The other episode connected with her visit that has stamped itself upon memory is typical of her rare method of imparting knowledge to the infant mind. We were driving in a fly through the rose-smelling country, and it transpired, as we approached a railway station, that we were going to visit Shakespeare's grave. "Who is Shakespeare?" I flippantly asked, looking at my sister, who sat beside my mother.
Pif-paf! a blow on the ear sent sparks flying before my eyes, and rolled my hat to the ground. Two years inhabiting a sacred county and not to have heard of the poet's name! a child of hers, the most learned of women, so ignorant and so unlettered! Thus was I made acquainted with the name of Shakespeare, and with stinging cheek and humiliated and stiffened little heart, is it surprising that I remember nothing else of that visit to his tomb? Indeed it was part of my pride to look at nothing, to note nothing, but walk about that day in full-eyed sullen silence.
My mother had not seen me for two years. This was the measure of maternal tenderness she had treasured up for me in that interval, and so royally meted out to me. Other children are kissed and cried over after a week's absence. I am stunned by an unmerited blow when I rashly open my lips after a two years' separation. And yet I preserve my belief in maternal love as a blessing that exists for others, born under a more fortunate star, though the bounty of nature did not reserve a stray beam to brighten the way for that miserable little waif I was those long, long years ago.
Chapter XXI. OLD ACQUAINTANCE.
The most vivid remembrance of my first return to Ireland is the sharp sensation of ugly sound conveyed in the flat Dublin drawl. I have never since been able to surmount this unjust antipathy to the accent of my native town. The intolerable length of the syllables, the exaggerated roundness of the vowel sounds, the weight and roll of the eternal r's—it is all like the garlic of Provence, more seizing than captivating.
And then the squalor, the mysterious ugliness of the North Wall! The air of affronted leisure that greets you on all sides. A filthy porter slouches over to you, with an indulgent, quizzical look in his kindly eyes. "Is it a porther ye'll be wanting?" he asks, in suppressed wonderment at any such unreasonable need on your part. When he has sufficiently recovered from the shock, he lounges in among the boxes, heroically resolved to make a joke of his martyrdom. He meets your irritated glance with a reassuring smile, nods, and drawls out cheerily: "Aisy, now, aisy. Sure an' 'twill be all the same in a hundred years." When at last your trunks are discovered in the disorderly heap, he volunteers, with the same suggestion of indifferent indulgence: "I suppose 'twill be a cab or a cyar you'll be wanting next." By implication you are made to understand that the cab or the cyar is another exorbitant demand on your part, and that properly speaking you should shoulder your trunk yourself and march off contentedly to your inn or lodging or palace. "If ye loike, I'll lift it on to the cab for you," he adds, good-naturedly.
There are travellers whom these odd ways of Erin amuse; others there are who are exasperated to the verge of insanity by them. But they amply explain the lamentable condition of the island and the imperturbable good-humour of the least troubled and least ambitious of races. The porter's philosophy resumes the philosophy of the land: "Aisy, now, aisy. Sure an' 'twill be all the same in a hundred years."
With patience and good-humour on your side, and much voluble sympathy and information on that of your driver, you are sure to arrive somewhere, even from such remote latitudes as that of the North Wall and the Pigeon-house. You are jerked over two lock-bridges, and you thank your stars with reason that the discoloured and malodorous waters of the Liffey have not closed over you and your luggage. The catastrophe would find your driver phlegmatic and philosophic, with a twinkle in his eye above the infamous depths of mire that suffocated you, assuring you that when a man is ass enough to travel he must take the consequences of his folly. For Erin and Iberia, moist shamrock and flaunting carnation, meet in their conviction that the sage sits at home and smokes his pipe or twangs his guitar in leisure while the fool alone courts the perils of foreign highways.