"Phyllis!" exclaimed my husband in a horrified voice, "what do you mean? Who is Mrs. O'Shea?"
Poor Phyllis gave one gasp at me and fled in confusion.
Then my King saw some of the newspaper people, and eased their minds of their duty to their respective papers. The lady from America he utterly refused to see, as she had forced herself into my room, but, undaunted, she left vowing that she would cable a better "interview" than any of them to her paper. They were kind enough to send it to me in due course, and I must admit that even if not exactly accurate, it was distinctly "bright." It was an illustrated "interview," and Parnell and I appeared seated together on a stout little sofa, he clad in a fur coat, and I in a dangerously décolleté garment, diaphanous in the extreme, and apparently attached to me by large diamonds. My sedate Phyllis had become a stage "grisette" of most frivolous demeanour, and my poor bedroom—in fact, the most solid and ugly emanation of Early Victorian virtue I have ever had bequeathed to me—appeared to an interested American State as the "very utmost" in fluffy viciousness that could be evolved in the united capitals of the demi-mondaine.
I showed this "interview" to my husband, though rather doubtful if he would be amused by it; but he only said, staring sadly at it, "I don't think that American lady can be a very nice person."
After he had sent the reporters off my King settled into his old coat again, and subsided into his easy chair, smoking and quietly watching me. I told him he must give up that close scrutiny of me, and that I did not stare at him till he grew shy.
"Why not?" he said. "A cat may look at a king, and surely a man may look at his wife!"
But I refused to stay indoors talking nonsense on so lovely a day, and we wandered out together along the fields to Aldrington. Along there is a place where they make bricks. We stood to watch the men at work, and Parnell talked to them till they went off to dinner. Parnell watched them away till they were out of sight, and then said, "Come on, Queenie, we'll make some bricks, too. I've learnt all about it in watching them!" So we very carefully made two bricks between us, and put them with the others in the kiln to burn. I suggested marking our two bricks, so that we might know them when we returned, but when we looked in the kiln some hours later they all appeared alike.
Then we got down to the sea and sat down to watch it and rest. Far beyond the basin at Aldrington, near the mouth of Shoreham Harbour, we had the shore to ourselves and talked of the future, when Ireland had settled down, and my King—king, indeed, in forcing reason upon that unreasonable land and wresting the justice of Home Rule from England—could abdicate; when we could go to find a better climate, so that his health might become all I wished. We talked of the summer visits we would make to Avondale, and of the glorious days when he need never go away from me. Of the time when his hobbies could be pursued to the end, instead of broken off for political work. And we talked of Ireland, for Parnell loved her, and what he loved I would not hate or thrust out from his thoughts, even on this day that God had made.
Yet, as we sat together, silent now, even though we spoke together still with the happiness that has no words, a storm came over the sea. It had been very hot all day and a thunderstorm was inevitable; but, as we sheltered under the breakwater, I wished that this one day might have been without a storm.
Reading my thoughts, he said: "The storms and thunderings will never hurt us now, Queenie, my wife, for there is nothing in the wide world that can be greater than our love; there is nothing in all the world but you and I." And I was comforted because I did not remember death.