it was Martin who saved Ross. She hurled herself into the work of restoration with her own peculiar blend of enthusiasm and industry, qualities that, in my experience, are rarely united. Her letters became instantly full of house-paintings, house-cleanings, mendings, repairs of every kind; what was in any degree possible she did with her own hands, what was not, she supervised, inventing, instructing, insisting on the work being done right, in the teeth of the invincible determination of the workmen to adhere to the tradition of the elders, and do it wrong.
Looking back on it, it seems something of a waste to have set a razor to cut down trees, and the work that was accomplished by “Martin Ross” that year was small indeed as compared with the manifold activities of “Miss Wilet.”