This girl springs into my pictures of childhood in an odd inconsequent way. She was very handsome, of the sparkling brunette type, with white teeth, and hard bright eyes as black as the hair that rippled low down on either temple, and was caught under the ear in an old-fashioned bunch of ringlets. She was under my mother's protection, who was very kind and generous to her, having an inscrutable liking for strangers,—above all, needy strangers. She was a woman to turn her back inevitably upon a friend in prosperity, and court him in poverty. There was nothing of the snob in my mother, I must admit.
Another vivid picture I have of this young girl is a gloomier and more impressive one. I cannot tell why I was chosen for that drive. I suppose it was because I looked so delicate and unhappy that my stepfather insisted on having me. He drove a pair of spirited horses, and I sat opposite my mother and the dark young girl. She did not smile once that day, and the extreme sadness of her face riveted my attention. I thought I had never seen any one so beautiful and interesting, and I wondered why her eyes kept continually filling with tears.
She and my mother whispered mysteriously from time to time, and the disconnected words that reached my ears were no enlightenment for my puzzled brain. Ordinarily I was too dreamy or too excited to have much curiosity for my fellows. I preferred my own thoughts to speculations upon creatures so dull and undiverting as big people. But this day it was different. A brilliant young lady in long dresses, with a glittering ring upon her finger, whom my parents treated with every kindness and consideration, could be just as miserable apparently as a small neglected girl. It was truly a wonderful discovery.
We drove along the Kilmainham road, I now know, and as we went farther north, the pretty girl's tears flowed more freely, only she did not cry as we children cry. She bit her lips, and every moment thrust her handkerchief angrily into her eyes. My mother seemed to scold her for having wished to come that way, and I thought wanted to divert her attention from something the girl was evidently anxious to see.
We stopped near a large building, and there was my stepfather turned towards us and talking a strange jargon. From dint of puzzling over each word, I arrived at the extraordinary conclusion that somebody this young girl loved was in prison, that it was not wicked apparently to be locked up in prison, and that the woodwork they were gazing at, my stepfather with his hat in his hand, was something bad men were getting ready for her friend's destruction. The young girl stared up at the woodwork with streaming passionate eyes, and then buried her face in her handkerchief, and rocked from side to side in a dreadful way. We were driving on, and I gazed up to see what my stepfather was doing. He, too, was wiping away tears, and his hat was right down upon his eyes.
The mystery was solved years afterward. This girl was engaged to a political prisoner recently condemned to death. My mother used to take her to see him at Kilmainham Jail, and she had insisted on being driven round by the prison the day before the execution.
My grandmother lies farther back, a fainter picture in that world of unsatisfactory grown-up people. While she lived, her favourite present to each of her granddaughters was either a grey or green silk dress, with a poky bonnet and ribbons to match. In the grey we must have looked like little Quakeresses, and in the green like a gathering of the "gentle people" out of the moonlit woods, our proper dominion.
Her I remember indistinctly as a thin-lipped, unpleasant-looking woman, who had a fixed opinion that children must either be "saucy" or "bold." I was bold, because I was always too frightened of her to say anything, saucy or meek.
She used to lie in bed or on the parlour sofa, sipping egg-flip and reading religious books. She was very devout; but her religion, I suspect, served neither to brighten her own nor any one else's life. It had a sombre, vinegary aspect, more concerned with punishment due than pleasure merited, more attuned to severity than Christian mildness.
By some unaccountable process she melted out of my existence, having darkened it for some months, from which I infer that her death passed unnoted by me or was not explained to me. I did not see her dead, and can record no gentle deed of hers living. She never kissed me, but sometimes shook my hand in a loose gentlemanly fashion, and exhorted me not to be so "bold."