home for the holidays! what a joyous sound the words have for little ears! holidays—home! two iridiscent words of rainbow-promise, expectation in all its warm witchery of dream and enchantment, of indolence and eager activity, of impulses unrestrained, and of constant caresses. for me, alas! how much less they meant than for happier children; but even to me the change was delightful, and i welcomed the hopes it contained with all the lively emotions of imaginative childhood. first there was the excitement of the voyage, then the fresh acquaintance with the land i had left two years ago, my own quaint and melancholy land i was about to behold again through foreign glasses; then the captivation of my importance in the family circle, the wonderful things to tell, the revelations, the surprises, embroidered fact so close upon the hidden heels of invention!
my mother came to take me home. she[pg 183] stayed at the ivies. it was summer-time, and all the rose-bushes were blood-red with blossom, and one breathed the fragrance of roses as if one were living a persian poem. not a white rose anywhere, but red upon red, through every tone from crimson to pink. is it an exaggeration of imagination, or were the lysterby lanes and gardens rivers of red, like the torrent-beds of the greek isles when the oleander is a-bloom? for, looking back to the summers of lysterby, i see nothing on earth but roses, multiplied like the daisies of the field, a whole county waving perfumed red in memory of the great historic house whose emblem in a memorable war was the red rose of lysterby.
of my mother's stay at the ivies, though she stayed there several days, i remember little definite but two characteristic scenes. walking across the lawn toward where she stood in the sunshine talking to sister esmeralda, i see her still as vividly now as then. she made so superb a picture that even i, who saw her through a hostile and embittered glance, stopped and asked myself if that imperial creature really were my mother. the word mother is so close, so familiar, so everyday an image, and this magnificent woman looked as remote as a queen of legend.[pg 184] her very beauty was of a nature to inspire terror, as if the mere dropping of her white gold-fringed lids meant the sentence of death to the beholder. my companions round about me were prone in abject admiration, and of their state i took note with some measure of pride.
not so had polly evans's mother been regarded; not so was even lady wilhelmina, the catholic peeress who came to benediction on sunday, regarded, though she had the haughty upper lip and inscrutable gaze of sensational fiction.
how to paint her, as she stood thus valorously free to the raking sunbeams that showed out the mild white bloom and roseleaf pink of her long, full visage? she wore on her abundant fair hair a black lace bonnet, trimmed with mauve flowers and a white aigrette, and the long train of her white alpaca gown lay upon the grass like a queen's robe. i remember my admiration of the thousand little flounces, black-edged, that ran in shimmering lines up to her rounded waist. she was in half mourning for my grandmother, whose existence i had forgotten all about, and brave and becoming, it must be admitted, were those weeds of mitigated grief. as i approached, she turned her fine and finished visage, with the long delicate and[pg 185] cruel nostrils, and the thin delicate red lips, to me, and her cold blue glance, falling upon my anxious and distrustful face, turned my heart to stone. i felt as amy robsart, my favourite heroine, must have felt when she encountered the gaze of royal elizabeth. elizabeth, handsome, tall, and stately, with long sloping shoulders and full bust, not the elizabeth of history; an empress eugenie without her feminine charm and grace, of the most wonderful fairness i have ever seen, and also the most surprising harshness of expression. i have all my life been hearing of my mother's beauty, and have heard that when the empress eugenie's bust was exposed at the dublin exhibition, the general cry was that my mother had been the sculptor's model, so singular and striking was the resemblance between these two women of scottish blood. but then and then only, in one brief flash, did i seize the insistent claim of that beauty always closed to my hostile glance. then and then only was i compelled, by the sheer splendour of the vision, to own that the mother who did not love me was the handsomest creature i had ever beheld.
the other episode connected with her visit that has stamped itself upon memory is typical of her rare method of imparting knowledge[pg 186] 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[pg 187] 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.
