We went into breakfast with what appetite we might, and felt what terrible facts had conduced to the circumstance that we, tourists and strangers, were able to take our places in the old Renvyle dining-room, and partake of hot breakfast-cakes and coffee—coffee whose excellence alone was enough to make us forget we were in an hotel—as if we, and not the Blakes, had been its proprietors for centuries.
We spent the morning in making a final tour of the house, up and down the long passages, and in and out of the innumerable charming panelled rooms. We have left the library to the last, and now that we are face to face with the serious business of description, our consciences tell us that we are not competent to pronounce on ancient editions and choice bindings. It seemed to us that every book in the tall mahogany cases that stood like screens about the room was old and respectable enough to have been our great grandfather; we certainly had in our hands a contemporary edition of Sir Walter Raleigh’s “History of the World,” not to mention an awful sixteenth century treatise on tortures, with illustrations that are still good, handy, reliable nightmares when the ordinary stock runs short. My second cousin has, I fancy, privately set up a reputation as a book-fancier, among people who do not know her well, on the strength of her graphic descriptions of one massive tome, a treatise on Spain, written in Latin, with gorgeous golden hieroglyphics stamped on its white vellum cover, and a date far back in 1500 on its yellow title-page.
I am sure that Sibbie felt small gratitude to the sulphate of zinc that brought about the complete healing of her sore shoulder, which took place during her visit at Renvyle. Probably never before since her entrance into society had she spent three whole days in a stable on terms of delightful equality with real horses, and with at least two feeds a day of real oats. “Beggars can’t bear heat,” is a tried and trusted saying in Ireland, and it soon became apparent that the moral and physical temperature in which Sibbie had been living had been too high for her. When we went to the hall-door to superintend the stowage of our effects in the governess-cart, we found her on her hind legs, with a stable-boy dangling from her bit, and flat on his back in front of her lay the respectable butler, overwhelmed in the rugs which he had brought out on his arm. We hastened to the rescue; the butler got up, Sibbie got down, and we proffered apologies for her misconduct.
“Oh, thin that one’s the divil painted!” said the stable-boy, speaking, probably, on the principle of “Penny plain, tuppence coloured.” “He went to ate the face off me to-day, an’ I claning out his stall! Faith, ’twas hardly I had time to climb out over the side of the stall before he’d have me disthroyed.”
The miscreant’s appearance was that of a swollen sausage propped on hairpins, and, as having regretfully bade farewell to the hospitable house of Renvyle, we set off down the avenue at a showy canter, we promised ourselves that we would not strain the tender quality of mercy by any philanthropic nonsense of walking up hills.
Our route lay along our old acquaintance the switchback road for two or three miles, and then we said farewell to it, and turned to our left to follow the easterly line of the coast. It was not a bad little road in its way, but it was sufficient to chasten the exuberance of Sibbie’s gaiety before we had travelled very far along it; in fact, as a midshipman observed of Madeira, “The scenery was lovely, but very steep.” The coast thrust long rocky fingers into the sea, and we drove across the highly-developed knuckles; that is, if not picturesque, the most practical description that we can give of this stage of our journey. To try to convey the blueness of the sea, the variety and colour of the innumerable bays and creeks, the solemn hugeness of Lettergash mountain that towered on our right, is futility, and a weariness of the flesh. Rather let us speak of such things as we are able, of the dogs whose onslaught from each successive cabin made it advisable to keep a pile of stones in the trap, and justified the time spent in practice at the bladder campion; of the London Pride and the great bell-heather that ably decorated the rocks; and, lastly, the amenities of these are past. This tract of country had a baneful practice of tempting us to pass by a deferential retreat into the ditch, and of then instantly starting in emulous pursuit. On one of these occasions, after a stern-chase of half a mile, in despair of otherwise putting an end to it, my cousin and I pulled up at a moderate hill, and got out and walked, hoping that the cart that had been clattering hard on our heels would now pass us by. Far otherwise; it also pulled up, and one of its many occupants called out in tones of genial politeness: “Ah! don’t be sparin’ him that way, ladies. He’s well able to pull the pair of ye; nourish him wid the whip!”
Our destination was Leenane (pronounced Leenahn), but we had been advised to turn off the main road in order to see the Pass of Salruck. Slowly rounding the flank of Lettergash, we turned our backs to the sea and struck inland again into the now familiar country of lake and heather. We had been told that a fishing-lodge by a lake would be a sign unto us that we had arrived at the by-road to Salruck. Here was the lake, and here the fishing-lodge; but could this be the by-road? If so, it certainly was not promising; in fact, before we committed ourselves to its stony ferocities, my cousin alighted in order to collect information from the peasantry, a task in which she believed herself to excel. In this instance the peasantry consisted of an elderly man, breaking stones by the side of the road, and the perspiring stare with which he received my cousin’s question was not encouraging. She repeated it. He stared up at the sun, wrinkled his face till it looked like a brown paper parcel too tightly tied with string, and replied, “I’d say it’d be somewhere about a quarther behind three—or thereabouts.”
“No,” said my cousin in her shrillest tones, “I asked you whether that is the road to Salruck?”
“Oh, it will—the day’ll be fine, thank God,” wiping his forehead with his sleeve, “but we’ll have rain on it soon—to-morrow, or afther to-morrow. Ye couldn’t put yer thumb bechuxt the shtarr and the moon lash’ night, an’ they’d reckon that a bad sign.”
“Stone deaf,” remarked my cousin to me in a “Just-Heaven-grant-me-patience” sort of voice; then, pointing towards the hill, “Is—Salruck—over—there?” she slowly screamed.