CHAPTER IX
The thing was settled definitely that night, Mrs. Hennessey resisting theidea at first, more, one might have fancied from her talk, because theidea was anti-national than from love of Phyl, though, as a matter offact, she was fond enough of the girl.
"It's what's left Ireland what it is," went on the good lady. "Cripplesand lunatics, that's all that's left of us with your emigration; all thegood blood of Ireland flowing away from her and not a drop, scarcely,coming back."
"I'll come back," said Phyl, "you need not fear about that--some day."
"Ay, some day," said Mrs. Hennessey, and stared into the fire. Then thespirit moving her, she began to discant on things past and peoplevanished.
Synge, and Oscar Wilde and Willie Wilde, who was the real genius of thefamily, only his genius "stuck in him somehow and wouldn't come out." Shepassed from people who had vanished to places that had changed, and onlystopped when the servant came in with the announcement that supper wasready.
Then at supper, lo and behold! she discussed the going away of Phyl, asthough it were a matter arranged and done with and carrying her fullconsent and approval.
During the weeks following, Phyl's impending journey kept Mrs. Hennesseybusy in a spasmodic way. One might have fancied from the preparations andlists of things necessary that the girl was off to the wilds of New Guineaor some region equally destitute of shops.
Hennessey remonstrated, and then let her have her way--it kept her quiet,and Phyl, nothing loath, spent most of her time now in shops, Tod andBurns, and Cannock and White's, examining patterns and being fitted,varying these amusements by farewell visits. She was invited out by allthe Hennesseys' friends, the Farrels and the Rourkes, and the Longs andthe Newlands, and the Pryces and the Oldhams, all prepared tea-parties inher honour, made her welcome, and made much of her, just as we make muchof people who have not long to live.
She was the girl that was going to America. She did not appreciate thereal kindness underlying this terrible round of festivities till she wasstanding on the deck of the _Hybernia_ at Kingstown saying good-bye toHennessey.
Then, as the boat drew away from the Carlisle pier, as it passed theguardship anchorage and the batteries at the ends of the east and westpiers, all those people from whom she had longed to escape seemed to herthe most desirable people on earth.
Bound for a world unknown, peopled with utter strangers, Ireland, belovedIreland, called after her as a mother calls to her child.
Oh, the loneliness! the desolation!
As she stood watching the Wicklow mountains fading in the grey distance,she knew for the first time the meaning of those words, "Gone West"; andshe knew what the thousands suffered who, driven from their cabins on thehillside or the moor, went West in the old days when the emigrant shipshowed her tall masts in Queenstown Harbour and her bellying canvas to thesunset of the Atlantic.
At Liverpool, she found Mrs. Van Dusen, a tall, rather good-looking,rather hard-looking but exceedingly fashionable individual, at the hotelwhere it was arranged they should meet.
Phyl, looking like a lost dog, confused by travel and dumb from dejection,had little in common with this lady, nor did a rough passage across theAtlantic extend their knowledge of one another, for Mrs. Van Dusenscarcely appeared from her state-room till the evening when, the greatship coming to her moorings, New York sketched itself and its blazingskyscrapers against the gloom before the astonished eyes of Phyl.
PART II