wended our way among the heaps of
luggage, followed by crowds of
ragamuffins, who offered to run for a car, run for a cab, run for a
porter, carry our
luggage up the street to the cab-stand, carry our
wraps, carry us, 'do any mortial thing for a penny, melady, an'
there is no cars here, melady, God bless me sowl, and that He be
good to us all if I'm tellin' you a word of a lie!'
Entirely
unused to this flow of conversation, we were obliged to
stop every few seconds to
recount our
luggage and try to remember
what we were looking for. We all met finally, and I rescued
Salemina from the voluble thanks of an old woman to whom she had
thoughtlessly given a three-penny bit. This mother of a 'long wake
family' was wishing that Salemina might live to 'ate the hin' that
scratched over her grave, and invoking many other
uncommon and
picturesque blessings, but we were obliged to ask her to desist and
let us attend to our own business.
"Will I clane the whole of thim off for you for a penny, your
ladyship's honour, ma'am?" asked the oldest of the ragamuffins, and
I
gladly assented to the novel
proposition. He did it, too, and
there seemed to be no hurt feelings in the company.
Just then there was a
rattle of cabs and side-cars, and our self-
constituted major-domo engaged two of them to await our pleasure.
At the same moment our eyes lighted upon Salemina's huge Vuitton,
which had been dragged behind the pile of wool sacks. It was no
wonder it had escaped our notice, for it was
mostly covered by the
person of the sea-sick
maiden whom I had seen on the arm of the
stewardess. She was seated on it,
exhaustion in every line of her
figure, her head upon my travelling bag, her feet dangling over the
edge until they just touched the 'S. P., Salem, Mass., U.S.A.'
painted in large red letters on the end. She was too ill to respond
to our questions, but there was no mistaking her
nationality. Her
dress, hat, shoes, gloves, face, figure were American. We sent for
the stewardess, who told us that she had arrived in Glasgow on the
day
previous, and had been very ill all the way coming from Boston.
"Boston!" exclaimed Salemina. "Do you say she is from Boston, poor
thing?"
("I didn't know that a person living in Boston could ever, under any
circumstances, be a 'poor thing,'" whispered Francesca to me.)
"She was not fit to be crossing last night, and the doctor on the
American ship told her so, and advised her to stay in bed for three
days before coming to Ireland; but it seems as if she were
determined to get to her journey's end."
"We must have our trunk," I interposed. "Can't we move her
carefully over to the wool sacks, and won't you stay with her until
her friends come?"
"She has no friends in this country, ma'am. She's just travelling
for pleasure like."
"Good gracious! what a position for her to be in," said Salemina.
"Can't you take her back to the
steamer and put her to bed?"
"I could ask the captain, certainly, miss, though of course it's
something we never do, and besides we have to set the ship to rights
and go across again this evening."
"Ask her what hotel she is going to, Salemina," we suggested, "and
let us drop her there, and put her in
charge of the
housekeeper; of
course if it is only sea-sickness she will be all right in the
morning."
The girl's eyes were closed, but she opened them languidly as
Salemina chafed her cold hands, and asked
gently if we could not
drive her to an hotel.
"Is--this--your--baggage?" she whispered.
"It is," Salemina answered, somewhat puzzled.
"Then don't--leave me here, I am from Salem--myself," whereupon
without any more
warning she
promptly fainted away on the trunk.
The situation was becoming embarrassing. The assemblage grew
larger, and a more interesting and
sympatheticaudience I never saw.
To an Irish crowd, always warm-hearted and kindly,
willing to take
any trouble for friend or stranger, and with a
positiveterror of
loneliness, or
separation from kith and kin, the
helpless creature
appealed in every way. One and another joined the group with a
"Holy Biddy! what's this at all?"
"The saints presarve us, is it dyin' she is?"
"Look at the iligant duds she do be wearin'."
"Call the docthor, is it? God give you sinse! Sure the docthors is
only a flock of omadhauns."
"Is it your daughter she is, ma'am?" (This to Salemina.)
"She's from Ameriky, the poor mischancy crathur."
"Give her a toothful of whisky, your ladyship. Sure it's nayther
bite nor sup she's had the morn, and belike she's as impty as a
quarry-hole."
When this last expression from the mother of the long weak family
fell upon Salemina's cultured ears she looked desperate.
We could not leave a fellow-countrywoman, least of all could
Salemina
forsake a fellow-citizen, in such a
hapless plight.
"Take one cab with Francesca and the
luggage, Penelope," she
whispered. "I will bring the girl with me, put her to bed, find her
friends, and see that she starts on her journey
safely; it's very
awkward, but there's nothing else to be done."
So we
departed in a
chorus of popular approval.
"Sure it's you that have the good hearts!"
"May the heavens be your bed!"
"May the journey
thrive wid her, the crathur!"
Francesca and I arrived first at the hotel where our rooms were
already engaged, and there proved to be a comfortable little
dressing, or maid's, room just off Salemina's.
Here the Derelict was
presently ensconced, and there she lay, in a
sort of
profoundexhaustion, all day, without once absolutely
regaining her
consciousness. Instead of visiting the National
Gallery as I had intended, I returned to the dock to see if I could
find the girl's
luggage, or get any further information from the
stewardess before she left Dublin.
"I'll send the doctor at once, but we must learn all possible
particulars now," I said maliciously to poor Salemina. "It would be
so
awkward, you know, if you should be arrested for abduction."
The doctor thought it was probably nothing more than the complete
prostration that might follow eight days of sea-sickness, but the
patient's heart was certainly a little weak, and she needed the
utmost quiet. His fee was a
guinea for the first visit, and he
would drop in again in the course of the afternoon to
relieve our
anxiety. We took turns in watching by her
bedside, but the two
unemployed ones lingered forlornly near, and had no heart for
sightseeing. Francesca did, however, purchase opera tickets for the
evening, and
secretly engaged the housemaid to act as head nurse in
our absence.
As we were dining at seven, we heard a faint voice in the little
room beyond. Salemina left her dinner and went in to find her
chargeslightly better. We had been able thus far only to take off
her dress, shoes, and such garments as made her uncomfortable;
Salemina now managed to slip on a nightdress and put her under the
bedcovers, returning then to her cold
mutton cutlet.
"She's an
extraordinary person," she said,
absently playing with her
knife and fork. "She didn't ask me where she was, or show any
interest in her surroundings; perhaps she is still too weak. She
said she was better, and when I had made her ready for bed, she
whispered, 'I've got to say my prayers'.
"'Say them by all means,' I replied.
"'But I must get up and kneel down, she said.
"I told her she must do nothing of the sort; that she was far too
ill.
"'But I must,' she urged. 'I never go to bed without
saying my
prayers on my knees.'
"I
forbade her doing it; she closed her eyes, and I came away.
Isn't she quaint?"
At this juncture we heard the thud of a soft falling body, and
rushing in we found that the Derelict had crept from her bed to her
knees, and had probably not prayed more than two minutes before she
fainted for the fifth or sixth time in twenty-four hours. Salemina
was vexed, angel and philanthropist though she is. Francesca and I
were so
helpless with
laughter that we could hardly lift the too
conscientious
maiden into bed. The situation may have been
pathetic; to the truly pious mind it would indeed have been
indescribably
touching, but for the moment the
humorous side of it
was too much for our
self-control. Salemina, in rushing for
stimulants and smelling salts, broke her only comfortable
eyeglasses, and this accident, coupled with her other anxieties and
responsibilities, caused her to shed tears, an
occurrence so
unprecedented that Francesca and I kissed and comforted her and
tucked her up on the sofa. Then we sent for the doctor, gave our
opera tickets to the head
waiter and chambermaid, and settled down
to a
cheerful home evening, our first in Ireland.
"If Himself were here, we should not be in this plight," I sighed.
"I don't know how you can say that," responded Salemina, with
considerable spirit. "You know
perfectly well that if your husband
had found a mother and seven children
helpless and deserted on that
dock, he would have brought them all to this hotel, and then tried
to find the father and grandfather."
"And it's not Salemina's fault," argued Francesca. "She couldn't
help the girl being born in Salem; not that I believe that she ever
heard of the place before she saw it printed on Salemina's trunk. I
told you it was too big and red, dear, but you wouldn't listen! I
am the strongest American of the party, but I
confess that U.S.A. in
letters five inches long is too much for my patriotism."
"It would not be if you ever had
charge of the
luggage," retorted
Salemina.
"And
whatever you do, Francesca," I added beseechingly, "don't
impugn the veracity of our Derelict. While we think of ourselves as
ministering angels I can
endure anything, but if we are the dupes of
an adventuress, there is nothing pretty about it. By the way, I
have consulted the English manageress of this hotel, who was not
particularly
sympathetic. 'Perhaps you shouldn't have assumed
charge of her, madam,' she said, 'but having done so, hadn't you
better see if you can get her into a hospital?' It isn't a bad
suggestion, and after a day or two we will consider it, or I will
get a trained nurse to take full
charge of her. I would be at any
reasonable expense rather than have our pleasure interfered with any
further."
It still seems odd to make a
proposition of this kind. In former
times, Francesca was the Croesus of the party, Salemina came second,
and I last, with a most
precariousincome. Now I am the wealthy
one, Francesca is reduced to the second place, and Salemina to the
third, but it makes no difference
whatever, either in our relations,
our arrangements, or, for that matter, in our expenditures.
Chapter IV. Enter Benella Dusenberry.
'A fair
maiden wander'd
All wearied and lone,
Sighing, "I'm a poor stranger,
And far from my own."
We invited her in,
We offered her share
Of our
humble cottage
And our
humble fare;
We bade her take comfort,
No longer to moan,
And made the poor stranger
Be one of our own.'
Old Irish Song.
The next morning dawned as lovely as if it had slipped out of
Paradise, and as for
freshness, and
emerald sheen, the world from
our windows was like a
lettuce leaf just washed in dew. The windows
of my bedroom looked out
pleasantly on St. Stephen's Green, commonly
called Stephen's Green, or by citizens of the baser sort, Stephens's
Green. It is a good English mile in
circumference, and many are the
changes in it from the time it was first laid out, in 1670, to the