Penelopes Irish Experiences | Page 4

the brain
that has to settle all its own affairs and all the affairs of its friends and
acquaintances could never lack energy. Spiritually it is almost too good
for earth, and any woman who lives in the house with it has moments
of despondency and self-chastisement, in which she fears that heaven
may prove all too small to contain the perfect being and its
unregenerate family as well.
Financially it has at least a moderate bank account; that is, it is never
penniless, indeed it can never afford to be, because it is peremptory that
it should possess funds in order to disburse them to needier brothers.
There is never an hour when Mr. William Beresford is not signing
notes and bonds and drafts for less fortunate men; giving small loans
just to 'help a fellow over a hard place'; educating friends' children,
starting them in business, or securing appointments for them. The
widow and the fatherless have worn such an obvious path to his office
and residence that no bereaved person could possibly lose his way, and
as a matter of fact no one of them ever does. This special journey of his
to America has been made necessary because, first, his cousin's widow
has been defrauded of a large sum by her man of business; and second,
his college chum and dearest friend has just died in Chicago after
appointing him executor of his estate and guardian of his only child.
The wording of the will is, 'as a sacred charge and with full power.'
Incidentally, as it were, one of his junior partners has been ordered a
long sea voyage, and another has to go somewhere for mud baths. The
junior partners were my idea, and were suggested solely that their
senior might be left more or less free from business care, but it was
impossible that Willie should have selected sound, robust partners--his
tastes do not incline him in the direction of selfish ease; accordingly he
chose two delightful, estimable, frail gentlemen who needed

comfortable incomes in conjunction with light duties.
I am railing at my husband for all this, but I love him for it just the
same, and it shows why the table is laid for three.
"Salemina," I said, extending my slipper toe to the glowing peat, which
by extraordinary effort had been brought up from the hotel kitchen, as a
bit of local colour, "it is ridiculous that we three women should be in
Ireland together; it's the sort of thing that happens in a book, and of
which we say that it could never occur in real life. Three persons do not
spend successive seasons in England, Scotland and Ireland unless they
are writing an Itinerary of the British Isles. The situation is possible,
certainly, but it isn't simple, or natural, or probable. We are behaving
precisely like characters in fiction, who, having been popular in the first
volume, are exploited again and again until their popularity wanes. We
are like the Trotty books or the Elsie Dinmore series. England was our
first volume, Scotland our second, and here we are, if you please, about
to live a third volume in Ireland. We fall in love, we marry and are
given in marriage, we promote and take part in international alliances,
but when the curtain goes up again, our accumulations,
acquisitions--whatever you choose to call them--have disappeared. We
are not to the superficial eye the spinster- philanthropist, the bride to be,
the wife of a year; we are the same old Salemina, Francesca and
Penelope. It is so dramatic that my husband should be called to
America; as a woman I miss him and need him; as a character I am
much better single. I don't suppose publishers like married heroines any
more than managers like married leading ladies. Then how entirely
proper it is that Ronald Macdonald cannot leave his new parish in the
Highlands. The one, my husband, belongs to the first volume;
Francesca's lover to the second; and good gracious, Salemina, don't you
see the inference?"
"I may be dull," she replied, "but I confess I do not."
"We are three?"
"Who is three?"

"That is not good English, but I repeat with different emphasis WE are
three. I fell in love in England, Francesca fell in love in Scotland-" And
here I paused, watching the blush mount rosily to Salemina's grey hair;
pink is very becoming to grey, and that, we always say, accounts more
satisfactorily for Salemina's frequent blushes than her modesty, which
is about of the usual sort.
"Your argument is interesting, and even ingenious," she replied, "but I
fail to see my responsibility. If you persist in thinking of me as a
character in fiction, I shall rebel. I am not the stuff of which