Minnie's Bishop and Other Stories/This Lost Land

HE scene was quite a usual one. I suppose that the like of it might have been found in a hundred places that same afternoon: in England, in Scotland, and here in Ireland, with no very noticeable differences.

There was sunshine and a green lawn with a tennis net stretched across it. Men, most of them young and more or less athletic, in white flannels, striking at flying white balls; women in summer frocks, also white, with pink or blue hats, all of them gay. They, too, struck eagerly at the flying white balls. Two groups of spectators, some seated on chairs at one side of the lawn and obviously very much interested in the fate of the white balls and the powers of the strikers; players themselves, the members of this group, competitors in the tournament which was in progress. Others, a separate group, less interested or quite indifferent, the local aristocracy, with an air of being a little afraid of compromising their reputation for social aloofness by mingling with the baser folks who congregated at the other side of the lawn.

In the background there is a house and a gravel sweep. There are tables on the gravel spread with white cloths, covered with plates of cake and bread and butter. A busy hostess, very eager to make her guests happy, pours out tea. A few of us stand round her and drink the tea.

I am most fortunate. I find myself beside a very charming lady with blue eyes, and she is kind enough to be conversational and pleasant. Her smiles are quite worth winning, and I, who am a dull dog on whom pretty people rarely smile, am grateful. I really try to listen attentively to what she says.

"I was down in Kerry last week, and so I missed the Horse Show. It was most unlucky, for I had a new hat especially for the occasion."

The Horse Show is a great function. It is the great function of Irish society. It is held in Dublin and every self-respecting man or woman in the country tries to be present at it. I murmured condolences, a little insincerely, for I have missed the Horse Show so often as to have become callous about my loss. Also I never on any single occasion was fortunate enough to have a new hat especially for it.

"Game," shouts an umpire from his table on the lawn. "Five games to four."

There is a clapping of hands among the interested spectators and a turning of heads in the other group. I found myself speculating on the nature of aristocracies. Why are some people superior to common delights? The attitude cannot be exciting. It must, one would think, be actually boring. I suppose there must be compensations which I do not understand. Meanwhile there is desperate striking of flying white balls and I gather that the umpire will soon make another proclamation—"Five games all"—and there will be more applause. My companion is telling me about the trains in Kerry and expressing contempt for them. I have never been in a Kerry train, but I am willing to take her word for it that they go very slowly. Ah! it is as I anticipated. The umpire has shouted again and the match does stand five games all. There is a great clapping of hands. The local aristocracy, several men and women of it, seizes the opportunity for making a move towards tea.

"But there's one advantage about a slow train. You are able to see the country as you go along."

I agree, and watch the progress of our great people across the lawn. It is a pity that so few women can walk. I wonder if we men would make as bad an attempt if we were obliged to wear petticoats.

"There was a great stretch of bog," said my companion, "miles of it, grey, you know, with patches of brown, where the turf stacks stood, and even they looked greyish because it was raining. I never saw such desolation."

I am listening. The description of the Kerry bog goes on. I fill it in from my imagination. There was not a house in sight, nor a man nor a beast, just the grey bog and the misty rain; flat with not a hillock; a pool here and there where the turf had been cut away, but no river or stream. There were three trees standing close to each other in a straight line rising out of the bog and breaking the intolerable grey of the low sky. I see the whole thing as she saw it out of the window of the train which went slowly.

"The middle tree was taller than the other two; and they reminded me of the crucifixion."

She laughed, with a sort of shame-faced merriment as she said this. I felt a sudden sense of relief. She had gone perilously near the abominable thing. If she had not laughed she would have confessed herself a sentimentalist. Heaven forbid that an Irish girl, a girl with large blue eyes and charming manners, would so forget all that is honourable and of good report, should so defile herself as to sentimentalise at a tennis tournament with a tea-cup in her hand. Nevertheless she saw and felt what we all see and feel now and then, what we escape from only because the gods have granted us the ability to laugh.

In a few minutes she will be running about the lawn, striking, I hope skilfully, at the flying white balls, and the umpire will be encouraging her with shouts of "Forty-fifteen," or some other frivolous combination of long suffering numbers. No one will then suspect her of having seen the vision any more than I suspect the eager group of onlookers or the other men and women who have now achieved their tea, of having seen or having felt. I miss the end of her experiences in Kerry and the reiteration of her half mocking lament over the missing of the Horse Show. I am wondering whether any of us really escape seeing the grey bogs of this lost land and the three trees which remind us of the crucifixion and make us laugh when we think of them.