My eldest sister was only fourteen, but she was already, had ever been, a sage and a saint. At the age of eight she had put her hand into a blazing fire in order to die the death of a Christian martyr. She shrieked dismally for several hours afterwards. Another time, staying with relatives in the country, she knelt in the gloaming in a big barn, praying with fervently closed eyes, in the hopes of being devoured by lions. She heard the distant growlings of an angry mastiff, and thought her prayer was granted, and that this was the ravening lion about to make a meal of her. She fell down in a fit of convulsions, and had to be nursed by several doctors.
When she came back to consciousness, with her hair shorn and wan little hands upon the coverlet, she recognised our tender mother seated beside her bed, and contentedly shortening her last new frock for my second sister. She[Pg 213] offered up the mortification for her sins, and instantly said a prayer to her patron saint, Agnes. At dinner she never ate pudding or pie, not even damson-pie, for which I in those gluttonous days would have sold, not only my own soul, but hers as well; but after dinner she invariably carried her share of these luxurious edibles to the nearest poor person.
She visited the poor continually, always provided with tea and sugar and such things; and Pauline, who accompanied her on these missions of mercy, assured me that she often saw the pet cases of misery dash under the bed excellent dishes of bacon and eggs and bottles of Guinness\' stout, while the traditional invalid would jump into bed, gather the clothes about her, and begin to whine, "Sure, your little ladyship, \'tis our lonesome selves as hasn\'t had bit or sup since last we saw your purty face."
My eldest sister was a bewitching beauty. She had large dusky blue eyes in constant communion with the heavenly spheres. She had ruddy golden hair that shown adown her back like pounded guineas, and her complexion was a thing to gape at. Indeed we had all inherited from our mother wonderful golden locks and dazzling complexions.
This sentimental and saintly creature wrought the utmost havoc around her, and went dreamily through life unconscious or sublimely indifferent, with her gaze of impassioned sadness fixed upon her heavenly home. Youths went down before her like ninepins, and trembled when they addressed her. One lad of sixteen rode past the door with a crimson cravat, which he fondly hoped to be becoming, and the moody intensity of expression that betokens a broken heart. She minded him not. She was reading "Fabiola" for the hundredth time in the front garden. The gate was open. In his amorous distraction the youth forgot the proprieties, and rode through the gate in lordly style. The door likewise was open, and the pony gallantly galloped into the hall.
My sister\'s dismay was nothing to the youth\'s. He stammered and stuttered and went so red that the wonder was he ever grew pale again. But we were used to these commotions aroused by our young Saint Agnes in the bosom of excitable youth. It did not hurt her, and it did not harm them. With gracious gravity she escorted the poor lad to the gate; but we who knew her knew that she was stifling with suppressed laughter. For my eldest sister had a[Pg 215] pretty humour, even an irony of her own, and gaiety, as will be seen, was not contraband in her religion.
She constituted herself our veritable mother in that old rambling house of Dalkey. She ruled us like an autocrat, and punished us with a lamentable severity. To teach us self-control and fearlessness, she insisted that the smallest baby should be taken in her night-dress, half asleep, and flung into the wild Irish sea that roared at the foot of the garden. No mercy was shown a recalcitrant babe. Howl she never so dolorously, she was plunged in head-foremost, sputtering salt through her rebellious lips.
At night, when our parents stayed in town, she gathered us ............