Life at Eltham went on in the same routine. My aunt was well, and would sit for long hours at the south door of her house—looking away up "King John's Chase"—the ruins of King John's Palace were at Eltham, and my aunt's park and grounds were part of the ancient Royal demesne. In these summer evenings she loved to sit at the top of the broad flight of shallow steps with me, and tell my little girls stories of her life of long ago.
Sometimes her favourite Dr. Bader would bring his zither down from London and play to us; or my aunt and I would sit in the great tapestry room with all of the seven windows open, listening to the song of the æolian harp as the soft breeze touched its strings and died away in harmony through the evening stillness.
Sometimes, too, she would sing in her soft, gentle old voice the songs of her youth, to the accompaniment of her guitar. "We met, 'twas in a crowd," was a favourite old song of hers, half forgotten since she used to sing it to the music of her spinet seventy years before, but Dr. Bader found the words in an old book, and the dear old lady crooned it sentimentally to me as we sat waiting for the hooting of the owls which signalled to her maid the time for shutting her lady's windows.
And I was conscious of sudden gusts of unrest and revolt against these leisured, peaceful days where the chiming of the great clock in the hall was the only indication of the flight of time, and the outside world of another age called to me with the manifold interests into which I had been so suddenly plunged with the power to help in the making and marring of a destiny.
In the autumn of 1880 Mr. Parnell came to stay with us at Eltham, only going to Dublin as occasion required. Willie had invited him to come, and I got in some flowers in pots and palms to make my drawing-room look pretty for him.
Mr. Parnell, who was in very bad health at that time, a few days later complained of sore throat, and looked, as I thought, mournfully at my indoor garden, which I industriously watered every day. It then dawned upon me that he was accusing this of giving him sore throat, and I taxed him with it. He evidently feared to vex me, but admitted that he did think it was so, and "wouldn't it do if they were not watered so often?" He was childishly touched when I at once had them all removed, and he sank happily on to the sofa, saying that "plants were such damp things!"
His throat became no better, and he looked so terribly ill when—as he often did now—he fell asleep from sheer weakness on the sofa before the fire, that I became very uneasy about him. Once, on awaking from one of these sleeps of exhaustion, he told me abruptly that he believed it was the green in the carpet that gave him sore throat. There and then we cut a bit out, and sent it to London to be analysed, but without result. It was quite a harmless carpet.
During this time I nursed him assiduously, making him take nourishment at regular intervals, seeing that these day-sleeps of his were not disturbed, and forcing him to take fresh air in long drives through the country around us. At length I had the satisfaction of seeing his strength gradually return sufficiently to enable him to take the exercise that finished the process of this building-up, and he became stronger than he had been for some years. I do not think anyone but we who saw him then at Eltham, without the mask of reserve he always presented to the outside world, had any idea of how near death's door his exertions on behalf of the famine-stricken peasants of Ireland had brought him.
Once in that autumn, after he came to us, I took him for a long drive in an open carriage through the hop-growing district of Kent. I had not thought of the fact that hundreds of the poorest of the Irish came over for the hop-picking, and might recognize him.
After driving over Chislehurst Common and round by the lovely Grays, we came right into a crowd of the Irish "hoppers"—men, women, and children. In a moment there was a wild surge towards the carriage, with cries of "The Chief! The Chief!" and "Parnell! Parnell! Parnell!" The coachman jerked the horses on to their haunches for fear of knocking down the enthusiastic men and women who were crowding up—trying to kiss Parnell's hand, and calling for "a few words."