"My true love hath my heart and I have his."                                                                         —SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.
 
 
Once when Parnell had to go to Ireland by the morning mail, after a late sitting of the House, I went up to the St. Pancras Hotel, where he had a room that night, and made the waiter bring up a tray into the bedroom, with a cold bird, some tomatoes and materials for salad dressing, adding a bottle of still Moselle (Parnell always drank still Moselle by his doctor's, Sir Henry Thompson's, orders, and no other wine). I knew he would be rushed to catch the train when he returned in the early morning, and that he would miss the little meal I always had ready for him, and this missing a meal was very bad for him.
 
When I had prepared the supper table to my liking I sat down by the open window and watched the flare of light in the sky and the wide panoramic view of mean streets and wide spaces I had from this window, of one of the rooms highest up in this high building; and the shrieks and oaths of men and women came up to me as they quarrelled, and the drunken brawls of some past semblance of humanity floated up to me till dawn brought peace to the city, as these poor dregs of life slunk back to their dens to seek the oblivion of sleep. I shall never forget the sights and sounds of that night, for never before had the horror of a great city's streets at night been so forcibly brought before me.
 
{251}
In the early dawn Parnell came, and, seeing his supper there, sat down to eat it without question, as I had known he would. He ate in a preoccupied way as he thought over his speech, and after telling of various points in it, suddenly said, "Ah, I was really hungry; and you found some tomatoes. I'll make the salad if you'll eat some." So he made a delicious salad, and we feasted upon it before I left him to go down to Eltham by the early train, and to give him time for a short rest before catching the mail train for Ireland.
 
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"There is one great comfort about this," I used to say to myself, after two hours' walking up and down that most uncomfortable station, Waterloo Junction, "and that is that he always comes at last." I had often to comfort myself with that reflection as I waited about at various stations for Parnell.
 
When he had to be late I often went up to the House to fetch him out to dinner at a restaurant. He hated dining in the House, and there were one or two points in the diet ordered him by Sir Henry Thompson that I insisted upon for him where he would not take the trouble to insist for himself. After dinner I would drive him nearly back to the House. There he got out, and if he felt lonely at the idea of driving down to Eltham by himself as he sometimes did, or if he thought he would want to talk to me again before he came home (as he very often did!) I would promise to wait for him at some station, so that he could find me without observation. It would have been much more comfortable, of course, for me to have waited in a house or rooms somewhere, but people were so extraordinarily curious about Parnell that it would have been {252} impossible so to get any peace unless we changed the address every week, and this would have been decidedly too expensive. As it was, he was often followed to the station by a detective or some private busybody who could not realize that even a public man may possible prefer to keep a little of his life to himself.
 
So very many hours I waited for him at various stations! The officials (at each and all) were most kind and considerate to the lonely lady who had to be driven, by sheer force of regulations, from one waiting-room to another as the lights were put out, and who finally would take to a steady tramp up and down the station platform till at length (such a long length sometimes!) she was joined by her husband and almost lifted into the hansom-cab they invariably drove off in.
 
When I felt that he really wanted me to wait I could not bear to go home, and though Waterloo was the most uncomfortable station of all to keep vigil in I often chose it, as, owing to the early morning trains at the Junction, I could always be sure that it would not be altogether shut up.
 
I think the officials must have known who Parnell was, as I always had a free pass (from him) for all these lines, but they never intruded, and, in spite of my pass, received and kept his telegrams for me (he often telegraphed from the little office near the House, in the name "Preston") with perfect tact. The porters were very good to me also, and many a scuttle of coal was recklessly emptied on a waiting-room fire after hours as "reg'lations 'gainst keepin' on gas strong, but it will be fairly cheerful like with the firelight, ma'am." The railway men are a kindly race, for I rarely tipped these men.
 
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{253}
HOUSE OF COMMONS,
    12.30.
I arrived here to-night.
 
I fear I may be detained till rathe............