As I thought I should be able to be away from my aunt, with occasional flying visits to her, for about two months, Parnell had two of our horses brought down to Eastbourne. He had during that time to go to London and Ireland, but it was on the whole a peaceful little interlude in his strenuous political life, and we were very happy. He rode his horse President in the morning, and afterwards I drove him far out into the country around Eastbourne with Dictator in my phaeton.
We often drove out to Birling Gap--a favourite haunt of ours--and there we selected a site for the ideal house of our dreams; a place where one could hear nothing but the beating of the surf on the rocks below and the wild call of the sea-birds. He loved that place, where we could be absolutely alone save for the coastguardsman along the cliff, who never intruded his interesting conversation, but who was always ready for a chat when we cared to hear his stories of the sea.
It was impossible to drive near the place, so we had to leave Dictator and the phaeton far off on the last bit possible to drive upon. Parnell had an easy method of "hitching" a horse to something, in the firm faith that he would find it there on return a few hours later, and this made me very uneasy where my far from patient Dictator was concerned. Parnell would settle the horse with a feed, in charge of his groom, well sheltered behind a hill, and take a fantastic pleasure in observing the sulky gloom of the young man's face after an hour or so of this isolated meditation.
Parnell had a great love of sea-storms, and when there { 240} was a gale blowing from the west, and rough weather assured, he loved to get me out to Birling Gap to listen to the roar of the sea and the screaming of the wind as it blew around us, nearly carrying us off our feet. He would tie his coat about me, and hold me firmly against the wind as it tore about us, and while we gazed out at the raging waves he would exclaim: "Isn't this glorious, my Queen? Isn't it alive?"
Our coastguardsman friend always seemed somewhat pleased to see us, though undoubtedly he thought us odd in our amusements. I have often thought since that if we had built our house in that isolated loveliness, where the sound of the sea and moan of the wind were incessant, there would have been some truth in what was said afterwards as to our house in Walsingham Terrace, that it was so "terribly dreary."