The talk drifted onward about her and many other curious persons and things, and the smoke from the cigars grew denser and denser until I dreamed that I saw all sorts of vanished faces in the space around me, and I fear that I was dreaming actually when aroused by Major Beddoes and told that "the ladies are retiring" and so we lighted their candles for them, and chatting a moment at the foot of the staircase, watched them disappear above.
Burne-Jones must have gotten the idea for his famous picture from such a scene. There is no place where a group of stately, beautifully gowned women show to better advantage than upon a staircase. I was strongly reminded of his painting on this occasion. After all the custom of good night to the ladies with the lighting of candles and its pleasant chat is a pretty one though you may object to their early disappearance and would greatly prefer an hour's more talk with them than with your own sex.
However, it is late to-night, and bidding our host adieu we move off through the glades of the park where Spenser wandered and dreamt so long ago, pausing a moment by the lake where the swans still drift as on a surface of molten silver. The midsummer air is balmy and delightful and a full moon lights up the woods until one almost fancies the Faerie Queene is out in their glades with all her court, or adrift on the lake with the swans.
My stay in the barracks is drawing to a close, and perhaps it is well. Major Beddoes threatens me with arrest, fearing a riot if I am allowed to wander around attending weddings and other functions to which I have not been bidden.
During my sojourn I have employed a boy named Tom who owns a sprightly horse and a jaunting-car not more than a century old, the latter harnessed to the former by means of strings. We have had many a rare drive between the hawthorn hedges, leaving the motor neglected in a shed: its day will come.
I have been desirous since leaving Achill to hear again that mournful cry for the dead,—"keening,"—and had arranged with Tom to bring two old women into the barracks after dark, to whom I was to give half a crown each and a bottle of—let us say "cologne"; but they did not materialise and when I questioned Tom he replied, "Sure, sor, I had 'em beyant Major Beddoe's rooms, but he druv 'em away."
"Certainly I did," chimed in the Major; "do you want me court-martialled?"
I would not object if it were in a good cause. I think there is also a bit of personal malice in his acts, as I laughed at him the other day. He has lately married a charming wife, and is at present quartered in Mallow, from whence he runs the nine miles in a motor-car of his new father-in-law. When he made his first appearance the other day on the barracks compound, with all the officers and their families assembled to greet him, said motor-car looked as though it had been through the wars, and was as pug-nosed as many of the aborigines of the land, caused by sudden contacts with stone gates and the sides of houses, to say nothing of unexpected excursions through old ladies' gardens and into gullies not intended for motors. I laughed, I could not help it, hence the malice aforesaid, with threats of arrest.