a grown-up young lady, with yellow ringlets, in a black-and-white silk dress, paid a visit to my grandmother one day, when i heard myself described as "bold and saucy,"—heaven knows why, since i never uttered a word in that formidable presence, and felt less than a mouse's courage if i but accidentally encountered those severe black eyes. the young lady offered to show me her dolls. i never cared for dolls, and i went without enthusiasm. it was my first glimpse of girlish luxury. the room in which her treasures were kept seemed to me as large as a chamber of the palaces of story. there were trains, carriages, perambulators, about two dozen dolls of all sizes, with gorgeous wardrobes; there were beds, bonnets, parasols, kitchen utensils, dear little cups; babies in long clothes, peasants, dancing-girls, and queens with crowns on their heads and long cloaks. the young girl was one of the many extinguishable flames of my[pg 99] uncle lionel, destined, like goethe, to sigh for one, and then another in sentimental freedom, and end in bondage of an execrable kind. she is blurred for me, but that palatial doll's chamber and all those undreamed-of splendours remain still a vivid vision, like the lovely pantomime, whither dennis took me with his pockets full of oranges to suck between the acts. oh, that bewildering paradisiacal sight of the fairies! the speechless emotions of the transformation scene! the thirst, the yearning, for short muslin skirts, and limelight, and feet twinkling rapturously in fairyland! the humours of the clown and the harlequin left me cold; for, being acquainted with the extreme tenderness of the human body through harsh experience, i could not understand the pleasure the clown found in continually banging and knocking down the harmless harlequin. each unprovoked blow left me sadder and more harassed. i felt the old man must be very much hurt, and wondered why the audience seemed to enjoy his repeated discomfiture so hugely. but the fairy dancing was quite different. here was an untempered joy that did not pass my comprehension. to be a fairy by night, and possess all the young girl's toys by day! this was the dream harshly broken[pg 100] by the appearance of my sisters, themselves demure little fairies in green silk dresses and poky green silk bonnets.
they lured me out among the dead branches, where the robins were dolefully hopping in search of crumbs, and exclaimed together: "oh, angela, wait till you hear the news!"
what news? why, i was to go away, across the sea, which was always awfully wet, like the pond, only bigger and deeper. a ship, they said, was like those little paper-boats the boys used to make at kildare, and you sat in it and rocked up and down, unless a shark came and ate you up. somebody told them that the english were dreadfully proud, and thought no end of themselves, and looked down on the irish.
"but you must stand up for yourself, angela. tell them your father was king of ireland lots of hundreds of years ago, and that long ago, when the kings lived, all your cousins and brothers were red-cross knights."
"what were red-cross knights?" i asked, deeply impressed.
"oh, they were men who wore long cloaks with red crosses on them, and rode about on steeds."
"what's steeds?" i breathlessly inquired.
"horses," was the pettish answer; "only you know they go quicker than horses, and knights always preferred steeds. and they took things from the rich and gave them to the poor."
"what things?" i again asked.
"isn't she stupid? i declare she knows nothing. why, food and money and clothes, to be sure. they'll say the irish are dreadful ignorant and stupid when they see angela, won't they?"
a great deal more was of course said between four passionate and voluble children; but all i remember of that winter afternoon was the stupendous news that i was going away in a ship soon across the sea to a foreign land, where i should be submitted to insult, perhaps torture, because i was irish, if i were not previously devoured by a shark—a creature the more terrible because of my complete ignorance not only of its existence, but of its general features; and the mention of a new animal was something like the menace of the devil: large, luminous, potent, and indistinct. i already knew through mary jane that there was a queen who put irish people into prison, and entertained herself by hanging them at her leisure, and that evening i startled mary ann out of her senses by asking her if it was likely i should be hanged in england like[pg 102] robert emmet. and then, in order that she should have a proper notion of the extent of my acquaintance with robert emmet, i stood in the middle of the kitchen, with my arms strenuously folded, my brows gathered in a fearful frown to reproduce the attitude of robert emmet in the dock, as depicted in the parlour of mary jane's mamma.
"you know the english hanged him 'cause he was irish," i explained, extremely proud to impart my information. "mary jane told me so. when i fell into the pond she cried, 'cause she was afraid the queen would hang her too."
mary ann laughed till she wept, and then drying her eyes, vowed she would like to see "thim english" touch a gould hair of my head. "if thim monsthers as much as lay a hand on ye, darlint, you just send me word, and me and dennis 'll soon come over and whack them all round."
perfidious mary ann! she failed to keep this large and liberal promise when, in my sore hour of need, i indited an ill-spelt epistle to her from saxon shores, and urged her to come and save me. i did not insist upon the whacking, i only entreated to be taken back to erin. probably the letter never reached her.
i think that it was immediately after this engrossing hour that i found mary ann sobbing over an open trunk in the lumber-room. "your very own, alannah; look at the big white letters," she cried, and wiped her eyes in a new linen garment before pressing it into the box. "thim monsthers can't say as you haven't chimmies fit for any lady of the land. ye're to wear a black cashmere o' a sunday, just as if all your relatives was dead. did ye ever hear the likes?"
i certainly never did, for strange to say i had not worn a black dress after stevie's death. i did not, however, dislike the notion. black was not a hue with which i was familiar. still musing on all the extraordinary things that were continually happening, and wondering whether the eventual climax of an uncertain career would prove the shark or the gallows, not, however, using this superb word in my reflections on the end of a little girl precariously balanced on the boards of existence, i found myself confronted with my terrible grandmother in a farewell interview.
she was propped up with pillows, and her eternal egg-flip was beside her on a little table, along with her prayer-book, her spectacles, her rosary, and her favourite novel, which i afterwards[pg 104] learned was "adam bede." my mind reverted then, and has since often reverted, to an abominable scene in that chamber i abhored. i had been noisy or disobedient,—raced down the passage, or refused to go to bed when uncle lionel shouted to me from above the kitchen-stairs, probably stamping my foot with the air of a little fury, which was my sad way in those untamed days. with a napoleonic gesture, my uncle caught my ear, and dragged me into the awful presence. here he was solemnly ordered to fetch the knife-sharpener, which he did; heated it among the flames till it glowed incandescent scarlet; then, my grandmother looking fiendishly on, gathered me between his knees, held my mouth open with one hand, and approached it to my lips. of course it did not touch me, but memory shrinks, a blank, into the void of terror.
the precise text of my grandmother's address i forget, but the nature of her harangue is unforgettable. she addressed me as might a magistrate a refractory subject about to be discharged from a reformatory. i was exhorted not to be bold, or bad, or saucy, to say my prayers, to tell the truth, not to thieve (oh! that damson-jam and those coppers), not to get[pg 105] caught again by the police; i was warned that i might drop dead in one of my violent fits of rage, and then i would surely go to hell; was adjured to learn my lessons, to respect my superiors, to break none of the commandments, to avoid the seven deadly sins, learn the catechism by heart, with the alternative of having my hair cut short and being sent to the poorhouse. she then held out her yellow hand, and placed a sparkling sovereign in my small palm.
"don't lose it. there are twenty shillings in it, and in each shilling twelve pennies. good-bye, and don't forget all i've said."
she shook my hand in her loose gentlemanly fashion, as if i were a young man going to college instead of a baby girl of seven about to be expatriated alone among strangers, in an alien land, for no conceivable reason but the singular caprice of her who had given me so ill a gift as life. it was the last time i saw my grandmother. i heard soon of her death with complete indifference.
"polly was a jolly japanese," sang my uncle cheerily, as he caught me up in his arms, and carried me down to the cab, on which dennis had placed my trunk. mary ann was weeping on the steps. she handed me a bag of [pg 106]gingerbread and two apples, and told me i was not to be "down."
"'tis yourself that's worth all the english that ever was born," she asserted, and i dolorously assured her that whatever happened, even if the queen came in person to hang me, i would keep "up."
"that's me hearty," roared dennis, holding the cab-door. "in with you, and do something for your living."
uncle lionel lifted me in, gave me a crown-piece, and to my astonishment kissed both my cheeks without hurting me. he stood on the pavement, handsome, smiling, and elegant, as the cab drove off with solitary, bewildered little me as surely a waif as any orphan. and waving his hand, he turned unconcerned on his heel.