第29章

At ten thirty there is great confusion and laughter and excitement, for the sportsmen are setting out for the day and the car has been waiting at the door for an hour. Oonah is carolling up and down the long passage, laden with dishes, her cheerfulness not in the least impaired by having served seven or eight separate breakfasts. Molly has spilled a jug of milk, and is wiping it up with a child's undershirt. The Glasgy man is telling them that yesterday they forgot the corkscrew, the salt, the cup, and the jam from the luncheon basket,--facts so mirth-provoking that Molly wipes tears of pleasure from her eyes with the milky undershirt, and Oonah sets the hot-water jug and the coffee-pot on the stairs to have her laugh out comfortably. When once the car departs, comparative quiet reigns in and about the house until the passing bicyclers appear for luncheon or tea, when Oonah picks up the napkins that we have rolled into wads and flung under the dining-table, and spreads them on tea- trays, as appetising details for the weary traveller. There would naturally be more time for housework if so large a portion of the day were not spent in pleasant interchange of thought and speech. I can well understand Mrs. Colquhoun's objections to the housing of the Dublin poor in tenements,--even in those of a better kind than the present horrible examples; for wherever they are huddled together in any numbers they will devote most of their time to conversation. To them talking is more attractive than eating; it even adds a new joy to drinking; and if I may judge from the groups I have seen gossiping over a turf fire till midnight, it is preferable to sleeping. But do not suppose they will bubble over with joke and repartee, with racy anecdote, to every casual newcomer. The tourist who looks upon the Irishman as the merry- andrew of the English-speaking world, and who expects every jarvey he meets to be as whimsical as Mickey Free, will be disappointed. I have strong suspicions that ragged, jovial Mickey Free himself, delicious as he is, was created by Lever to satisfy the Anglo-Saxon idea of the low-comedy Irishman. You will live in the Emerald Isle for many a month, and not meet the clown or the villain so familiar to you in modern Irish plays. Dramatists have made a stage Irishman to suit themselves, and the public and the gallery are disappointed if anything more reasonable is substituted for him. You will find, too, that you do not easily gain Paddy's confidence. Misled by his careless, reckless impetuosity of demeanour, you might expect to be the confidant of his joys and sorrows, his hopes and expectations, his faiths and beliefs, his aspirations, fears, longings, at the first interview. Not at all; you will sooner be admitted to a glimpse of the travelling Scotsman's or the Englishman's inner life, family history, personal ambition. Glacial enough at first and far less voluble, he melts soon enough, if he likes you. Meantime, your impulsive Irish friend gives himself as freely at the first interview as at the twentieth; and you know him as well at the end of a week as you are likely to at the end of a year. He is a product of the past, be he gentleman or peasant. A few hundred years of necessary reserve concerning articles of political and religious belief have bred caution and prudence in stronger natures, cunning and hypocrisy in weaker ones.