Part 35 (2/2)
As a matter of fact, this visit to Elinor's Irish cousins was the most enjoyable episode in their entire trip. And to make it more complete, the moon came out after dinner, flooding the lawn and garden with its golden light. Then Maria quite forgot that she had intended to keep her vocation as a singer a secret and enchanted them all by singing:
”'There is sweet music here that softer falls Than petals from blown roses on the gra.s.s Or night dews on still waters between walls Of shadowy granite in a gleaming pa.s.s; Music that gentler on the spirit lies Than tir'd eyelids upon tir'd eyes; Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies.
Here are cool mosses deep, And through the moss the ivies creep, And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep, And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep.'”
CHAPTER XXIII.-THE BANSHEE OF CASTLE ABBEY.
One may become accustomed to anything, even the notion of visiting a real lord in an ancient abbey.
”We owe this to you, Maria,” cried Billie ecstatically, as the motor car climbed slowly up a wooded hill, on the summit of which stood Lord Glenarm's Irish home.
”Remember how much I owe to you, Billie,” answered Maria. ”I might never have been here now, but for you. It was the jewels you guarded so carefully for me that furnished the funds for my trip abroad and a year's study in Paris, before I finally began singing again in opera. I feel that there is nothing too good for the Motor Maids and Miss Campbell.”
”That was just an act of friends.h.i.+p,” protested Billie.
”There are not many acts of real friends.h.i.+p,” said Maria, ”and not many young girls who would have endured what the Motor Maids endured for my sake. Lord Glenarm has heard the whole story and I can a.s.sure you he is as proud to know you as I am.”
There is no getting around a good, substantial, sincere compliment, and the four young girls could not conceal the pride they felt in Maria's praises.
”They are four sweet la.s.sies, as David Ramsay remarked,” observed Miss Campbell, and everybody smiled; for Miss Campbell often quoted David Ramsay lately and had received two long letters from him since she had been in the land of the Shamrock.
As they neared the top of the hill, the landscape unfolded before them in a splendid panorama,-fields and meadows; dark splashes of green marking forests of oak and beech trees, and here and there a thin haze of smoke curling up from the chimney of a farm house. Toward the west was the soft blue expanse of the sea.
”They do say that the good Saint Patrick preached the gospel once on this hillside and converted a king and hundreds of his people to Christianity,” Maria was saying, when they heard a voice calling excitedly:
”Billie, Elinor, Nancy, Mary!” and Beatrice Colchester dashed up. She was riding a fat gray pony which was puffing indignantly like an apoplectic old gentleman who had been made to climb a steep hill against his will.
Behind her rode Lord Glenarm on a hunting-horse, and barking and yelping at his heels were half a dozen dogs.
It was all very jolly and natural,-no pomp and ceremony about visiting a real lord who was as simple and unaffected as Billie's own father. At last they drew up at the gate of the Abbey, and for once in his useful life the ”Comet” seemed decidedly out of place and inappropriate.
The left wing of Castle Abbey was a picturesque pile of crumbling ruins overhung with ivy and climbing rose bushes. Here had been the chapel of the monks and the cloistered walk wherein they had paced up and down telling their beads. In this quadrangle, also, had been the original garden of the monastery and a garden it still was, carefully tended by an aged Irish gardener and his a.s.sistants, and filled with bright ma.s.ses of old-fas.h.i.+oned flowers. The other wing of the Abbey, where had once been many of the cells and the monks' refectory or dining-hall, was now the dwelling place of Lord Glenarm for at least six weeks in the year.
”Uncle says that one wing is a 'reflectory' and the other is a 'refectory,'” Beatrice informed the four girls, while she conducted them on a flying trip over the entire place. ”The old cloisters are the reflectory and the refectory is now our living-room, a sort of dining-room and drawing-room combined.”
The ancient dining-hall, however, was quite large enough for all its present purposes and could have accommodated a good-sized household with ease. The old carved black oak dining-table was lost in the vastness of the apartment. Suits of armor were ranged along the walls at intervals, and Billie was amazed to find that one or two of them were not a whit taller than she was herself. From a gallery running around two sides of the hall hung several faded battle flags. There were a few portraits on the walls of dark-haired, rather fierce-looking knights and their beguiling ladies, also dark-haired with gentle blue eyes. The only modern object in the entire room was a grand piano at the far end under a stained gla.s.s window.
”Beatrice, do we sleep in cells?” demanded Mary Price.
”Yes,” answered the English girl. ”There are dozens of them opening on the galleries. They are just as they were centuries ago, rather small for sleeping-rooms, but, as Uncle says, it's quite like camping out to come up here for a visit; and the cells are much larger than tents.”
”Are they haunted?” asked Mary.
Beatrice smiled mysteriously.
”People claim to have seen things,” she said, ”but I never did. Almost every castle in Ireland has its banshee, you know, but it only appears before a death in the family.”
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