CHAPTER XXIII
SEASIDE HOLIDAYS
"Green leaves a-floating,
Castles of the foam,
Boats of mine a-boating,
Where will all come home?"
—STEVENSON.
In May, 1886, I took my children to the Queen's Hotel, Eastbourne, for a change, and, after a few days spent in looking for lodgings, I settled them in St. John's Road. Parnell enjoyed the bathing at Eastbourne greatly, and was much distressed that the weakness of my heart prevented my joining him in his swims, and that boating had most disastrous effects on me.
He was boyishly determined that I should at any rate join him in some way in his sea "sports," and one warm May evening he insisted that if I went into the sea fully dressed it could not hurt me. I thought it would at any rate be most uncomfortable, but to please him I held tightly to his arm while we waded far out to sea till the waves came to my shoulder and threw me off my feet.
He held me tightly, laughing aloud as the ripple of waves and wind caught my hair and loosed it about my shoulders; and, as I grew cold and white, my wonderful lover carried me, with all my weight of soaked clothing, back to the shore, kissing the wet hair that the wind twisted about his face and whispering the love that almost frightened me in its strength. Luckily the dusk of evening had come down upon us, and I was able to get back to the house in my wet things, half-walking and half-carried by Parnell, without unduly shocking Eastbourne's conventions.
As I thought I should be able to be away from my aunt, with occasional flying visits to her, for about two months, Parnell had two of our horses brought down to Eastbourne. He had during that time to go to London and Ireland, but it was on the whole a peaceful little interlude in his strenuous political life, and we were very happy. He rode his horse President in the morning, and afterwards I drove him far out into the country around Eastbourne with Dictator in my phaeton.
We often drove out to Birling Gap—a favourite haunt of ours—and there we selected a site for the ideal house of our dreams; a place where one could hear nothing but the beating of the surf on the rocks below and the wild call of the sea-birds. He loved that place, where we could be absolutely alone save for the coastguardsman along the cliff, who never intruded his interesting conversation, but who was always ready for a chat when we cared to hear his stories of the sea.
It was impossible to drive near the place, so we had to leave Dictator and the phaeton far off on the last bit possible to drive upon. Parnell had an easy method of "hitching" a horse to something, in the firm faith that he would find it there on return a few hours later, and this made me very uneasy where my far from patient Dictator was concerned. Parnell would settle the horse with a feed, in charge of his groom, well sheltered behind a hill, and take a fantastic pleasure in observing the sulky gloom of the young man's face after an hour or so of this isolated meditation.