He was an idyllically picturesque creature of seventeen or eighteen, with large, gentle grey eyes, set in a golden-brown face several shades darker in value than they were, and the most charming voice and manner imaginable. The cat, on whom my cousin had basely tried to empty the bath, came with him; sometimes strolling behind with a set face of unconsciousness, but with a tail that twitched with inward plottings, and sometimes making possessed scuttles on ahead, with a sort of squirrel’s tail held high, and a little dreadful air of being moved by some unseen power. Pat James was evidently rather ashamed of it, and at such moments would throw stones at it to cover his confusion.
“We have it for a dog, Miss,” he said in answer to our enquiries, “and it have the way now to be running with us when we’d be going out.”
Here he threw another stone at the cat who had usurped the position of household dog, which had the effect of wafting it across the road under Sibbie’s nose, and thereby alarming her seriously. He left us after about half a mile, and when we saw him last he was sitting on a big rock, his slouched felt hat and creamy flannel “bawneen” looking all that could be desired against their background of clear blue sky, whilst the cat performed unearthly gambols in the heather at his bare feet.
“After all,” we said to each other, as we turned into the main road, and set Sibbie’s long nose for Recess, “it was just as well we missed our way, for if we hadn’t we should have missed Pat James.”
The road that was to be our portion was the one known as the New Line, leading out of the Recess and Clifden road into another road that leads through the Pass of Kylemore, and on into Letterfrack, where we meant to spend the night. Sibbie was fresh and full of going, and the long level road, following the curves of Lough Inagh and Lough Derryclare, inspired her with a fine and unusual zeal. The accustomed boats, each with its little patient whipping figure, were paddling about the lakes, and, according to our custom, we reined in the fiery Sibbie to watch them. They were a depressing spectacle, and, as usual, our cold, though anything but fishy, eye blighted all their chances of a rise. We left them all flogging away like Dublin cabdrivers, and made up our minds that if we wanted to spend thirty shillings a day on fish, we would do it at the Stores.
Our way lay through a long up-sloping tract of heathery, boggy valley, with the splendid towers and pinnacles of the Twelve Pins hanging high over the lakes on our left, and on our right the last outworks of the Maam Turc ranges rising almost from the road. It was an utterly lonely place. The small black-faced sheep pervaded the landscape, speckling the mountains like grains of rice, and we could see them filing along the ledges over purple depths where more than one climber has been killed. The little black and brindled cattle stared at us defiantly as we drove along, and the only human creature we met on the road was a grey old bagpiper, who looked as though he might have lost his way among the hills some time in the last century, and had only just found the New Line when we met him.
It certainly was a perfect day and a perfect drive. The delicious mountain wind, which was charged with all the subtle perfumes drawn from bog and heather; the marvellous cloud effects on the great crags of the Twelve Pins; the sparkle and rush of the brown streams under the innumerable hog-backed bridges; the intense blue of the lakes, even the yellow whiteness of the slow-climbing road, all combined to fill us with that vague delightful yearning which can only be satisfied by lunch half an hour earlier than usual.
One only sign of civilisation did we see between Recess and Kylemore, and it was of a wholly unexpected type. A middle-sized house, bow-windowed, gabled, stucco-covered, hideous beyond compare, standing in the middle of a grass plot at the foot of one of the hills, and looking as if some vulgar-minded fairy had transported it bodily from Brixton or Clapham Rise. It had at first the effect of being deserted, but, as we got nearer, a melancholy old horse strayed out of a sort of dilapidated shed and stared at us, and an outside car propped against an elaborately gabled end showed that he was not a mere derelict. As we drove by, a cat climbed out of one broken pane of glass, and a cock crept in by another, and then suddenly at three of the upstairs windows there appeared the faces of three dirty little girls. The hall door was shut, and the thin wiry grass round the house was untrampled. No other living thing appeared, and we can only conclude that we stumbled in upon the middle of a fairy tale. The house, of course, was the work of enchantment, and the three princesses, who were held there in durance vile, were about to be rescued by the princely cock whom we had seen forcing an entrance, while the bad fairy—the cat, naturally—had to creep out and throw up the sponge (of which, by-the-bye, the princesses might with advantage have made practical use).
We left the New Line just as we came in sight of the Pass of Kylemore, and the road on which we now found ourselves wound along the shore of the lake, according to the custom in Connemara, where, unlike the rest of Ireland, the roads are not planted along the backs of the highest hills procurable. We pulled up on one of the bends of the road to look at the view and make a sketch. That is the supremest of the advantages of driving your own donkey-cart, you can generally stop when and wherever you like. The only exception to this rule is when, as happened at Ballinahinch, your donkey has had too many oats.
On this occasion the donkey was quite ready to stop, and she surveyed, with a connoisseur’s cold eye, the unsurpassable view, while the evening clouds thronged the gap between the steep tree-covered sides of Kylemore on one side, and the stony severities of the Diamond Mountain on the other, and sent changing lights and shadows hurrying over the wide lake, and drove the labouring sketcher of these things almost to madness.