Changeling, and Other Stories 18 – Byrne · Library Across
Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
Changeling, and Other Stories 18Part 4 · Chapter 1
18
Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
Changeling, and Other Stories 18
Part 4 · Chapter 1
ByrneEnglish
All those things I dreamed about, and I thousands of miles away, are there still: the house, half farm-house and half castle, at one end an ancient military tower, at the other a thatched cottage; all the trees--the ash, the elms, the chestnut with the dark-green foliage and the prickly bulb containing the polished mahogany fruit, the rowan-trees with the gallant red berries, bitter as death, the copper beech with the foliage of lace and the fuzzy brown nuts, the apple- and pear-trees, and the trees of cherries that the birds do be ever after.
The lawns that were once shaven so closely are now rectangles of high sweet grass where the bees are seeking. And the tennis-courts, where once was the laughter of young girls--those, too, are knee-high in grass, swaying in the soft Irish wind. And here and there is a gallant yew-tree, blackly green. Roses still cling to the wall, and around all the walls are riots of flowers.
The low greenhouses are still there, under whose glass roofs grew great purple grapes, and where row on row of exotic flowers grew and delicate ferns whose names are unknown to me, so much closer are men and horses to me than flowers and ferns. Ivy is on the walls, soft-looking as velvet, and the winds and rains have been kind to the lodge and the stables. The walls are still white and a little moss is on the slates of them, and a soft and gentle grass is between the cobbled stones.
And the deep well is there. And everywhere are birds and bees. The bees are wild now, who once lived in skips of yellow straw, and their nests are in the long grass, and there, too, is the meadowlark, and under the eaves the swallows flit. And here the robin is safe with his impudent eye, and the blackbird of the yellow bill. And everywhere the throaty murmur of the wood-pigeons, the thrum of their wings.
Eh! There it is all still, at the foot of the soft and purple mountains--the Sugarloaves, the Big Sugarloaf and the Little, and the hill called Kitty Gallagher's, and the Scalp with its slender tower and the sweet shoulder of Three Rock Mountain. And below--one could pitch a stone nearly--is Dublin, the abiding city. There the Liffey, rippling gently to the sea. And one can almost see St. Patrick's, where great Swift was Dean, and Trinity, where poor Goldsmith and fearless Burke were students. The broad streets, the princely squares. And there Robert Emmet was hanged for treason against our Sovereign Lord the King, His Crown and Majesty, and Lord Edward, the rebel Geraldine, was stabbed. And there is Clontarf, where Brian the High King fought the red Danes, fought and died, but fought and conquered. And there Howth, where Iseult, the Dublin princess, sailed to marry Mark in rugged Cornwall, sailed with Tristram....
Eh! There from Mount Kyteler one can see it all--the soft dreaming mountains, the sad weeping city. And here where was once the laughter of young women, the barking of dogs, the neighing of horses, the shouting of lads--here is silence, but for the husky note of the wood-pigeon, the little thunder of his wings, and the droning of the seeking bees. All, all are dead, but here is no desolation. There is the sweet gentleness of remembered twilights, and the copper beech rustles, and the rowan nods, and the apple-trees murmur with their antique boughs: "Is it yourself is in it, Ronnie? Is it yourself, long lad? And it is long you've stayed away from us in foreign lands and bitter seas. And it's Lady Margery you 're looking for? And Paddy the Pipes? You mind him, do you so? And Jacky Sullivan--ah, the great lad! Sure, they 've just left this minute, laughing fellow. Gone to see the old earl, they have. Sure, you'll be following them, and seeing them all soon. Over the mountains they went, a wee ways. You 'll see them all soon, very soon, a wheen of years...."
Not for long will be this sweet silence, this soft, dim loneliness. Soon will be business of courts, justices sitting in wig and gown. And Mount Kyteler will die, and its name be forgotten. Sad history will pass and affairs proceed in their inexorable ordinance. And where once great Norman fighters charged in mail, and Elizabethan nobles ruffled, and the old red-faced earl swore when the gout was on him, and of late Lady Margery moved over lawns and walks with her sweet, sad-faced dignity, will be three or four little farms, their smoke blue against the purple of Three Rock Mountain. And the lawns will turn to fields of blue corn, and fat cattle will graze where once was a maze of flowers.
And all the crops will prosper there. And the children that are born of the farmer folk will be happy as the birds in the trees. There will be no blight on the milk the cows give, and there will be great luck on the stock of the kindly land. Always will there be prodigal bees and the dancing of swallows.
There are houses and lands that are kindly, and places that are sinister, fields that are surly, meadows that are sweetly generous. Old things, if we watch them, have a very human quality, and that is because they have been intimately connected with people who have these qualities themselves. One influences one's surroundings so much. Whirling sparks of personality fall from us and charge what we have usually by us. On all the estate came such a current of sweetness that even the thieving wood-pigeons grew generous, leaving the young trees alone.
Will she ever come back here when Mount Kyteler is gone, and the little whitewashed farmhouses are an outpost against the heather of Three Rock Mountain? I think she will. She will have so much beauty to know, now she is dead, that she will not begrudge the loss of the flower gardens and the courts where tennis was played. Apple-trees and flowers will be hers wherever she is, and perhaps the same ones--who can say no? Yet I can see her come to visit the whitewashed houses in the hushed summer twilight, when the daisies have tucked in their modest heads and only the great foam of the hawthorn billows over the country-side. On some warm little breeze from Three Rock Mountain she will come. And horses in their stalls will know her, and the kine will turn their heads to her, lowing gently, and the dogs will bark joyously, and some little child on the floor will stand up suddenly and run forward, its arms outstretched, bubbles of laughter beating from the tiny lips....
