Lesbia Newman (1889)/Chapter 13
CHAPTER XIII.
The Background of the Dream.
Lesbia, however, did not recover her spirits that day, and she asked her uncle to send a postcard home, announcing their safe arrival, as she did not feel up to writing a letter. As they sat together at their evening meal she said, breaking a long silence,—
‘Uncle Spines, to-morrow’s my birthday, and I want you to do something for my diversion; you must take me across the harbour to that village they call Whitegate; we can see it from here. From that place we can walk up to Roche’s Tower, and see Roche’s Point too, if we have time and think it worth the trouble. But up to the lighthouse I must go; it’s been on my mind even more than parting from Lettie. I have felt something drawing me to that spot ever since I first saw it from the deck of the steamer as we came in from England, though I really don’t know what there is to see when we get there, except perhaps a fine stretch of ocean coast.’
‘I’m sure I don’t know either, Lesbie,’ replied her uncle; ‘but since your heart’s set upon it, we'll go the first thing to-morrow, weather permitting. It’s to be hoped we shall have it clearer than to-day, because Roche’s Tower in such a mist as we saw it this afternoon would be a dismal pilgrimage indeed. However, I should not grumble at that if only it led to your collaring the foul fiend and chucking him into the vasty deep once for all. We mustn’t forget to take some lunch with us into Dreamland, because the stuff that dreams are made of doesn’t suit my digestion, and I fancy there’s nothing else to be had there.’
The next day, fortunately, was fine and clear on the whole, but a warm southerly wind brought short showers at intervals. The regular ferry having ceased for the year, they hired a small boat to take them over to the village of Whitegate, situated in a bay of Cork Harbour to the south-east of Queenstown, and partly hidden from it by an intervening islet. After the boatman had pulled up some distance, they got a side wind and were able to set sail, and bounding merrily along, past the various craft that dotted the wide basin, they landed in less than an hour on the road which runs along the face of the village as a sea-wall would do. As they walked away, Lesbia began to feel a vivid interest in every portion of the route, notwithstanding that behind the village there was nothing but the most ordinary and tame scenery of wood and down. The road leading from the village southwards divides into two, the main road following a partly wooded valley, the other, which keeps more the coast line, mounting the hill at once. It was this latter route our friends chose, and it soon led them out on the high bleak down, where, a pelting shower coming, they were glad to shelter for two or three minutes under the lee of a fragment of wall. They then walked on until stopped by the dyke on the inland side of Fort Carlisle already mentioned, the eastern portion of which they skirted.
‘Strong place this,’ Mr Bristley remarked, as they stood looking down into the great gulf of masonry.
‘Yes, whether in the hands of friend or enemy,’ replied Lesbia, in an incisive tone, which made her uncle look at her with momentary surprise.
‘I wonder if we could get admittance to see the interior,’ he then said.
‘Not worth while to lose time, uncle; I want to get on to the lighthouse—Roche’s Tower; I can see its nose peeping over there.’
They found, however, that the goal of their enterprise was further than it looked; there was a glen to be crossed by a narrow path leading down along the cliff past some hovels in the bottom, over a watercourse purling through large shingle, then up the opposite slippery ascent, until they scrambled over a low rough wall at the top, and found themselves on an undulating down without furze, where a few cows were grazing, with the little promontory of Roche’s Point, its lighthouse and other buildings lying below them to the right, while the squat white column of Roche’s Tower rose some distance in front, that is, to the south-east, on the very edge of the high down, looking upon the ocean. Reaching it at last, they found it had none of the imposing appearance it had worn when they saw it through the fog from the steamer’s deck; it was merely a primitive round watch-tower or lighthouse some thirty-five feet high and perhaps fifteen thick, made of white stone or white-washed, with a tall signal-staff standing near on its right or western side. Fancies apart, a more common-looking group of objects could hardly be met with.
‘Well, seer, and here you are at last,’ said Mr Bristley, out of breath by the pace at which his niece had hurried him to the lighthouse, ‘here you are at last on the hill of the dream, as you ordain it, and with the veritable tower itself in stern and stony reality before you! Why don’t you apostrophise it, and say with Macbeth:—
The armed rhinoceros, or the Hyrcan tiger;
Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves
Shall never tremble.”
Well, I must say it might very easily wear any shape but that, and be improved. I suppose it’s because I’m a plain, prosaic, undreaming mortal, that I remain quite unimpressed by Roche’s Tower. How odd of the spirits of the dream to select such a building! I should blow them up about it, if I were you, Lesbie. But really the coast view is wild and wide, and the ocean breeze is refreshing; so it’s almost worth our trouble, after all. Look! there comes a homeward-bound American liner as big as Letitia’s, or nearly. No doubt she’s going to call here on her way to Liverpool: most of them do.’
The young girl paid no attention, but with an eager expression turned to gaze inland, that is, east and northwards.
‘Let us go a little this way,’ she said, leading on again until they reached the western descent of a valley of considerable but gradual depth, which extended from the cliff in a very straight line northwards. ‘What is that mansion and place with a wood at its back and a thin plantation extending all along the valley? There, I mean, down below us, near the sea.’
‘That, I believe,’ answered Mr Bristley, ‘is or was an Irish lord’s estate; it’s called Trabolgan on the map. Good house, I daresay, fine sea climate, and lots of solitude. Don’t know that I should care to live there, though, somehow.’
‘Good heavens! no, uncle; I should think not indeed! The place is doomed!’
Lesbia rapped out the last four words in that stern, loud, incisive tone which seemed to come from other lips than hers. The clergyman started, and a shade of alarm and annoyance passed over his face, which, however, he instantly suppressed.
‘Come, come, Lesbie, have a drop of sherry and a sandwich. You’ve been fasting too long, I see; it’s my fault: I ought to have thought of that before.’
The young girl shook her head as she took her uncle’s hand affectionately.
‘Not hungry, thanks, Uncle Spines. I'm not through it yet. When I am, I'll eat and drink, I promise you. Come along the ridge now; well get back to Whitegate by the valley road.’
And off she tramped at a pace that taxed her uncle’s powers to keep up with her, along the crest of the hill northwards, that is, with her back to Roche’s Tower and the ocean. After passing about half-a-mile of level and rather swampy pastures, separated by high rough walls with projecting stones fixed up either side to do duty for a stile at every point of crossing the footpath, they dropped over the fence into a lane which ran straight down into the valley at right angles to their previous course, that is, eastward. It not only ran into but crossed the valley, continuing straight up the wood-besprinkled slope opposite, in full view; here, however, it ceased to be a lane, for it was joined in the valley by the main road from Whitegate already mentioned, the road by which our friends had not come, but by which they were about to return. Thus—we must beg the reader's particular attention here—all the ways now visible to our heroine and her uncle formed together a B
AΤC
D, whereof the vertical shank B D ran north and south, forming the main road along the valley by which our friends were about to return to Whitegate; that is, they were about to proceed from the top of the shank, B, or the south, to the bottom D, or the north, descending C B the right or western arm of the B
AΤC
D
which represented the lane just now mentioned, and having in their faces, while descending B A, the left or eastern arm running, as already said, up the opposite slope and vanishing over it. At the junction B of the three limbs of the B
AΤC
D—that is, of course, in the bottom of the valley—they came upon the lodge and iron gate of the carriage drive to Trabolgan, which drive was in fact a private continuation southwards, towards Roche’s Tower, of the main road forming the shank B D of the B
AΤC
D, This road was therefore flush with the carriagedrive, and pursuing it northwards, they turned their backs upon Trabolgan. These dry details of a very tame, uninteresting locality were sharply engraven on our heroine’s memory, ready for the lurid light destined to be thrown upon them by after events.
When they had got about three hundred yards northward, with their backs to Trabolgan Lodge gate, along the main road to Whitegate, Lesbia halted suddenly.
‘Here are a cottage or two, at last,’ she said; ‘it’s really pleasant to see a human habitation, however lowly, in this howling wilderness. I should have been glad to go into that one, where you see a woman with her brats at the door, but no, uncle, I cannot; I feel something pulling me back. We must return to the lane—I am sorry for it, but we must—and then we must continue along the ridge until we sight Queenstown.’
Her uncle saw that her waywardness on this occasion must be humoured, and he turned back at once without reply. They retraced their steps to Trabolgan Lodge, and then re-ascended the lane, the right arm B C of the B
AΤC
D, until they reached the crest of the hill; they then resumed their northward course, over pastures and wall-stiles as before, making again towards Whitegate, parallel to and above the valley road B D they had been partly pursuing. About half-an-hour brought them to the northern end of the ridge—a wooded shoulder, which their route in the morning had skirted, whence the view was open to Queenstown, prettily displayed on the frontage of a steep eminence across the
great blue basin.
‘We shall have to get down into the road again, I think,’ observed Mr Bristley. ‘It’s evidently all wood from here tight down to the Cove; there’s no way through the wood that I can see; and look! there’s another shower making for us. Hadn’t we better use that little sheltered hollow just below as our refectory, eh? I’m not so spiritual as you are, Lesbia, and my inner man craveth for creature comforts.’
The girl only remarked in a dreamy manner,—
‘How the gusts moan through the trees! Do you hear what the voice in the wind says?’ looking at her uncle fixedly.
‘Voice in the wind! No. What do you mean?’
‘It keeps calling, Close the ranks! Close the ranks!’
Mr Bristley took to his pocket-handkerchief, and, under cover of using it, gulped down his uneasy feeling with one of his strong efforts. Then turning to his niece, with a cheerful laugh,—
‘What nonsense, Lesbia! what an imagination you have! To me now the voice in the wind—since you mention it—does certainly seem to say, Sherry and sandwiches! Sherry and sandwiches!’
Her uncle’s persistent good-humour at last produced upon her the effect he desired; she laughed in her turn, merrily and naturally.
‘And what an imagination you have too, Uncle Spines! There’s no fear you’ll ever be haunted—you haven't self-respect enough. But sherry and sandwiches, by all means. It’s over now, and I’m as hungry for creature comforts as you can be.’
Mr Bristley produced the packet and bottle with much relief at the change in the young girl’s manner. Presently they reached the road again by a ravine which led directly down to it, and in about ten minutes afterwards found themselves again on the landing-place at Whitegate, where the same boat was awaiting them on the chance of a back fare. They took it, of course, and scudded swiftly back to Queenstown before a favourable breeze. The special interest of that place, however, was now exhausted, and the following day they proceeded by rail to Cork, and the next day to the Jakes of Killarney.