“Don’t mind her at all, Miss,” said a cattle drover, encouragingly, as he dragged a calf from before the wheel; “that one’d bother a rookery with her tongue; there isn’t a fair in the counthry but she’ll be bawling and fighting in it this way, so it’s little regard the people pays to her and her chat. Sure, as Shakspeare says, “ye’ll always know a rale lady wherever ye see her!”
This gallantry was so refreshing, that we did not stop to inquire more closely into the whereabouts of the quotation, and we slowly made our way out of the fair, past the bulging, grimy tents where porter and whisky were sold, and the screaming crowd of children in front of a showman’s booth, till the last knot of blue-cloaked women was circumnavigated, and the last incensed pig was dragged from between Sibbie’s forelegs.
We looked back as we crawled up the hill outside the village, and wondered what the pleasure could be of standing all day long in the drizzle, in mud ankle-deep, as many do who have nothing either to buy or sell. But a fair is not to them merely a place of business, it is a conversazione, extending from sunrise to sunset, at which the keen spectacular enjoyment of bargaining is blended with the purely personal pleasure of getting drunk.
Another mile or two of switchbacking brought us in sight of trees, which, in Connemara, answers to coming in sight of land, as far as civilisation is concerned; before long we were driving underneath them, and pulling up at the entrance gate of a demesne. We drove down a long avenue (when we say “avenue” in Ireland, we mean it according to the true sense of the word, and do not necessarily imply that it is over-arched with trees), with the sound of the sea in our ears, and became aware that we were on a strip of land like the battlefield of Lyonesse.
“On one side lay the ocean, and on one lay a great water.”
We wound by the edge of the lake, and might easily have mistaken the frothy ripple along its shore for the salt lip of the tide, but for the tall band of reeds that shook stiffly in the mist-laden wind. But we were nearing the sea every moment. We emerged from a plantation, and came in sight of it at last, and at the same time came to our destination, a long, grey, two-storey house, with low Elizabethan windows, and pale weather-slated walls, wholly unexpected, and altogether unique, as far, at all events, as this part of Ireland is concerned.
Anyone who knows Galway at all, knows the name of Blake; and anyone who read the reports of the Parnell Commission will remember the Mrs. Blake whose evidence there was thought by both sides to be of so remarkable a kind. Renvyle House, at whose oaken, iron-studded door Sibbie was now joyfully coming to a standstill, has been the home of the Blakes for several centuries; now, in its old age, it is the home of any tourist who chooses to go there. The bad times and the agitation hit Renvyle very hard; so hard that when the fight with the Land League was over, Mrs. Blake was not able to sit down and tranquilly enjoy her victory. She had, on the contrary, to rise up and give all her energies to repairing the ruin that such a victory meant. Her plan was a daring one for a boycotted woman to undertake; but it was carried out to its fullest intention. Before long, advertisements appeared in the newspapers and the guide books to the effect that Renvyle House had been added to the list of Connemara hotels, and the sound of traffic, “the coorsing and recoorsing” of cars began to be heard on the long avenue by the lake, as in the old times, when “exclusive dealing” and decrees of isolation were unknown.
We cannot here say much about the difficulties she had to contend with. Whatever they were they were overcome. It is both easier and pleasanter to speak of the advantages at her command. The charming, rambling old house, with its innumerable panelled bedrooms, the lakes, “shtiff” with brown trout, the woods and rocks in which hide all manner of strange beasts—from otters and seals downwards—the untainted Atlantic for the tourist to disport himself in or upon, as seems good to him, and the tallest mountains of Connemara to stare at across the bay, while sprawling at ease on such a level, creamy stretch of sand as is seldom found except in those places where it is the sole and much-bragged-of attraction. We had heard of all these things in advance; we were accustomed to thinking of Renvyle as an hotel; and yet, when we knocked at the door, and a grave and decorous man-servant appeared, the look of everything conspired to make us forget that we were tourists, prepared to exercise our lawful right of “bed and board,” and we came very near stammering out an inquiry if Mrs. Blake was at home.
CHAPTER VIII.
