CHAPTER XII.
Seeing Lettie Off.
The autumn came round, and would no doubt have passed in the same pleasant mode of life, had not Letitia Blemmyketts been wanted back by her people at home. Lesbia was the first person to whom the letter was read, then Lady Humnoddie, who had shown Letitia much hospitality. The next day Lesbia met Rose Dimpleton at a quiet luncheon at Letitia’s lodging, the only other person present being the landlady Miss Skimpsalt. Here they discussed their plans how to make the most of the remaining short time, although pleasure-seeking on the eve of separation is rather a half-hearted affair, and the two girls really thought more of spending the time together than of going out.
‘I guess you’re more fortunate than we are, Rose,’ said Letitia; ‘we shall soon be parted for some time at least, while you'll have the pleasure of looking forward to become Mrs Lockstable.’
‘Your parting will be worse than a divorce, I’ve no doubt,’ answered. Rose, looking at Lesbia, ‘but depend upon it, Letitia won’t leave you for long.’
‘I hope not, Miss Dimpleton,’ said Miss Skimpsalt. ‘My little house will be void and desolate when she is gone.’
‘Not for ever, I hope, Miss Skimpsalt,’ said Letitia; ‘but, Lesbie, you must get your uncle to step with you over the puddle one day to see me, and we'll all run up to the Falls for a tryst. But, listen now, to be practical, I've an idea to draw out the parting. Why shouldn’t you and your uncle just go with me for a short trip as far as Queenstown? You’d see something of the south of Ireland, and you could run back by Dublin and Holyhead. I guess it’s no use asking you, Rose?’
‘Thanks no, Letitia, "’m a shocking sailor. Folkestone to Boulogne’s more than enough for me.’
Lesbia approved, and on reaching home at once mentioned the proposal to her uncle, who fell in with it readily. After some consultation, it was settled that his niece and he should accompany Miss Blemmyketts as far as the Irish coast, the two elder ladies not caring to face a sea passage merely for pleasure. Eventually the three went to London, and after staying a night at the Great Western Hotel, Paddington, ran down by the morning express on that line to Milford Haven, where they put up at the Railway Hotel, New Milford, the Cork steamer not leaving until the following evening. They had rather a rough passage by her, but none of our party suffered from sea-sickness or looked any the worse when they met in the saloon for breakfast; the vessel having been delayed in departure, the captain said it would be past noon before they could make Cork Harbour.
When they met on deck afterwards, there was some fog, and the Irish coast loomed dark through it, the great waves lashing up fiercely against rock-bound islets.
‘What a forbidding country!’ Lesbia said to her friend. ‘It suggests to my mind that horrid name of the Dark and Bloody Land.’
‘No,’ answered Letitia; ‘that name’s our property, and I shall bring an action against you if you steal it. It was given to Kentucky. After all, I guess you mustn’t judge of poor Ireland by the outside. Wait till you’ve been inside a bit.’
Presently they came in view of a headland, on the summit of which stood out conspicuously a rather low, round white lighthouse. This, for some unexplained reason, attracted Lesbia’s attention strongly.
‘Do you know that place?’ she asked of Letitia, who was sitting on a camp-stool by her.
‘Yes, that’s Roche’s Tower, and just below it is Roche’s Point, the entrance to Cork Harbour. As soon as we get well round that point, we shall sight Queenstown, and then your little watering pilgrimage will be over, Lesbia. My voyage will continue without you, worse luck! I sha’n’t enjoy it a bit, having left you behind. What on earth makes you stare so at that fumbling old lighthouse up there? You don’t hear what I’m saying, Lesbia.’
‘Roche’s Tower did you say they call it?’ asked Lesbia excitedly, unheeding her friend’s reproach.
‘Certainly, Roche’s Tower. Why? Or rather why not? What’s the matter with it?’
‘I've seen it before!’ Lesbia exclaimed, looking dazed.
_ Indeed!’ said Letitia. ‘Didn’t know you’d ever been this way.’
‘I have not, that’s the extraordinary part of it,’ answered Lesbia; ‘nevertheless, as sure as I stand here, I’ve seen that place before. I know perfectly well that steep gloomy hill in the fog, with the old lonely lighthouse on the top. Where and how I’ve seen it I can’t divine, but seen it before I have, as sure as I stand here.’
‘Guess you dreamt it, my Lesbia.’
‘Good gracious, yes, that’s it!’ exclaimed the young girl, turning to her friend, with a wild look. ‘It is so; you’re right, Letitia, it’s the Dream, my mother’s dream, the very place she saw and described, and which afterwards reflected upon me one day at dinner, when we had a clerical meeting at Dulham. Here, uncle, I say! uncle! uncle!’ calling to Mr Bristley, who was standing a few yards off at the bulwark.
‘Well, Lesbie?’
‘Do you recognise that?’ she asked, very loudly, her outstretched arm pointing at the hill top and her figure posed in a graceful, eager attitude.
‘Recognise what? No; I’ve never been here before.’
‘It’s the Hill of the Dream,’ she said solemnly.
‘The hill of— Oh, nonsense! Lesbia dear; how that bogey does haunt you!’ he said, looking vexed and anxious. ‘I had hoped the change of scene would have rid you of all that sort of thing.’
‘I can’t help being somewhat of a visionary, Uncle Spines,’ replied Lesbia; ‘and, after all, it’s better to be that than a weaker vessel, eh?’
‘A thousand times, Lesbie—no doubt of that.’
‘I should think so indeed,’ assented Letitia; ‘and now to come down from dreaming dreams and seeing visions, to real life, There’s Queenstown before us; that island before us in the harbour is Spike Island, where they used to keep convicts, but which is now a depot of some sort; and those two forts frowning down upon us right and left are Forts Carlisle and Camden.’
While Lesbia was looking up at the two forts very attentively, a boat came alongside, the captain of the steamer having signalled one to land our party at Queenstown, while he steamed further up the harbour to Passage and thence with the tide to Cork. They accordingly landed at Queenstown, and took rooms at the principal hotel, on the quay. They spent that afternoon in walking about the place, and visiting the fine Catholic church; and the next morning, a berth having been previously engaged for Miss Blemmyketts in the fore state-rooms of a Cunard liner for New York which was to call that day, they went with other passengers and their luggage in the tender which conveys between the town and the steamships which, as a rule, lie off the mouth of the harbour near Roche’s Point. There was an interval of about an hour between the arrival of the Queenstown tender and the departure of the steamship for the western ocean, and Lesbia was much interested in being shown over the great vessel, with its spacious saloons and cabins, long corridors and vast engines, and in walking up and down the long parade of deck open to passengers from stem to stern. But the inexorable moment of parting came, a bell was rung for visitors to quit, and after reiterated promises between the two girls to write often, our heroine went down the side after her uncle, and waved farewell as the great ship pounded forth on her outward way and the tender bore them back toward the quays of Queenstown.
The separation proved more of a wrench than Lesbia had anticipated. To say that they had been to each other as two sisters would be a common-place quite beside the mark; rather should they be likened to lovers in a state of society toward which the race is painfully struggling, but which it has not yet reached or even approached, a state in which the merely sensual nature will be depressed and the spiritual raised, or at any rate the lower will be brought into such complete harmony with the higher, that theologians of the future, so far from warning mankind against fleshly lusts as warring against the soul, will, on the contrary, strive rather to indicate the method whereby the flesh may most effectually be made the purified and ennobled soul’s instrument.
Even while the great ship ploughed the broad Atlantic swell, leaving their little vessel to return across the calm basin, Lesbia felt that she had passed through the first act of her youthful life, and that greater issues were now to concern her than could be circumscribed by her country home. Her uncle partly comprehended her feelings, and said kindly,—
‘It’s au revoir, that’s all, Lesbie. Depend upon it, you'll meet again, and before very long, humanly speaking. There’s work for each of you to do in the great cause, and you can keep each other up to the mark by writing often.’
Lesbia felt her uncle’s sympathy, but still went ashore with a heavy heart. Yet she was not wanting in moral courage any more than in physical, and her good sense soon bade her rouse herself against brooding over troubles more or less imaginary. ‘Come,’ she said to herself, ‘I can surely be as strong-minded as my dear mother, who has made an effort and is quite cheerful now, and never says a word about the Dream.’